Yeah, I think the raider and U-boat threats look manageable in 1939 and there just isn't that much of an obvious need for more carriers, not when compared to the threat of the Luftwaffe, for example. Germany is the same prisoner of geography as she was in the first war. Everything changed in May 1940, but it seems slightly to absurd to plan for that defeat.
Early RN Escort Carriers
- Thread starter Peg Leg Pom
- Start date
Thank you, which brings us right back to 'Hawkins' conversions <10k tons so doesn't break any Treaty limits, no problem. Only the RN wins, would be too small for IJN and/or USN use.
given that the angled deck was a British invention in OTL
as was the "Ski Jump" no reason it should not be done in 1940
(IIRC one of the Japanese carriers has a "hump" in its flight deck to achieve a bounce effect)
These would be particularly if combined with the conversions of ships
eg. using prefabricated components onto a AMC to give it both recon and ASW power
As for autogyros , which the RAF were operating experimentally from 1934
and many more were taken up from civilian source in 1940 but without a real long term mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cierva_C.30
Its a timeline I've often thought of writing - except I lack the talent to make it engaging
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hipper
Banned
its not only the japanese who have an carrier with a Ramp Furious had one for most of her life
GarethC
Donor
IIRC, Glorious was in company with Ark Royal when D'Oyly-Hughes requested permission from the Navy to hurry back to Blighty to court-martial his Commander(Air) pour encourager les autres, and so left with a minimal escort.
Courageous would stay with Ark Royal while D'Oyly-Hughes goes off to get sunk, I fear.
As I understand it, the slope on Furious' deck was to slow landing aircraft which in the late '20s had no (or poor) brakes
As an experimental design, F had other curious features, for example a safety wire along her flight deck
This acted as a kind of guard rail in case of planes veering left or right rather than an arrester or crash barrier
Seeing as he was a Submariner, maybe put him in command of one of these "Aircraft Tenders". That was Courageous and Glorious survive the Norway Campaign. Outrageous Fortune.
Cryhavoc101
Donor
The Angled deck was a result of operating jet planes and the need to allow for 'bolters' as a jet plane is landing faster than your WW2 fighters there was no 'cutting the throttle' and dropping onto the deck - the jet had to be flown onto the wires and if it missed having an angled deck allowed the plane to continue on its merry way...or at least not crash into the deck park forwards or interfere with simultaneous air ops.
The only way I can see it happening before it did is (and this is a stretch) having a much earlier Seafire developed (say 1939?) and the navy recognising the difficulties and trade offs of having a high performance aircraft attempting to land on and the angled deck being seen as the 'partial' answer (particulalrly during high intensity ops such as those conducted in the med when it was necessary to both launch and recover aircraft at a fairly high tempo).
Makes you wish Cierva had missed his last flight, he was getting so close to a true helicopter. As it was with the ability to leap into the air and practically hover over a moving deck autogyros could have made a real impact in the Battle of the Atlantic and all they'd have needed was a platform on the stern of an A.M.C. They wouldn't even have really needed to carry weapons, just by being there they would have kept the Uboats down until the convoy passed. A few smoke pots or flares to mark a Uboat's position and life gets a lot more exiciting than the crew really want
I have to disagree with this, if they thought they had the problem under control they wouldn't have resorted to putting surplus WWI guns on liners like the Rawalpindi converting them into Armed Merchant Cruisers. Now suppose she'd been impressed after the seizure of the rest of Czechoslovakia rather than in August and had a simple light deck fitted in a quick and dirty conversion Ala HMS Audacity. A squadron of Sharks or Swordfish could have changed the outcome of Rawalpindi's heroic but suicidal fight. Would they even have attacked that convoy or would the presence of a carrier have scared them off. By the way Captain Kennedy should have been awarded the Victoria Cross for that forlorn hope of a charge not just Mentioned in Dispatches. Taking on two Battlecruisers in a liner armed with 20+ year old 6 inch guns was definitely above and beyond the call of duty.
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For a very early escort carrier in something I started to write a few years ago. The back story is it's 1915 and HMS Campania has been sent to the Med to work up but is then recalled once German and Austrian Uboats make a menace of themselves. They leave behind a flight of Short 184s working for an Admiral on special duties. On the voyage out it had been quickly realised that rather than seaplanes they needed to be able to land on the carrier. In August off Gallipoli the former SS Pfaltz now a transport in the RAN is torpedoed and beached. OTL she was repaired in Naples. Here she's repaired in Malta, her funnel and wheelhouse reduced to no more than 10 feet wide and moved to the starboard side of the ship and a flight deck fitted. Aircraft are stored in the space between the ships deck and the flight deck and moved between the two through a hatch by block and tackle. The 184s have all had their floats replaced by makeshift wheeled undercarts.
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The AMC weren't there to fight U-boats, they were there to fight surface raiders. In particular, German AMC.
There were a number of problems with converting them to escort carriers.
A lot of the ships allocated werent sutable due to engine layout and size.
There was a shortage of aircraft
There was a perception that they would have been useless in poor weather (common in the NA). I dont think it was realised at the beginning of the war just how good the swordfish was at operating in pretty impossible conditions. In practice, weather bad enough to stop a Swordfish meant it was highly unlikely the raider could actually see the convoy.
I agree that in retrospect merchant carriers would have been more use, but its a much more dificult decision in 1939. It also need the AM getting a good kicking to release the agreed aircraft.
Be interesting to see what the design could do with a more powerful engine....apart from using fuel quicker.
From memory one of the requirements for the award of a VC is that the act in question must be witnessed and attested to by a senior officer. That does not necessarily have to be a British officer (Roope on Glowworm was awarded his in part due to a German recommendation passed via the Red Cross), but there have been plenty of instances where that requirement means that decorations are under-awarded.
They were not covered under the Washington Treaty. They were banned under the London Treaty of 1930.
Interesting but wiki makes no mention of carriers, but with a tonnage limit for the RN on heavy cruisers with 8" guns, gives them more of an incentive, to convert and replace with 8" gun armed heavy cruisers rather than 7.5". But besides which, who knows the conversions may have been accomplished before 1930!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Naval_Treaty
There are numerous problems.
The Royal Navy was an arm of the British government. These governments spent the period 1922 to 1936 trying to reduce defense expenditures through limitations treaties. The RN spent a godawful number of man-hours designing undersized BBs, carriers and cruisers to propose as examples of the qualitative limits the British wanted at the various Treaty conferences. The British also paid the most attention to the Treaties, using the least number of loopholes and legal fictions to get around the limitations. About the only trick they used was to design their ships to a standard displacement with a limited number of main armament rounds (60 per gun for battleships), while providing room in the magazines for 100, despite the Treaty definition of standard displacement as the "ship ready for war minus fuel and reserve feed water". Building convertible auxiliaries and merchant ships would be too much for the governments in power at the time.
The RN did not control the development and production of its aircraft and the provision and training of its aircrew. This resulted in lower priorities placed on naval requirements. Once it reclaimed control of the RNAS, it still had to operate within the limitations of British defense policy and doctrine. With the priority on the defense of Britain and bombers, it would take time for the RNAS to build the training platforms, cadre and aircraft to produce the additional aircrew, pilots and maintenance crews and to produce the necessary aircraft, even if purchased in the USA. Between the lack of slack for converting the dual-use auxiliaries and getting aircrews and planes, it could be the end of 1940 before any of these ships is ready.
RN doctrine and strategic planning between 1922 and 1935 was focused on the campaign against Japan in the Pacific. Ship design and organizational and training planning centered on collecting the Fleet in the Med and proceeding to the Far East, where the Fleet would operate from Singapore, seeking a decisive battle with the Japanese battle line and after victory, obtaining additional ports from the Chinese to use along with Hong Kong to blockade Japan and force her to sue for peace. Between 1935 and 1937, it shifted to a war with Italy and then from 1938 to a war with Germany or Germany, Italy and/or Japan. Only in 1938 was defense of trade an issue within the strategic and operational planning. Before then, the focus was on the Fleet, the Battle Line and its supporting elements, including the carriers. The RN, like the USN and IJN, saw the best defense against an enemies' carriers was pre-emptive strikes. But where the USN and IJN looked to fighters, even pre-radar, as an integral part of the fleet's air defenses, the British became convinced by 1936, that the bomber would always get through. So their response was an armored hanger carrier, where when enemy air strikes threatened, the strike aircraft would be struck below in the hangers and the defense of the Fleet left to its AA guns. On after drone targets became available, did the RN begin to question the viability of that doctrinal decisions and then radar made it the right decision in 1935 and the wrong one for 1940, since the armored carrier couldn't carry enough planes to execute strikes and defend the Fleet. Also, the RN never had much of an auxiliary force, something that would come to haunt it when it moved to the Pacific for operations. With the network of bases and ports throughout the world that the Empire afforded, the British didn't need and the RN couldn't justify spending limited resources on auxiliaries it couldn't really use in peacetime.
As pointed out, while the Treasury was not the drag on re-armament that is commonly thought, Britain's declining economic position and the atrophy in her ship building industry and supporting industries was. Britain simply didn't have the capability between 1938-39, when the London Treaty of 1936 collapsed and when the war started in 1939, to do everything it needed to rebuild its air force, navy and army. Even BBs had to wait for dock or pier space and for armaments production to accelerate to get modernized. The RN desperately wanted more cruisers, to modernize HMS Hood, to get more destroyers and the war came three years to early for that. It was a miracle for the British that the US had a President with the foresight to prepare the US for mobilization between 1939-41 and who was both navy and air minded and could push the escort carrier concept on the USN and get it into serial production to provide the escort carriers for the Battle of the Atlantic.