AHC: Flight Deck Cruiser(s) See Action!


For your Reference...


As far as I can tell this idea, which is admittedly a bad one, has been discussed before, but not as fully as I would like...

Your challenge if you choose to accept it, is to have a Flight Deck Cruiser or "CF" built by at least one if not more navies. But that's too easy for you distinguished gentlemen, your next task is to have these CF's see action and the more of it the better!

I'll hold off on posting my own ideas...
 
I agree that it's a bad idea, for the same reasons as why the battleship/carrier hybrids such as the Ise were a failure.

However, if for some reason there are enough funds available for it, major powers restricted by the Washington Treaty could build them for minor allies.
The advantage would be that such a ship wouldn't go against their own tonnage for the WNT as a carrier or battleship in foreign service would have.

The UK could build a few to serve in the Canadian or Australian navy without having to limit the amount of battleships/carriers in their own navy. However, the cost of operating these ships (approaching those of a battleship) would be horrendous for a non-major navy such as the Australians or Canadians.

Early war you could have such a flight deck cruiser take out the Kormoran and other raiders. They'd work great against U-boats with Swordfish operating from their decks too.
IIRC the Tarrantry fiction series have exactly such a ship around and in action.

The Japanese used CA's with 6 floatplanes on their reardeck and their major gunturrets only forward for scouting purposes with their carrierfleets, to conserve carrieraircraft for striking purposes. You could argue those CA's were sort of used as hybrid cruisers, although without the flight deck.
 
IIRC...

...Curious acronym...

I looked at auxiliary cruisers with seaplanes to fake a Japanese attack on US Navy targets, whilst subs (minisubs, would you believe?) went in with divers and mined the ships. Nearly got Japan and the US into war, whilst Chiang and Hitler smirked. Didn't work - Arados aren't enough like Nakajimas and the Japanese fleet were in the wrong areas.

Myself I'd prefer a MAC with half a dozen ASW planes.
 
I was thinking, could this possibly come about in a world where the Naval Treaties come about as being more generous, with either larger tonnage allowances (and no limits as to how you spend your tonnage in detail), and with no post-WWI Doolittle trials to validate naval air strikes.

I was thinking this might be a curious and almost conservative way for the various navies to dabble in carriers, testing their effectiveness and all of that without the full liabilities of a carrier should the whole flightdeck thing not work out?

As for designs...
Perhaps a catamaran design, two gunship hulls on either side, and a flightdeck as the structural 'bridge' between the two gun hulls? That said, I can easily see this being...problematic, on account of needing (nonexistent) storage space under the flight deck to stow and refit aircraft, so perhaps a trimaran design would be more appropriate. But looking at such unconventional designs means some POD in naval engineering and design... And I don't know nearly enough of this aspect to see how to do it/whether it is even plausible in the early 20th century. Of course, you could also go with the CF design listed, but I can't imagine it being terribly effective without some (significant) issues in regards to room to make sure everything isn't just thrown together in the centre of the ship, per the flight cruiser plans in the wiki link.
 

Hoist40

Banned
The only real use I think for flight deck cruisers would be in remote areas such as South Pacific, Indian Ocean, East Pacific and South Atlantic where they could cover a lot of area but not face powerful opposing forces. So Britain who wanted lots of cruisers to protect its trade routes might have some interest in it.

If kept below 10,000 tons there was no limit on the number of such ships the British could build under the Washington treaty. It was only in the later London treaty that cruiser numbers were limited by a tonnage limit.

So Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and maybe India build these ships for trade protection between 1922 and 1930. This would help with the design since early aircraft were light and did not need much runway so the short decks on these kind of ships would not hurt much. By WW2 however they would be limited to planes with short takeoff and some of the heavier higher performance aircraft would either not be on board or in small numbers.

If built in significant numbers these ships would require some changes to the London treaty since I doubt the British would want to scrap nearly new ships.
 
The only real use I think for flight deck cruisers would be in remote areas such as South Pacific, Indian Ocean, East Pacific and South Atlantic where they could cover a lot of area but not face powerful opposing forces. So Britain who wanted lots of cruisers to protect its trade routes might have some interest in it.

If kept below 10,000 tons there was no limit on the number of such ships the British could build under the Washington treaty. It was only in the later London treaty that cruiser numbers were limited by a tonnage limit.

So Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and maybe India build these ships for trade protection between 1922 and 1930. This would help with the design since early aircraft were light and did not need much runway so the short decks on these kind of ships would not hurt much. By WW2 however they would be limited to planes with short takeoff and some of the heavier higher performance aircraft would either not be on board or in small numbers.

If built in significant numbers these ships would require some changes to the London treaty since I doubt the British would want to scrap nearly new ships.

There is no way Britain or the Empire would have built these turkeys. While the concept was brought up a few times, it was shot down in flames. Basically its stupid to put all those delicate planes and avgas on something that is going to take shell hits, and you cant armour the volume properly.
Aircraft carriers are volume-limited designs, heavy gun ships are displacement limited. Two completely different types of ship.
The germans designed one (the Graf Zeppelin) bacause they had no idea about aircraft carriers. The British did.
 
I was thinking, could this possibly come about in a world where the Naval Treaties come about as being more generous, with either larger tonnage allowances (and no limits as to how you spend your tonnage in detail), and with no post-WWI Doolittle trials to validate naval air strikes.

I was thinking this might be a curious and almost conservative way for the various navies to dabble in carriers, testing their effectiveness and all of that without the full liabilities of a carrier should the whole flightdeck thing not work out?

As for designs...
Perhaps a catamaran design, two gunship hulls on either side, and a flightdeck as the structural 'bridge' between the two gun hulls? That said, I can easily see this being...problematic, on account of needing (nonexistent) storage space under the flight deck to stow and refit aircraft, so perhaps a trimaran design would be more appropriate. But looking at such unconventional designs means some POD in naval engineering and design... And I don't know nearly enough of this aspect to see how to do it/whether it is even plausible in the early 20th century. Of course, you could also go with the CF design listed, but I can't imagine it being terribly effective without some (significant) issues in regards to room to make sure everything isn't just thrown together in the centre of the ship, per the flight cruiser plans in the wiki link.

A seagoing catamaran isnt going to happen pre-WW2, the structural effects cant be handled, and the available steels probably arent up to it either. The stresses involved with a basic cat design (the only one possible at the time) are horrendous. There are good reasons why, even now, you dont see many around, and all those have very heavy hulls
 

Hoist40

Banned
There is no way Britain or the Empire would have built these turkeys. .

I am talking about the 1920’s when aircraft were weak and low angle guns needed to defend the carrier from surface attack

Hermes ha six 5.5 inch guns
Eagle had nine 6 inch guns
Furious had ten 5.5 inch guns

So there was a perceived need for the ability to engage surface targets. Also Britain did not armor its aircraft carrier hangers until Ark Royal in 1938
 
There was one built, if not finished.
Look up the specs for the KM's Graf Zeppelin :eek:

Graf Zeppelin a cruiser at 33.500+ tonnes?

I'd hate to see what you'd call a battleship... :p

Myself I'd prefer a MAC with half a dozen ASW planes.

If you don't mind going nowhere fast and being terribly vulnerable, a MAC or a CVE is a quick and cheap solution to operate aircraft from the sea.

A CVL OTOH, while being more costly, at least has some protection from it's cruiser armor and is a lot faster. Because it's faster it's also more useful, as it is capable of operating with fleetcarriers.

The battle of the Leyte Gulf is pretty much the exception which proves the rule about CVE's or a MAC.

I was thinking, could this possibly come about in a world where the Naval Treaties come about as being more generous, with either larger tonnage allowances (and no limits as to how you spend your tonnage in detail), and with no post-WWI Doolittle trials to validate naval air strikes.

Wouldn't it be the other way around?
With the WNT being more strict (for battleships and carriers), you'd have more opportunity to experiment with ships around 10.000 tonnes.
 
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