British aircraft carriers in WW2

[Icicle]

Wasn't the Shinano adapted from a Yamato class hull. Hence its large size, and ability to be armoured. Something that would be hard to do with a converted liner (which some of the japanese carriers were).

[Tiornu]

Yes, Shinano was the third in the Yamato class.

[hojutsuka]

Originally posted by Jeff:

My guess is they were heading towards the same concerns as the Brits had pre-war, few trained pilots(left) and a need to defend what carriers they had. This led them to a similar reality, small air groups and tough carriers. The right choice for bad reasons. In the end, a carrier's job is to carry planes, if it needs big guns (Lex and early Sara) or lots of armor (Brits) it's compensating for an inadequacy in it's prime roll of fighting with planes and not guns and armor.

 

Chronologically impossible. Taiho was laid down 10 July 1941, i.e. before Pearl Harbour. The move towards armored flight deck came before war experience with its high aircrew attrition.

 

Hojutsuka

[KingSargent]

Originally posted by DougRichards:

Originally posted by Tiornu:

when you consider during the period the Brits were developing their carriers the FAA did not control the pilots.

 

The problem with British carrier aviation pre about 1940 was that the pilots were RAF, so in order to maintain some naval presence they had to fly with a naval officer in a back seat.

 

Hence, when the rest of the world was building single seat naval fighters the RN was wedded to two seaters, therefore the Fulmar and the Roc. It was only under wartime pressure that RN was able to get their own NAVAL pilots and develop decent single seat fighters, the best of the bunch being the Sea Fury.

 

 

Until 1938, the RAF supplied all the pilots (although some Naval personnel did become pilots with RAF flying training). The RAF did not teach navigation to pilots. The second man in the plane had to be a trained navigator, or the plane would never be able to find anything except a watery grave.

 

The RN got control of the pilots in 1938, but there wasn't time to train pilots to navigate and they were stuck with the two-seat designs ordered by the RAF/Air Ministry.

 

Radar and homing beacons solved part of the problem, the planes could at least get back to the carrier, even if they had trouble finding the target in the early years of WW2.

[Colin Williams]

BTT

[Slater]

Damn, talk about old threads rising from the grave