Of course, in 1945 the balance favored Allied penetrators over Japanese defenders as well.
Earlier in the war, in 1942 when the more balanced carrier on carrier battles took place, the penetrators had the advantage. Both sides had the right idea of trying to overwhelm the defense by simultaneously attacking by torpedo planes and dive bombers.
Yup.
But the Royal Navy did suffer a similar trauma when two of their most powerful warships were sunk by Japanese aircraft two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Here’s link to an article about that very question in the OP: The author comes down on the side of a bigger combat air patrol was better than tougher ships.
Good point.
The Japanese though would probably take the opposite view.
Sure. If nothing had changed and Midway where fought just like it was historically, the armored deck would likely have prevented the general purpose American bombs from penetrating down to the hangers, which were filled with
However, had the Japanese had armored flight decks, the tragetory of the war may have been different.
On first glance, the answer seems obvious. The armor would have stopped the GP bombs, hence they would not have lost the four carriers. Alt-hist fans then like to run it with and find ways that Japan would have won the war.
However, it’s not that easy. First, they couldn’t have suddenly had armored decks that morning. They would have started the war with them, and the US would have been aware of that. Even assuming that nothing else would have changed, it’s likely that the US would have been dropping AP bombs instead.
Had the Japanese carriers been deck-armored, what would that have done to their aircraft complement?
And what in turn would that have done to the Pearl Harbor attack? Or the Japanese offense at Midway? Or the effectiveness of the Japanese CAP fighters at Midway trying to stop the USN bombing attack on those stouter carriers?
As you quite rightly say, the ramifications of a single counterfactual get deep quickly.
Exactly!
It also touches really deep questions concerning the mindset of the Japanese.
The Japanese were overwhelmingly oriented towards the offensive, and generally rejected defensive measures which would have negatively impacted offensive performance.
For example, Japanese rejected using self-sealing gas tanks because they had negative impact on weight and speed. Once the US was able to find tactics to combat the Zero, the Japanese lost many planes.
I can’t see the Japanese sacrificing the number of planes for the defensive measure of armored decks.
Agreed. Within their military culture it was culturally unthinkable.
Just as DoD has avoided (deliberately) fielding second-rate cheap gear that is expected to kill lots more of our combatants, but could happily be bought in greater quantity.
Plus, IJN carriers tended to be top-heavy as it was, in part because they had two (and in the case of Akagi and Kaga, three) hangar decks. Adding an armored deck that high in the structure would have made for horrendous seakeeping.
Not to mention that planes are a much better defensive measure than armor for a carrier, anyway.
When carriers were being developed in the 30s, that wasn’t really clear. The biggest change was the development of effective radar, which allowed ships time enough to direct their CAP to attack the incoming planes. Advanced radar allowed the ship to see the altitude of the attackers, something clearly necessary for an effective defense. The development of IFF also helped.
Japanese CAP sucked, to use the techical term for it. The Zero radios sucked and the pilots lacked coverage discipline, and they didn’t have really good zone coverage planned out.
The IJN didn’t sacrifice aircraft complement but they increased defensive capability by making their carriers larger. Compare Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku class, Taiho. Each design had more armor, heavier AA, and a wider torpedo defense system than the one before, while aircraft complement was pretty steady. Taiho had an armored flight deck.
And the IJN would have half the number of aircraft, meaning Pearl, Battle of the Coral sea and yes, Midway, would have come out different.
More or less halved, maybe 60%.
Taiho was sort of a Shokaku with an armored flight deck. IIRC, her hangar space was about 3/4 of Shokaku. She carried a few more planes though; I think that’s because the IJN had started keeping some of the planes on the flight deck, as had been USN practice all along. That deck park was part of the reason USN carriers carried more planes than the IJN and RN carriers. The RN started using deck parks late war, which brought their a/c complement closer to that of USN carriers.
The kamikazes were, rightly, seen as a passing phase in warfare that was unlikely to reoccur.
The armoured hangar deck made modernising the carriers after the war difficult and expensive, and only one, Victorious, was so modernised (and it was poorly project-managed and cost a lot more than it was supposed to, as a result no others were done). Compare with the Essex/Ticonderoga-class hulls which remained useful into the 1970s.