The British used armored Flight decks on their aircraft carriers, and in a few instances where light bombs or a kamikaze hit, that armor came in real handy. The Royal Navy (RN) was convinced armor on the flight deck was the way to go.
OTHO, the US Navy (USN) didnt use the armor for most of their fleet carriers- instead their aircraft carriers carried about twice as many aircraft (later the Midway class- which were HUGE had both- large numbers of aircraft and an armored flight deck- but they were oversized in order to have both)/.
IMHO the USN was right and the RN was wrong. Aircraft carriers were there to… carry aircraft. The planes were their eyes, attack and defense. Of course some AA guns are a good idea, sure, but some Aircraft carriers were originally built with 8” gns, for attack, and those were fairly quickly replaced.
Now the numbers say the USN was right-28 fleet aircraft carriers, only 4 lost, IIRC (and IIRC the Lex had armored decks). The RN had only 12 and lost 5.
BUT many of the RN losses were due to U-boats, and the USNs were lost to IJN aircraft.
You can make armor out of any material, if it’s thick enough. The thicker the material, the better the armor. The best armor is made out of air, and is hundreds of miles thick.
I’m not sure whether “better” — or “worse” — applies, since each navy’s design reflected its tactical orientation, which in turn depended on its anticipated opponents. The RN appears to have been oriented toward a European conflict, which implies a more limited range and exposure to land based bombers (among other factors); the USN was oriented toward a Pacific conflict with Japan, which meant extended periods away from base and less frequent replenishment. Their respective carrier designs embodied those concepts, and seem to have fulfilled them pretty well.
The difference in ability to withstand kamikaze attacks has been discussed ad nauseam, and on the surface it would appear that the RN’s armo(u)red deck design was superior. But I do recall one instance (it’s come up here, though I’m damned if I can find it) where postwar modernization of one RN carrier revealed irreparable structural damage from a kamikaze hit. Since the flight deck formed part of the hull’s “box” (as opposed to the USN design, which used the hangar deck), the impact was transmitted throughout the structure; with a US carrier, it would have been absorbed by the decks above the hangar.
(All of the above is, of course, subject to correction.)
Unless you’re talking CV-2 Lexington, this is incorrect. I served on the flight deck of the Lady Lex (CV-16 later AVT-16). Her decks were teak. I have some that we pulled up when we did her final decommissioning. She was a grand old lady and getting to take my kids to see her in Corpus is a treasured family experience. It’s fun to teach the tour guides about your ship.
CV-2 and CV-3 were completed with most of their original battlecruiser armor on the hull, but their flight decks were just unarmored superstructure, like later US carriers until the Midway class.
Plenty of arguments and counter arguments on this subject. Franklin and Bunker Hill would have been much better off with some flight deck armor.
OTOH, I doubt flight deck armor would have saved Lexington, as the gas leak that doomed her was torpedo-caused. Yorktown’s loss was primarily due to torpedoes, but maybe flight deck armor could have stopped some bombs and kept her mobile for long enough to avoid some of the torpedoes? Wasp was lost to torpedoes, and was probably too small for an armored flight deck anyway. Hornet was also lost mostly because of torpedoes.
ISTM that all these carriers were prewar designs. As such they were guessing about what enemy air capabilities would be. The progress in airplanes and aerial bombs far outstripped expectations.
So I don’t think it’s really valid to ask “which got it right?”. IMO it’s better to say “Which decision proved to be luckier in light of the actual unanticipated changes in aerial bombing?”
And I think the answer is: “The data is inconclusive. So few carriers were sunk by enemy airpower.” As an aside, the reduced top-heaviness of the USN method had seakeeping advantages that probably saved a ship or two in typhoons.
The best answer to this question i heard was “Armored flight decks wouldn’t have saved the day during the Battle of Midway and in fact would have hurt the US” which is pretty much the only answer to this question.
Most US carriers were lost to torpedoes which an armored flight deck doesn’t save, and by the end of the war a few carriers lost to kamikazes isn’t really that big of a deal considering how much naval air power the US fleet was able to throw at the Japanese in return.
Correct. The highest armored deck was the hangar deck. The Essex class had some armor on a higher deck but it was a narrow starboard side strip under the island, IIRC.
You are absolutely correct when you said that the initial design choice was made prewar, when everyone was guessing at how things would be.
A lot of people want to debate the armored desk vs. not, as @OttoDaFe pointed out.
As @asuka says, it’s a mistake to concentrate on kamikaze attacks because the war was essentially over by then. A couple less fleet carriers damaged less and repaired quicker or escort carriers not sunk wouldn’t changed the outcome at all. At the end of the war, the US had 28 fleet carriers and 70+ escort carriers. The quality of the Japanese aviators was so poor then, and the AAA protecting the fleet was so deadly that there wasn’t a way of turning things around.
For the early war when the US was struggling to keep even a few carriers in the Pacific, there were a few cases where armored decks may have made a difference, but the problem is that is you make changes and create an alternative history, you don’t know if things would have turned out. Also, I think it’s pretty well accepted that the USN critically needed as many planes as possible.
The much bigger issue is that the US military wasn’t ready for war, and had it been better prepared, there was many things it could have done differently, and which would have have larger effects.
If one were allowed to go back in history and make a single change, my guess is that most people would have preferred to solve the torpedo problem.
Perhaps you are thinking of Illustrious. Of the six RN carriers with armoured decks, four were hit by kamikazes, and only Illustrious suffered major damage. However, she had been in combat for five years at the point.
By 1945, accumulated wear-and-tear as well as undiagnosed shock damage to Illustrious’s machinery caused severe vibrations in her centre propeller shaft at high speeds. In an effort to cure the problem, the propeller was removed, and the shaft was locked in place in February; these radical measures succeeded in reducing, but not eliminating, the vibrations and reduced the ship’s speed to about 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph).
Originally, they planned to completely repair her:
The RN planned to fit her out as a flagship, remove her aft 4.5-inch guns in exchange for increased accommodation, and replace some of her Oerlikons with single two-pounder AA guns, but the end of the war in August caused the RN to reassess its needs. In September, it decided that the Illustrious would become the trials and training carrier for the Home Fleet and her repairs were changed into a lengthy refit that lasted until June 1946.
I don’t believe she was irreparable, and that the armoured deck saved her. Other than her, the other carrier to receive lasting damage was Formidable. She was able to continue to fight, and only afterward was it discovered:
In early March 1947, Formidable steamed north to Rosyth for a brief refit before being reduced to reserve. She was paid off on 12 August and a later survey revealed that her wartime damage and poor material shape meant the ship was beyond economical repair at a time when money was very tight.
I don’t know much more than that, and it looks like they just didn’t have the money for repairs in the post war period.
Your last sentence reminded me of my first days on an aircraft carrier, when one of the guys pointed to the wall next to me and said “That’s the ballistic bulkhead” and went on to describe how it encased the ship from top to bottom with minimal penetrations–it formed a sort of armored bathtub around the core of the ship.
The kicker? Our berthing area, where we were chatting, was outboard of that bulkhead.
In other words, we were the soft squishy stuff that would soften the impact of a missile before it hit the armor.
To be fair, if our ship were under attack, we would be at General Quarters and not sleeping in our bunks.
IIRC the British carriers were somewhat constrained by the protective measures relative to the US carriers, and carried a considerably smaller air wing.
That was really the trade-off; did you want a more survivable carrier, or one that carried more planes? I kind of think the British and American doctrines were pretty different, with the US taking and running with the idea that the carriers and aircraft were the new capital ships after Pearl Harbor, while without such an abrupt trauma, the British never really went all-in on that concept until sometime after the war, if even then.
That said, the Midway class carriers and all subsequent US carrier classes have had armored flight decks and other protection, which considering the time frame of their design and development, reflected both the British and American experiences, as exhibited in their considerably larger size, while retaining the same size air wing and adding armor protection.
So in a sense, the Midway class carriers validate both the utility of armor and the utility of a larger air wing. It was the first wartime designed carrier that did both.
As was pointed out upthread, this was fine for the war they were largely fighting, the one in Europe. For the spatially enormous was in the Pacific, more aircraft was more important.
It also makes sense for the country that can’t build as many ships to emphasize their survivability a bit more.
I was in essence answering @LSLGuy’s question upthread:
and the answer was that for the US, the lighter construction was best early on, but the eventual approach (presumably decided from combat experience) was a blend of the two, as exemplified by the Midway and subsequent Forrestal classes, both of which had both large air wings and armored decks.
Right. And the fact Midway was so different from both USN and RN pe-war designs shows a couple things:
The large progress in naval architecture and ship building scale
The large amount by which both countries’ prewar designs were thought inadequate for a planned 1944-1948 war against Japan without nukes.
Current CVN practice still has some decent armor. But compared to the lethality of modern anti-ship missiles, they’re really pretty thin-skinned. The see-saw between offense and defense lives on.
Lastly, @Chronos comment about the efficacy of a couple hundred miles of air being real nice armor remains quite true. Holding the enemy at arm’s length outside his weapons range is ideal. Absorbing his fire personally is the anti-ideal.
This was also not appropriated sufficiently prior to the war and early battles saw carriers being damaged or sunk because of that.
By the Battle of Okinawa, the USN had developed and implemented Combat Information Center on warships, better radar, IFF, and the implementation of radar pickets. the picket ships were located 50 to 60 miles away from the main fleet.
The radar picket system saw its ultimate development in World War II in the Battle of Okinawa. A ring of 15 radar picket stations was established around Okinawa to cover all possible approaches to the island and the attacking fleet. Initially, a typical picket station had one or two destroyers supported by two landing ships, usually landing craft support (large) (LCS(L)) or landing ship medium (rocket) (LSM(R)), for additional AA firepower. Eventually, the number of destroyers and supporting ships were doubled at the most threatened stations, and combat air patrols were provided as well.
Picket station 1 was generally the first warship the kamikaze encountered and suffered the most attacks and sunk ships. The Combat Air Patrol (CAP) did the heavy lifting on keeping the
The CAP was able to keep the most of the kamikaze away from the main body, and consequently saved many ships.
Yeah. Modern doctrine around both carriers and forward land bases involves a lot of layers to detect, attack, and attrit the enemy as they seek to enter your inner circle and fuck you up.
All of which traces back to the late 1940s.
IMO the balance favors pentrators much more than defenders now vs 1945ish
The tradeoffs w kamikaze are interesting to modern scholars considering a stodgy conventional defense to AI or remotely piloted big drones. Doubly so if delivered in quantity.
When should manned defensive aircraft be asked to commit likely suicide to stop unmanned air vehicles inbound to the carrier / base and its comparatively vast population of vulnerable servicemembers?
