Even a seriously committed and disciplined strike force is going to have huge morale problems when missiles start splattering parts of the formation from 10+ miles away.
even if they follow the missle contrails Nimitz If my research is correct carries 2x 8 tube sea sparrow launchers and 2x RAM launchers with 21 missles each. The Japanese strike force has no effective countermeasures and are standing still compared to present day jets. That could easily splash 3-4 dozen inbound aircraft. if not closer to 60. CIWS should be able to handle another 20-30 without reloading. 100 round burst and aquire new target every couple seconds…even though torpedo bombers are moving at a good clip, doubtful many would survive long enough inside 1.5km Phalanx range to release torpedoes. IF the crew managed to reload almost any of those weapons before significant damage the attack is over.
Thats also assuming no planes. Couple BARCAP plus the ready 5’s will play havok with the inbound strike. Sure they cant wipe out the whole strike due to lack of ammo. They can also be more selective about targets choosing to engage bombers while pretty much allowing raw speed to handle defense against escorting fighters. Considering the CV can easily spot that strike 200 miles out, they could probably put more like a dozen aircraft up if given any kind of distance. In addition the speeds of WWII era aircraft would allow the CV to turn away from the strike and give them another few minutes to arm up and prepare if needed just by moving away and putting the throttles to the stops.
I concur with TokyoBayer’s assessment. On its own, the carrier will run out of ammunition long before the Japanese run out of planes. The anti-air armament of modern carriers is there for last-ditch hard kill point defense against anti-ship missiles. While they can certainly engage aircraft, that isn’t what they were designed around doing, and certainly not against mass air attack. They were designed for ‘last chance’ defense against sea-skimming missiles, or missiles conducting terminal mach 3 dives from 60,000 feet. The Japanese planes could easily inflict fatal damage on the carrier. It wouldn’t be enough to save it, and would certainly make no difference against the torpedoes, but one advantage the Nimitz would have over US WW2 carriers is that all US carriers from the Midway class on have incorporated armored flight decks; late in the war when facing kamikaze attacks the same deck crashes that could put US carriers out of service for months of repairs would usually only result in superficial damage to British carriers which had armored flight decks. The HMS Formidable was able to resume flight operations little over five hours after a kamikaze hit making a dent 10 feet long, two feet wide and two feet deep in the armored flight deck.
I conclusion, enough would get through to probably make a mess, but I seriously doubt there would be damage significant enough to put Nimitz out of action. Even under WWII conditions airstrikes rarely connected with more than a few bombs or torpedos… Nimitz is faster, probably more agile, and has way better damage control.
During the 1980s when the Iowa-class battleships were being pulled out of mothballs, I read that they were regarded as THE likeliest man-made objects to survive a nuclear near miss. The carrier won’t be that sturdy, but might prove more durable than most people think.
Well, despite the notoriously complicated battle plan that Western military historians tend to deride, yes, the Japanese plan did succeed in their operational goal – to deliver heavy surface units against the Leyte landing force, undefended by American capital ships.
The tactical part of the plan then disintegrated, as the small units of Taffy 3 intimidated the Japanese battleships and cruisers into turning away. That resulted in the overall strategic picture turning into decisive defeat for Japan.
But the planners did their part – they put Kurita in position to do the damage Japan longed to inflict.
Whether that damage would have defeated the invasion itself is doubtful – the troops were mostly ashore already and the US could replace the supply fleet; the Japanese couldn’t replace the capital ships used on this mission, nor could they defend the islands indefinitely. And certainly even outright failure of the invasion of the Philippines would not have saved Japan herself in the long run.
My link mentions some of the damage to the target fleet from an airblast. Only five ships were sunk outright. The transport Gilliam, 50 yards from ground zero (the airblast was at an altitude of 520 feet), did not vaporize.
Radiation, on the other hand, is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. A goat, topside on the Nevada, 615 yards from ground zero, was not vaporized. It died two days later from radiation poisoning. (I don’t know if the ship’s superstructure was between the goat and the heat of the fireball or not.) I imagine the goat was rendered deaf, too.
This isn’t very likely at all; taking substantial losses that far out was very common for carrier strikes in WW2, albeit to CAP rather than missiles yet the strikes were carried home by the pilots of both sides in spite of horrific losses. The Japanese lost more than 350 planes in one day in the Battle of the Philippines Sea, but they continued on after the massive losses to CAP to fly into the intense anti-aircraft barrages being thrown up by US ships to attack. They only inflicted minor damage, but it should be remembered that pilot quality had dropped dramatically for Japan by this point in the war. The initial strikes on the Japanese carriers at Midway were carried through with near suicidal determination on the part of the American pilots while failing to inflict a single hit. VT-8 lost 15 of 15 planes, VT-6 lost 10 of 14 planes and VT-3 another 10 of 14 planes.
All launchers (same applies for CIWS) would only be available only if the ship was attacked from all angles, which is possible, but if not some will only be able to engage planes after they have already delivered their attack and come into their line of fire after passing over the carrier. Either way, even 60 kills isn’t going to cut it; the carrier will be out of ammunition long before the Japanese are out of planes. That’s only 1/3 of the first wave.
CIWS has the same firing angle limitations. The ammunition drum also only carries 1,550 rounds of ammunition, so you’re only going to get 15 100 round bursts before the guns are dry. Now you’ve killed perhaps 90 of planes of the initial strike force, which is only half of it, and are now completely defenseless as every weapon is out of ammo.
Not going to happen. None of these weapons are designed for rapid reload. At best you might get one or two Sea Sparrows per launcher reloaded before the attack is long over. This isn’t a fault of any of the weapon systems; anyone specifying in the design stage that they must be able to stop an attack by 353 WW2 Japanese aircraft as a likely threat would find their career coming to a rapid end. Again, the carrier’s weapons aren’t there to protect it from air attack by aircraft, they are there to provide last ditch defense against very high speed missiles that have made it through all other defenses. Very large ammunition capacity or rapid reload aren’t of much use in this situation as the engagement time will be very short.
Even better, if it’s the goat I’m thinking about, they had it tethered within one of the main battery turrets, i.e., behind over 12 inches of armor plate. And it still took enough prompt neutrons to die from primary radiation sickness.
All that said, I don’t know if the USN even has non air-dropped bomb tactical nuclear warheads anymore, so I’m not sure how the nuke is going to get from the carrier’s magazine to the heart of the Japanese air formation. I think they got rid of the ASROC and other nuclear depth bombs awhile ago; same with the nuclear armed Talos SAMs.
My vote is with TokyoBayer and Dissonance. I think you lose the Nimitz if a 150-strong IJN alpha strike materializes 10,000 feet above the carrier. Give the Nimitz some distance, and the strike might not even see her, let alone sink her. Add the plane guard Burke or Tico and Nimitz might win.
We have some evidence of damage control on a USN CV (Forrestal, Oriskany.) Yeah, they didn’t lose the carriers but there was still an awful lot of damage and chain reaction fires started from a comparatively small source. Things have improved since then, I’m sure.
Some interesting replies here. When the scenario popped into my head my main thought was that surely the carrier would have some badass AA guns popping out thousands of bullets and chopping up the relatively slow planes. I hadn’t even considered the carrier launching its own planes, but its interesting to hear that the types of AA guns they have seem to be very much short burst weapons that would actually be overwhelmed by the number of planes. I guess its similar to people who watch old Arnie action films thinking that machine guns can fire on full auto for about two hours until everybody on the island is dead.
The Nimitz’s presence in the past would probably lead to it not being manufactured under the same circumstances in the future, therefore blipping it out of existence along with the rest of the planet/universe.
Pretty sure. In test ‘Able’ in your link, 5 ships inside the 1,000-yard radius target zone sank. 14 others sustained serious damage. Only one large ship inside the zone sustained “moderate” damage, the modern Japanese battleship Nagato. She was near the edge of the circle and had her stern facing the blast.
Able was a 23-kiloton blast at 150 meters above sea.
The constraint of the OP that Japanese force discovered the carrier in their path. With non-pressurized cabins, they would not be cruising high enough to spot the carrier 200 miles away.
As per my earlier post, there is no question that given a great enough distance or enough planes in the air, the carrier would win. However, within the constraints of the OP, it seems more problematic.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was carefully planned even down to the level of deciding not to attack the oil as to not obstruct the view for the other attackers.
The operation had required overcoming some large hurdles, including the well-known modification of their torpedoes but there was also the modified armor-piercing bombs for battleship row. Both of these were required in order to sink the battleships, through which the Japanese believed that they could destroy the morale of the Americans and quickly win.
I believe that there would have at least been some hesitation to abandon the purpose, even if this super carrier would have shown up.
The carriers do have some “badass AA guns” which would chop up the WWII planes quickly. It’s just that they are floating a ways off on the task force where they’re more useful.
The Nimitz appears with the Japanese aircraft out of sight, and also right next to a secret Japanese mini sub carrying a detachable mine. The sub actually collides with the Nimitz setting off the mine, and causing a catastrophic explosion in the carrier. It sinks like a rock along with the sub, never seen by any one that didn’t go down with the wreck. The remains of the carrier have never been discovered because no one is looking for them. The sub was believed by the Japanese to continue on to Pearl and have accidently sunk somewhere in that area. History is unchanged and the Nimitz will be developed once again.
An aircraft carrier’s primary armament is its air wing. I think that, to make the question meaningful, you have to assume that the carrier has all of its birds, and can get them airborne in whatever the standard amount of time is for that.
And given the tech disparity, I would expect that the planes’ missiles, at least, would be very close to one shot, one kill, likely from a greater range than the Japanese could even detect them. Even if the ship itself doesn’t have enough missiles to kill all of the Japanese planes, I have to imagine that the planes based on the ship do.
There are probably enough missiles/cannon ammo for the US planes to shoot down all of the IJN planes - but how much of that can they put in the air at once? If you have to land to rearm, I think you’re in trouble.
And where is the fun in that? Could an NFL teach beat up a high school team?
IIRC, F/A 18s carry four to six air-to-air missiles each. Assume six, and divide the Japanese 180 planes by that. As there are about 180 IJN planes at one time, you need 30 planes. The F/A 18s have their 20 mm cannons, so it’s actually less than that.
The Japanese planes were particularly vulnerable to enemy fire, so they would get shot down readily. The US pilots wouldn’t have trained for this type of warfare, but I suspect they could pick it up fairly quickly.
I donno. I guessed above that about a dozen fighters could protect the carrier, unless they were all just there directly above releasing their bombs. I’m not a navy pilot so YMMV.
That’s overly optimistic. Air to air missiles have a number of issues that prevent that level of reliability. Hardware failure…sometimes the rocket motor fails to ignite, or burns out too soon. Sometimes the missile fails to separate from the airplane. Sometimes the guidance package fails. Sometimes the warhead fails to detonate…or detonates too soon…or too late. Etc.
And the range isn’t as great as you seem to think. Heat seeking missiles are usually not fired beyond visual range. Radar missiles can be used beyond visual range, but accuracy decreases as range increases.
One thing that has not come up. 1930’s carriers were 30+ knott ships. A modern carrier is 40+ knotts. The Japanese pilots aim would be off because the ship would have already passed the point he ws aiming at when the wepon got there.