Could the Kriegsmarine have assembled a battlefleet for the Atlantic ?

one there was significant changes to Renowns belt in the 1930s that arguably broke the treaty as thier meant to be an upper limit on how much bigger a ship could be post refit than when it went in 2 that part of the treaty your referring too was never actually ratified writing and signing a treaty is one thing ratifying it and then enforcing it is a completly different kettle of fish it is still true even today with a lot of armaments treaties for example the "Ban on Landmines" it's not actually legally binding
I don't believe you.
 
I don't believe you.
i don't care if you don't believe me look at the treasury account figures for the 1930s they kept the receipt for the work done as for ratification of a treaty while in the US it is up to Congress hence why US never joined League of Nations as they never ratified Versailles in the UK it is a Royal Prerogative and the then King George V had more than one disagreement with the government of Ramsey Mcdonald and often refused royal assent it should also be pointed out that in 1930s international law was very much in its infancy and just like today in the security council of the united Nations several members of the preceding League of Nations had the power to veto
 
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it should also be pointed out that in the 1930s thier was virtually no system of international courts etc most of the current system is a product of the post ww2 consensus and what system they did have jurisdiction was optional and any country could opt in or out of it the US never ratified the Permanent Court of International justice and the League of nations had virtually no power to enforce any rulings even if they ever made one
 
i don't care if you don't believe me look at the treasury account figures for the 1930s they kept the receipt for the work done as for ratification of a treaty while in the US it is up to Congress hence why US never joined League of Nations as they never ratified Versailles in the UK it is a Royal Prerogative and the then King George V had more than one disagreement with the government of Ramsey Mcdonald and often refused royal assent it should also be pointed out that in 1930s international law was very much in its infancy and just like today in the security council of the united Nations several members of the preceding League of Nations had the power to veto
it should also be pointed out that in the 1930s thier was virtually no system of international courts etc most of the current system is a product of the post ww2 consensus and what system they did have jurisdiction was optional and any country could opt in or out of it the US never ratified the Permanent Court of International justice and the League of nations had virtually no power to enforce any rulings even if they ever made one
Listen, when your claims are contradicting the secondary sources I have and you're citing archival documents I can't access, don't blame me when I get intensely skeptical.

As for the treaties, 1. if you're seriously claiming the treaty wasn't ratified by the UK then I'm really questioning your credibility now and 2. yes, which is why enforcement of the treaty was entirely down to clauses saying "if you break the treaty then everyone else is no longer legally bound". And building battleships before they're legally allowed is way more blatant a violation than any of the other treaty violations that happened. You can't hide battleship construction; you can hide the characteristics but not that something's being built.

If the British do as you suggest and start building earlier, then Japan's immediately going to start building themselves and any time advantage is lost.
 
OTL, when Scheer was assumed to be sortieing in the Fall of 1941, the USN was ready to intercept. In this ATL, with no Bismarck sortie, is the USA still at the same level of almost-war in the Atlantic? Do Yorktown and the New Mexicos still go to the Atlantic? Your proposed big Fall 1941 sortie may see a USN squadron on guard in the west. And then we are in a different situation to OTL. We will have the potential for a fleet action on either side of Iceland. I wanna game this out!

A lot of German destroyers were range limited and had horrible sea keeping.
 
Listen, when your claims are contradicting the secondary sources I have and you're citing archival documents I can't access, don't blame me when I get intensely skeptical.

As for the treaties, 1. if you're seriously claiming the treaty wasn't ratified by the UK then I'm really questioning your credibility now and 2. yes, which is why enforcement of the treaty was entirely down to clauses saying "if you break the treaty then everyone else is no longer legally bound". And building battleships before they're legally allowed is way more blatant a violation than any of the other treaty violations that happened. You can't hide battleship construction; you can hide the characteristics but not that something's being built.

If the British do as you suggest and start building earlier, then Japan's immediately going to start building themselves and any time advantage is lost.
if you look at the parliamentary archives or any of the UK Parliamentary records neither of the treaties were ratified they were considered more of a gentlemen's agreement thier is no record in the HOC Archive (House of Commons) of any ratification vote let alone a presentation to the House of Lords or the Granting of Royal Accent to any bill all of which are the process of introducing a law into the UK. it is not uncommon for a major power to sign a treaty and then not ratify an international agreement for internal reasons or to ratify it years later. Thier 100s of examples USA never ratified Versailles or any of the other treaties at the end of WW1 it never ratified the Permanent International Court it also never ratified the Land mines treaty or even the Paris Climate Change protocols, The UK has also never ratified international laws regarding the use of child soldiers hence why in the UK you join the Army at 16 France didn't ratify the Nuclear Test Ban treaty until the late 1990s, 30 years after it was written and they signed it Israel still hasn't. As for the list of treaties China and the Soviet Union signed and never ratified that list is exceptionally long it is not uncommon for any of the major powers to routinely not ratify international legislation especially as being permanent members of the UN Security council and its preceding bodies means thier is bugger all anyone can do about it. Not only that but by your own theory Germany by building Multiple battleships before 1940 would be in breach of the Anglo-German Naval treaty and thus a perfect excuse to commence building and even if they did it would take massive amounts of resources away from other projects Germany had a very limited armour plate manufacturing industry up until 1938 when they acquired the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia and Japan couldn't have built earlier as they lacked the resources that they got in Northern China and weren't up and running until late 1938 as China did a pretty dam good job of smashing up the mines and railroads in the region that all needed to be rebuilt and all it would have achieved was imploding thier economy even quicker than they did. The UK were never worried about a building race with either Germany or Japan as they knew they could out build them both which they did it is often overlooked due to the size of the US Naval building program of WW2 but the UK one was the 2nd biggest of all time and they build more ships than the Axis Combined in 1939 the RN has 7 Carriers 3 Battle Cruisers 12 Battleships 21 Cruisers and 81 Destroyers as well as assorted other vessels in 1945 they had on operational duty 59 Aircraft Carriers 1 Battle Cruisers and 15 Battleships 62 Cruisers 801 Destroyers and over 1400 over vessels i.e Corvettes Frigates Gunboats etc and thats after all the losses they incurred during the war doesn't include all the ships that didn't quite get finished in time like the Audacious or Malta Class carriers and despite the massive building program multiple shipyards struggled and several even closed due to a lack of orders for new ships the UK response to a Japanese building program would be to unleash the ship building industry
 
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McPherson

Banned
Sorry you are just simply wrong If you ever check the series of studies commissioned by 3rd Sea Lord Sir Reginald Henderson during the mid 1930s you will see that not only was thier a detailed design study of modifying a KGV hull to use existing 15 inch turrets (remember several 15 inch turrets were in storage after the conversion of Glorious and Furious and they also had turrets from the Ney and Erebus Class Monitors) with blueprints made up. This study would be used as the starting point for the project that became Vanguard the DNC (Director of Naval Construction) signed off on the plan estimating that converting the KGVs then under construction would save between 12 and 18 months of construction time making it perfectly possible that at least one of them could have been ready by October 1939 as long as the decision was made before autumn of 1938 if you go to the National Archives you can still see these plans. The main reason why the last two KGV hulls (Anson and Howe although at the point of the discussion they were still planning on calling them Jellicoe and Beatty) didn't have this done to them was the death of Henderson in 1939 and the fact that the Lion hulls that had started construction were deemed better candidates as they were earlier in thier construction although they in turn were scrapped in 1943 to make room for the 1942 light fleet Carrier programme that gave ships like the Majestic and Colossus classes. When building any warship the Guns are the biggest long lead item any way of shortening that by using existing stockpiles dramatically shortens construction time. You also need to remember that although the KGV did not start construction until 1937 the design work started in 1928 and thier were many different ideas and plans as well as a series of contingency plans this set of design studies was why the RN were able to start construction so quickly after they got the go ahead from the Treasury in 1935.

I think @CV12Hornet covered it.

I know about Henderson. I know about Clarke.

Sorry but you are just so wrong on pretty much every count just highlighting some of the issues
A the 14 inch guns were specifically designed to be able to use the 13.5 inch hoists etc there were several design studies of reactivating Iron Duke using this
B Design Studies did exist for a modified KGV hull using spare 15 inch turrets they were openly discussed as early as 1936 you should see correspondence between the Director of Naval Construction Sir Arthur Jones to his successor Sir Stanley Goodall where they discuss exactly this
C FAA Pilots of 1930s-40s had no issue with Anti-shipping work not only did they possess in the Skua the single most accurate dive bomber in the world at the time although the only way they could get the air ministry to fund it was to tell them it was a fighter remember it was the FAA who were the first Airforce ever to sink a warship at sea and at action stations. It should also be noted that Swordfish from Malta sank over 200,000 tones of shipping in a 4 month period far superior numbers than the Luftwaffe etc ever achieved
D. Whilst the FAA did need to expand thier training of pilots in 1939-40 not only were they able to crew multiple carriers but they even loaned the RAF several squadrons worth of pilots during the Battle of Britain in 1939 the FAA had 20 squadrons thats more than the B.E.F had assigned to them in France or any of the sector commands in the Battle of Britain ever had although compared to 1945 it is nothing but in 1945 the Royal Navy had 59 aircraft carriers, 3,700 aircraft, 72,000 officers and men and 56 Naval air stations which is just a little bit overkill. and considering it was able to expand this way thier is no reason to suggest it would not be able to expand in any other TL
E The RN did know how to do mass carrier strikes they had been the centre piece of RN doctrine since the 1932 Atlantic and Mediterranean fleet wargames infact the RN had more aircraft carriers in 1939 than any other nation and had done for the last 15 years in fact the first plans for a massed carrier strike date from 1919 as the RN were adamant to never again be in the frustrating situation they were in during WW1 were the opposition had an annoying habit of staying in port and the RN could do nothing about it. Infact during his tender as 3rd Sea Lord Sir Reginald Henderson planned the navy to fight in exactly this way and was expected to command the fleet himself however he unfortunatly died suddenly in 1939 despite being a relitivly young and healthy officer the Kido Boutai were not the first navy to conduct massed carrier strikes in practice they weren't even the second navy to come up with the idea or conduct training operations infact USN training operations involving multiple carriers led to a major debate over it it was better to have a small amount of large carrier or lots of very small ones in a debate remarkable similar to the one that plagued the USN in the 1970s with the abomination that was the Sea Control Ship as that debate tends to resurface in the USN roughly every 30-40 years. The RN had 6 operational carriers frontline carriers in 1930s the idea that they never thought of using more than one of them together is just stupid thier doctrine revolved around three distinct types of carriers this evolved throughout the 1930s and 40s with the "armoured carriers" for example HMS Illustrious whose job was to be close to the main fleet offering close in support Strike Carriers Mainly Ark Royal and the Fishers who were to be further back doing long range strikes and the smaller carries like Hermes whose job was escort, reconnaissance and maintenance this role was eventually to be split into two distinct types of ship the light fleet carrier for example the Majestic class and the Fleet Maintenance Support Ship HMS Unicorn. It is a wonderful curiosity that with the Germans and Italians being so obsessed by the movements of the strike carriers especially Ark Royal when it came to Taranto she was deliberately sent away to visibly operate outside the theatre as part of the plan to allow the Illustrious to get within range basically an aircraft carrier version of getting someone to concentrate on your left hand while you pickpocket them with your right.
F The RN had by far the best Air traffic control and flight director systems of the period and were the only force able to operate at night and did on multiple occasions

as for the eastern fleet diffiecinces of 1941 that is largely due to the RN planning a war with Japan through most of the 1930s and then suddenly finding themselves in a situation where they were facing the Germans then the Italians and the Japanese at the same time without the help of the French and thus the Eastern fleet of 1941 was a scratch force. As they had had to withdraw many of the units from the region to deal with the Mediterranean theatre as to be honest all the pre war planning had assumed the Marine National would hold the Med. You need to remember that in 1938-39 most of the modern cruisers Town Class etc were stationed in the pacific while during 1940 those stations were stripped and then an attempt was made to build a new force from scratch

I would recommend you looking at some of the work in this area by Dr Alexander Clarke

I know about Henderson. I know about Clarke. I have no respect for Clarke because he has no good idea about what was going on at all. I will explain.


Here is what is going on. The source of fact is Andrew Boyd; "The Royal Navy In Eastern Waters" Seaforth Publishing; an imprint of Pen and Sword Books, Ltd. (2017)

The interpretation therein (his) is radically different from mine based on his facts. Mine is also taken from Hyperwar and the US Naval Historical Institute.

And of course there is a map. (Source Google generic polar projection map.).
British-ABC-failure.png

1601597346591.png


The work is mine. Red is British coverage. Brown is Canadian Coverage. Blue is American coverage.

Now then.

a. The Americans screw up in the Philippine Islands, get Pearl Harbored and are acutely embarrassed when MacArthur and Brereton lose the FEAAF on the ground. But then comes the six month stand at Bataan. Americans buy exactly the time envisaged in Rainbow 5. Remember THAT.
b. The British try to rump-roast the Singapore Bastion Defense, lose Force Z to incompetence and are disgraced in the Malay Settlements and run out of Burma.
c. Asiatic Fleet and the Dutch fight a losing fight in the Malay Barrier. This was expected by American planners.
d. Somerville tried to fight an aircraft carrier battle off Sri Lanka. He was going to use his Fulmars to deliver a night torpedo attack. He failed for multiple reasons, but I will summarize the key ones.
---he miss-estimated Nagumo's arrival as being 1 April 1942 and set his ambush position accordingly. He failed to provide tanker support and could NOT REFUEL at sea. Nagumo showed up on the fifth. Somerville was refueling and had to charge from his protected anchorage to try to catch Nagumo when that man showed up on British reconnaissance on 5 April 1942.
--Somerville miscalculated Japanese strength at 2 or 3 aircraft carriers.
--Somerville expected to find Nagumo by night search; but one little problem. In that region of Earth and at that time of year as the USN savagely criticized him at the NWC from their own experience in the Caribbean and the tropics with RADAR, the atmospherics degrade search ranges of surface and airborne radars SEVERELY. An aircraft carrier sized target will yield a reflected signal that can be theoretically be discriminated, supposedly at ranges at night beyond the Mark 1 eyeball. The Fulmar's ASV (ASR in USN parlance) was expected to generate a bearing and range at about 150 km from a patroller flying at 3,000 meters altitude. The damned ASV radars could only detect Somerville's own ships at about 30 km in the local weather conditions. How the hello were the Fulmars to detect Nagumo or Yamaguchi? The Fulmars did not until they came within VISUAL for the Japanese saw one of them at night and dodged. The Fulmar compounded this error by misreporting Yamaguchi's position by 40 km, and then Somerville boloed it again by not having a strike package warmed up and ready.

The less written about Somerville allowing Hermes, Devonshire and Cornwall to die, the better.

japanese-air-raids-on-ceylon-april-1942-map-by-c-e-warner.jpg


‘Battle of Ceylon’: Japanese Air Raid on 5 April 1942 ...

Incompetent is "charitable".

e. So that is the situation in April 1942. Pound asked King for help. "Could the Americans draw the Japanese away from the Indian Ocean and save the Royal Navy Eastern Fleet?"
f. King did not tell Pound about the Doolittle Raid or the do-or-die stand about to happen in the Coral Sea, or the all-or-nothing fight planned for Midway as soon as PACFLT got wind from FRUMEL that Yamamoto was laying on Operation MI to destroy PACFLT.

The Americans had been laying on aircraft carrier raids, showing the flag, and waving their ensigns in the IJN's faces in February and March in the Caroline and Marshall Islands to turn the IJN EAST; before Pound screamed for help. They knew how important it was to protect the Persian Gulf from Japanese attack. Wilson Brown lays on the (The Forgotten Revenge for Pearl Harbor – Lae-Salamaua 1942).


This provoked the Port Moresby action (Operation Mo.)... And it set the stage for THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA.

Then of course the bitterness of Midway. It should be noted that the Americans lost a third of their pre-war PACFLT trained pilots to these air operations, the raids and the two naval battles which they won. But the threat to the Indian Ocean and to Australia and to Hawaii was not over yet. So WATCHTOWER. Destroyers which could have been used in the Atlantic were kept in PACFLT to supply the escorts for the fighting expected at Guadalcanal. The PACFLT went in with green pilot replacements and inexperienced marines and then SAVO, Eastern Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz happened. By now four of America's six aircraft carriers were gone, another 800 pilots spent and King went to Pound and asked to borrow an aircraft carrier.

Pound said, "No."

The Eastern Fleet had three new aircraft carriers sent to it after Somerville's defeat hugging the east coast of Africa doing NOTHING. It took Churchill to order the RN to release HMS Victorious to join USS Saratoga.

November 1942 to November 1943. Show the flag, show off the Victorious' fighter director setup which LANTFLT had already leaned via Wasp and the Malta Convoys and in general cross train with the USNAS to learn how to do the deck park and the flight deck yo-yo the USN way, which was the right way to do things. Just until USS Enterprise was back on her keel again and was joined by a few Essexes. (Essex, Yorktown, Hornet, Franklin, etc. ) And all the while the IJN was bloody shirt fixated on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands and the Eastern Fleet was cruising up and down the east coast of Africa and convoying convoys to the Persian Gulf.

And then you know that USS Saratoga after the CPTF was formed was chopped to new duties? Guess where? To the Eastern Fleet. Yup, a USN aircraft carrier was lent to the British in late 1943 and 1944 to firm them up for operations in the eastern Indian Ocean.

===================================================================================

About the KGVs and the fourteen inch guns designed to use 13.5 inch mounts. The 14 inch guns were designed to use CRADLES like USN guns were. The 13.5 inch barrels of WWI era were mounted on slides. Additionally, 15 inch guns would not fit the 14 inch cradles so the mounts would have to be redesigned, that includes barbette weight balancing, all the hoists and handling arrangements and as I pointed out previously.

===================================================================================
I will add this comment. Convoying and protecting the Persian Gulf oil routes and Russian Lend Lease shipping was important, so I do not think one should not minimize the RN contribution to victory by this vital work. Nor can holding the Suez canal by the Desert Army be overlooked as part of the global naval war. But no "historian" who fails to understand the interconnected nature of PACFLT's desperate 1942 fight to keep the IJN on it and off the Eastern Fleet, which was demonstrably incapable of the kind of fighting needed to attrite the IJN while Germany First went forward with Torch which was LANTFLT's contribution to the overall global war at sea and on land should be considered as knowing what is happening or why. The British revisionist historians, like Boyd or Clarke, do not get to claim that the RN in the Indian Ocean was the lynchpin of victory. The real guarantors of "victory" in this case were...

PACFLT and the British Eighth Army. One stopped Yamamoto (Nimitz). The other stopped Rommel.(Montgomery).

McP.
 

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McPherson

Banned
The longstanding plan for Taranto was a multi-carrier strike. Saying there was no doctrine for that is simplistic.

The plan was a two carrier raid on a port. To FIGHT enemy aircraft carriers or shore based air forces was not in anyone's syllabus until the Malta Convoys and the Indian Ocean Raid at the earliest. The USN had practiced aircraft carrier vs aircraft carrier from 1935 onward. it was usually 2 on 1 with Ranger or Langley teaming up with a Lexington playing one team while the other Lexington played the other team. I believe the RN tried an exercise in 1927 that was unsuccessful in the Mediterranean fleet. The Ethiopia crisis was the genesis for "Judgement".

I could argue that PEDESTAL was the RNs equivalent to Midway. Great victory.

McP.
 
I think @CV12Hornet covered it.

I know about Henderson. I know about Clarke.



I know about Henderson. I know about Clarke. I have no respect for Clarke because he has no good idea about what was going on at all.


Here is what is going on. The source of fact is Andrew Boyd; "The Royal Navy In Eastern Waters" Seaforth Publishing; an imprint of Pen and Sword Books, Ltd. (2017)

The interpretation therein (his) is radically different from mine based on his facts. Mine is also taken from Hyperwar and the US Naval Historical Institute.

And of course there is a map. (Source Google generic polar projection map.).
British-ABC-failure.png


The work is mine. Red is British coverage. Brown is Canadian Coverage. Blue is American coverage.

Now then.

a. The Americans screw up in the Philippine Islands, get Pearl Harbored and are acutely embarrassed when MacArthur and Brereton lose the FEAAF on the ground. But then comes the six month stand at Bataan. American's buy exactly the time envisaged in Rainbow 5. Remember THAT.
b. The British try to rump-roast the Singapore Bastion Defense, lose Force Z to incompetence and are disgraced in the Malay Settlements and run out of Burma.
c. Asiatic Fleet and the Dutch fight a losing fight in the Malay Barrier. This was expected by American planners.
d. Somerville tried to fight an aircraft carrier battle off Sri Lanka. He was going to use his Fulmars to deliver a night torpedo attack. He failed for multiple reasons, but I will summarize the key ones.
---he miss-estimated Nagumo's arrival as being 1 April 1942 and set his ambush position accordingly. He failed to provide tanker support and could NOT REFUEL at sea. Nagumo showed up on the fifth. Somerville was refueling and had to charge from his protected anchorage to try to catch Nagumo when that man showed up on British reconnaissance on 5 April 1942.
--Somerville miscalculated Japanese strength at 2 or 3 aircraft carriers.
--Somerville expected to find Nagumo by night search; but one little problem. In that region of Earth and at that time of year as the USN savagely criticized him at the NWC from their own experience in the Caribbean and the tropics with RADAR, the atmospherics degrade search ranges of surface and airborne radars SEVERELY. An aircraft carrier sized target will yield a reflected signal that can be theoretically be discriminated, supposedly at ranges at night beyond the Mark 1 eyeball. The Fulmar's ASV (ASR in USN parlance) was expected to generate a bearing and range at about 150 km from a patroller flying at 3,000 meters altitude. The damned ASV radars could only detect Somerville's own ships at about 30 km in the local weather conditions. How the hello were the Fulmars to detect Nagumo or Yamaguchi? The Fulmars did not until they came within VISUAL for the Japanese saw one of them at night and dodged. The Fulmar compounded this error by misreporting Yamaguchi's position by 40 km, and then Somerville boloed it again by not having a strike package warmed up and ready.

The less written about Somerville allowing Hermes, Devonshire and Cornwall to die, the better.

japanese-air-raids-on-ceylon-april-1942-map-by-c-e-warner.jpg


‘Battle of Ceylon’: Japanese Air Raid on 5 April 1942 ...

Incompetent is "charitable".

e. So that is the situation in April 1942. Pound asked King for help. "Could the Americans draw the Japanese away from the Indian Ocean and save the Royal Navy Eastern Fleet?"
f. King did not tell Pound about the Doolittle Raid or the do-or-die stand about to happen in the Coral Sea, or the all-or-nothing fight planned for Midway as soon as PACFLT got wind from FRUMEL that Yamamoto was laying on Operation MI to destroy PACFLT.

The Americans had been laying on aircraft carrier raids, showing the flag, and waving their ensigns in the IJN's faces in February and March in the Caroline and Marshall Islands to turn the IJN EAST; before Pound screamed for help. They knew how important it was to protect the Persian Gulf from Japanese attack. Wilson Brown lays on the (The Forgotten Revenge for Pearl Harbor – Lae-Salamaua 1942).


This provoked the Port Moresby action (Operation Mo.)... And it set the stage for THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA.

Then of course the bitterness of Midway. It should be noted that the Americans lost a third of their pre-war PACFLT trained pilots to these air operations, the raids and the two naval battles which they won. But the threat to the Indian Ocean and to Australia and to Hawaii was not over yet. So WATCHTOWER. Destroyers which could have been used in the Atlantic were kept in PACFLT to supply the escorts for the fighting expected at Guadalcanal. The PACFLT went in with green pilot replacements and inexperienced marines and then SAVO, Eastern Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz happened. By now four of America's six aircraft carriers were gone, another 800 pilots spent and King went to Pound and asked to borrow an aircraft carrier.

Pound said, "No."

The Eastern Fleet had three new aircraft carriers sent to it after Somerville's defeat hugging the east coast of Africa doing NOTHING. It took Churchill to order the RN to release HMS Victorious to join USS Saratoga.

November 1942 to November 1943. Show the flag, show off the Victorious' fighter director setup which LANTFLT had already leaned via Wasp and the Malta Convoys and in general cross train with the USNAS to learn how to do the deck park and the flight deck yo-yo the USN way, which was the right way to do things. Just until USS Enterprise was back on her keel again and was joined by a few Essexes. (Essex, Yorktown, Hornet, Franklin, etc. ) And all the while the IJN was bloody shirt fixated on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands and the Eastern Fleet was cruising up and down the east coast of Africa and convoying convoys to the Persian Gulf.

And then you know that USS Saratoga after the CPTF was formed was chopped to new duties? Guess where? To the Eastern Fleet. Yup, a USN aircraft carrier was lent to the British in late 1943 and 1944 to firm them up for operations in the eastern Indian Ocean.

===================================================================================

About the KGVs and the fourteen inch guns designed to use 13.5 inch mounts. The 14 inch guns were designed to use CRADLES like USN guns were. The 13.5 inch barrels of WWI era were mounted on slides. Additionally, 15 inch guns would not fit the 14 inch cradles so the mounts would have to be redesigned, that includes barbette weight balancing, all the hoists and handling arrangements and as I pointed out previously.

===================================================================================
I will add this comment. Convoying and protecting the Persian Gulf oil routes and Russian Lend Lease shipping was important, so I do not think one should not minimize the RN contribution to victory by this vital work. Nor can holding the Suez canal by the Desert Army be overlooked as part of the global naval war. But no "historian" who fails to understand the interconnected nature of PACFLT's desperate 1942 fight to keep the IJN on it and off the Eastern Fleet, which was demonstrably incapable of the kind of fighting needed to attrite the IJN while Germany First went forward with Torch which was LANTFLT's contribution to the overall global war at sea and on land should be considered as knowing what is happening or why. The British revisionist historians, like Boyd or Clarke, do not get to claim that the RN in the Indian Ocean was the lynchpin of victory. The real guarantors of "victory" in this case were...

PACFLT and the British Eighth Army. One stopped Yamamoto (Nimitz). The other stopped Rommel.(Montgomery).

McP.
wow so wrong on so many levels no evidence to support your accusations is Andrew Lambert also in your bad books as he largely agrees with Clarke or is it just anyone who challenges the myths of US doing everything in the Naval war that is a "revisionist"
 
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The plan was a two carrier raid on a port. To FIGHT enemy aircraft carriers or shore based air forces was not in anyone's syllabus until the Malta Convoys and the Indian Ocean Raid at the earliest. The USN had practiced aircraft carrier vs aircraft carrier from 1935 onward. it was usually 2 on 1 with Ranger or Langley teaming up with a Lexington playing one team while the other Lexington played the other team. I believe the RN tried an exercise in 1927 that was unsuccessful in the Mediterranean fleet. The Ethiopia crisis was the genesis for "Judgement".

I could argue that PEDESTAL was the RNs equivalent to Midway. Great victory.

McP.
you might want to read a 1932 RN Fleet Manual
 

McPherson

Banned

I think Lambert, is not quite a Mahanist, either. The US, incidentally, is a SEAPOWER, even by Lambert's rather weird definition.
 
I did. Have you?
you couldn't have it was a trick question the RN didn't have a fleet manual in 1932 they come out in odd years it was the 1919 manual that first advocated for the use of carriers on mass infact there was a plan if WW1 had lasted until 1919 to launch a mass carrier strike on Wilhelmshaven as the RN had already had limited sucsess with Naval Air Raids the previous year this was why HMS Furious and several other ships had flying off platforms fitted in 1918 with Furious taking part in the raid to destroy the German Zeppelin sheds despite them being in neutral Denmark even more carrier strikes were done in during the UKs intervention in the Russian Civil War with the UK disabling the remnants of the Baltic Fleet in Kronstadt although to be honest that whole period is super crazy and very easily overlooked. Although the real significant change in organisation that made multi carrier operations the norm was the creation of the post Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers with the first one being Reginald Henderson he held the position immediately before becoming 3rd Sea Lord and controller of the Navy although he had been a major player in developing multi carrier operations significantly before becoming Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers as the captain of HMS Furious
 

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McPherson

Banned
The British did publish.

You can find the relevant documents here. I did mention the relevant year.

I believe the RN tried an exercise in 1927 that was unsuccessful in the Mediterranean fleet. The Ethiopia crisis was the genesis for "Judgement".

BTW> that is why I know you did not understand the RN technical problems with aircraft carrier operations at all because they found they had the same problems the Americans and Japanese had... how to strike first.

ENDIT.
 
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