"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
thlink.net

Remember how difficult it was for the Air Force to get in the fight
against Libya?


Eldorado Canyon? I recall the F-111s had to take a lengthier route
than desired and that carrier aviation alone wasn't up to the task.
Is that not correct?

USN A-6s and A-7s were busy beating up on targets around Benghazi while the
F-111s were hitting Tripoli.

Basically, it came down to numbers of suitable aircraft. The plan called
for precision night attack, which meant either A-6s or F-111s. With two
carriers, there were only 20 A-6s in the region, but 32 were needed to
strike all the planned targets in one go. So the Air Force was recruited to
fly the rest of the strikes.

It took the Air Force 57 aircraft (half of them tankers) to hit roughly the
same number of targets as 26 Navy aircraft.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/el_dorado_canyon.htm

Today, many of the factors that restricted the Lybia strikes are no longer
factors. A single carrier could put up at least 40 aircraft qualified for
night proecision strike today; two carriers could easily cover both the
Benghazi and Tripoli target sets without Air Force augmentation, even
excluding the possible use of Tomahawks against some or all of these
targets.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)