I thought the Ranger (CV-4) was the Flag Ship that led 4 escort Carriers and greatly assisted the landings in Africa. I seem to recall they provide air superiority, blew up dozens of tanks and hundreds of trucks and wiped out airfields.
She was the first true US Carrier built as one from the start. For a 1931 ship she did a good job. She gave of a CV presence in the Atlantic when we desperately needed the newer Essex carriers in the Pacific.
I was proud that our ship the USS Ranger CV-61 was named after her and of course the most Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.
Yes, absolutely, but I would suggest that the same would have happened at this point in time to a Yorktown. Wasp was singularly unlucky in that she was hit by three submarine torpedoes while undergoing flight operations, with open aviation gas lines. Three torpedoes is a very severe dose for any ship. I would not discount vulnerability as a reason why Ranger was not deployed in the Pacific, but I think other reasons were more important: she had vastly lower endurance (half that of Wasp), a slightly lower speed, a smaller deck area, and no catapults. I’m sure the Navy was not happy about having to use Wasp in the Pacific either, but Ranger was a much worse ship.
Incidentally, if this post seems much more detailed than my previous one on Ranger, it’s because I’ve looked at books. I suppose I could have done that first…
Ranger had a larger hangar than the Lexington class, IIRC. (I’m not at home, don’t have access to my stuff.)
Wiki lists: Ranger ---------Wasp --------- Sangamon CVE
Tonnage 15k tons---------15k tons --------- 22k tons (?)
Speed 29.3 ----------- 29.5-------- 18
Range(fuel) 10k Nmi ---------12k Nmi --------- unk
Length 769 ft --------- 741 ft --------- 533 ft
Width 86 ft --------- 109 ft --------- 75 ft
Aircraft 76 --------- 76 --------- 30
Wiki lists Ranger width = 109, and is incorrect. (Actually, browsing the interweb, I notice that there is conflicting info on different websites on the three ship classes. Sigh.)
Wiki does not go into details, like the size and speed of the elevators (which regulates the tempo of flight ops). Perhaps the Rangers elevators were kinda dinky.
Ranger’s engineering plant may have been in desperate need of overhaul, I cannot remember.
Your right about the catapults. Catapults were definately going to be needed in '44+ with the heavier aircraft, like a bomb laden corsair.
Edit: damn. i put spaces in my comparison list, but the board deleted them. sorry.
That’s certainly possible, as Lexington’s hangar wasn’t especially well designed. It was also a closed design, as opposed to Ranger’s open one.
That was also my bad – I misread the endurance numbers given (or rather, not given) by Friedman. Wasp’s endurance is not listed, so I suspect that there are no reliable figures for her apart from the design range, which I can’t find.
Ranger was considered to require a significant overhaul every 6 months to check the deterioration of her speed.
They were needed on such small ships even in 1942, and I suppose this is a major crux and the reason to prefer Wasp to Ranger. The SBD’s maximum takeoff weight was above 10.000 pounds, and the TBF weighed as much empty; and 10.000 pounds was the magic barrier in the Ranger design according to Friedman, at which she would not be able to launch planes from further forward than her arresting gear – not enough room to spot a deckload strike, in other words. Two other reasons I will maintain are Ranger’s lack of torpedo storage and the worse position of her magazines, which were partially above the waterline.
The CVE’s were slow (aka easilly hit) and had little protection either, but they were risked in front line combat areas. (They had no catapults either. I think they flew the SBD’s and FM2 Wildcats once those models were replaced on the Fleet carriers.)
If Ranger’s engineering plant was as crummy as Enterprise staes, I would agree that that would absolutely condemn her to rear area roles once the “emergency” years (1942 & early '43) passed.
Iowa Class (I see her at least once a week, she is mothballed at Suisun) 45,000 tons, 861.5 feet in length. Iowa-class battleship - Wikipedia. There were 4.
Ton for foot, the Yamatos were the heaviest, but the quality of the steel might make a difference. The Iowas were never seriously threatened. The Yamatos and the Bismarcks took incredible beatings before going down. Nimitz carriers are substantially heavier than the Iowas and Bismarcks, but roughly the same as the Yamatos, maybe a bit less ton for foot. However, it is a safe bet that the steel quality is better and they are probably multi-hulled for practical purposes with many water tight compartments.
Otara and Elendil’s Heir - i knew about “Mutton Legs” and Surcouf - it was just my attempt at somewhat lame joke. Thanks for the links anyway - they may be interesting for other Dopers.
But that does not address armor thickness, merely bulk and flotation.
You’re onto something with steel quality – apparently armchair experts feel that the higher quality armor belt in the American battleships made them equivalent to, or better than, the thicker but lower-quality armor of the the Yamato/Musashi class, but that’s a technical argument over minor differences. It’s armor belt thickness, along with “rational” armor distribution, that makes a battleship tough.
Although tonnage does contribute to ability to absorb damage, a lot of the tonnage on a carrier is bombs and fuel, which can be, um, less protective than armor plate.
I assume that the magazines of modern carriers ARE armored, but I doubt the whole package comes close to a true battleship’s durability.
Here’s a very cool page for battleship comparisons:
On the subject of armour quality, does anyone know if advances made in this area for land vehicles could be carried over to battleships? Would composite armour be as effective against anti-ship warheads as it is against anti-tank warheads?
I’ve no doubt that it would be and is likely done to provide protection of vital areas such as magazines. Just to note it though, protection designed against HEAT or HESH warheads would be pretty pointless for a warship. Penetration or spalling is a serious concern for a tank since the crew compartment is so small and could also easily reach the ammunition. On a warship, such weapons would just make a small hole in the side of the ship and likely kill anyone unfortunate enough to be in the compartment that was hit, but it would have no meaningful effect past that.
However, the armor protection on modern warships is pretty trivial. There isn’t really much point to heavily armoring them if they aren’t going to be exchanging salvos with each other in surface gunnery duels.
I think it’s matter of scale. Anti-tank weapons mostly have warheads in the range of, say 2 - 20 kg. They don’t have to make massive damage - they just need to penetrate armor and do little poof inside to incapacitate crew or set ammo and fuel on fire. To do something against ship you need a lot more - if only because of size of ship. So anti-ship missile warheads starts around 200 kg and often weight more. Add weight of whole missile, multiply it by missile speed and you have far more energy than needed to penetrate armor of most current ships. And then you make warhead explode.
Just sheer scale of anti-ship weapons make it unnecessary to use high-end armor piercing techniques - as far as I know, no anti-ship weapon have HEAT warhead, not to mention tandem etc. And if weapons have no specialized anti-armor properties, you don’t need specialized armor against them. Composite or chobham that would dissipate jet, shockwave or fragment DP penetrator would have no use - and would cost very much to cover whole hull. Covering hull with active armor plates would be not only expensive, but also cause innumerable problems with keeping it operational in harsh conditions, additional risk for crew etc. And still wouldn’t do much when missile weighting ton or more hit you at mach speed. Maybe cause it to explode millisecond earlier.
Now, if - big IF - we ever face return of battleships, then we could expect development of armor piercing anti-ship missiles. Say, with tandem warhead where primary HEAT make hole in the hull, and secondary HE-I warhead explode inside moment later. But until then - anti-tank weapon vs. tank armor race as seen on land is simply unnecessary on seas. It’s all about not getting hit rather than surviving hit. Hence active defense systems. That’s what matters.
