Pacific campaign

The US had seven-or-so carriers by Pearl Harbor and immediately after, and kept losing them steadily through to 1943. They only had 2 to 3 carriers in all the major sea battles in 1942 (Coral Sea, Midway, Santa Cruz). The carrier was obviously the most important aspect of sea warfare and as the US kept losing them they weren't adding any new ones until late 1943. My question is, the manufacturing might of the US made over 100 carriers, both regular and escort throughout the war, and started making them before Pearl Harbor, so why wasn't the Navy adding at least new escort carriers and the new full-size carriers by the time the battles Coral Sea, Midway, and the battle of Santa Cruz took place, because they were steadily losing carriers throughout this period. They had to have had at least some escort carriers completed by Spring 1942, and the better fighters such as the Corsair were becoming available in 1942, the Hellcat not until the second half of 1943. Were Wildcats still also being relied upon solely for fighter use or were the Marines using P40s and P38s from the island bases available?

 

I believe the number of carriers completed by the US was close to or slightly above 150.

New large carriers were not added quickly for many reasons...Just off the top of my head and in no order.
-Carriers do take a while to complete, commission, and work up.
-Large slipways to build them were not available to start construction of several all at once.
-Budgetary reasons.
-The ship-building industry was not able to handle all of the pre-construction work at one time.
-The USN is undergoing exponential growth in warships and men and materials are needed elsewhere.
I could go on, but you get the idea. For instance, even though 10 Essex class carriers were ordered in 1940, it would be over a year before the keel was laid on the first one.

Then you have to consider crews, aircraft, pilots, etc. none of which the USN had at the time.

The CVE was a still a fairly new concept, and was at the time classified as an auxiliary not a combatant. Further, the US ship-building industry was not yet what it would become, and construction of the early CVEs also took time. While some were coming into commission by mid-1942, you really don't start to see a drastic increase in production until late-1943.

The CVLs were seen as a way to expedite getting aircraft carriers into commission, but again, construction takes time, and it would not be until January, 1943, when the first one was commissioned.

Yes, the Wildcat was still being relied on as the front line fighter for the USN & USMC, while the P-40 & P-39 was the front line fighter for the Army. Both the F4U & P-38 took time to workout the early kinks and make use of the knowledge gained in the early fights with the Japanese.

 

That would seem to cover it nicely!

And the reason only three were available at Midway?

CV-2 Lexington, sunk
CV-3 Saratoga, repairs completed and heading west
CV-4 Ranger, Atlantic
CV-5 Yorktown at Midway
CV-6 Enterprise at Midway
CV-7 Wasp, Atlantic, soon to head west
CV-8 Hornet at Midway
AVG-1 Long Island, arrived at San Francisco on 5 June after transit from Atlantic

That was all they had. The next CV to come along was Essex, laid down on 4-28-41, launched 7-31-42, commissioned on 12-31-42. As pointed out above, it takes a while.

 

As Takao said, it takes time, although they did expedite construction considerably. Essex for example was orignally planned for completion in March 1944 but was commissioned Dec 31, 1942, fifteen months early. Yorktown was commissioned eighteen months ahead of schedule. Still, the last of the eleven carriers on order at the time of Pearl Harbor, Randolph, was not commissioned until October 1944. I suspect - maybe someone can confirm - that in some cases they have had to wait for one ship to be launched before another could be laid down in its place.

Two more Essexes were ordered in Dec 1941 and nineteen in June 1942 (eight later cancelled) but even with wartime urgency only six of these ships were commissioned before the war was over, and only three saw combat.

Total carriers to the best of my knowledge:

Essex class 24 (7 completed postwar)
Midway class 3 (3)
Independence class CVL 9
Saipan class CVL 2 (2)

CVE-6-123 of which 33 were transferred to Britain
Long Island CVE-1, numbers CVE-2-5 not used
Five CVEs for Britain designated BAVG, an early classification for the type
Total 124 CVEs. Most of the last class, Commencement Bay, did not see war service; two went straight into reserve without being commissioned.

Total 162 of which 20-some were completed postwar.

Of the Commencement Bay class ships which did serve in the war, four carried Marine squadrons, 24 F4Us IIRC, intended to specialize in air close support. A couple of them did the same in Korea.

 

great information...thanks all.......if I may ask or add about transportation...railroads, trucks, cargo ships,etc needed to bring the supplies to build all the above and transport military personel to bootcamps, bases, etc had to be overtaxed? thereby causing slowdowns somewhere

 

I wouldn't say overtaxed since we got it done, but clearly all our resources had to be organized and employed with maximum efficiency. You make a good point that when we consider America's or any nation's capacity to support war, it has to include all these elements. It also gets back to GunSlinger's original point, it's not just a matter of ordering more ships, everything in the chain has to be considered - and balanced against other priorities. For instance, as critical as carriers were, I recall reading that at least one was delayed because of an immediate need for landing craft.

 

Since we're on the topic of carriers, I think the Saipan class CVLs were a questionable investment. They were basically an improved Independence, based on the Baltimore cruiser design, but new construction rather than conversion. The rationale was to replace expected losses of CVLs, and the estimate that two might be lost was not bad; Princeton was sunk and Independence damaged enough that, although she served through the war, she was retired and used for an atomic bomb test immediately after.

I question the presumption that lost CVLs needed to be replaced with new CVLs. The CVLs had been an emergency program, ordered shortly after Pearl Harbor when there was an urgent need for additional flight decks as soon as possible. They provided about 30% of the aircraft in the fast carrier force in 1943-44, which I think justified the conversions.

When the Saipans were designed, it was evident that by the time they could join the fleet, Essex class carriers would be available in significant numbers. The need for more CVLs had passed. Indeed, Essexes were being built in about the same time it took to build Saipan and Wright from the keel up.

 

It all had to do with Admiral King. His vision was for a task group to be composed of one CVL & two CVs. The CVL would provided local air cover for the CVs, thus freeing the CVs' air groups entirely for air strikes. There was expected to be 18 CVs in commission by December, 1945, so 9 CVLs would be needed, and with two of the original nines expected to be lost, two more CVLs would be needed, so two more CVLs were ordered in FY1944.

This was the thinking in July, 1943, when no one knew how long the war would go on.

 

Admiral King had originally wanted USS Enterprise and 4 CVEs to form a night carrier task group. Wiser minds prevailed, and the Independence was selected, in July, 1944, as a replacement for the slow CVEs. However, the Independence had to wait until the Enterprise finished her tour as a day carrier in December, 1944, before they could form their two night carrier group.

 

great and interesting reading all...
thanks all for replies

very impressive statistic here ......staggering.....seems almost impossible....I kind of think we don't have that spirit, will, culture, discipline, etc to even come close to doing something even close to that today.

 

much thanks....and if we helped supply Russia, fought in more than theater---what was Japan thinking when they bombed Pearl? I'm sure there is a thread on this somewhere.....

Gunslinger and all---I'm guessing here, but I would think they put those ships out 'very fast' considering the humongous, complex, etc problems of being 'forced' into war.....I'm sure records were broken....

 

It wasn't the smartest decision, but their backs were against the wall. Due to the oil/fuel embargo they either gave into US demands or their economy collapsed. There is some convincing evidence that one of the reasons FDR opted to go with a stricter embargo (though there is evidence it was implemented in a stricter manner than he intended) was that US oil production was not fully ramped up yet and if they didn't cut oil shipments to Japan rationing would have to be implemented on the American public, if we continued to fully meet British requests. Gas rationing would erode public support for continued and increased aid to Britain. This is in addition to the primary purpose of using economic sanctions to force political concessions. We had already closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, had cut off scrap metal shipments, had a partial embargo on certain POL products, had frozen their financial assets in the US, etc. Japan knew they could get the oil their economy and military needed by seizing the Dutch East Indies. They thought such a move would automatically trigger US military intervention (a good deal of evidence that they were mistaken here), and that they needed to neutralize the capability to intervene.
In the last several months I've read a lot of the political history leading up to the war and have read in a couple of places that FDR did not intend for the embargo to be as strictly enforced as it was and that his advisors warned him it would result in war with Japan. Once, those responsible for implementing the embargo had interpreted it in the strictest sense, FDR couldn't back off without appearing weak to the Japanese.

 

Yes, that was what I was referring to when I wrote:

"FDR did not intend for the embargo to be as strictly enforced as it was and that his advisors warned him it would result in war with Japan. Once, those responsible for implementing the embargo had interpreted it in the strictest sense, FDR couldn't back off without appearing weak to the Japanese."

 

I believe the best account of these events remains Irvine Anderson's. See http://www.jstor.org/stable/3638003 The problem was the mechanism chosen by Roosevelt to enact such an embargo was to freeze Japanese assets by Executive Order on 25 July 1941 and leave it to State and Commerce to work out the exact how. That opened the door for the hardline anti-Japan/pro-China faction in State to squeeze the Japanese harder. Since Japanese assets in the US were frozen, they would have to use assets held in other countries to pay for the oil, which they refused to do. It was actually Dean Acheson that pulled the trigger. The British and Dutch decisions to follow the US lead just added to the pressure.