What a Malta-class carrier could have offered in the Falklands

Would a Malta-class aircraft carrier have been useful during the Falklands War?

Yes. Its much larger deck and aviation spaces could have supported a larger air group and aircraft such as the Hawkeye, assuming the ship had survived and been modernized.

Malta shows the value of growth margin in carrier design. It was projected as substantially larger than Ark Royal or Eagle, leaving more usable deck and internal space for later aircraft. A modernized ship might have operated Hawkeye airborne early-warning aircraft, a capability Britain lacked in 1982. It would also have carried more aircraft and supported them with a less constrained flight deck. The counterfactual depends on decades of retention and modernization, but it explains why postwar cancellation had consequences beyond the immediate construction budget.