Aircraft carriers

Using frieghter hulls and putting decks on them work just fine for escort carriers. The sonar can be left to the escort ships.

 

Great site ! Thanks for the link.



I came across a few names doing some research. Unfortunately this is all the information I´ve got :

Italian aircraft carriers : Aquira and Sparviero. Both conversions not completed.

French aircraft carriers : Béarn and Dixmunde ( ex-HMS Biter ), Joffre ( not completed ) and Commandant Teste ( seaplane tender ).

Does anybody know the fates of Béarn and Dixmunde ?

 

Bearn served throughout WWII and apparently survived until the late 60's.
Dixmunde was only transferred to the French Navy in April 1945. No idea of what became of her.

 

the italian carrier name was aquila, and the germans captured but it was unfinish and suffered the same fate as the graf zeppelin.

 

Wow, meglomaniacs strike again, Hitler what were you thinking? Ooops, another brain fart by the brain dead.

 

yeap ,but there is nothing we can do about but :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

What do you think, would three Axis carriers be enough to take out Gibraltar?
Of course this is a carrier fleet, including German and Italian battleships and the like.

 

The Germans laid down another carrier in the same class as the Graf Zeppelin, the Peter Strasser. And a conversion of the Hipper class heavy cruiser Lützow into a carrier was also begun. So Germany could have had three carriers by itself.

 

Béarn stayed in service till the sixties(served in Vietnam), and was scrapped in Italy in 1967.

Dixmude was returned to the US and sunk as a target ship.

 

But was the Dixmunde taken over by the French Navy post-war ? Or did it serve in WWII as well ? And did the Béarn serve in WWII ?

 

It looks like Dixmunde was taken over by the French at the end (April 1945) of WWII, after having served with the British in the war as the HMS Biter.

 

I think the French learned their lesson about carriers with their newest one.

 

Dixmude did not serve in WW2.

Béarn was build in the early 1930's, and served troughout the war.
This was the first aircraft carrier being build in France, and remained the only one till the Clemenceau in 1961, and the Foch in 1963.

These two served till 1997 and 1999, and were replaced by the nuclear powered Charles de Gaulle which should have taken service in 1999, but technical problems delayed this till 2001.

Currently there are discussions to build a second carrier, but as this is very expensive, no decision has been taken yet.

Besides the carrier, France also has an helicopter carrier, the Jeanne d'Arc, whose purpose is anti submarine warfare, and amphibious landings.

 

The liner NORMANDIE was going to be converted to an aircraft carrier. A fire whose origin is still unknown completely destroyed her as she lay docked in New York City.

 

I know I'm resurrecting (don't even thing about turning this into a discussion about religion) an old topic but what the heck!

From what I've read Normandie wasn't technically destroyed by fire. She caught fire and trying to put it out they pumped so much water on board she rolled over and was thus a write off!



Back on the subject of carriers it strikes me that one or two long ranged, fast carriers might have been a better proposition for Germany than the Bismark class. With the Scharnhorst class as escorts they might have given the ability to strike at convoys while keeping the most expensive bit (the ships) at a safe distance.

Of course in the 1930's for Germany to build carriers might have been a bit of leap of faith.

 

You're quite right about the NORMANDIE; it was the firefighting efforts that casued her to turn turtle, although I believe that the fire would have still put paid to her. She was burning quite nicely by the time firefighters got there.

Development of a German aircraft carrier in the 1930s would have required a miracle. All of the carrier deploying navies had lengthy periods of trial and error during the 1920s in order to develop proper ship types, aircraft, and doctrine. Germany was way too far behind the learning curve to catch up in time for the outbreak of WW2.