Letter to the Editor: Carrier Groups

Sir, – Terms like ‘Strike Group’ are unhelpful as they feed public, media, and political misconceptions. What was wrong with ‘battle group’ or ‘task group’? This is not helped by lacklustre MoD/RN PR describing any air defence or ASW activity in terms of defending the carrier. The emphasis on (ground) attack helped lead to the cancellation of the CVA-01 carriers in the 1960s, as somebody had forgotten to mention that NATO depended on carriers, including RN ones, for things such as air defence and ASW, and nobody told the politicians that carrier based aircraft routinely intercepted Sovie…