Return of the Behemoths

Sazzer

Sazzer

During the mid thirties America in particular experimented with Flying Aircraft Carrier’s (FAC’s)and had some success with the USS Akron. They also had some success using K-class blimps in the anti submarine role.

My question is:
Would it have been feasible for the UK to develop and deploy their own fleet of FAC’s not only as a stop gap until other very long range aircraft came online but as an ASW platform and convoy escort in order to close the Mid-Atlantic air gap much earlier. As an option the airship could stay in the background, out of sight of enemy surface units, merely acting as a mobile advanced base for the airplanes which would do all the actual searching sweeps of the proposed convoy routes, it could also stay on station for long periods of time with local air superiority due to no major air threat coming from the AXIS navies operating in the Atlantic. Their aircraft would be capable of patrolling, defending the ‘mother ship’ and carrying out attacks on any submarines located.

This may all sound a little far fetched but wouldn't it be far more practical and cost effective than an aircraft carrier built from ice?

28jxkc4.jpg


2czwn81.jpg

16adzeu.jpg
 

jlckansas

Need some revisions for this one. Too many gun turrets on a ship that is in the Mid Atlantic, Germany, et al have no long range aircraft that would be able to attack it in an offensive role. Best mix for this aircraft would be maybe 2 Hurricanes with trapeze mounts on them so they can hook on and use them to attack Condors, 2 to 4 longer range search aircraft that could stay airborne around the convoys or to search areas. The search aircraft would only need to be armed with AP rockets to pierce the hulls of U boats or with 1 or 2 depth charges. Base this out of Bermuda and Iceland so it does not have to deal with the Luftwaffe over the UK. Have Radar on board so it not only can search for U Boats but also surface raiders.
 
Sazzer

Sazzer

I have to 'fess up' I found all the above pictures online as a proof of concept, but I agree with what you are saying about the upper mounts.
I reckon that they could also be deployed from UK bases (possibly Scottish) as long as they had fighter escorts until they were out of range of Axis mainland fighters and because of the area that they would be operating in they wouldn't necessarily require up to date aircraft but could utilize out of date aircraft that were still capable of outmaneuvering Condors like Hawker Osprey's, Blackburn Ripon's, Fairey_III's etc....
 

b0ned0me

Sazzer said:
This may all sound a little far fetched but wouldn't it be far more practical and cost effective than an aircraft carrier built from ice?
Click to expand...
Would it be far more cost-effective than something which wasn't built due to being terribly impractical and totally cost-ineffective? Quite possibly.
Would it be more practical and cost-effective than aircraft? No.

Long range aircraft were mostly unavailable because the RAF thought that chasing around hunting submarines was a dangerous distraction from the real solution, which was to destroy the submarine-building industry through <choir of angels>STRATEGIC BOMBING</choir of angels>. Give coastal command a few squadrons of good four engined aircraft and you are mostly there.

To close the remaining gap and provide close escort, you need a carrier and some carrier aircraft. Assuming the RAF play ball on the carrier aircraft, which is easier?
-Design, build, test, produce, equip and crew a brand new thing never before attempted, namely a flying aircraft carrier capable of surviving the Atlantic weather during extended trans-oceanic operations. That's a hell of a technical challenge.
- slap a bit of planking on top of some rusty boat and tell a few FAA pilot ratings to do their thing.

Edited to add: I loves me some airship but they are so terribly impractical. Only remotely plausible military WW2 use I can think of would be as a f-off big flying Radar or D/F station, but I fear life expectancy of this early Rivet Joint/AWACS would be very very short.
 
Last edited:

Nik

IMHO, there's the problem of the R100 / R101 fiasco. IIRC, the *official* design was under-strength, under-powered and over-weight. It tried to 'bull' through a storm it lacked the speed to go around, the lift to go over. It crashed and burned, took a VIP along...

The *private* design lacked these flaws, but was 'tarred with same brush', and that was that.

Institutional memory runs long and deep-- Especially when it would mean admitting former fault on that scale...
 
Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

b0ned0me said:
Edited to add: I loves me some airship but they are so terribly impractical. Only remotely plausible military WW2 use I can think of would be as a f-off big flying Radar or D/F station, but I fear life expectancy of this early Rivet Joint/AWACS would be very very short.
Click to expand...
Well, as the OP mentions airships were used in the ASW role by the United States during World War II, to the tune of around 150 aircraft and a few thousand personnel. Not huge, but not trivially ignorable, either. I could certainly see flying aircraft carriers being involved had US development of those continued, but probably mostly along the coast, in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, or around Gibraltar after Torch (though those were all important U-boat hunting grounds IOTL, so this isn't a trivial change!). I'm not sure the United Kingdom would have worked on such a thing, though.

And I think an airship AWACS/Rivet Joint could have been significantly more practical than you seem to. Imagine one flying over England, using its altitude to see much farther than surface radars, or being used in, you guessed it, an ASW role where there is little threat to airships anyway. Either of those might have been quite useful (especially the latter).
 
Sazzer

Sazzer

b0ned0me said:
Would it be far more cost-effective than something which wasn't built due to being terribly impractical and totally cost-ineffective? Quite possibly.
Would it be more practical and cost-effective than aircraft? No.
Click to expand...

Apparently one standard B24 cost $297,627 ($4.85 million in today's dollars)
Project Habbakuk was estimated for £700,000 (and that was only for proof of concept).
R101 cost £711,595 in 1929
The 'parasite' aircraft for the FAC would already be available from obsolete/mothballed units requiring some modifications.
 
Last edited:

fasquardon

Sazzer said:
Project Habbakuk was estimated for £700,000 (and that was only for proof of concept).
Click to expand...

Projects to build anything with a completely new material tend to go over budget and pykrete isn't stuff that's exactly easy to work with.

Sazzer said:
Would it have been feasible for the UK to develop and deploy their own fleet of FAC’s not only as a stop gap until other very long range aircraft came online but as an ASW platform and convoy escort in order to close the Mid-Atlantic air gap much earlier. As an option the airship could stay in the background, out of sight of enemy surface units, merely acting as a mobile advanced base for the airplanes which would do all the actual searching sweeps of the proposed convoy routes, it could also stay on station for long periods of time with local air superiority due to no major air threat coming from the AXIS navies operating in the Atlantic. Their aircraft would be capable of patrolling, defending the ‘mother ship’ and carrying out attacks on any submarines located.
Click to expand...

Well, one of the big advantages of airships is they don't need such high power/weight ratios as heavier-than-air aircraft do. So maybe during the war airships are built as a way to free up high-performance engine production for tank engines and land-based air.

Buuut. It would be a new production line, which is likely to impose its own costs.

More likely, the PoD would need to involve the FAA or RN taking more seriously the idea that submarines could be a serious threat to British trade.

I wonder if a solution might be for airships to not get lumped together with aircraft in the FAA and RAF, and instead retained directly by the army and the navy and developed as high-altitude scouts to augment surface warfare during the late 20s early 30s. That means that come WW2, there are production lines and operating experience available for airships meaning the designs get updated and crew and airships get pulled into the ASW role (due to being dead ducks near land-based air).

fasquardon
 

b0ned0me

Sazzer said:
Apparently one standard B24 cost $297,627 ($4.85 million in today's dollars)
Project Habbakuk was estimated for £700,000
R101 cost £711,595
Click to expand...
I estimate I can put 200 people on mars in 10 years for one billion dollars. Give me half the money now and we can have a status meeting next year.

A cursory scan of the internet suggests that by the time they flushed the Habakkuk idea, estimated costs were anything from £2.5MM to $70MM. And as importantly construction timelines were a year or more, no-one could be certain it would work at all, and there was a war on that needed practical solutions urgently.

R101 took two years to build, and on its first long distance flight killed 48 out of 54 people on board. How long is it going to take you to build several airship carriers, prove they work on their own, prove the aeroplanes work with it, demonstrate the whole arrangement of airship + aircraft + petrol + bombs works and is safe, and get the whole arrangement out on patrol?

HMS Audacity was out on her first patrol 9 months after being sent to the shipyard, and I doubt she cost hundreds of thousands to convert.
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
What about off Eastern Med, Gulf of Aden, SE India, South Africa, Gibraltar, where there were a surprising number of attacks by subs and surface raiders? - but little in the way enemy aircraft
 
Last edited:
Sazzer

Sazzer

Driftless said:
What about off Eastern Med, Gulf of Aden, SE India, South Africa, Gibraltar, where there were a surprising number of attacks by subs and surface raiders? - but little in the way enemy aircraft
Click to expand...

All good options and I dare say 'do-able', releasing those assets hunting down submarines to other theaters and operations.
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
Sazzer said:
All good options and I dare say 'do-able', releasing those assets hunting down submarines to other theaters and operations.
Click to expand...

Airships, with or without parasite aircraft, would have great loiter time, and if there were parasite planes aboard, those planes in turn should have some duration - no fuel burning take off and climb to height...

This idea may be unrealistic, but might an airship be able to track either subs or especially surface raiders (warship or auxiallary) for an extended stretch? - weather and lighting conditions as the caveat.
 

Nik

"Imagine one flying over England..."

Uh, IIRC, UK's long-wave, land-based radar required several very tall masts per 'Chain' station, trailing very long antennae, plus a shed-load of tech. Marine radar took a ton of 'black boxes' and a ship to power them. Beyond some night-fighter stuff with antennae spread along the wings, practicable airborne radar required the short-wave magnetron...

Also, remembering the 'Balloon Busters' of WW1, there'd be an automatic 'Iron Cross' for any pilot who downed one. A dirigible can't run, can't hide. A simple DF set-up would allow tracking, making such a *juicy* 'target of opportunity'...

And how many barrage balloons could you hoist in its place, ensuring dive-bombers couldn't slip in at low altitude, masked from 'Chain' stations by ground clutter ??
 

Shaun Moran

Could airships recover the parasite aircraft as well? That would be a game changer. They'd be useful over the Atlantic gap
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top