lets see what do you think was the biggest weakness of the Essex class carriers?

Uh... The wooden deck, lack of armor?
The Essex class was a very good one, I don't know any real weakness.

Yeah that would be the only REAL weakness that i saw. The Essex class was a very well designed carrier. If they had made their decks armored they would have faired better against the kamikazes.
You wouldn't have seen destruction like on the Franklin.
When British carriers were operating at the end of the war...a few were hit by kamikazes and didn't suffer much damage. I's a good thing the Essex class had good fire control!

Right, but you sure know the Essex Class was designed before the war, so all in all it was a good guess!
And none was lost at sea, even if some were crippled and never saw action again. The armored deck of the English carriers were good protection against kamikaze, but it was heavy and harder to repair (i may be wrong). And the English armored carriers didn't have 90 planes squadron onboard...
BTW, the kamikaze hits were killing sailors, but most of the time the damage were rather quickly repaired. The Franklin was baldy hit, but the bomb stroke him with armed planes on the bridge! The heavily armored Kaga and Akagi were lost at Midway in the same circonstances... US Navy fire control teams were truelly superior at the time.

Yeah it was a great design overall. I guess it would be hard to mass produce armor decked carriers. It prob. would have made the class slower too. I guess it runs along the lines of the sherman tank. lighter armor faster speed...mass produced.
By the time the deck flaw was seen it would was too late to adjust the design for it, and also it would take to much time to overhaul all the carriers.
Good thing we learned a lesson from Japan's Midway defeat and had GREAT fire control!