Hello, can anyone help a non-engineer understand something?
On the CVF propulsion page on the Navy-Matters website it states that modern steam propulsion never seemed to be a likely option for CVF. Yet on the PA2 page of the same website it states:
"however DCN had done a considerable amount of work investigating propulsion options, and despite a close association with Rolls-Royce, for an aircraft carrier of this size equipped with steam catapults it favoured using a modern steam (boilers and turbine) propulsion system with conventional shafts. As DCN was leading the ship platform design and build aspects of the Romeo Project/Juliete, it's ideas would have predominated if that Project had continued."
Does anybody know why the UK weren't interested in steam propulsion? Was it simply that they were initially only interested in a STOVL carrier and therefore didn't need the steam for catapults?
The reason I ask is that from my limited knowledge it appears that using steam propulsion the UK could have built a smaller, cheaper CATOBAR carrier and avoided a lot of the problems involving manufacturing and basing the CVFs. Do you think this would have been possible?
Thanks
Essex |