Naval Equipment that should and shouldn't have entered service

[michael1]

The Essex class was designed under WNT limits to 27,000 tons, just like the North Carolinas and South Dakotas. The Iowas also began as treaty battleships under the 2LNT escaltor clause and only added a lot of weight after the war began. The tonnage limits imposed on the Navy by Congress were informed by the treaties that Congress had ratified. It may not be accurate to say that the Essex design was limited by the WNT, but it would be accurate to say that the design was legally limited to 27,000 tons, the same as the WNT limit for aircraft carriers. The first US capital ships that were built without any measure of adherence to the interwar treaties were the Midways and Montanas.

The 1st LNT reduced max carrier (but not BB) size compared to the WNT. I'm not sure why WNT limits are relevant?

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Would have loved to have seen a Jaguar M!

Could it have been put on the 'Park Royal' in the late 70's replacing the Bucc's?

AIUI the Jaguar M was cancelled because it failed its carrier qualification trials which led to its cancellation because the cost of curing its faults as a naval aircraft and the necessary modifications to the Clemenceau class aircraft carriers were prohibitive.

Dassault-Breguet Jaguar M [in french]

www.ffaa.net

AIUI it could have been put on the Victorious, Eagle and Hermes as well as Ark Royal. However, the Buccaneer was a better aircraft than the Jaguar, so there isn't much point in the latter replacing the former. Buccaneer carries a heavier payload further than a Jaguar. Plus the folded dimensions of the two aircraft are similar so the number of aircraft that can be accommodated is about the same.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Ok then . . . how about the RFA's "Round Table" class?

View attachment 581931

Why not more 'Fearless' vessels instead? Why have a fleet of LSL's that can beach themselves when the gaffer doesn't bother using this option in San Carlos in '82 thus slowing down the length of the landing operation? At least with the 'Fearless' class you have the option of more LCU's. The 'Round Tables' didn't carry enough Mexeflottes down South, only carrying three units.

Much obliged!

Because unlike the Fearless class, the Sir Lancelot class weren't built to replace the LST Mk 3s operated by the Royal Navy's Amphibious Squadron. They were built for the British Army and their "day job" was transporting its heavy equipment between the UK and (mainly) Germany in peacetime.

According to Brown & Moore in Rebuilding The Royal Navy...

... they were built to commercial standards and not intended for use in opposed landings. They were , however, intended to land troops (with Mexifloats) on suitable beaches in the event that ports were destroyed. Since they were regarded as merchant ships, the rules said that if they grounded they had to be docked for inspection and hence beaching was only practised once, just before a planned docking.

They were operated by commercial companies under charter when first completed and were transferred to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in 1970. (Brown & Moore say 1980, but that is a typo.)

 

[McPherson]

You will get no disagreement from me on the Essex class being the best of all the CV designs in WW2

However they were not treaty limited and certainly did benefit from the 4 year gap between the designs allowing for learnings from the Yorktown's and Wasp - and the shared early war time experiences of the British

Essex was laid down in April 1941 and while there is no doubt that they are an evolution of the Yorktown the extra years between the design provided them with a much greater amount of armour, improved machinary layout, better TDS and being far larger than both the Yorktown and the Illustrious class, better at operating aircraft and more of them

If you really want to compare carriers then compare the Illustrious class to the Yorktown's - USA's treaty limited carriers and not one that was freed from the shackles of the 2LNT limitations.

--Illustrious was ordered in 1937. It is fair to say that she was LNT treaty restricted as to design. Average air group ~36-44 aircraft. ~22,000 tonnes SDP
--Ark Royal was ordered in 1934. It is fair to say that she was treaty restricted. Average air group ~44-54 aircraft. ~25,000 tonnes SDP

What happened?

--Yorktown was ordered in 1933. Definitely WNT and she was so treaty restricted. Average air group ~64-76 aircraft ~25,000 tonnes SDP
--Wasp was ordered in 1935. WNT hobbled. Average air group ~ 64-76 aircraft ~ 18,000-20,000 SDP (sources vary)

So Illustrious is more akin to WASP.

Start 15.00 in and you will see what I think about British claims about armored flight deck carriers.

And here...

What is the difference between an Essex and an Illustrious?

About the Lexingtons. (The Two White Elephants).

While the Ranger was being constructed, the two white elephants entered service and demonstrated that size mattered. In this case, it was soon obvious that the total number of aircraft in a fleet was not as important as the number on board each carrier, because the latter comprised U.S. carrier aviation’s tactical unit, the air wing. (Later, well into World War II, the U.S. Navy began conducting multicarrier air-group operations.) Size also bought speed and survivability. The Lexington and Saratoga, but not the Ranger, fought in the Pacific. The bigger carriers were not turkeys; they were ugly ducklings that became swans.

Read the whole article at the USNI citation to get the fill story.

And now...

Many of the ships the U.S. Navy built during World War II reinforce the bigger-is-better lesson. Designers always want to create the tightest possible package that fulfills specific requirements. For various reasons, by 1941 the U.S. Navy was demanding enough to get larger packages than those of some other navies (German heavy cruisers and destroyers were larger, apparently without getting as much for the tonnage). During the war, British captains periodically wrote that they wished they could have similarly large ships, and by the time Japan surrendered the British were designing and building U.S.-size destroyers. However, the usual response by the British design authority was that the American ships were large simply because their designers were incompetent; they produced loose, expensive ships.

Now that was clearly untrue. The Americans designed tight ships for the criteria they wanted. If one looks at the Atlantas and the Didos, both ship classes which I like *See same article), one sees that the American AAA cruiser was designed to be like a large destroyer. The RN wanted a dual use cruiser that had some trade protection value, hence the different choices in main armament, and the different solutions to mid and close-in AAA defense when that became an urgent necessity in the Med and in the early Pacific War. One has to see WHY a navy did what it did, and adjudge the effectiveness. Juneau was just an Atlanta repeat with better arrangements. Dido had to be replaced by a larger platform with different guns.

Another myth...

The only real criticism was that having been designed mainly for the calm Pacific, the ships were ill-adapted to patrolling rough northern waters, which Cold War service usually entailed. The British had much better hull forms for seakeeping. However, many of their well-designed warships could not accommodate new technologies, resulting in the size of the Royal Navy contracting faster than necessary.

The RN ships might have radioed "what typhoon?" as the joke goes, but I think Friedman was being generous. Small ships with wrong length to beam ratios (And you British ships know who you are, since I crossed in one.) ride ROUGH in a Pacific typhoon or an Atlantic hurricane. The western Pacific as the Japanese knew and the British discovered is not a gentle place. The Arctic seas were rough, but warships that could ride through a Pacific cyclone could FIGHT in arctic seas, especially aircraft carriers.

What conclusions can be drawn about ship design? One lesson, at least in surface ships, is that reaching for spectacular performance, speed for example, is often counterproductive: The enemy’s weapons generally outrun ships. The sacrifices made for a few knots may be difficult to identify, but they are real and later on become unacceptable. Also size pays, even if at the outset it may seem wasteful. The larger the ship, the better the opportunity to modernize her to keep up with a changing world.

A navy needs numbers. Usually that is translated to mean that ships should be made as inexpensively as possible. However, there is another way to look at numbers.

The number of ships the U.S. Navy can maintain is, roughly, the number the Navy can build each year multiplied by the number of years a ship remains viable—and viability is a matter both of how well the ship survives the rigors of the sea and of how well she survives the rigors of a rapidly changing world. The bigger the ship, the better she will survive the sea. If bigger also means better at adapting to the changing world, the answer to numbers is probably to build fewer ships each year but to make them big.

Quod erat demonstratum. Or to put it another way... Which ships were scrapped as useless and which served postwar?

The Essexes and their GATO/BALAO submarine contemporaries, have examples which are now museum ships with the pedigrees of the Constitution. Even the North Carolinas and the Iowas are so honored.

Where is the Illustrious and T class sub?

Razor blades.

 

[CV12Hornet]

--Illustrious was ordered in 1937. It is fair to say that she was LNT treaty restricted as to design. Average air group ~36-44 aircraft. ~22,000 tonnes SDP
--Ark Royal was ordered in 1934. It is fair to say that she was treaty restricted. Average air group ~44-54 aircraft. ~25,000 tonnes SDP

What happened?

--Yorktown was ordered in 1933. Definitely WNT and she was so treaty restricted. Average air group ~64-76 aircraft ~25,000 tonnes SDP
--Wasp was ordered in 1935. WNT hobbled. Average air group ~ 64-76 aircraft ~ 18,000-20,000 SDP (sources vary)

So Illustrious is more akin to WASP.

Um... where the hell are you getting your Standard Displacement figures? Because they're completely wrong.

 

[ShySusan]

Um... where the hell are you getting your Standard Displacement figures? Because they're completely wrong.

I think he might be crossing full load displacement with standard displacement. Since Yorktown displaced 25,500 tons at full load and Wasp displaced 19,000 tons full load.

 

[McPherson]

Ship's displacement Plimsoll line (usual combat loading) in metric tonnes. Standard displacement is a WNT treaty definition of the time of crew, ammunition, ammunition, provisions, but not fuel load or reserve boiler water or consumables.

There is a measurable difference. That reserve capacity varied by navy. RN was not as much as USN so "displacement" is an "iffy" thing. The figures are within the combat loading expected.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Ship's displacement Plimsoll line (usual combat loading) in metric tonnes. Standard displacement is a WNT treaty definition of the time of crew, ammunition, ammunition, provisions, but not fuel load or reserve boiler water or consumables.

There is a measurable difference. That reserve capacity varied by navy. RN was not as much as USN so "displacement" is an "iffy" thing. The figures are within the combat loading expected.

Ah, okay then. That brings me to my next question: how is the Illustrious class the only one of the three with a displacement at the Plimsoll line smaller than her standard displacement, given standard explicitly doesn't count a lot of tonnage that would count under the definition you use?

 

[McPherson]

Simple. She was light loaded as she was top-heavy.

 

[Riain]

AIUI the Jaguar M was cancelled because it failed its carrier qualification trials which led to its cancellation because the cost of curing its faults as a naval aircraft and the necessary modifications to the Clemenceau class aircraft carriers were prohibitive.

Dassault-Breguet Jaguar M [in french]

www.ffaa.net

AIUI it could have been put on the Victorious, Eagle and Hermes as well as Ark Royal. However, the Buccaneer was a better aircraft than the Jaguar, so there isn't much point in the latter replacing the former. Buccaneer carries a heavier payload further than a Jaguar. Plus the folded dimensions of the two aircraft are similar so the number of aircraft that can be accommodated is about the same.

The RN had bought 48 Phantoms by the time the Jaguar M failed it's carquals, years earlier iiuc.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Simple. She was light loaded as she was top-heavy.

Okay, at this point I'm going to have to ask where you got those numbers, because this smells very fishy.

 

[McPherson]

Okay, at this point I'm going to have to ask where you got those numbers, because this smells very fishy.

Illustrious class Aircraft Carrier - Royal Navy

illustrious class aircraft carrier royal navy hms

www.seaforces.org

Listed as 23,000 tons full load. That is FULL LOAD. Short tons = ~ 20,000 tonnes. Might be a bit light? Long tons to metric 23,370 tonnes. Take your pick. That is what I have to deal with because different navies used different values. Sources bounce all over wrt to it. 22,000 tonnes is logical given l/b/d.

Okay?

 

[CV12Hornet]

Illustrious class Aircraft Carrier - Royal Navy

illustrious class aircraft carrier royal navy hms

www.seaforces.org

Listed as 23,000 tons full load. That is FULL LOAD. Short tons = ~ 20,000 tonnes. Might be a bit light? Long tons to metric 23,370 tonnes. Take your pick. That is what I have to deal with because different navies used different values. Sources bounce all over wrt to it. 22,000 tonnes is logical given l/b/d.

Okay?

Considering that that full-load figure is in complete contravention of every source I can think of, no, not okay. 23,000 tons is the standard displacement. Their designed full load displacement was 28,620 tons and over 29,000 during wartime. Seaforces is wrong here.

 

[McPherson]

Considering that that full-load figure is in complete contravention of every source I can think of, no, not okay. 23,000 tons is the standard displacement. Their designed full load displacement was 28,620 tons and over 29,000 during wartime. Seaforces is wrong here.

You could be right. If so, it should be corrected.

 

[CiH]

The Essexes and their GATO/BALAO submarine contemporaries, have examples which are now museum ships with the pedigrees of the Constitution. Even the North Carolinas and the Iowas are so honored.

Where is the Illustrious and T class sub?

Razor blades.

Without detracting from your point, there is a massive cultural difference between the USA and UK re. Museum ships generally. UK does not hang on to that many old ships, USA tries to preserve all it can, maybe too much so?

Also desperate postwar economics forced a quick sale of much of the wartime royal navy. Literally the proceeds from scrapping sales being needed to pay to keep the government going. Which is why there is no HMS Warspite floating museum. The largest survivor from that period being the 6 inch gunned HMS Belfast.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Um... where the hell are you getting your Standard Displacement figures? Because they're completely wrong.

Thanks - saved me the bother of responding

Question to McP - why wasn't Enterprise saved?

People can sup from the Slade and Worth cool aid all you like but its mostly bullshit

Anyway the British do not save ships - if we saved every 'famous' warship worthy of being saved our dockyards would have ceased to work for lack of space!

The USA has slightly more room!

HMS Victory for example was saved by the thinnest of margins - Then Admiral Hardy having returned home and told his wife that he had ordered her to be scrapped - was ordered by his wife to go straight back to work and rescind the order under pain of no dinner or fun between the sheet later for him that night.

And no British ship ever made was designed or ordered with the thought 'wouldn't this make a great museum ship' in mind.

From the top of my head Britian saved the Cruiser HMS Belfast and a C class Destroyer HMS Cavalier along with a handful of smaller craft.

So using that as a bench mark is flawed.

 

[Captain Seafort]

From the top of my head Britian saved the Cruiser HMS Belfast and a C class Destroyer HMS Cavalier along with a handful of smaller craft.

And Warrior, thanks to her being used as a refueling jetty (I think), and everyone forgot she was there long enough that by the time someone got curious enough to look more closely, and realised what she was, there was enough interest in warship preservation for her to be saved. If anything it reinforces your point even more.

 

[Mike D]

From the top of my head Britian saved the Cruiser HMS Belfast and a C class Destroyer HMS Cavalier along with a handful of smaller craft.

So using that as a bench mark is flawed.

HMS Caroline in Belfast too, thanks to her being used for cadet training for about sixty years.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

The RN had bought 48 Phantoms by the time the Jaguar M failed it's carquals, years earlier iiuc.

True, but I don't understand why it is relevant.

A total of 52 F-4K Phantoms was built if the 4 prototypes are included. According to the UK Serials website they were delivered 1967-70.

However, the RN only received 28 of the 48 production aircraft. The other 20 were delivered straight to the RAF and equipped No. 43 Squadron from 1969.

This was due to the Phantomisation of Eagle being cancelled, which AFAIK was in 1968. That is in the aftermath of the Sterling devaluation and the subsequent decision to bring the East of Suez withdrawal forward from 1975 to the end of 1971.

 

[Merrick]

A good example is HMS Implacable, formerly the French Duguay-Trouin, veteran of Trafalgar, used in various roles as a harbour hulk for over 100 years after decommissioning and the second-oldest ship in the Royal Navy in 1949 - at which point she was towed out to sea and scuttled because neither the British nor French governments could spare the money to restore or maintain her.

The British were under resource and financial restrictions the the Americans simply weren't - even in the 1930s they went from an anti-military government and extremely limited budgets to a rushed rearmament to a war emergency situation with shortages of just about everything and ships needed yesterday. Yes, working an extra 500 tons of steel into the design would produce a better seaboat with better accommodation and more potential for expansion - but those 500 tons are already promised to three different projects and they can't afford six months' delay to revise the design.

And while the carriers were the primary striking arm of the USN, RN naval aviation often found itself competing for hind teat behind both the RAF and the U-boat war. Had the Implacables (laid down pre-war, but not in service until late 1944) been ready in 1942, or the Audaciouses built to a US construction schedule, they might have had careers to match the Essexes. As it was, the RN got the Light Fleets - too small and too late - which despite being explicitly designed as throw-away war-emergency ships nevertheless lasted in service years after the Essexes had gone.