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Essex class

Discussion in 'Naval Warfare in the Pacific' started by Ron, Oct 4, 2000.

  1. Marmat

    Marmat Member

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    ... but considering experience, and planned airgroup size vs. lift #s, a Yorktown compared to the first 3 Illustrious' (Illustrii?), really needed that 3rd lift. The plan for the Illustrii was to accommodate 1 squadron between each of the hangar fire curtain sections, so getting to the lifts at the hangar ends could be a problem for the middle or aft squadrons during ops. Plus, in square footage, Yorktown/Essex lifts were massive compared to British, the aft lift on Illustrii were especially small, the forward lift could accomodate non-folding aircraft i.e. RAF type fighters. But that had to be so, lift #'s and size were an issue, or for any aperture through the hull for that matter compromised the strength of the closed hangar/hull design, none would get a centre lift. Yes, Ark Royal had 3 lifts, but they were all small, for folding aircraft only, one of them was dedicated to the upper or lower hangar only. She could never accomodate naval fighters, much less RAF types (a consideration back then), even the naval fighters types in service when she was designed! A deck park only accomodation for fighters was the answer here. The Lexingtons only had 2 lifts as well (one smallish, the other for non-folding aircraft), probably for the same reason, but given the size of their airgroups there must've been an even longer line up to get in or out! Not sure it was worth it here either, Sara survived the Able blast, but Baker stove in her deck big time.

    Interestingly enough, the lifts built into the Illustrii proved very robust, and hard to knock out. The ships had what proved to be an expensive design requirement built in; the transmission gear would continue to operate despite extreme lift misalignment. When Indomitable was hit in the unarmoured areas of both of her lifts during Pedestal, the forward lift was canted 5 ft. to starboard, but was hammered back to 2 1/2 ft. off the centreline, and was able to operate, the aft lift operated as well, at half speed, all this while the ship had an 8 degree list due to underwater damage from the near misses.
     
  2. SymphonicPoet

    SymphonicPoet Member

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    One reason Japanese elevators might have been aiming points while Allied elevators were less so: The Japanese didn't darken decks until mid-late war. In the early war the elevators were a different color. (Thanks to a different surface.) Which is pretty easy to pick out, even from a distance. They give you a nice big spot that helps you judge the movement of the ship (similar to the Hinomaru, which also served as an aiming point)

    Also: No American carrier ever had a wooden deck, so far as I know. (Maybe Langley, but does she really count?) They had steel decks with planking applied atop it as a non-skid surface. Much the same as British (and German, and Japanese, and American) battleships, but no one ever calls their decks "wooden." The same is true of Japanese carrier decks. They were also steel.

    And one of the reasons armored decks weren't used on the Essex was the unfavorable comparison between Lexington and Yorktown. The big deck was lovely, but the third elevator was better. This was reconsidered later, but I would be hesitant to stake my battle on the assumption that a few thousand pound AP/SAP bombs would necessarily cripple an Essex so severely as to take her out of the action permanently. It's certainly possible, but so long as she prepped and waiting for it she should be able to survive them, patch up the damage, and get back to work pretty quickly. GP bombs might actually be more of a threat, but even large holes in the deck could be and were regularly patched, so long as there weren't serious fires to contend with.
     
  3. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Actually I believe that lesson was learned with the loss of Lexington. I think I recall that a damage control officer on Yorktown figured out how to purge the gas lines with CO2 among other things one the way back to Coral Sea and at least some of the modifications were in use by Midway.

    Well they may have been sunk by torpedoes but Lexington was lost to a fuel air explosion brought on by a damage control failure subsequent to being hit by bombs. Hornet was a combination of bombs, torpedoes, and planes. Indeed in the first wave she was hit by 4 bombs, two planes, and two torpedoes and would probably have survived that if not for additional torpedoes. That said I'm not sure that any other ship could have taken the damage she did and stayed afloat as long. Yorktown was also initially hit with bombs and a plane and that surely contributed to her demise as well. Not sure what conclusions to draw from all of this though.
     
  4. SymphonicPoet

    SymphonicPoet Member

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    The damage that caused avgas fumes to leak aboard Lexington was almost certain shock damage to the hull from the . . . I believe it was the second torpedo hit, but don't quote me on that. I could check if you wish, but it's generally accepted to have been a torpedo that did the deed. The bombs did only very minor and quite superficial damage, though the near miss did rupture a seam or two and cause some minor flooding of void spaces.

    The fatal damage to Hornet was the flooding of engineering spaces from torpedo damage and subsequent loss of power. (Nearly restored when she took another torpedo hit that did it again.) The bombs did little other than superficial damage and the plane did even less.

    Yorktown was abandoned because of the increasing list, entirely the result of the torpedo hits. The . . . second? . . . bomb hit opened up the exhaust trunks and extinguished the fires, but so long as you have residual steam pressure this is just a matter of relighting the burners once you can get a decent draught again. No enemy plane struck Yorktown, though one crashed close in her wake. Again, it was exclusively the torpedo damage that led to abandonment. But for more torpedoes the next day from the Japanese submarine even this would not have been enough.

    No U.S. fleet carrier was ever sunk by bombs. Nor was any, save Franklin, ever in any danger of being so. This does not, of course, mean that such a turn of events could not have occurred, merely that it didn't. The only light carrier thus lost was Princeton. Frankly, no carrier of any nation was ever lost exclusively to bomb damage if you wish to be so picky as to dismiss the torpedo as causal to Lexington's loss. Kaga and Hiryu were lost to secondary explosions caused by uncontrolled hangar fires. Akagi and Soryu were scuttled as unservicable by destroyer launched torpedoes. Princeton was lost to secondary explosions. Ryujo was lost to uncontrolled flooding from a torpedo hit that damaged engineering spaces. (The fires from the four or so bombs were by then largely extinguished.)
     
  5. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    My point was without the spark due to faulty DC the Lexington would almost surely have survived. Although the torpedo hits would have made her more vulnerable (slower) to additional damage in any case.
    But didn't fires ignighted by the bombs also play a part (exerbated by the torpedo hits/ power loss)? In any case the additional torpedo hits given the tactical situation probably doomed her in any case with or without the bomb and plane hits.

    And without the initial torpedo hits the follow on ones become unlikely. However didn't the initial bomb hits slow air ops? Could she have gotten a few more fighters in the air to intercept the torpedo planes without them?

    But bomb hits were contributing factors in the loss of some. In any case they seem to have proved themselves much tougher than one would expect them to.

    I agree that bombs didn't prove very effective at sinking carriers or even most large warships in WWII (glide bombs and those of excessive weight being the exceptions) however they did prove quite capable of significantly impacting the combat worthyness of such ships.

    Getting back to topic it doesn't appear that the decks of US CV's can be considered a significant weakness considering the overall damage recieved and the after effects of such damage.
     
  6. CTBurke

    CTBurke Member

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    re: "Wooden Decks"-->Also: No American carrier ever had a wooden deck, so far as I know. (Maybe Langley, but does she really count?) They had steel decks with planking applied atop it as a non-skid surface.<

    While true enough, the steel underneath was thin. The point being that the steel involved in the flight deck was not needed to be thick and strong to withstand "hull" stresses--it was merely "superstructure" independent of the hull.

    re: Bombs vs torpedoes--Bombs seemed to do the trick to make a carrier hors d'combat for the current battle, with the POSSIBILITY of secondary explosions dooming the ship enough to either sink it or render it so useless as to have its own forces sink it. Bombs are a lot less likely to take a battleship out of the battle than a carrier. As the world's sea powers found out during the war, if your carriers are put out of action but the enemy still has carrier forces intact, it is "battle over" no matter how many battleships you still have afloat. But if we apply Mahan's philosophies here, it's gotta be SUNK to really count. A ship disabled in battles far from home or a dockyard made saving a ship improbable. So bombs alone CAN result in a carrier SUNK. If you can put a hole in it below the waterline somewhere, the chances of the carrier making home port decrease toward nil.
     
  7. ResearcherAtLarge

    ResearcherAtLarge Member

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    I'm a big fan of the US Philosophy at the beginning of the war (Essentially the Yorktown and Essex Class versus the Midway class), but I'm going to take exception to that statement. None of the fleet carriers every had any serious repair done in forward areas. The nearest I can think of is Bennington, who had damaged structure REMOVED at Ulithi following it's collapse during a typhoon, but essentially they just cut 10 or so feet off the forward flight deck overhang.

    The Essex Class was better at dishing it out. The Armored carrier decks were better at taking it. Each was a reflection of what their respective navies were planning on dealing with.
    I also want to comment on Marmat's statement of "if you asked the crews and aircraft maintenance folks, regardless of deck repair, most would prefer to take their chances on a British carrier, with a closed armoured hangar." It's really an immaterial point, as the people referenced aren't focused on bringing the fight to the enemy. SUre, they want to get their aircraft fixed and into the air, but they're not playing with airgroups and the need to destroy enemy forces directly. I'm sure they'd place a higher value on armor, whereas the Admiral is going to have a higher value on offensive capacity.

    Also, with regards to CTBUrke's comment on elevators, the US elevators had advantages in both speed and size, driven by the priority of operation tempo and the ability to move as many aircraft from the hangar to the flight deck as quickly as possible.

    One other point; Princeton's loss is similar to Yorktown's in a way, as both could be argued to have been lost due to abandonment during the damage control "procedure." Birmingham, Reno Irwin, and Morrison had the fire almost completely under control by 1330, when a submarine sighting was reported. This caused the ships and crew to abandon Princeton for over an hour, and the fire was strong again when they returned.
     
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  8. Marmat

    Marmat Member

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    In the early 20’s “D quality” or “D steel” types (D, D1 etc.) replaced mild and high tensile steels (HT & HTT) in ship construction. Ultimate Tensile Strength i.e. UTS tons/sq.for mild steel is 26-32, D-steel is 37-44. Further heat treated, D1 steel was used in bulkheads and for protection on areas such as bridges, and thickened (NCD armour) it was used in decks. When welding was introduced in ship construction, only D steel plates of a max. ½” thickness could be used, a D steel with reduced carbon was introduced (DW). For heavy armour, alloyed steel non-cemented (NC steel) was used, and of course the older Krupp's cemented (C steel) remained. D steels were also a bit lighter, a savings of some 30 tons/1,000 tons, certainly a consideration in treaty built ships.

    There’s an interesting photo of the flight deck bomb penetration damage sustained by Yorktown at Coral Sea, seen underneath, and another of flight deck bomb penetration damage to Illustrious’ flight deck, seen from above, sustained in the Med. in Jan. 1941. They aren’t the same views, but damage wise, apart from the thicker British deck, they appear to be not all that dissimilar.

    Re: Princeton – it can also be argued that this is a case in point, an armoured deck or hangar would’ve prevented most of the damage sustained. What’s also remarkable is that Princeton was still in any sort of condition worth recovering when Birmingham returned, the detonation of fire roasted bombs, taken on beyond safe storage and stored in torpedo stowage rather than a magazine, could’ve occurred much earlier in the day than it did. In terms of damage received and cause of demise, comparison between Lexington and Wasp is more apt, the latter was a disappointment after what was learned with the former.

    My conjecture regarding crew preference may be immaterial to an Admiral moving pieces on aboard, no question there, but not to a good ship’s Captain and Exec., to whom crew issues including morale in the face of terror the like of the Kamikaze, were very real.
     
  9. Fred Wilson

    Fred Wilson "The" Rogue of Rogues

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    In drydock - Boston 1945 - More photos at http://www.ussessexcv9.org/WWII01.htm
    - keep hitting the "Next" button. Several pages of terrific pics of the Essex and crew.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Takao

    Takao Ace

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  11. gusord

    gusord Member

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    Reguarding the essex class carriers some of them were used after ww2 and up until 1970 or so.
    I worked at the Boston Navy Yard from 1967 - 1973. Worked on the USS WASP CVS -18, USS
    LEXINGTON CVS/CVT 16 and USS INTREPID CVS 11 at different times on the arresting gear.
    LEXINGTON was at Boston Navy Yard for a year being converted to a training carrier. The
    LEXINGTON was later stationed at Pensacola, Florida as training carrier until November 1991
    when it was decommisioned.
    My cousin was a machinists mate third class on the Wasp from 1965-1968 home port at
    Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

    gusord
     
  12. R Leonard

    R Leonard Member

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    My father served aboard USS Wasp (CV-18) twice. The first time was very briefly in early 1945 when the TF-38 staff, to which he was assigned, was aboard. The second time he was assigned was from June 1965 to June 1966. Wasp was homeported out of South Boston Navy Yard at the time and expended considerable effort on Gemini recoveries that year.
     
  13. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    The defensive advantage of the armored deck isn't so clear-cut. The rigidity of the ship's structure causes shock to be transmitted throughout the hull; there's a good discussion of this in Fleets of WWII by Richard Worth aka Tiornu. At best this makes repair more complex, at worst, a ship like the heavily hit Illustrious may never fully recover. Nor did the armored deck prevent Illustrious' hangar from being penetrated. Indomitable's flight deck was disabled by a bomb hit during Operation Pedestal, and she had to go to the US for repairs.

    Friedman's US Aircraft Carriers Illustrated Design History cites a US Navy examination of Illustrious' damage which concluded an Essex class ship would have survived comparably placed hits just as well.

    The armored deck might be better described as an armored hangar; the elevators and the ends of the flight deck were unarmored. Armored-deck carriers also usually had only two elevators where comparably sized or smaller ships (Enterprise, Essex, Hiryu, Shokaku) had three.

    Enterprise illustrates the durability and repairability of American-style carriers. She took multiple hits and near misses at the Eastern Solomons, was back in action for Santa Cruz, hit a few more times, repaired in the forward area and fought at Guadalcanal less than three weeks later. In 1945 she was quickly repaired from a bomb hit and her first kamikaze, although a second suicider sent her back to a Stateside shipyard.

    Kamikazes are often Exhibit A in the armored deck debate, but most of the Essexes hit were promptly back in action, often without leaving formation. Catastrophic events like Bunker Hill (which was repaired although never returned to active service) were the exception rather than the rule.
     
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  14. ResearcherAtLarge

    ResearcherAtLarge Member

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    For one, Bunker Hill was returned to service, just not in time to take part in more action during WWII. She did make numerous Magic Carpet trips. She was fully repaired as well; I've got photos of her in September showing the latest anti-aircraft radars and directors.

    The other thing to consider as well is that of the true nature if the damage. Often it was the full-fueled aircraft in the hangar that caused the most damage and not the initial strike. From Franklin's Damage Report:

    I question any statement that an "armored" carrier (I.e. Armored on the flight deck) would have been able to shrug off that much "action."
     
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  15. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    For one, Bunker Hill was returned to service, just not in time to take part in more action during WWII. She did make numerous Magic Carpet trips. She was fully repaired as well; I've got photos of her in September showing the latest anti-aircraft radars and directors.

    Good information, thanks.

    Franklin was also repaired. World Aircraft Carriers List: US Fleet Carriers, WWII Era
    provides an interesting comment on the repairability (if that's a word) of the American type carrier:

    "During repairs everything from the hangar floor up, except the island and forward flight deck, was removed and replaced.

    Did not resume flight operations following repairs, decommissioned to reserve 17 Feb 1947. Was in excellent condition and held in reserve for potential "ultimate" Essex class conversion."

    This would be difficult if not impossible on an armored deck or enclosed hangar ship. Those configurations, while providing protection to the hangar, may also amplify the effect of explosions which do occur within it.
     
  16. Marmat

    Marmat Member

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    ... some of which I may have already touched on. As stated earlier, the Illustrii (1936-) and Yorktowns (1934-) were Treaty designed & built, the Essex’s were not. Despite mods made from experience gained in combat,the former remained pre-war designs with many constraints. The strength of the Illustrii closed structure also allowed their hulls to be built lighter. Given hull stresses, US carrier design as it was maxed out with the Essex, US hull structures had to go the route of the strengthened flight deck, modified closed hangar route when they went bigger, the hull stresses became unacceptable.


    ResearcherAtLarge,there are many instances where the Yorktowns, with their more limited Treaty built design, sustained damage that could lead one to question any statement regarding an “armored carrier”, for sureI. Your choice of Franklin, an Essex is poor for other reasons. No disrespect to you or the sailors who sailed her intended, but the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin was caused by 1 perhaps 2, 500 lb. bombs. Even beyond fuel/fire arrangements, it can be argued that they wouldn’t have penetrated the hangar of an Illustrii, much less caused the hangar fire and devastation that ensued. Much the same can be said of the post-attack fire damage Bunker Hill incurred. In these and other cases, catastrophic fire damage and human carnage became more than the exception, they became major concerns to the USN, especially considering that an invasion of Japan could be necessary. Nothing like these fires ever occurred in armoured hangar, closed hangar, armored deck types, even though more battle damage by ordnance was often sustained.

    I’ve included the appropriate sections of the NASHIPS A-4 (424) summaries for Franklin, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga for comparison. Unfortunately my copies are on PDF format,


    SUMMARY OF WAR DAMAGE
    TO U. S. BATTLESHIPS, CARRIERS,CRUISERS, DESTROYERS AND DESTROYER ESCORTS
    8 DECEMBER 1944 TO 9 OCTOBER 1945




    COMBATANT SHIPS DAMAGED
    AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
    Ship Date Place Source Remarks on Damage
    FRANKLIN
    (CV13)
    3/19/45 Kyushu
    Bomb - 2
    One Japanese bomb passed through flight deck at about frame 68 and probably a second at about frame 149; both detonated in hangar. Terrific conflagration fed by
    gasoline in aircraft fuel tanks. Detonations of heavy bombs and rockets loaded on
    aircraft demolished major part of flight deck and wrecked hangar and gallery deck
    spaces. Flooding from firefighting caused heavy list. All machinery spaces evacuated
    due to smoke and heat.All power failed. Towed for day until power partially
    restored.

    COMBATANT SHIPS DAMAGED
    AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
    Remarks on Dama e
    BUNKER
    HILL
    (CV17)
    5/11/45 Okinawa Suicide Plane
    Crash - 2
    Japanese suicide plane struck flight deck abaft No.3 elevator and carried over port
    side. Its bomb penetrating flight deck and port side of ship detonated in air close
    aboard. Fragment damage.Fires among planes on flight deck. Second plane
    struck base of island structure port side. Bomb penetrated flight deck and detonated
    in gallery space. Severe gasoline fire gutted hangar.

    Now, compare that with the damage sustained by USS Saratoga, a closed hangar carrier, with some flight deck/above hangar armour:

    COMBATANT SHIPS DAMAGED
    AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
    Remarks on Damage
    SARATOGA 2/21/45
    (CV3)
    Iwo Jima Suicide Plane
    Crash - 4
    Bomb - 2
    Japanese suicide plane carrying bomb crashed into starboard side at about frame
    109 about 6 feet above blister top. Its bomb detonated among uptakes. Second
    suicide plane struck water and ricocheted into starboard blister at frame 147 1/2.
    Its bomb detonated underwater at frame 120 starboard. Minor structural damage
    and flooding. 6-degree starboard list. Bomb struck flight deck at frame 4.
    Detonated in anchor windlass room. Third suicide plane crashed into flight deck
    hitting on port catapult and causing large gasoline fire. Fourth suicide plane hit
    crane, started fire in parked plane and went over side at frame 39. Its bomb
    detonated on flight deck at frame 25. Gasoline explosion. Almost 2 hours later
    large bomb detonated on flight deck at frame 42port. Severe structural damage.


    I’d also planned to include another USN document on war damage caused by aerial bombs to British warships, specific to Illustrious:



    July 22, 1942
    WAR DAMAGE
    TO
    BRITISH NAVAL VESSELS
    SUMMARY OF DAMAGE BY BOMBS TO SEPTEMBER 2, 1941
    Preliminary Design Branch
    Bureau of Ships
    Navy Department
    NOTE:*Indicates Admiralty Report Available in Navy Department

    There are many items of interest here, for example the USN determined one bomb hit/penetration to be caused by a 2,000 lb bomb (likely 1,000 kg or 2,200 lbs.), where the British deemed it to be of 1,000lbs., as were others. Compared to damage received by other carriers, it’s a wonder she survived at all, much less that only 5 hangared aircraft were destroyed, some of the aircraft in her hangar were repairable! Unfortunately, it’s all in a 71 page PDF table (3 pages worth on Illustrious), Nuance wasn’t of much help in converting it into .doc, and I’m not going to pay for something I don’t use very often.
     
  17. ResearcherAtLarge

    ResearcherAtLarge Member

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    Maxed out? That's why they were blistered and operated jet aircraft into the 1970s that were twice the weight of the aircraft they were originaly designed for

    I wasn't speaking specifically to the Yorktown or Essex class, but to armored flight decks versus armored main decks and the trade offs. The Essex class was clearly a superior OFFENSIVE weapon with its larger air groups and better operational tempos. That comes at the cost of an armored deck. The Illustrious class had better overhead protection, but it came at the cost of offensive and defensive power. How well would a task group of British carriers done against the late-war massed kamakize attacks? How many would it have taken to project the damage and destruction a US Task Force did?

    You are incorrect about the cause of Franklin's catastrophe, by the way. The bombs did little damage to the ship; it was the fact of the fully fueled aircraft both on the flight deck AND in the hangar that turned her into such a pyre. Her captain was a hard charger who wanted a higher volume of offensive power in shorter time, and he broke some guidelines to do it. Yes, the bombs caused the fires, but they were merely the spark in lots of tinder.

    Frankly, this is a pointless academic conversation. The different navies had different doctrines and built their ships around them. Armored flight decks were only one of many differences between the ships, and it's stupid to base "better" on a single item.
     
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  18. Marmat

    Marmat Member

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    -----------------------------“Maxed out? That's why they were blistered and operated jet aircraft into the 1970s that were twice the weight of the aircraft they were originaly designed for”


    I said, “US carrier design as it was maxed out with the Essex,” the key word is DESIGN:

    “In 1945 … armoured carriers such as Formidable were able to shrug off Kamikaze attacks which disabled their US contemporaries. It is often suggested that the subsequent USN decision to armour the flight decks of the post war super-carriers reflected this success.

    This is not quite true. In US wartime and pre-war carriers, the flight deck was designed as a superstructure. In British carriers from Ark Royal onwards, the flight deck was integral with the hull, serving as its upper strength member. Because US ships had shallower hull girders, they suffered from higher stresses, and this problem was aggravated as ships became longer, and longer. Thus the shift to British-style hull (with integral flight deck) in the post war ships was almost inevitable.”

    - Norman Friedman



    ----------------------------“I wasn't speaking specifically to the Yorktown or Essex class, but to armored flight decks versus armored main decks and the trade offs. The Essex class was clearly a superior OFFENSIVE weapon with its larger air groups and better operational tempos. That comes at the cost of an armored deck. The Illustrious class had better overhead protection, but it came at the cost of offensive and defensive power.How well would a task group of British carriers done against the late-war massed kamakize attacks? How many would it have taken to project the damage and destruction a US Task Force did?”



    As for your questions, it’s clear that we’ll never know. As for your comparison between carriers you should add that even the US carriers and air groups were taxed, perhaps overtaxed, when it came to defensive power when you consider all the ships and shipping struck by the massed Kamikaze attacks, ships that the CAP & dispatched fighter forces from the large carriers had a duty to protect.


    --------------------------“You are incorrect about the cause of Franklin's catastrophe, by the way. The bombs did little damage to the ship; it was the fact of the fully fuelled aircraft both on the flight deck AND in the hangar that turned her into such a pyre. Her captain was a hard charger who wanted ahigher volume of offensive power in shorter time, and he broke some guidelines to do it. Yes, the bombs caused the fires, but they were merely the spark in lots of tinder.”


    I believe that’s pretty much what I said? Let me reiterate then; small-ish bomb(s) penetrated the hangars, light damage by ordnance but a post-attack conflagration ensued, says pretty much the same thing, I closed it with “Much the same can be said of the post-attack fire damage Bunker Hill incurred, in these and other cases, catastrophic fire damage and human carnage became more than the exception.” and added the USN’s own “SUMMARY OF WAR DAMAGE.”



    -------------------“Frankly, this is a pointless academic conversation. The different navies had different doctrines and built their ships around them.Armored flight decks were only one of many differences between the ships, and it's stupid to base "better" on a single item.”


    Agreed! I’d like to point out though that this isn’t academia, it’s a discussion forum open to anyone who wishes to partake in the banter, there’s little of academia in most of the threads on this board. Apart from my conjecture regarding sailor preference, and saying that yours was a “poor” choice with Franklin, I attempted to remain neutral and merely provide information, I don’t believe I ever said “better”or “worse” anywhere. My info, despite being from reputable sources and well supported, clearly went against the grain, and touched a few nerves. That’s OK, it stands on its own, and I’m here for myself, not for pats on the back.
     
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  19. SymphonicPoet

    SymphonicPoet Member

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    Let's all step back for a moment. Marmat, you are quite right. The information you provide stands or fails on its merit, and looking back over it much of it is very good indeed. I think I for one have inadvertently conflated things you have said with things other people have said, and I strongly suspect I am not the only one.

    When RAL said this was an accademic argument, I believe she was suggesting that this is an argument that cannot be adequately addressed without the careful and rigorous statistical and engineering analyses naval architects and engineers might use. I am not one of these. Neither are most of the other members of this forum. Some of us (yourself included) have made reference to some fairly good work by naval engineers, but for the most part amateurs like the majority of our membership are unduly influenced by emotion. We can argue about which design is better until we're all blue in the face but we will never come to a conclusion to convince all. (Witness the rather unpleasant arguments around the Wikipedia pages on Kamikazes and Carrier Design.) The evidence, such as it is, is variously rather arcane or potentially misleading. For the most part, nothing any of us can say will convince all. We can either walk away angry at one another or respect the fact that both the Royal Navy and U.S. Navy employed quite competent naval architects who worked quite diligently to supply their force with the ships most appropriate to their needs. I think Marmat, ResearhcerAtLarge, Carronade, and many others among us realize precisely this and would like to see some of the emotion dialed back a bit.

    This is certainly an interesting subject, and one all of us feel passionately about, but we need to realize, at the end of the day, that neither can the U.S. dedicatees honestly decry the Brits as short-sighted chuckleheads who knew not the value of the almighty fighter, nor can the Brits productively describe the Yanks as callous, bloodthirsty buzzards who heedlessly threw their crews into the maw of sacred offense. (We're maybe particularly sensitive to this as many among us say the same thing about the Imperial Japanese with a sneer without fully understanding what it was they were trying to accomplish or the conditions they were operating under.)

    I think my own teeth got set on edge to an extent when someone, somewhere said roughly that there were more casualties aboard Franklin than all the British carriers combined. (Which, for the record, isn't remotely true in the larger global sense, thanks in large part to the hideous loss of life aboard Glorious. Though her loss has not a whit to do with her design, but can instead be attributed to gross negligence on some party or parties. Which may be roughly what RAL would like to say about Franklin, ironically.) I cannot now find this quote. It may have been in another thread on this forum. It may have been on another board. But I came across it during the life of this thread and it contributed, rightly or wrongly, to the negative emotions I have about this thread, and so when RAL steps up and defends our boys, saying some of the same things I've wanted to say, but stepped back from, well I stand and salute. Good for him. And then I realize that the target of my own ire is misplaced. Marmat wasn't the badguy. Maybe he got one or two things slightly wrong. Maybe. But in general I agreed with (and even liked and deeply respected) what he said.

    So there you have it. Let's all breathe for just a moment. And when we go back to the topic, one dear to us all, let's try to play nice. Thank you.

    Sincerely,
    SymphonicPoet
     
  20. steverodgers801

    steverodgers801 Member

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    If a British carrier was struck with a load of fully loaded planes on the deck would it be as easily repaired as an Essex? My understanding is that while the armoured flight deck could withstand a hit better, but if damaged it was much harder to repair.
     

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