How many carriers?

[Takao]

Tiornu,
Thanks for the information on Habbakuk, it’s much appreciated. Yes, I had forgotten about the deck edge elevator on the Wasp, thanks for correcting me. Glad to see another naval enthusiast join TRF.

Gabriel,
Yes, “Samurai”, is a true classic. However, the range and maneuverability came at a cost. Japanese a/c were much more susceptible to damage than their American counter-parts. This, along with American radar, led to Japanese aircraft usually taking a severe beating whenever they engaged the American carriers.

The radio failure of Soryu’s scout plane has no bearing on the loss of the Hiryu. It is immaterial because at the time the scout plane landed on Hiryu, Hiryu’s planes were attacking the Yorktown. The information only clarified how many carriers Rear Admiral Yamaguchi was facing. Yamaguchi’s second strike also hit the Yorktown, but they thought they were attacking a different carrier. This was due to the fact that efficient damage control had repaired much of the damage done by the first strike. It is possible, that had the Yorktown still been burning, the second strike might have continued on to the other American carriers.

Sam H.,
I understand your point and as you said there are always exceptions. IJN’s Shinano probably is the biggest one.

Now to the Shoho – Lexington debate.

Gabriel’s conclusion that Shoho=Lexington+10%Yorktown is in error. The fact of the matter is the Shoho’s aircraft accomplished nothing during the Battle of the Coral Sea, she never once launched a strike. The damage dealt to the Americans was done by aircraft from Shokaku and Zuikaku. Little Shoho only served as a distraction for American aircraft. Her air group, consisting of 8 Zeros, 4 Claudes, and 6 Kates(there should have been an 9 Zeros, but one ditched before the battle began), was overwhelmed by the American strike of 93 aircraft. During the attack, the Americans lost only 3 aircraft.(all SBDs). So, I guess you could say that Shoho = 3 SBDs, but we all know that would be wrong too.

[Sam H.]

Not I, Coral Sea proved Shoho=Lexington+10%Yorktown. 8) 10% is enough? If I well remember Yorktown lost 40 planes....

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/coral.html

The Yorktown only lost 16 planes.

[Tiornu]

I'm glad gabriel said, "I am tired of this joke," because I had thought he was serious about Shoho being superior to Lexington and Yorktown. The thought of a 12,000-ton 28kt ship outranking a pair of 30kt+ fleet carriers is likely to start a cascade failure in my brain.

[Tiornu]

The Japanese never "got it" with regard to fighter vectoring. By 1944, they found their air attacks running a gauntlet of fighter opposition for 70 miles or more before reaching their targets. Two years after Midway, they still hadn't caught on. Even before Midway, a pair of British bombers caught Nagumo sleeping in the Indian Ocean. The planes dropped their bombs and got away without a scratch. Now, any misfortune may happen occasionally (Franklin), but the fundamental failure of the Japanese system put them in an awkward position--unable to make good their losses, and unable to provide adequate protection.
This brings us to Shinano. Takao notes the discrepency between her vast size and her small air group. When you see such a large ship with so few planes, you look for the reasons. I see three. She was a conversion. She carried heavy armor. (!) But most importantly, she had a very specialized role laid out for her by Japanese doctrine.
The IJN, aware of its quantitative inferiority against its likely enemies, had found numerous ways to attain a longer reach, to strike before being stricken--Long Lance torpedoes, high gun elevation, long-range aircraft. This last idea hadn't provided a sufficient margin of superiority, so a new idea arose. The more vulnerable carriers could remain farther to the rear if they had the chance to shuttle their planes. Sounds like Philippine Sea? But in this case, the base to which the planes would shuttle was not a land base but the rugged armored carriers Taiho and Shinano. I do not know if Taiho was conceived with this role in mind, and obviously there was never an opportunity for this cardiv to operate according to plan. But it does explain why gigantic Shinano is rated as carrying only 47 planes of her own.

[Windward]

Here's an interesting design of Japanese carrier.

[hisashi]

The ship above is a fictinal 'Takachiho' class aircraft carrier designed by Jun WAKAMIYA.

http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~wakamiya/takachi.htm

[gabriel pagliarani]

The ship above is a fictinal 'Takachiho' class aircraft carrier designed by Jun WAKAMIYA.

http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~wakamiya/takachi.htm

X-shaped decks were developed by Royal Navy after WW2. About the effectiveness of a weapon there is a great fog spread out, but not only in my own brain. Obviously the equation about Coral Sea was wrong at the very beginning, I knew it! But it works exactly as the "thumb" rule relating displacement vs. air power...a joke not understood about "onions" vs. "peaches" comparing. The relationship I am waiting for must show the nos. of planes that a carrier could maintain continuosly on duty, thus in air. Doubling authonomy japs halved the nos of ground operations, halving the request of turnations, avoiding losses in time and fuel consumption of escorts when climbing till "umbrella" ceiling. If there is no logical relationship between nos. of planes and displacement surely there must be a logical relationship between displacement of carrier and fuel carried, because the presence of great amounts of liquids could affect the stability of the ship. And the consumption of heavy fuel due to the engines of the carrier is a fraction respect the fuel consumption due to airplanes and refuelling operations between ships during a battle thousand miles far from home is little less than suicidal ... Click, clock, clack.. brain gears are finally working?

[Tiornu]

True, the actual Japanese carriers did not angled angled flight decks, deck-edge lifts, or catapults.
For comparing the use of tonnage, it's always interesting to look at Ark Royal and Illustrious, built by the same navy one after the other, and not all that different in size. The newer ship was 1000 tons larger, and yes, she carried 4850 tons of fuel rather than 4400. I have it in my head that the Illustrious fuel load was reduced at some point to make space available for avgas, but I'm not sure I want to trust my memory on that. Ark Royal had much more avgas than Illustrious: 100,000 gallons versus 50,540 gallons.
If we want an exception to the rule, we can compare old Lexington to Essex: 5400 tons versus 6330 tons. What this illustrates mostly is that statistics are slippery. Lex was designed for 2637 tons, but had an emergency max load of 7227.7 tons. Essex was designed for 6330 tons at full load, but I don't know her emergency figure.

[Sam H.]

The ship above is a fictinal 'Takachiho' class aircraft carrier designed by Jun WAKAMIYA.

http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~wakamiya/takachi.htm

X-shaped decks were developed by Royal Navy after WW2. About the effectiveness of a weapon there is a great fog spread out, but not only in my own brain. Obviously the equation about Coral Sea was wrong at the very beginning, I knew it! But it works exactly as the "thumb" rule relating displacement vs. air power...a joke not understood about "onions" vs. "peaches" comparing. The relationship I am waiting for must show the nos. of planes that a carrier could maintain continuosly on duty, thus in air. Doubling authonomy japs halved the nos of ground operations, halving the request of turnations, avoiding losses in time and fuel consumption of escorts when climbing till "umbrella" ceiling. If there is no logical relationship between nos. of planes and displacement surely there must be a logical relationship between displacement of carrier and fuel carried, because the presence of great amounts of liquids could affect the stability of the ship. And the consumption of heavy fuel due to the engines of the carrier is a fraction respect the fuel consumption due to airplanes and refuelling operations between ships during a battle thousand miles far from home is little less than suicidal ... Click, clock, clack.. brain gears are finally working?

I have to admit, I love the way you argue a point. If you start to lose, you shift gears, when you are proven wrong, its all a joke.

So why should we take what you are saying now as anything more than a joke?

[Takao]

Yes Gabriel has become quite the laugh riot, he has gratiously provided us with several new jokes.

The relationship I am waiting for must show the nos. of planes that a carrier could maintain continuosly on duty, thus in air.

I see this as meaningless. The only aircraft a carrier would need to have airborne at all(or at least most) of the time is the CAP. Whay any one would want to keep a fully armed strike group circling a task force is beyond me.

Doubling authonomy japs halved the nos of ground operations, halving the request of turnations, avoiding losses in time and fuel consumption of escorts when climbing till "umbrella" ceiling.

Japanese strike groups had about the same level of autonomy as the Americans.

If there is no logical relationship between nos. of planes and displacement surely there must be a logical relationship between displacement of carrier and fuel carried

Are we going back to onions and peaches. Gabriel, you told Sam H. this would not work for him, so why should it now work for you?

And the consumption of heavy fuel due to the engines of the carrier is a fraction respect the fuel consumption due to airplanes

Is it now? Then please explain to me why Japanese carriers carried 3000-4000 tons of fuel oil, but only 150-300 tons of AvGas? If the planes consume more than the ship, should this not be reversed?

and refuelling operations between ships during a battle thousand miles far from home is little less than suicidal

That's why refuelling was done before or after the battle, not during. IIRC, TF38/58 did rather well when it ventured into Japanese waters(South China Sea, raids on Formosa, raids on Japan, etc.).

And the hit just keep on coming.

Sorry about the rant, feeling sarcastic and too tired to argue. Maybe later I'll feel up to the challenge.

[gabriel pagliarani]

Takao, the stuff was in comparison of weapons, not in useless querelles. I have no interest in holding up a theory than any other and I have no reply ready to show. But if you have better criteria than the Sam H. strange rule show them: just you said it was too easy (..thumb) I agreed with you but none of us (... more exactly I am trying it only and alone till now) still produced a valid alternative rule. This is the essence of scientific method: without alternatives the Sam H. "thumb" horrific rule is the only till working, you agree or not. I personally cannot think that the best production of US Navy engineering till Langley was based on such a crazy rule, however it works...what are you hitting? there is no match.

[Tiornu]

I still haven't figured out what's so wrong with the general rule that larger carriers have larger air groups. We have already isolated three variables that can override the rule: conversions (Lexington and Shinano), tonnage given to armor (Illustrious and Shinano), and operational role (Shinano and...Shinano). But these additional factors don't negate the displacement statement as a good starting point.
What is meant by "autonomy"?

[gabriel pagliarani]

...What is meant by "autonomy"?

I am just avoiding this kind of off-roads: if you know the real meaning of authonomy, show me. It's too easy criticize other opinions without showing an equivalent theory. Tiornu: "DO UT DES", this was the core of the previous message to Takao.
About Sam's rule :
A glorious day during '20s Mars, the western goddess of war striked on USNavy HQ. Thus he broke the black cloudy mantle shadowing the minds of US Navy engineers with a shining revelation:
"..you'll produce a new class of battleships: Carriers! they must have an armored deck and every 400 tons of displaced water they will carry on a plane! Go on!.."
The astonished engineers tried to reply:
"..mylord, we'lldo it, but explain why a new class of vessels and why so strange rules...shall we see what kind of enemy we will face...
The goddess furiously replied:
"..shut up! You are a plenty of fucked asses and no one among you, bastards, must understand a comma abot such rules. 400tons/1 plane is the rule I gently give you. Try to investigate and you will loose at least a couple of wars during this century!"
In the meanwhile he appeared to japs telling them the same words. But japs told "yes" to any word Mars told them without querelling, they did so only because is their habit never counter-reply to any order. When Mars went away from Japan so happy about the enthusiastic reply of Japs, the Imperial War College was immediately re-assembled. Hiro Hito asked:
"..who was that funny boy with such a red mask?"
Yamamoto replied that Mars was the westen goddess of war. The Emperor got in a hurry then replied:
"..I am the shintoist goddess of war, not that fucked white greek ass! What the rule of westerns? 400 tons each plane? HALVED!! only 200! Because any samurai values at least as 2 americans I say that 200 tons displaced water per plane abroad is enough!Armored decks? Why? Planes will have 10 times more the reach of any bullet. No armors indeed?"
At the end of WW2 americans won, japs lost, nobody knows why. End. 8)

[Tiornu]

Wow, that was some tale! I'm not sure what it meant, but it was definitely something. Could've done without the foul language, though.
I'm looking for ships that had 1 plane per 200 tons of displacement, and I found some. Ranger, Wasp, and the Yorktowns manage it--nominally, at least. In real-life operations, maybe not, but they were close.
Ark Royal would have to be the best British choice, but she is well behind the US standards. For the Japanese, Soryu is the winner.
In any case, I'm still no closer to understanding what is meant by "autonomy."

[Tiornu]

Also, what does that little paperclip mean next to the title of the thread?