Post War Analysis
What was not discovered until late in the war was that the kamikaze impacts proved to have a long term effect on the structural integrity of British carriers and their post war life was shortened, as the RN lacked the financial resources to repair the damage, in contrast to the vast resources of the USN which was even able to rebuild carriers such as Franklin that had been completely gutted and the crew decimated by IJN attacks. HMS Formidable (R67) was an excellent example of this; while she weathered a severe kamikaze hit in 1945 which cratered her deck armour, the hit caused severe internal structural damage and permanently warped the hull (damage worsened in a postwar aircraft-handling accident wherein a Vought Corsair rolled off a lift and raked the hangar deck with 20mm cannon fire, causing a severe fire); but plans to rebuild her as per Victorious were abandoned due to budget cuts, not structural damage, and she lingered in reserve until 1956 before being towed off to the breakers. The Royal Navy planned to rebuild most of the armoured carriers in the early post war period:
There seems to have been general agreement that the first ship to be modernized should be an Illustrious. Formidable was laid up and required a long refit in any case, so she was provisionally selected for modernization. Illustrious was a deck landing training and trials carrier, and could not be spared, particularly as she was needed to test the new generation of naval aircraft. This left HMS Victorious as the only other candidate. In early 1951 the other two ships of the programme were HMS Implacable, followed by HMS Indefatigable, for modernisation, respectively, 1953–55 (to relieve HMS Eagle so that she could refit in 1956 with steam catapults) and 1954–57. HMS Indomitable was scheduled for a more limited modernisation (1957) as the future deck landing training ship. At this time Eagle was scheduled for completion in August 1951 and Ark Royal in 1954, so that the full programme would provide the Royal Navy with five fleet carriers plus a semi-modernised deck landing training ship. —Illustrious suffered a similar battering, especially off of Malta in 1941 when hit by German dive bombers and late in the war was limited to 22 knots (41 km/h) because her centreline shaft was disabled due to accumulated wartime damage; she spent five years as a training and trials carrier (1948–53) and was disposed of in 1954. Indomitable was completely refit to like-new condition, only to suffer a severe gasoline explosion on board, which caused "considerable structural and electrical damage to the ship". Indomitable was refitted between 1948 and 1950 and served as flagship of the Home Fleet then served a tour of duty in the Mediterranean, where she was damaged by the petrol explosion. She was partially repaired before proceeding under her own power to Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 Coronation Review, before being placed in reserve in 1954. Indomitable was scrapped in 1956. The explosion which occurred on Indomitable's hangar deck, while severe, would also have caused severe casualties and extensive damage to an Essex-class carrier, several of which returned to service after hangar explosions, primarily due to the USN's considerable financial and material resources. The postwar Royal Navy could only afford to rebuild Victorious and had to abandon plans to rebuild four other armoured carriers due to cost, and to provide crews to man the postwar built carriers, such as Ark Royal, due to reductions in manpower.
Another factor is the advantage in resources that the US Navy had over the Royal Navy. The numerous and capacious American yards on the East and West Coasts allowed the US Navy to build and repair carriers at a more leisurely pace and higher quality individually, while producing ships collectively at a furious rate. The British with their strained facilities were forced to rush repairs (indeed the overloaded British shipyards had forced some vessels to be sent to the US for repairs) and some ships such as Illustrious, were forced into service even though not fully repaired. The RN was in a state of continual contraction after WWII, and simply did not have the resources or inclination to repair ships that it could no longer man.
Read more about this topic: Armoured Flight Deck, Defences
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