Propeller aircraft carriers today?

[CalBear]

Originally Posted by ScorchedLight

Helicarriers are a more rational investment.

Also, all carriers have propellers

Now an paddlewheeler CV would be an interesting sight.

Behold the glory that was the ix-64 Wolverine!

[e of pi]

Originally Posted by ScorchedLight

Helicarriers are a more rational investment.

Also, all carriers have propellers

Now an paddlewheeler CV would be an interesting sight.

Paddlewheels? Been done. USS Sable and USS Wolverine, training decks on the Great Lakes in WW2. They were converted from excursion steamers.

Video of one in action

EDIT: Ninja'd by CalBear! At least it was by one of the best...

[Peg Leg Pom]

Dead easy, take 1 beat up old frieghter, hide a launching ramp in what looks like a couple of containers and store your UAVs in the holds. Use rocket assisted take offs and have your UAVs fly into whats basically a big net to recover them. Use rapier launchers hidden in containers for air defence. Harpoons for sea attack and Tomahawks for land attack if you must have an offensive capacity. If you're launching from a ship you don't need Preditor or Global Hawk type UAVs with a thousand mile plus range.

[MattII]

Originally Posted by modelcitizen

How about a stealthy-ish small-ish "carrier" that has small UAVs instead of full-size planes?

Could work I suppose, although you'd want at least some of the UAVs to be capable of carrying AGM-114s.

[EWHM]

I've often wondered how effective for the price propeller aircraft would be if armed with modern missiles and fire control systems. If you could afford to have hordes of them, seems to me that you could defeat a more traditional supercarrier. Call it the 'good enough' air force.

[CalBear]

Originally Posted by EWHM

I've often wondered how effective for the price propeller aircraft would be if armed with modern missiles and fire control systems. If you could afford to have hordes of them, seems to me that you could defeat a more traditional supercarrier. Call it the 'good enough' air force.

Difficulty here is that once you load them with missiles and modern avionics they will cost almost as much as the jets.

[ANTIcarrot]

Originally Posted by EWHM

I've often wondered how effective for the price propeller aircraft would be if armed with modern missiles and fire control systems. If you could afford to have hordes of them, seems to me that you could defeat a more traditional supercarrier. Call it the 'good enough' air force.

But then all the carrier would do is swap out a small fraction of its ordinance for sufficient 'good enough' AAMs to knock your fleet out of the air 100 miles short of its target.

[Peg Leg Pom]

Piston aircraft loaded down with ordinance can be summed up in two words. Target Practice.

Turboprops arn't much better.

[MattII]

Against pirates it wouldn't matter too much, those guys generally can't get the kind of equipment you'd need to hit even prop-jobs, at least, if they're flying high. Prop-jobs can also be operated from smaller carriers (the Avenger class CVEs for example, were smaller than are modern destroyers such as the Arleigh Burke class), and if you were operating UAVs I imagine they'd be able to work from even smaller vessels.

[Peabody-Martini]

I can't believe that no one here has mentioned the Douglas A-1 Skyraider, a piston driver that the US Navy has never found a satisfactory replacement for. It would still have a mission except that the planes literally fell apart from use in the early 1970s.

[Riain]

The OV 10 operated without catapults from both USN conventional carriers as well as LHA/LHDs.

[MacCaulay]

Originally Posted by Peg Leg Pom

Propeller driven aircraft are used at sea.

The Grumman E2 Hawkeye & Grumman C2 Greyhound turbo prop aircraft.
If you mean piston aircraft there's no reason they can't fullfil the same roles. Infact the E2 and C2's predecessors were piston powered.
The Grumman E1 Tracer and S2 tracker served in these roles and as an anti submarine aircraft. With up dated avionics they could still do the same job now, though having to have a seperate fuel supply from the jets would complicate things. So would the fact that petrol is more volatile than jet fuel.

Well what about the rest of the air wing? You know...the fighters and interceptors that actually make a carrier worth having?

[MacCaulay]

Originally Posted by EWHM

I've often wondered how effective for the price propeller aircraft would be if armed with modern missiles and fire control systems. If you could afford to have hordes of them, seems to me that you could defeat a more traditional supercarrier. Call it the 'good enough' air force.

Okay, that's it: we are getting WAY to close to Dure's "a fleet of radio-controlled suicide Cessnas can take out a carrier"-trainwreck in Future History.

[Magniac]

Originally Posted by Peabody-Martini

I can't believe that no one here has mentioned the Douglas A-1 Skyraider, a piston driver that the US Navy has never found a satisfactory replacement for. It would still have a mission except that the planes literally fell apart from use in the early 1970s.

Originally Posted by FlyingDutchman

Apart from the roles already mentioned, they're only going to be good for COIN. Even a small carrier is going to be expensive to run, as you'll still have several hundred people on your payroll to operate the vessel... It's not very effective to have a very expensive vessel, which is limited to a few area's, such as COIN or anti-piracy.

Maybe the USMC asks for a Skyraider-dedicated carrier at some point?

A wilder idea would be for the USAF to ask for one, but I think that's a bit too much.

[PoorBoy]

As a fighter plane? Quite improbable. But militaries still use propeller planes to this day for two specific purposes: Freight and Reconnaissance. And in both cases, it's their ability to fly at low speeds and altitudes that makes them advantageous for these purposes.

Perhaps we could have a laundry ship/supply ship (that's also an aircraft carrier) stationed in the middle of nowhere for just this purpose.

[SAVORYapple]

Originally Posted by MattII

Against pirates it wouldn't matter too much, those guys generally can't get the kind of equipment you'd need to hit even prop-jobs, at least, if they're flying high. Prop-jobs can also be operated from smaller carriers (the Avenger class CVEs for example, were smaller than are modern destroyers such as the Arleigh Burke class), and if you were operating UAVs I imagine they'd be able to work from even smaller vessels.

I think that those measly pirates may soon start wiping asses with MANPADS, don't you think? They're quite cheap, you know!

[MattII]

Originally Posted by SAVORYapple

I think that those measly pirates may soon start wiping asses with MANPADS, don't you think? They're quite cheap, you know!

And quite short-ranged. When air-launched, Hellfire missiles have a longer range than any MANPADS except the British Starstreak, and the Griffin out-ranges that by a few Km, and MANPADS have to use some fuel to gain altitude, whereas the UAVs are already at altitude. And that's just for the UAVs that will be firing back, there's nothing saying the UAV has to go after the pirates itself, it can just loiter out of range and call in bigger naval assets, or bigger missiles.

[Flocculencio]

Originally Posted by MacCaulay

Okay, that's it: we are getting WAY to close to Dure's "a fleet of radio-controlled suicide Cessnas can take out a carrier"-trainwreck in Future History.

But what about a small carrier operating propellor ground attack planes along the Indian Ocean littoral for anti-pirate duty?

[Riain]

Just a thought. I recently saw a justification for battlefield airlifters such as the Caribou/Buffalo/C27 Spartan being that helicopters such as the Chinook are doing tasks that a STOL aircraft could do just as well at far, far less cost per hour. Tasks that don`t require a helicopters unique ability to hover, but helicopers (which are parts, fuel and maintenence guzzlers) are undertaking for a lack of something else to fill the niche.

Also recently the British were using Apache Longbows off the HMS Ocean in Libya. So WI a similar justification occured? WI it was decided that half of the tasks given to Apaches on HMS Ocean (or any other suitable helicopter/LHA combo) could be done just as well for a fraction of the cost with an OV-10 Bronco class aircraft? Then many of the countries around the world currently operating through deck helicopter carriers could have mixed air groups with light planes such as the Bronco.

Would that count as propellor carriers today?

[AdA]

Brsail has a substancial peacekeeping force in Haiti. Make the situation there more serious and have the Brasilians deploy their Carrier with a AG made up only of SuperTucano COIN aircraft and Helis. The superTucano would have to be modified for arrested landings.