In December 1978, HMS Ark Royal, the Royal Navy’s last conventional aircraft carrier, paid off for the final time. Laid down in 1943, commissioned in 1955 and spending almost half her life in refit, she was retired without direct replacement following the 1966 decision to cancel the CVA-01 programme. In 12 years, the Navy ran down its once significant force of five strike carriers to nothing, reorganising instead around anti-submarine warfare (ASW) in the North Atlantic.
Conventional history records this as the end of the story. Yet the files reveal that in 1978, the RN, spurred by a direct intervention from NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT), Admiral Kidd USN, seriously considered extending Ark Royal’s life.
“Terry, we need Ark Royal”
After the East of Suez withdrawal, Ark Royal operated mainly in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, carrying F-4 Phantoms, Buccaneers, Gannets and Sea Kings. She remained a potent platform, one of the few RN ships capable of nuclear strike with WE177 tactical weapons. Crucially, she fitted neatly into NATO war plans, able to defend herself against Soviet air attack while striking surface ships and submarines. By 1973, she was NATO’s sole non-US fixed-wing carrier, making her unique.
By 1978, however, the RN judged her too worn out to continue. Resources were shifting to the Invincible-class ‘through-deck cruisers’ for ASW helicopters and Sea Harriers. The gap between Ark’s decommissioning, Hermes’ Sea Harrier refit, and Invincibles’ arrival would be covered by recommissioning HMS Bulwark as a helicopter carrier.
SACLANT commander Admiral Kidd, however, was alarmed by the wider reduction in US Navy carrier forces assigned to his Command, which in wartime would play a vital role in getting military reinforcements across the Atlantic to Europe. In February 1978, he warned First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Terence Lewin that NATO faced a severe carrier shortage: “By the end of 1978… we need eight carrier task groups for reinforcement and resupply of Europe, and I shall be fortunate to have more than one, repeat one, American task group to cover the entire Atlantic and Norwegian Sea.” His blunt plea – “Terry, we need Ark Royal” – forced the Admiralty to reconsider.
A carrier without maintenance
As a result of Kidd’s letter, the Naval Staff quietly examined whether Ark could be kept going. The USN’s 13 carriers were mostly tied to the Pacific or Mediterranean, leaving only one for SACLANT beyond 1979. The risk of a NATO carrier gap was real – but was Ark salvageable?
A survey painted a grim picture. The ship was corroded, her boilers unreliable, and she could not form a proper NBC citadel. Electrical wiring was dangerously degraded, communications kept alive only by improvisation, and spares were almost exhausted. Catapult bridles and flight deck barriers had a two-year lead time to replace. The best estimate was that she could run another year before needing a massive 1980 refit requiring 50,000 man-weeks, the equivalent of eight escort refits. This would badly disrupt the wider fleet’s maintenance programme.
A carrier without planes
Keeping Ark would also complicate aircraft plans. By 1978, RN and RAF squadrons intended to reallocate Phantoms and Buccaneers ashore, generating 30 Phantoms and 36 Buccaneers for NATO in wartime. Retaining Ark would upset this balance.
Airborne Early Warning was an even bigger issue: the AEW Gannet force was already being scrapped, with no engine servicing available. Aircrew were short too – half came from the RAF, and RN pilots were transitioning to Sea Harriers. If Ark ran on, the RAF would shoulder most of the air wing.
Then came manpower. Ark’s 1,500 crew had already been reassigned. To find replacements, the RN would need to pay off Bulwark, Tiger, Blake, two County-class destroyers and perhaps two frigates. This would permanently remove five major escorts from the fleet to keep her at sea– a brutal trade-off.
A carrier without a role
Given these costs, was keeping Ark worth it? A March 1978 MoD review concluded it was not viable to run her as a strike carrier. But the First Sea Lord still ordered a study into alternative uses, to see if she could be maintained until the Invincible class came into service,
Three options emerged: refit Ark as a CVS, hold her in maintained reserve, or leave her moored like Eagle in Plymouth. Yet HMS Bulwark was in better shape, due a refit, and could embark helicopters and Sea Harriers more readily. There simply weren’t enough aircraft or crews to keep both ships viable.
Keeping her in a maintained reserve status proved unrealistic. Even ‘mothballing’ Ark would need 300–400 crew, equivalent to 1.5 frigates’ worth of engineers. Given already acute artificer shortages, this meant robbing frontline ships and paying them off to keep Ark Royal in reserve. The Chief of Fleet Support warned that reactivating Ark would take far longer than reactivating Bulwark. By summer 1978, the Admiralty accepted that retaining Ark Royal would damage the wider fleet more than it helped: “retaining ARK ROYAL between the buoys with minimal presentation would imply little confidence that she could ever run again”.
The decision was taken that, regardless of the logic to retain her, there would be no reprieve for the Ark Royal, and she was scrapped in 1980.
Speculation persists that retaining Ark Royal might have changed the Falklands War. The archives suggest otherwise. Her poor material state meant she may well have been in refit during 1982. AEW capability would have been absent, as the Gannet force was gone due to lack of engines. Had she been in reserve, the scale of reactivation work required would have meant she would not have been recommissioned until long after the conflict was over.
