That is the point: a battleship or heavy cruiser could not even get within gun range of an aircraft carrier-the planes would attack and sink the big gun ships.
There was NO defense against high speed dive bombing-the most heavily equipped ships (for AA gns) stood no chance at all
Except effective air cover, of course.
Kind of both makes your point and doesn’t. 
A pretty interesting battle. I once read a book about it, back in the 70s, but I can’t find it now. Might have been a chapter or two of a larger book. Had lots of quotes and some wild pics. Anyone here maybe remember it too?
I’d definitely swap every battleship for an aircraft carrier. The Bismark was crippled by an attack from a handful of biplanes.
Battleships simply couldn’t get close enough to competantly handled carriers to do any damage.
Indeed, although incompetently handled carriers were a different matter.
A great recent book about the Battle off Samar is James D. Hornfischer’s “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.”
I agree with the rest of your post, but this is an error.
The Washington Naval Treaty (1922) did limit the signatories carriers in terms of total tonnage, and size of the ships. Articles 7 thru 10 specifically put limits on carriers.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pre-war/1922/nav_lim.html
In the London Naval Treaty (1930), articles 3 through 5 again directly specify carrier limitations and definitions.
http://www.microworks.net/pacific/road_to_war/london_treaty.htm
Yes, that’s the one I was thinking of, the only fleet carrier to be sunk by gunfire. It was flying no aircraft at the time, had none prepared for a quick take off, had no spotter in the crows nest, and was running with many of it’s boilers shut down, so it could not quickly produce full power and reach maximum speed.
Nice catch.
The Yamato was well on its way to becoming fully commissioned at the time of PH, tho that and the subsequent 1942 carrier battles did lead to the cancellation of the American Montana-class and British Lion-class BB’s.
Incorrect, the Americans got a lot of mileage out of their proximity-fused five inch shells for their secondary batteries-so much so that the Japanese eventuallu realized that attempting to bomb (dive- or torpedo-) an American ship with their fearsome AA batteries was suicide, thus leading to the formation and use of Kamikazies (where it wasn’t expected that you would try to return to base after unleashing your payload).
After reading up on the battle of Samar I’m ready to hand you your point.
Thanks! Looks like a good one.
Also the conversion of the third Yamato-class to a carrier.
And only gave it enough hangar room to operate about 40 planes. By way of comparison, the Midway class CVs which the US commissioned after the war were about the same tonnage as the Shinano, but could operate over 100 planes. Of course by 1945 the Shinano would be/was just another doomed target for something.
Germany itself claimed four Royal Navy carriers from the North Sea through to the Mediterranean, none of them through the use of air power (HMS, Courageous, Glorious, Ark Royal and Eagle.)
From what I understand, the style of gun turret most people think of, the little bulb on top of the ship that pivots back and forth while the guns go up and down, became popular for the smaller weapons because of this. Before that, the smaller guns tended to be mounted in the side of the ship with limited ability to elevate, since they were only needed to fending off smaller craft like torpedo boats. You’d only need the higher elevation for ships that were still well within the engagement envelope of the bigger guns anyways.
Bumped.
For those craving some Graf Zeppelin stuff:
http://www.militaryissue.com/The-German-Aircraft-Carrier-Graf-Zeppelin/productinfo/702418/
http://www.militaryissue.com/DKM-Graf-Zeppelin-Aircraft-Carrier-1_350-Kit/productinfo/702224/
I was going to comment on some things in the thread but then I saw it’s a zombie.
A correction about the Yamato. It had already been laid down well before Pearl Harbor and participated in the Midway operation, although it didn’t fight in the battle itself.
Speaking of raising the dead,* Yamato *(not yet a space battleship) was launched in August of 1940, but not commissioned until 16 December 1941. Generally speaking, ships have a shakedown period between being launched and actually entering service, where the crew is trained in the ship’s operation and basically figures out what’s already broken (ships are very big, complicated things, there are bound to be unforeseen issues for them to smoke out and fix). Take the ship out to sea, sail it around a bit, see what breaks off, take it back into port to get fixed before it’s ready for action.
Bad things tend to happen when you try to put a ship into battle before doing the shakedown period. The middle of a battle is a hell of a time to figure out you have a defective power distribution system or a sticky watertight door.
Bumped.
I just read The German Aircraft Carrier Graf Zeppelin: Super Drawings in 3D by Stefan Draminski (linked in post 36 above). Beautifully realistic computer-generated images of the carrier as she would have looked upon completion, with her flight deck full of planes, and some line drawings. No cutaway views, though, and the text reads like it was run through Google Translate.