A Whale is a sea mammal without wings - No FAA

Inspired by Astrodragon's enjoyable TL "The Whale has Wings" how about other way around - no FAA and less carrier focused RN prior to Second World War?

We might not see total elimination of RN carriers but maybe a minor effort only towards carriers, with perhaps, say Courageous, Glorious and Hermes surviving the cuts of 1920's, followed by building of some light carriers (say, heavily armored fleet support carries carrying small amount of aircraft) or hybrid ships during late 1930's buildup.

While this may initially sound seriously harming the RN's war effort and the Allied war effort at large, what could be done with additional resouces? I'd imagine the AAA of ships might well be better as no or at least less fighters might be available. This might mean much less casualties for RN during early period of war when they were severely threatened by Italian, German and Japanese aircraft.

Amphibious warfare, submarines, mine warfare and special operations units would get a boost as airplanes would not be seen as important means of striking on enemy bases as in OTL. Commando units in Norway 1940? SBS operational in Taranto working together with X-craft? British unsweepable pressure mines being laid on footsteps of enemy bases? More advanced submarines?

Thoughts on a) How smaller RN carrier force might be achieved and b) What would be done with additional resources available?
 
I don't see this as possible. The RN spent most of WW 1 trying to get ever more aircraft serving with the fleet. Even going so far as launching fighters from lighters towed behind light cruisers and destroyers. The most you could realistically find would be for Argus and Eagle to be withdrawn once Glorious and Courageous are recommissioned, and replaced with seaplane tenders. These would have to be cruiser sized equivalents of the Australian Albatross.
 
I don't see this as possible. The RN spent most of WW 1 trying to get ever more aircraft serving with the fleet. Even going so far as launching fighters from lighters towed behind light cruisers and destroyers. The most you could realistically find would be for Argus and Eagle to be withdrawn once Glorious and Courageous are recommissioned, and replaced with seaplane tenders. These would have to be cruiser sized equivalents of the Australian Albatross.

How about RAF leadership which would be as cunning as Blair cabinet in weakening the RN, by offering co-operation instead of confrontation? Even very small number of bomber units trained and equipped for maritime strike and reconnaissance duties in 1920's and 1930's might well cut much of the support of FAA. And actually, skilled maritime strike units equipped with modern aircraft might well be far more useful in Taranto, Norway and Far East of 1942 than carriers.
 
To achieve that you would have to dismiss most of the officer corps above the rank of Group Captain. They were almost to a man wedded to the theory of Strategic Bombing. So much so that the fighter force was starved of funding in case they raised doubts about the theory that the bomber always gets through. Allocating bomber squadrons to coastal command would be thought of as threatening the R.A.Fs independence. If they did try this and managed to get away with it you only need to look at Army Co-Operation Command to see how it would have turned out, as thats pretty much what the army was promised.
 
The only way you are going to get this is if the other two carrier powers, Japan and the USA, basically gut their naval air arms as well. Even this might not be enough, as air power was seen as critical for the support of the battle fleet.

Suggesting the RN basically loses the FAA without everyone else giving it up would mean a bloodbath in Whitehall, not to mention what would happen in the Commons.

The RN basically allowed itself to be pushed as far as it would go in OTL, anything further is likely to result in full-fledged Navy-RAF war...

The only way to effectively lose the FAA is for some sort of international arms treaty that bans naval air, period.
 
Which neither the US or Japan would agree to having seen how useful the RN found naval airpower in WW1 and the lengths they went to to get as many aircraft as possible into the fleet.
 
That means the POD needs to be earlier:

For whatever reason* airpower failed to make an impact on naval planning beyond 'this flagship here will get a seaplane hangar for secure communication channels**'

*Uhhhhh..... bad weather and brainfarts when it came to navalizing radios ? Early planes very allergic to saltwater ?

**hand carrying orders and such between fleet and capital
 
I suppose if the Wright Brothers gave up you could delay powered flight just about long enough that it played little or no part in WW1. With tight budgets and a war weary public then serious military development of airpower probably wouldn't start until the late twenties. Quite possibly the first demonstration of the potential of military aviation could come in the Spanish Civil War and Eithiopia, with the first aircraft carriers been converted from merchant hulls in 37 or 38. To late to have much of an impact in the early years of the war.
 
I suppose if the Wright Brothers gave up you could delay powered flight just about long enough that it played little or no part in WW1. With tight budgets and a war weary public then serious military development of airpower probably wouldn't start until the late twenties. Quite possibly the first demonstration of the potential of military aviation could come in the Spanish Civil War and Eithiopia, with the first aircraft carriers been converted from merchant hulls in 37 or 38. To late to have much of an impact in the early years of the war.

The problem with that is that the Wright Brothers weren't the only game in town. Santos-Dumont and Bleriot were hot on their heels for a start. Even if you delay heavier than air flight by a decade the military applications are just too obvious to ignore.

Possibily the only way you could retard naval aviation in Britain is to have the RAF maintain control of the FAA after 1939.
 
The problem with that is that the Wright Brothers weren't the only game in town. Santos-Dumont and Bleriot were hot on their heels for a start. Even if you delay heavier than air flight by a decade the military applications are just too obvious to ignore.

Possibily the only way you could retard naval aviation in Britain is to have the RAF maintain control of the FAA after 1939.
That's what I was thinking, though I would also make the Air Ministry less competent and more obstructive than OTL if possible
 
The only way you are going to get this is if the other two carrier powers, Japan and the USA, basically gut their naval air arms as well. Even this might not be enough, as air power was seen as critical for the support of the battle fleet.

Suggesting the RN basically loses the FAA without everyone else giving it up would mean a bloodbath in Whitehall, not to mention what would happen in the Commons.

How about Air Ministry getting pressed - from whatever direction - that, say, one third of RAF budget must be used to support Army and Navy (divided in half, of course)?

So, by 1939 there's squadrons specialized in naval strike and reconnaissance duties, some for ASW, some for long range reconnaissance.
For oceanic duties there's very small amount of TSR's and fighters onboard rather small but well built carriers and some seaplane cruisers carrying reconnaissance planes.

This is deemed enough, as battle fleet action is judged to happen where it can be covered by ground based air units, which can have planes which are superior in performance to any sea based planes. Moreover, even more importantly, these superior planes can be massed while those from carriers cannot be massed from a long distance.

In order to defend the fleet from air attack a powerful dual purpose guns are developed for cruisers, destroyers and capital ships.

In 1939 the workhorse of RAF's Maritime Command is Dandy & Wooster Rupert. Built by a aircraft factory unknown in 1918, this aircraft has more than a passing apperance to OTL's Ilyushin DB-3, closely resembling it in basic performance (Max speed 450km/h, 4000km range, 2500kg's of bombs or two torpedoes).

While the daytime raid on Wilhelmshaven on 3 September 1939 was a massacre with Luftwaffe being the butchers, the tactics for Maritime Command are refined during winter of 1939-1940. Effects of the development were seen in Norwegian Campaign where long range planes were capable of finding and striking German units in conditions where carrier planes could not have been operating.

In 1940 the Maritime Command was as instrumental as Fighter Command in making sure that Hitler's Seelöwe was a non-starter. Maritime Command bombers struck diligently during every night at concentration of barges and performed precision mining which took heavy toll on larger ships.

It was in the Mediterranean where Maritime Command had it's greatest success in 1940. While in Mers El Kebir debacle Maritime Command was merely in supporting role, it was another port, Taranto, where massed effect of maritime bombers was really felt. Raid of one hundred bombers, some gathered from as far as Gibraltar and Alexandria for forward basing at Malta, struck Italian fleet with deadly efficiency during one moonlit night.

Afterwards, maritime bombers proved an effective weapon in both locating Italian convoys for RN units and striking the convoys themselves. By mid 1941 thanks to experience and new technical developments they could work by night, something which IJN would discover by late 1941.

Later during the war the Maritime Command would provide fighters, mostly of lend lease American Types, for RN's escort carriers and naturally took an important role in battling the U-boat threat.

In the Pacific, Maritime Command with it's long range bombers were crucial in delaying Japanese conquest of Malaysia and Dutch East Indies.
 
Glenn Curtiss and Eugene Ely are responsible for naval aviation.

Great Britain and the Sempill Mission are largely responsible for helping with Japan's naval aviation ambitions, supplying British aircraft, tactics, operational procedures, and aircraft designers. Japanese naval officers had to learn English. The first Mitsubishi fighter was designed by the man who designed the Camel. Teaching the Japanese to run surprise naval air attacks on fleets in harbor rather than open seas isn't the action of a country that is getting out of the business.
 
That's what I was thinking, though I would also make the Air Ministry less competent and more obstructive than OTL if possible
That... is a truly awful thought. Is it even possible for them to reasonably screw up more than they did in our timeline? :)
 
Glenn Curtiss and Eugene Ely are responsible for naval aviation.

Great Britain and the Sempill Mission are largely responsible for helping with Japan's naval aviation ambitions, supplying British aircraft, tactics, operational procedures, and aircraft designers. Japanese naval officers had to learn English. The first Mitsubishi fighter was designed by the man who designed the Camel. Teaching the Japanese to run surprise naval air attacks on fleets in harbor rather than open seas isn't the action of a country that is getting out of the business.

Naval aviation does not mean just carrier borne airplanes. Carrier is a vessel used to project air power to places it cannot reach from land bases. In Mediterranean and North Sea even with 1939 technology it's quite plausible that shore based airpower would have proved to be far more effective than their carrier based counterparts, if organizational difficulties had not been on the way. Naturally in the Pacific it was a different story altogether, but RN before 1944 was in no position to match IJN's carrier force anyway.
 
The problem with that is that the Wright Brothers weren't the only game in town. Santos-Dumont and Bleriot were hot on their heels for a start. Even if you delay heavier than air flight by a decade the military applications are just too obvious to ignore.

The thing is heavier than air flight took a good ten years to advance far enough to have any practical uses. While Santos-Dumont, Bleriot and others could get machines off the ground they were still strugeling with roll control and sustained flight untill roughly 1907 1908. Things wern't helped by the fact that the accepted lift tables were wrong. The Wright Brothers real advancements were not so much the Flyers as the data they discovered by their carefull step by step testing and experimentation. Without that you setback the whole field by years, and probably cost lives as well. Delay things by even three or four years and you greatly reduce the impact of flight in the First World War.

Incidentaly the Wright Brothers were beaten into the air by a farmer in New Zealand, but he never made much of a it. One of his machines can be seen in Aucklands Museum of Transport and Technology.
 
Incidentaly the Wright Brothers were beaten into the air by a farmer in New Zealand, but he never made much of a it. One of his machines can be seen in Aucklands Museum of Transport and Technology.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN PILCHER!!!!

Curse you harsh mistress! :mad:
 

BlondieBC

Banned
That means the POD needs to be earlier:

For whatever reason* airpower failed to make an impact on naval planning beyond 'this flagship here will get a seaplane hangar for secure communication channels**'

*Uhhhhh..... bad weather and brainfarts when it came to navalizing radios ? Early planes very allergic to saltwater ?

**hand carrying orders and such between fleet and capital

Sometimes multi part POD are needed. Smaller things can add up. So if I was doing an ATL, here is what comes to mind.

1) Carriers are can be dangerous ships, and many new technologies have teething problems. Have 1-2 additional carriers lost to accidents during the war. For example, one of the seaplane carriers explodes while doing sea trials or one them has a accident while traveling to the Battle of Jutland. Then maybe a short building pause while a naval board investigates.

2) Bad Weather: Another potential workable idea. So the carriers are unable to launch in the key decision windows of a couple of battles. So take a modified Jutland. At sea level, the winds are too high to launch the planes, but at 6000 feet the winds are moderate. Very few clouds. The Zeppelins track the Grand Fleet for hours before it arrives at the battle, and relay information to High Seas Fleet who wins a major victory. Carriers are seen as low value by some naval decision makers.

3) Budget issues: In war there are always lots of people screaming for resources. The air frames made are not given to the RN, but used on land, the RN can produce only half as many carriers.

4) Evidently, the Hapsburg emperor's horse being spook by an armor car greatly hampered armor car/tank development for the Austrians. Never underestimate the power of the First Lord of the Admiralty being absolutely convinced that naval aviation does not work.

5) The naval treaty: Make it so you can keep the BC, but can't convert them to air craft carriers.

6) Increase losses in WW1. The carriers are just handled badly by an admiral at a battle or two, and 4 or 5 more carriers are sunk in the war.

7) The naval mutiny. Have the sailors revolt on the carriers, and actually scuttle them. IOTL, the Admiralty was concerned the mutineers would scuttle some dreadnoughts.

For a TL, one can easily have a much smaller carrier force for the RN in 1940, and yes, it would be hard to do with a single POD, but multiple changes or a POD with a lot of butterflies would work.
 
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