This brings up the eternal question of strategic versus tactical assets.
This debate–and it is a debate–was probably best summarized in Walter Kross’ Military Reform: The High-Tech Debate in Tactical Air Forces. Yes, those with a shaky grasp of analogy will be pursed at my using the Air Force example, but hear me out, please.
Two historical examples that reformers (cheaper, better, faster folks who, as Chronos once pointed out, would have been better served to settle with two out of the three) use are the P-38 versus the P-51 in World War II and the Me-262, also from the Big One. The P-38, being a twin-engined fighter, was approximately twice as expensive to maintain as the P-51, and it was eventually replaced by the Mustang in the European Theatre, with far better success. The P-51 also shot down a fair number of superior Me-262s due to their large numbers and their ability to loiter around the extra-long landing strips that Me-262s had to use when they returned from combat, fuel-strapped and unable to defend themselves (Chuck Yeager managed to take out a 262 in this fashion).
Bullshit, say the bells-and-whistlers. The P-38 was worth every penny ever sunk into it for one reason alone: P-38s were the only American aircraft that were in place and had the range and the performance to guarantee the assassination of Yammamoto Isoroku, brainchild and executor of Japanese naval strategy in 1941-1943. Americans learned through cracking Japanese communiques that Yammamoto would be paying a visit to the western Solomons, and made sure a squadron of P-38s were there to finish his career. With his death, say some, Japan’s last chance of orchestrating a negotiated peace with America ended, for Yammamoto had no strategic equal in Japan.
A second argument the high-tech folks give is the Japanese disaster at Midway. In addition to losing four fleet carriers in that battle, Japan also lost 90 of the best–and most expensive to train–pilots in the world, in large part because their ships were sunk from under them and the Japanese were not very concerned with recovering the ditched pilots. That loss, combined with the pilot losses inflicted upon the Shokaku and Zuikaku at the prelude to Midway, Coral Sea, represented an entire graduating class of Japanese naval pilots. Japan was to go on to replace its carrier and aircraft losses at Midway, but it never replaced its expert pilots. In contrast, American concern for the safety of its pilots included expensive armored cockpits, self-sealing fuel tanks and extensive search and rescue missions, which kept first-class American pilots in the air all the time. Techies believe the benefits justified the expense.
It’s difficult to believe that American fleet carriers in WWII were designed to be expendable, but in a small way they were. Great expense was saved by giving American flattops wooden decks, and allowed more fleet carriers to be produced. (A side benefit proved to be that Japanese armor-piercing bombs often penetrated below the vulnerable refueling and rearming deck, often saving the ships from the sorts of fires which sealed the fates of the Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu at Midway–a worst case scenario. That, however, was an unintended benefit.) British carriers, which joined the Americans at Okinawa, were smaller but pound-for-pound more expensive than American carriers. But due to their rebar decks, they fared far better at the hands of Japanese conventional planes and kamikazes than did American carriers such as the Bunker Hill and Franklin.
In a similar fashion, large carriers have the ability to operate independently, being able to simultaneously attack and defend themselves and their task force with combat air patrol, while CVE-style (which were styled Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable by their unhappy keepers) carriers must cluster in larger groups just to provide an adequate defense. As Anticay suggested, with ships, bigger appears to mean safer, while with aircraft the plane that cannot be seen on radar is much more likely to return from its mission. However, the loss of even one strategic carrier, bomber, or pilot is a dramatic loss which cannot be easily replaced.
There does not appear to be a happy medium except in the extravagant case of relying upon both, which of course is more expensive than either alone.
