The Audacious-class Ark Royal as a Cold War centerpiece

Sitting between wartime designs and the cancelled Malta class, the Audacious-class carrier was an almost-complete expression of British ambitions for an armoured strike carrier. Malta would have been the British counterpart to the Midway class, combining fleet protection and concentrated striking power without treaty shackles. Ark Royal and Eagle delivered a smaller but still formidable version of that idea. From 1954 to 1978 Ark Royal operated Hawker Sea Hawks, de Havilland Sea Venoms, Fairey Gannets, Westland Wyverns, Grumman Avengers, McDonnell Douglas Phantoms, Blackburn Buccaneers, Supermarine Scimitars, and de Havilland Sea Vixens. Her rotary-wing inventory also included Westland Dragonflies, Westland Sea Kings, and Westland Wessexes. Across those 24 years she formed the centre of British task groups and offered a scale of fleet-carrier capability that other navies could plausibly aspire to.