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Post by guino27 on Nov 19, 2016 3:53:23 GMT -6
Please examine the armored deck issue from a system approach. Every aspect of a carriers construction and operation should be considered together, not individually. The systems analysis is interesting. I suppose in the mid-30s it took some imagination to envision a carrier air wing that could successfully defend the carrier from any nearby surface unit beyond gun range. If you look at the planes that were in service before the wartime F4F, SBD, TBD, it's not a very threatening group. You have short range, poor performance, weak weapons load. If you postulate that this will change (as it did), the armored flight deck has A LOT of problems that compound with each other to hurt effectiveness. First, the flight deck is the main armor deck and strength deck. Therefore: 1) No permanent open access 2) Any access has to be armored to a similar standard to the main deck This means no ventilation on the hanger deck to warm up piston engines. Having the strength deck above the hanger means that the hanger height is also limited as every inch the deck goes up, the stability of the ship is compromised. It also means you have a major problem with the elevators for moving aircraft. The size of the elevator needs to be limited due to armoring. It also means the elevator is REALLY, REALLY slow (apparently the RN had a hard time developing the machinery for the elevator, unsurprisingly). This leads to a limitation of size of aircraft as each must fit on this smaller elevator (hence wingtips being clipped off the F4U, other planes not being able to be used on RN carriers). As a system, it really hurts the tempo of operations. Planes need to be on deck to warm up, but they take a long time to get there because the armored elevators are heavy and slow. The cycle time of the RN elevators was a multiple of the USN one. It also means that elevators had to be mid flight deck as it was not feasible at first to have armored elevators at deck side positions. Thus, if one failed, flight operations stopped until it was fixed...and it was more likely to fail as it was so heavy. The slow cycle time affected the ability to launch strike packages. You could have an unlimited number of planes in the hanger, but they needed to get to the deck, warm up and take off. With each cycle taking a while, the first planes on deck would be burning fuel waiting for the later planes, especially if they were in the air, circling to form up a cohesive strike. It also meant that reaction for launching CAP was hindered as warmed up fighters couldn't be kept below deck in case they were needed if the flight deck was full of strike aircraft. A cold fighter could be brought up, but would have a hard time getting off before an attack reached the carrier, much less get to altitude even with good radar GCI. The deck park was less useful because if you didn't have the right package positioned on deck, it was a real chore to swap plane types. Ordnance loading was also a hassle as any problems on the hanger deck with mishandled ordnance meant that there was a threat inside the armor. Thus, changing ordnance could be a risky decision as well as time consuming. On a USN carrier, if a threat was imminent, ordnance could be pushed out the sides of the hanger. While it was infinitely harder to damage the flight deck on an armored deck CV, it was very difficult to repair at sea, sometimes even in port. USN CVs took terrible beatings, but, if the fires were under control, they had lumber aboard to repair the flight deck quickly. Armored flight decks also not only don't help protect against torpedoes, they make the carrier more susceptible to listing once hit due to the heavy weight carried high on the ship. USN carriers rarely were sunk by bombs, they suffered from torpedo hits. It's a simplistic view, but a BB with a couple of seaplanes is the logical end to the armoring of carriers. Without the ability to project force and provide defense beyond the flak zone, the CV isn't that useful. These calculations change as planes get heavier, such as the '45 era twin engine planes and early jets that were really heavy. Wooden flight decks wouldn't suffice. Jet engines don't require the warmup time of piston ones, so having open hangers is less important at that point. Having the strength deck at flight deck level became less of an option and more of a requirement. Friedman's book on US CVs is very valuable in discussing these points. There are a couple other good sources on this discussion as well. Can't wait for the game!
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 19, 2016 13:59:45 GMT -6
The first comment I will make, is simply that the protection of a carrier is in its air wing, not torpedo bulkheads and armored decks. The other protection is advanced warning of an incoming raid and removing all aircraft from the hanger and decks, draining the fuel lines and filling them with foam and last but not least, all ordnance must be moved down into the armored ordnance lockers. The second protection is plenty of escorts like destroyers, AA cruisers and battleships. Lastly, a large compliment of fighters is important. We started the war with 18, but there was a directive out before the war to raise that to 32. Unfortunately there were not enough fighters to provide that amount, so the carriers went to Coral Sea without that extra protection. At Midway, the amount was raised to 27 and there after it was raised to 32. It got higher later in the war on the Essex class. The Japanese increased their fighter strengths to 27 after Midway... a little too late but better than nothing. Speed and maneuverability of the carrier is also vital. The first carrier to have an armored flight deck was the Illustrious. The first IJN carrier was the Taiho. Most British carriers had steel-plated flight decks. Armored flight decks are a prerequisite if you intend to tactical close with the enemy to provide extra range. In such a case, then you will have to be prepared for potential damage and an armored flight deck then becomes a vital necessity. Here is a good article about armored flight decks. www.armouredcarriers.com/debunking-slade-and-worths-armoured-carrier-essays/2014/5/30/debunking-slade-and-worths-armoured-carrier-essaysHere is the link to the article he debunks in the essay. You be the judge. www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-030.htmIt is my belief and always has been, that a weapons system is designed and built based on the naval situation that may confront a country, its geography and its potential enemy. The design must be developed through war games and extensive testing; then detailed specifications developed. This is the process. Armored decks have never been proof against bombs greater than 500 lbs. armored piercing. Any bomb larger than that, will penetrate the deck and has done so. That does not mean the armored deck isn’t worth the money, but all the other factors I’ve mentioned had better be in place before you make the choice because it is not fool proof. Testing in war has proven that. As an aside: the US Navy introduced a 1000 lbs. bomb that could penetrate 5 inches of armor at 6500 feet in a 300 knot 60 degree dive. Taiho, the first IJN carrier to have an armored deck only had 3.0 to 3.1 inches of armored over the enclosed upper hanger. Illustrious had a armored deck of 4.5 inches. It would appear that those two examples were no match for a well designed and delivered bomb.
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Post by guino27 on Nov 19, 2016 18:06:57 GMT -6
As an aside: the US Navy introduced a 1000 lbs. bomb that could penetrate 5 inches of armor at 6500 feet in a 300 knot 60 degree dive. Taiho, the first IJN carrier to have an armored deck only had 3.0 to 3.1 inches of armored over the enclosed upper hanger. Illustrious had a armored deck of 4.5 inches. It would appear that those two examples were no match for a well designed and delivered bomb. This is a very good point. It's hard with hindsight to view things from the CinC's point of view at the time. However, to assume that weapon loads will not increase at a rapid rate during war time is very dangerous. When you build an armored flight deck, you need to be sure it will be armored against likely threats. If not, you sacrifice a lot of flexibility for insufficient protection. Relying on an air wing for protection helps to reduce the threat of obsolescence. USN CAWs went from 24-36 fighters at the beginning of the war to 60+ when F4Us were added to the airgroup for kamikaze protection.
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Post by guino27 on Nov 19, 2016 18:14:03 GMT -6
According to the AAA Summary from Hyperwar, the 5 " with VT fuse fired 75,961 round with 207.5 kills for 1945. The 40 mm for the same year, had 718,699 rounds with 476.5 kills. The same article states that the 40 mm was the most effective weapon in the fleet. I would replace the 5 " guns and add more 40 mm. Rounds per bird is useless, only the kills matter. www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/Kamikaze/AAA-Summary-1045/index.htmlCould 40mm consistently destroy threats before they released their ordnance loads or entered final kamikaze attack? I don't know the answer to the question, but, ideally, you can engage and destroy the enemy before they become a threat as the 5" could. Japanese AA had this problem where their light/medium AA could only engage dive bombers after they had released their bombs IIRC. It's nice to get any kill, but much better before they release what could be the ship killing weapon.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 19, 2016 19:39:19 GMT -6
As an aside: the US Navy introduced a 1000 lbs. bomb that could penetrate 5 inches of armor at 6500 feet in a 300 knot 60 degree dive. Taiho, the first IJN carrier to have an armored deck only had 3.0 to 3.1 inches of armored over the enclosed upper hanger. Illustrious had a armored deck of 4.5 inches. It would appear that those two examples were no match for a well designed and delivered bomb. This is a very good point. It's hard with hindsight to view things from the CinC's point of view at the time. However, to assume that weapon loads will not increase at a rapid rate during war time is very dangerous. When you build an armored flight deck, you need to be sure it will be armored against likely threats. If not, you sacrifice a lot of flexibility for insufficient protection. Relying on an air wing for protection helps to reduce the threat of obsolescence. USN CAWs went from 24-36 fighters at the beginning of the war to 60+ when F4Us were added to the airgroup for kamikaze protection. One of the methods that the US Navy used to develop their carrier aviation technology, tactics and strategy was the use of Naval war games at the Naval War College and Fleet Problems held each year from 1923 to 1940. These were the training and testing grounds for everything that won the Pacific War for the US. A good book is "to Train the Fleet For War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems 1923 - 1940" by Albert A. Nofi. It explains each years problem in detail and what was learned. The Naval War College Rules is another interesting book, but I only have part of it. The Essex class could and did carry up to 62 fighters and as you stated, they were handy during the later years of the war. As to the deck park, we had the advantage of being able to recover and launch aircraft much faster than the Japanese. We had catapults and this allowed us to recover a bird, move it forward beyond the barrier, then refuel, rearm and launch another sortie. When you can do this consistently with little turn around time, you do not need as many aircraft. Our elevators were much faster than the other nations that had carriers. It wasn't just one item that made us better, it was the concept of carrier aviation as a system. All the systems had to contribute to the end product.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 19, 2016 19:56:10 GMT -6
According to the AAA Summary from Hyperwar, the 5 " with VT fuse fired 75,961 round with 207.5 kills for 1945. The 40 mm for the same year, had 718,699 rounds with 476.5 kills. The same article states that the 40 mm was the most effective weapon in the fleet. I would replace the 5 " guns and add more 40 mm. Rounds per bird is useless, only the kills matter. www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/Kamikaze/AAA-Summary-1045/index.htmlCould 40mm consistently destroy threats before they released their ordnance loads or entered final kamikaze attack? I don't know the answer to the question, but, ideally, you can engage and destroy the enemy before they become a threat as the 5" could. Japanese AA had this problem where their light/medium AA could only engage dive bombers after they had released their bombs IIRC. It's nice to get any kill, but much better before they release what could be the ship killing weapon. Both the 20 mm Oerlikon and 40mm Bofors were found to be inadequate by late 1944 against Kamikazes. The guns that replaced them were rapid fire 3 inch./50 weapons. It had a range depending on elevation of from 6844 yards to 11,133 yards @45 degrees. Its actual ceiling was about 22,300 feet. These figures and the fact that the gun lasted on major warships for only about six years before being replaced, seems to indicate its weakness at stopping a determine attacker. However, while the 5 inch. could with the proper fusing destroy the target consistently, you have to get close and in this case, volume of fire is vital. As to the IJN, their 25 mm gun was terrible. You had to replace the fifteen round magazine frequently and it was manually loaded which really slows down the firing. It's max range was 8200 yards at about 50 degrees elevation. It had a firing rate of between 260 RPM and 220 RPM. As you can see, you will exhaust a fifteen round magazine very quickly. If you use YouTube and watch the last scene of the Yamato it gives you a good idea of the problems with that gun. Try it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a1-zsd7Sn0
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 20, 2016 9:30:21 GMT -6
One of the key areas where carrier development in the US far exceeded the British and IJN was that of arrestor systems, catapults and the deck park. These developments were a product of what has been termed "institutional arrangements" for testing new ideas and systems. The Naval War College and the General Board are at least two of those institutions.
As to the deck park, neither the British and the IJN developed the deck park until later in the war. This system enabled our carriers to carry one more squadron. This extra squadron was a scout bomber squadron, titled VS, but simply a special SBD squadron trained for scouting enemy forces. This was the key to victory in the four major carrier battles, Coral Sea; Midway; Eastern Solomon's; Santa Cruz. Although the latter was considered a draw, it was the early detection of the opponents carriers that prevented a defeat.
We know from WWII experience that the side that detects the other first and launches, will generally have the advantage in a carrier battle and almost always wins the battle. We know that the key was the size of the single deck load the flight deck could carry. The more planes on the deck, using catapults, the faster the air wing could be launched, and quicker our attack would proceed. Carrier aircraft use, generally, air cooled radial engines and they require a 20 minute warmup and you can't do that in an enclosed hanger. On the other hand, if your deck doesn't have the capacity for a complete air wing load, your launch times will be slower as after each complete launch, another group must be brought up on deck, warmed up, then launched. This slows operations down. If a group is returning, arrestor systems can protect the forward end of the deck, which can continue to launch combat air patrols and ASW flights while the returning group is landed and moved forward to be refueled, rearmed and new attack instructions provided. All these procedures were developed and tested during the seventeen years of fleet problems from 1923 to 1940. BTW, armored decks tend to have heavier elevators and they do not rise and fall as fast as our did. Again, this has the effect of slowing down the launch times.
One key change during the war, as identified by Captain Wayne Hughes in "Fleet Tactics" was the change from a battle to sink carriers to a battle to destroy aircraft. Our larger air wings with more fighters and anti air ships, proximity fuses etc. all contributed to our successes. As I have stated repeatedly on this forum, we must take a systemic view of carrier operations.
Our carrier tactics at the beginning of the were not the best, Midway proved that, as our air wings went out disjointed, and paid the price. This is where combat experience paid off, but over time our technological advances showed the best way to conduct carrier operations.
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Post by axe99 on Nov 21, 2016 16:15:27 GMT -6
Hey Oldpop, just going off the top of my memory here (this is a quick post before work), but on British carriers: - They had catapults before the start of WW2 at least - and had them installed on the old converted light BC carriers as well. During the war, the Brits even used catapults to launch hurricanes from merchant ships (the Catapult-armed Merchants, or CAMs). Both the US and Brits had carriers at the start of the war with catapults that launched directly from the hangar deck, although as far as I know these didn't get a lot of use (although they were used). - The US definitely invented arrestor gear, but as far as I know all the British carriers had decent arrestor gear by the start of WW2. IIRC, the US had better crash barriers early on, which the Brits copied. - The Brits were aware of the deck park (I forget the exact reference, but they originally gave the number of aircraft one of their carriers could carry (presumably illustrious) with a deck park, even though they had no intention of using it, to disguise the fact it had an armoured hangar). British doctrine at the start of the war was based around operating in the Mediterranean, and was developed before radar and fighter direction had become effective enough to blunt air attacks sufficiently that there could be any confidence the carriers would be protected. In that context, the carriers were seen as a place aircraft could be protected while under attack, something a deck park clearly didn't do very well at all. It's not that they weren't aware of the deck park, but rather that it didn't fit the strategic situation they expected to be operating in. - While the Japanese didn't have a deck park, they had a strong emphasis on scouting aircraft carried by cruisers (and submarines, lol) to make up for it. The IJN was well aware of the "find and strike first" philosophy, and had the scouts to pursue it (in many ways, they were pretty unlucky not to find first at Midway, IIRC they were a bit slack with their doctrines and should probably have spotted the US fleet first if they hadn't have messed up). - Interwar carrier technology was a bit of a mix. I've seen US historians (in a US documentary) claim that the USN benefited greatly from access to RN innovations in the interwar years. As far as I can tell, both navies made useful innovations which benefited each other. - Weather was a significant element for deck parks. Much easier to use deck parks in Pacific conditions than in the North Atlantic/North Sea. I'd imagine that there were quite a few aircraft lost when that US taskforce got caught in the typhoon off the Philippines. - Don't discount the use of radar and fighter direction in carrier battles. The Japanese didn't have it, and suffered horrendously because of it when defending their forces. The US, while they took a while to get their fighter direction sorted, at the least had the benefit of radar to tell them when enemy aircraft were on the way in. It's one of the reasons why at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Japanese forces detected and launched first, but had a pretty bad day. It's also the reason why, during Operation Pedestal, MTBs, submarines and mines arguably did more damage to the convoy than aircraft, despite the Axis flying over 400 sorties against them. The big difference, as you point out, was the open hangars being able to warm up and launch more aircraft rapidly (which was one of the key reasons the RN moved towards an open hangar design with their Malta class plans) Just some thoughts based on what I can remember from what I've read. Thanks for yours, interesting as always .
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 21, 2016 17:44:46 GMT -6
I've said repeatedly on this forum that geography played a vital part in the design and development of carriers. For the British the problem was three fold; They had to fight in the Mediterranean which is an enclosed sea with one of the enemies sticking out like a sore thumb right across the east to west sailing area. They had to fight against the Germans in the North Sea and along the coast of Norway although the latter was not entirely realized until the war started. They also had to fight in the Pacific against the Japanese. They could not develop one design to accommodate all three regions. The Ark Royal was designed to fight in the open waters of the Pacific and was similar to our classes. The Illustrious was designed to fight in the Med and hence, was much better armored to protect from Italian and later German aircraft specifically dive bombers. Many of the carriers that they developed and we developed, were based on treaty limitations. The Essex class was not, and it was bigger and much better designed. Another issue is the opponent that you will face. The IJN did not have a dive bomber at the beginning of the war that could carry a bomb bigger than 350 kg. or 500 lbs. It wasn't until after Midway did a newer dive bomber was begin to make its appearance, but by that time it was a moot point. No US or British carrier was ever sunk by bombs alone. Even the four lost by the IJN at Midway had to be torpedoed by their own ships to sink them. Bombs could disable a carrier and make it mission killed, but generally they would not sink. This geographic dependence by the British designers made them reluctant to develop deck parks and it probably makes good sense, IMO. They almost had to keep their birds inside a hangar for protection. As to catapults, they did have catapults and I've seen a picture of a Seafire being catapulted into the air. However, almost all catapults until after the war, were hydraulic or black powder, if I remember steam did not enter the picture until after the war. I've see picture of an F4F catapulted from the side opening of the Yorktown, those were later removed. Now as to the IJN and their use of cruiser and battleship based scouting, at Midway it was a cruiser based scout that missed our fleet due to catapult problems. The aircraft used for this purpose did not have the range that our SBD's did and hence were limited. The scouts were float based and hence the drag made them vulnerable to intercept and used more fuel. Our VS squadrons actually carrier 500 lbs. bombs and when the opponent was found, attacked. Nagumo did use ten of his type 97 carrier attack planes for scouting. This allowed him to search out 400 miles but it also depleted his air wings. What the First Striking Fleet needed was more cruisers to use for scouting with their aircraft so they could exercise and two plane search. One aircraft would launch at 4:00 am and be at its max range at dawn, the second would launch two to three hours later to replace it. The IJN had no formally established search units on board the carriers and this deficiency spelled doom on all four carrier battles in the first year of the war. The IJN scout aircraft had a range of 485 miles and were designed for spotting, not search. They had a long range battleship scout that had a range of over 1100 miles but there weren't many available until the issue was settle. On the whole, more scouts might have precluded the four carrier battles being the doom of the First Striking Fleet and its air wings. As far as radar and fighter direction, I don't discount it at all. I am an old USAF trained radar tech so I am fully aware of its history and usefulness. It just took time for the US to develop and integrate radar into a Fighter Direction system that was effective. Early radars did not have height finding capability and hence one had to make a SWAG as to how high the incoming raid was, and direct the fighters to climb above. This meant that you had to have an early warning, to get a good launch or direct the CAP aircraft to climb to a superior altitude. The slow climbing aircraft needed time to get that altitude so the longer the range the radar had, better the intercept. Also, the shorter the pulse width the better the definition of the number aircraft incoming. It gets complex but there had to be a dedicated center below the armored hangar deck and the Essex class was the first to have it. Multichannel radios were also very important, but not available immediately. As I have said, you define requirements and build to specifications to suit the situations that were gamed and predicted prior to the war and used wartime experience to adjust and modify the ships and technology that resulted. Update: You might all find this interesting. www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ref/Radar/index.html The Fischer-Tropisch Archive, Naval Mission to Japan has documents on the Japanese radar. This is a link to Navweaps for German Naval Radars. www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_Radar.php
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Post by axe99 on Nov 22, 2016 4:27:51 GMT -6
Cheers for the links . You're spot on on the radar (which is no surprise given your background and your Midway as well. I guess my main point was along the lines of what you had in your most recent post, in that it's not clear whether the differences in carrier use and doctrine were due to geography and use, and thus it may not have been the institutional arrangements as much as the different requirements for the different navies (can't talk for the IJN, but they definitely seemed able to innovate as well, particularly in the context of a far more limited industrial base, and less developed electronics industry).
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 22, 2016 8:43:28 GMT -6
Cheers for the links . You're spot on on the radar (which is no surprise given your background and your Midway as well. I guess my main point was along the lines of what you had in your most recent post, in that it's not clear whether the differences in carrier use and doctrine were due to geography and use, and thus it may not have been the institutional arrangements as much as the different requirements for the different navies (can't talk for the IJN, but they definitely seemed able to innovate as well, particularly in the context of a far more limited industrial base, and less developed electronics industry). You are welcome, its always helpful to have common references to use during a discussion, IMO. The British, according to sources, was innovative but restrained. They wanted to wait for a technology to mature. In other words, they were very conservative. That's ok in some areas, but not in the military. You must push the envelope and gain an advantage. Militaries are conservative by their very nature and that can work against them. The first large fleet carrier built by the British was the Ark Royal which had the main strength deck being the flight deck. It had a pair of hydraulic catapults and a pair of traverse arresting wires. She was ordered in 1935. There were four carriers were the Illustrious class. They were built under the Washington Naval Treaty. They had an armored deck but only two unarmored lifts with armored screens in the hangars to protect the hangar bay. The ship only had on hydraulic catapult on the port side but six arrestor wires with protective barrier nets. I believe that the Royal Navy carriers were guided by geography and the conservatism of the organization. It had three different geographic location to address but added the Atlantic later. The three, as earlier stated were the North Sea/Norway region, the Mediterranean region and the Far East. The later would include the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea along with possibly the region near Australia. All in all, the British Royal Navy had numerous political, geographical and economical problems developing carriers as they did in developing many other military technology. They, as with the other two nations had the Washington Naval Treaty that curtailed their designs along with the depression. The IJN had the War in Manchuria then China that drained funds away from the IJN. All the three nations understood the requirements were for a carrier. Here are my requirements: 1. A stable platform from which to operate the aircraft. This ship must be stable to land and takeoff from and to service the aircraft. This means a wider beam and to support the necessary speed to launch a commensurate LtoB. It would also require more powerful engines and higher quantities of fuel during launch and takeoff times. 2. The flight deck has to be longer to allow for missed arresting gear wires and bouncing over those barriers. The British carriers had shorter decks and at Okinawa paid a severe price losing many pilots to those mishaps. Our longer decks ameliorate such events. Catapults had to be a must, to reduce launch times. The side that detects, launches and attacks first, will generally be the winner. 3. Damage control has to be extensive including foaming of the fuel lines etc. 4. There should be some sort of Fighter Control within the internals of the ship, preferably based on Search radar with height capability and IFF ability. It must be accompanied by good multichannel UHF radios for precise control. 5. There should be at least three elevators. In WWII those were centerline until moved to the side of the ship. 6. There should be a deck part to accommodate at least 90 aircraft with at least one aircraft capable of scouting. Torpedo bombers can do the job, but there must be plenty of them to alleviate the problems of reduction in attack sizes. 7. The hangar bay should not be part of the hull, that is very dangerous to the long term health of the ship. This was proved in the Battle of Okinawa. British carriers survived the hits, but afterward had to be scrapped due to hull damage. These are just some of my thoughts and ideas. It should be remembered when studying and analyzing carrier warfare that the carrier is a bus, designed to carry and launch aircraft to attack the enemy. It's design must make this task as effective as possible but the aircraft are the key and their design must be capable of performing in this environment.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 22, 2016 21:38:32 GMT -6
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Post by director on Nov 24, 2016 0:34:50 GMT -6
I'd say that aircraft carrier development 'between the wars' shows similarity to capital ship development of an earlier age: each nation designs for the things that it believes will be critical, puts them into practice and then refines the ideas. Eventually the design process would converge on similar solutions because, basically, physics. I think that goes a long way to explain the attempts to build little carriers, armored decks, catapults, open hangars and so on and on. With the coming of war (and the intense sharing of ideas, concepts and technologies between the US and Britain) we see designs begin to converge on certain common themes.
The greatest protection for a carrier group is its mobility. Land bases can theoretically mount enough aircraft to shut a carrier group down, but the carriers can hide in the open ocean and strike when least expected. So an armored flight deck might make sense in a narrow body of water like the Med, where it is harder to hide and get outside land-based attack range and less sense in the open Atlantic and Pacific. But for me the critical difference in evaluating the British armored flight deck is this: had the US adopted an armored 'box' hangar for the Essex class they would not have been able to carry the number of aircraft needed for the kind of carrier operations they carried out from 1943-45. And, had the Royal Navy adopted an 'Enterprise' or 'Essex' design, i don;t think they would have risked those ships in the Med during the Malta campaign.
So the best I can say is that the armored box hangar was thought useful by the Royal Navy though not unequivocally and conclusively so. The US Navy used the open-sided hangar and unarmored flight deck to good advantage but in some cases (USS Princeton, Bunker Hill, Franklin) an armored deck would have been useful. Since the designers and planners did their best to anticipate what would be needed, and the operations people did their best to get the most from the designs. And today we see convergence - US carriers still have large openings on the side of the hangar deck but the hull (and flight deck) is made from battle steel.
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Post by axe99 on Nov 24, 2016 16:29:30 GMT -6
The greatest protection for a carrier group is its mobility. Land bases can theoretically mount enough aircraft to shut a carrier group down, but the carriers can hide in the open ocean and strike when least expected. So an armored flight deck might make sense in a narrow body of water like the Med, where it is harder to hide and get outside land-based attack range and less sense in the open Atlantic and Pacific. But for me the critical difference in evaluating the British armored flight deck is this: had the US adopted an armored 'box' hangar for the Essex class they would not have been able to carry the number of aircraft needed for the kind of carrier operations they carried out from 1943-45. And, had the Royal Navy adopted an 'Enterprise' or 'Essex' design, i don;t think they would have risked those ships in the Med during the Malta campaign. Aye, at the end of the day, my view is that if a Yorktown or Essex had taken the hits that Illustrious did in the Med, it would have been sunk (or at the very least disabled and sunk a little later). I'd be interested if either you or @oldpop knows the largest size bomb that a US carrier took and survived. One of the things (iirc) about the British carriers is that they weren't just well armoured on the flight deck, but also had a larger slab of armour between the hangar and the rest of the ship (so, for example, when one of them had a large bomb penetrate the flight deck, the second layer of armour meant that the vessel could keep going - I know US CVs had armour here as well, but from memory it wasn't as thick - but I could well be wrong, a bit buggered today). On the other hand, if the US had gone with the British approach in the Pacific, they would have had a much harder time contesting the IJN until the Essexes had started to appear in numbers. So neither nation really made the wrong choice, per se, but, more or less (noting that no design generally gets everything right, as the future tends to be hard to accurately forecast) made sensible decisions for the wars they ended up having to fight.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 24, 2016 16:46:25 GMT -6
The greatest protection for a carrier group is its mobility. Land bases can theoretically mount enough aircraft to shut a carrier group down, but the carriers can hide in the open ocean and strike when least expected. So an armored flight deck might make sense in a narrow body of water like the Med, where it is harder to hide and get outside land-based attack range and less sense in the open Atlantic and Pacific. But for me the critical difference in evaluating the British armored flight deck is this: had the US adopted an armored 'box' hangar for the Essex class they would not have been able to carry the number of aircraft needed for the kind of carrier operations they carried out from 1943-45. And, had the Royal Navy adopted an 'Enterprise' or 'Essex' design, i don;t think they would have risked those ships in the Med during the Malta campaign. Aye, at the end of the day, my view is that if a Yorktown or Essex had taken the hits that Illustrious did in the Med, it would have been sunk (or at the very least disabled and sunk a little later). I'd be interested if either you or @oldpop knows the largest size bomb that a US carrier took and survived. One of the things (iirc) about the British carriers is that they weren't just well armoured on the flight deck, but also had a larger slab of armour between the hangar and the rest of the ship (so, for example, when one of them had a large bomb penetrate the flight deck, the second layer of armour meant that the vessel could keep going - I know US CVs had armour here as well, but from memory it wasn't as thick - but I could well be wrong, a bit buggered today). On the other hand, if the US had gone with the British approach in the Pacific, they would have had a much harder time contesting the IJN until the Essexes had started to appear in numbers. So neither nation really made the wrong choice, per se, but, more or less (noting that no design generally gets everything right, as the future tends to be hard to accurately forecast) made sensible decisions for the wars they ended up having to fight. The largest bomb to strike our carriers and they survived was the Type 99 Model 25 248.7 - 251.1 kg or 550 lbs. bombs that could penetrate 50 mm of armor. This was the largest bomb the D3 Val Dive bomber could carry and it was used against the US Fleet at the first four carrier engagements. The bombs had a nose and tail fuse with an explosive charge of Shimose or type 98 explosive inserted in paper covered layers after pre-casting. The loading factor was 24.5%. Our carrier losses were all due to torpedoes.
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