Lexington Class carriers.

Hi guys.! Does anyone know why the Lexington and Saratoga kept their 8 in guns for so long?.When they were converted into carriers from battle cruisers,did the designers not think a larger A.A.suite would be more advantageous than the 8 inch mounts.? Hope this makes sense.thanks,Lee.

 

When they were built aircraft were not the threat they would be. The Sara did survive the war so it was either too much trouble or they did serve some advantage

 

That's true. They were for protection from cruisers, but the Sara lost her 8 inchers in her last refit in 1940 or 41. Lexington would have too during her next refit if she had survived.

 

At the time they were converted, no one really knew how aircraft carriers would end up operating, but one thought was that they might operate on their own, much like scouting cruisers, and might encounter hostile cruisers. The earlist carriers all had anti-surface armament, mainly 5-6", comparable to contemporary cruisers like the C, Omaha, or Nagara classes. The Washington Naval Treaty established the same 8" maximum gun caliber for both cruisers and carriers, and the corresponding Japanese carriers, Akagi and Kaga, also carried 8" guns.

Of course it helped that the battle cruiser hulls were so large, originally intended to exceed 40,000 tons. The carriers designed as such in the 1930s were smaller, in part because of treaty tonnage restrictions, but also because smaller carriers appeared more useful. Some of the early designs for ships like the Yorktown class included heavy guns, as did various "cruiser-carrier" concepts, but they seriously reduced the ships' aviation capabilities, so carriers became pure aviation ships with anti-aircraft/dual-purpose armament.

An exception was the German Graf Zeppelin (built and launched but never finished or commissioned) with an anti-surface armament of sixteen 5.9" guns in unusual twin casemate mountings.

 

Didn't some of the IJN carriers have cruiser class armament right up to the start of the war as well? Lookin at:
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_79-50_3ns.htm
It looks like Kaga and Akagi never had their 8" guns removed.

 

The Lexington's 8-inch guns were removed and, along with Saratoga's, were used as shore batteries on Oahu.

The following article from the Coast Defense Journal covers the subject in great detail. Includes then vs now photos of the battery locations as well as photos of the turrets being removed from Lexington.

http://www.eugeneleeslover.com/ENGINEERING/8-inch-turret.pdf

"Lexington’s four 8-inch mounts were removed at Pearl Harbor on March 30, 1942, and made
available to the Hawaiian Department four days later. Lexington was sunk by Japanese naval aircraft
on May 8, 1942, during the Battle of the Coral Sea, before she could be outfitted with the 5-inch/38
mounts."

 

Thanks for the correction. I thought she still had them when she went down

 

Yes, and no.

Yes, the Kaga and Akagi carried their 8-inch casemate guns until their loss. However, they also had two twin 8-inch cruiser turrets on their 2nd flying-off deck. These turrets would be landed when the carriers were converted to full length flight decks in the 1930s.

IIRC, the 8-inch casemate guns were useful only in calm seas and became useless as the sea state increased.

 

Bear in mind that when the sisters were built [and the Kaga & Akagi too], the airplane was not a serious threat but the odd armored or heavy cruiser was. Hence the heavy surface armament.
Bill

 

Not a carrier but I seem to recall reading of SoDak setting one of her float planes on fire by firing over it then blowing it clear with the next salvo. It could have been Washington as I'm going from memory here.

 

I'm sure that's true, and it illustrates the difficulty of combining heavy guns and aircraft. The turrets also increased the off-center weight of the island, forcing Lex and Sara to keep either unusable oil fuel or seawater ballast in some of their port-side tanks.

Several cruiser-carrier designs in the 1930s featured turrets forward, or forward and aft, with the remaining ~2/3 or 1/3 of the ship's length available for hangars and flight deck. Obviously this reduced the number of aircraft that could be carried and the flight deck length, which was crucial since they usually used rolling takeoffs rather than catapults. Some designs had turrets forward but offset from the centerline, one to port, one to starboard, to minimize the blind arc aft. None of them were very practical IMO, and apparently in the opinion of people at the time since no one ever built such ships.

If you believe in putting anti-surface armament on carriers - which I do not - the best solution might be to place the guns along the ship's sides, below hangar (or upper hangar) level. That would allow the full length of the ship to be used for hangars and flight deck and protect aircraft on deck from muzzle blast. An example is the British carriers Glorious and Courageous, converted from light battle cruisers at the same time as Lex, Akagi, etc. They carried sixteen single 4.7" guns, eight per side, mostly at main deck level, on each side of the lower hangar. These were dual-purpose, but the number was in excess of what the RN was mounting for anti-aircraft defense at the time, so it appears they were also intended to provide anti-surface capability, at least against destroyers or light cruisers.

 

When Lexington's 8" guns were removed, she was "temporarily" fitted with additional quad 1.1" mounts in their place, ending up with a total of 12, the most 1.1s ever mounted on a ship AFAIK.

When Saratoga was fitted with 5"/38s, her original 5"/25 AA mounts were replaced. They were in four groups of three. Two in each group were replaced by 5"/38s - the mounts were very similar - for a total of sixteen, four twin mounts and eight singles. The forward- or aftermost positions in the 5" gun galleries were used for quad 40mm.

 

Some photos of 8" mounts from Lexington...

View attachment 20989 View attachment 20990 View attachment 20991

http://www.eugeneleeslover.com/ENGINEERING/8-inch-turret.pdf

 

That's not an assumption, that is a fact.

The pressure wave from the 8-inch guns easily damaged any aircraft parked near them. Further, IIRC, the firing the guns across the flight deck, also caused damaged to the flight deck's wooden planking.

 

Very informative thread guys,cheers.!

 

When the ships were originally designed, they were meant as an augmentation to the scouting cruisers and were expected to have limited cruiser functionality, meaning it was planned that they would take part in engagements as a cruiser. Thus, they were given the guns and partially armored against cruiser gun fire. By the time Ranger (CV-4) was conceived and designed, doctrine had changed enough and the fallacy of the plans had been revealed that we never did that again.

 

C = cruiser
V = heavier-than-air craft

CV = a cruiser which operates heavier-than-air craft, an aircraft carrier; and as Tracy notes, part of the cruiser scouting force.

 

oops, major brain fart

 

Not to mention blowing men overboard I'm sure.

I wonder if 8" guns had canister rounds, like a giant shotgun shell. That would wreak havoc on attacking aircraft, especially later in the war when the kamikazes entered the action.