No Pacific War: Whither Naval Aviation?

Did a brief search on this, and didn't turn up this discussion.

Let's say that for whatever reason, Japan never launches the Pacific war against the European colonies and the United States, and peace between those powers is maintained through WWII and its aftermath.

What does this mean for development in naval aviation and carrier-based warfare?

No Pearl Harbor, Midway, or sinking of the PoW and Repulse and so forth means carriers have still not yet been tested against each other. British operations in the Med offers a limited set of examples for the usefulness of carriers, but that was against the Regina Maria.

By the time everyone is ready to think about the next war, presumably jet aircraft have been introduced. Without the experience of the Pacific War, what will carriers be used for?
 
Did a brief search on this, and didn't turn up this discussion.

Let's say that for whatever reason, Japan never launches the Pacific war against the European colonies and the United States, and peace between those powers is maintained through WWII and its aftermath.

What does this mean for development in naval aviation and carrier-based warfare?

No Pearl Harbor, Midway, or sinking of the PoW and Repulse and so forth means carriers have still not yet been tested against each other. British operations in the Med offers a limited set of examples for the usefulness of carriers, but that was against the Regina Maria.

By the time everyone is ready to think about the next war, presumably jet aircraft have been introduced. Without the experience of the Pacific War, what will carriers be used for?

I dont think it would make too much difference to the carriers themselves. The RN's experience in the Med was already making them design bigger armoured carriers (on a bigger carrier, the armour is less of a limitation than it is on a smaller ship), and they wanted more and higher performance planes.
If the US enters the war, expect to see US carriers in the Med and North Sea - it will be interesting to see then how they feel about armoured decks, or whether it turns out more aircraft are a better defence.

Without carrier/carrier battles we may see the nature of the specialised carrier aircraft change, but not by much. Youd still want torpedo planes and heavy dive bombers for attacking all the other ships.

So overall, while it may change the development in the short term, once the postwar jet carriers are designed I dont think youd see much difference.
 
How plausible is it that the US and Britain refrain from backing Japan into a corner by threatening embargoes, which was the motivation for the strikes at Pearl, Philippines, and the invasion southward?

I was wondering what constrains the W-Allies from diverting all resources lost or used OTL in the Pacific war to the European front, which would presumably mean a shorter WWII there. This was what Churchill was hoping for after all. But with the Empire of Japan still there in the Pacific, the W-Allies would have some concern to keep something on alert in the Pacific lest the Japanese see an opportunity too good to resist, so that would be a brake. In parallel, the not-too-friendly presence of US and Commonwealth forces in the Pacific would justify Japanese maintenance of their fleet despite it never being used.

No war on Japan means they keep on trying to subdue China. They probably get away with taking control of Indochina without triggering Western embargoes; this is perhaps the POD, if securing Indochina and perhaps a rising influence over Thailand is sufficient for them and tolerated by the W-Allies.

Meanwhile, exactly how does Hitler get to be openly at war with the USA? OTL, he egregiously declared war after Pearl Harbor, which simplified things for FDR.

With all that given, and Germany having no carriers (but one under construction which would presumably never be finished), we have your timeline.

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The battleship dogma is never challenged directly in the US Navy, never mind British experience in the Med. I have some grounds for thinking American admirals would ignore British lessons--case in point, the failure of US Navy brass to immediately recognize the need for convoys and other means of protecting Atlantic shipping once war was mutually declared, despite years of British experience on the subject and their own personal memories of WWI. They were living in their own little fantasy world where all that mattered was battlewagon vs battlewagon in glorious naval battle. There were already factions within the Navy that favored airstrikes from carriers instead, but the dominant culture was the worship of the dreadnought barrage. So great was US Navy disdain for lowly stuff that they allowed the US Army ultimately to commission more ships than the Navy, letting the Army run their own transport ships rather than take on that mundane responsibility!

The Atlantic war would not have required battleships very often. Carriers would still be needed, but for the inglorious (if vital!) role of scouting for and sinking U-boats, while also holding off German airborne commerce raiders. Again when penetrating to North Africa (in range of German landplanes) and the Med, carriers would be needed but would rarely have any capital ships to engage but for whatever remained of the Italian Navy at that point.

The lessons would be clear but US Navy brass culture would be perfectly capable of ignoring them.

"Next war"--against whom? If you want American brass to get a nasty surprise, I suppose it would have to be against Japan. If you want to go with likely lines of development in geopolitics, it might more likely be the Soviets.

The former have the carriers, though perhaps ridiculously aged and limited if they keep the old ones and don't scrap them and replace them with new ones. The latter probably would never get around to developing a serious world-class blue-water navy.

Either way, it is a bit of a kabuki theatre, with both sides going at it with half-developed, improvised carriers.

Without the experience of handling really fast and heavy fighters and attack planes OTL, all parties involved might well despair of operating jet aircraft of any kind from carrier decks, accepting as inevitable that naval aviation, which experience tells them is "inherently" auxilliary anyway, must use firmly subsonic prop planes. Perhaps they generally replace piston engines with turboprops by the time war breaks out but otherwise the planes look pretty much like WWII standard.

If they want to mix it up with jets, it is possible that the various navies go ahead and develop the concept of jet seaplanes.

Thus we might have the bizarre situation of the next naval war "proving" that the key naval vessel is not the battleship nor the deck carrier, but the tender ship for supersonic seaplanes:D.
 

Bearcat

Banned
Jets would still cause the movement towards bigger carriers with angled decks. The progress would just be slower. You might get to something like Forrestal in the second half of the fifties rather than the early part of the decade.

Also without the lessons of the war, Battleships continue to be built, for a little while longer. You might even see some truly mammoth designs as the Battlewagon Race resumes after the Allied-German war. The Montanas might well get built, and an even larger follow-on design in the early 50s. Maybe even a BB based on a Forrestal hull (much as the Midways and Montanas shared design elements IOTL).

Without Pacific experience, the paradigm of massing carriers into large task groups probably also takes a few years longer to emerge, but again, there are strong benefits to going that way, so it will happen sooner or later.

Japan probably has trouble keeping up with the US here in the production of jet engines, as their ability to manufacture large amounts of high quality alloys is more limited. Japanese CV jets will be lighter, less rugged, and will be at a disadvantage in any later war with the US, as the Zero was. The gun is still the main weapon well into the 50s, but a mid-50s war would quickly result in the US developing something like Sidewinder.
 
1) Bismarck and other air attacks against german and italian ships would still be good examples regarding what air power can do, as the war against the submarines that mainly was won by escort carriers.

2) The Pacific had 1941 enormous areas that totally lacks any infrastructure. If you wanted air cover / reconnocance / ground attack you either had to build an airfield or have a carrier. Just as the P-38 was useful for the long distances above the Pacific carriers would have their nische.

3) Battleships in costal bombardment mode became vernuable to enemy attacks long before their artillery came into range (mine fields, aircrafts, real coastal artillery), but carrier could lie 100 km from the coast, and still bomb targets 100 km inland.
 
This is an interesting question, that also begs the question...who won the European War? Assuming no Pacific War means the UK and USSR were able to defeat Germany, or that the USA was a latecomer, I would propose that lessons to be drawn mainly from British experience in the North Sea, Altantic, and Med would be mixed. Taranto would show that heavy ships at anchor could be sunk or disabled by a daring carrier-based raid (but is that really news?). The Bismarck situation would show that a "lucky" Swordfish torpedo hit on a single battleship operating in the Atlantic being chased by a major navy could lead to its eventual sinking by gunfire and ship launched torpedoes, but again is that really news? The effectiveness of carrier aviation against the u-boat offensive would also be demonstrated. On the other hand the ability of German battleships to intercept and sink a british carrier in the north sea by gunfire would lead to other possible conclusions.

It was the experiences of Japan and the USA in the Pacific War that clearly made the fleet carrier, and task forces centered on them, the core of naval power. I would suggest that, absent battles like Midway, Coral Sea, Leyte, etc featuring abundant carrier aviation on both sides, neither the US nor Japanese navies would completely abandon the notion that carriers were basically still just very important adjuncts to well-rounded navy, but not its core.

Like others, I suspect carriers would remain smaller and perhaps be produced in designs that reflected British experience (armored decks with correspondingly reduced aviation compliments, and more dedicated ASW and shore attack capabilities). Other navies might (as Britain's obviously did) accept the "fact" that carrier-based planes might never be the true equal of their best land-based opponents, leading to the even longer survival of biplanes, two-seat fighters, and less than fully successful lash-ups of single-seat land-based types. As jets are introduced, rather than make the major jump from 15,000-25,000 ton carriers to 50,000-60,000 ton supercarriers with angled decks, the basic inferiority of naval aviation to landbased airpower might be ceded, leading to the survival of special purpose smaller carriers in an airpower environment dominated by land-based airforces with high performance long-range jet fighters and bombers.

One might also propose that navies with the cash might decide to invest it in long-ranged jet powered flying boats bombers such as the USN's P6M Seamaster, various smaller jet powered patrol boats like the Beriev Be-10 or the sea effect planes, and waterborne jet fighters like the US Sea Dart and British Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 rather than double or triple the size of aircraft carriers. An earlier greater emphasis on air breathing cruise missles might occur.

I think this would make an interesting (and not completely implausible) technical history.
 
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This is an interesting question, that also begs the question...who won the European War? Assuming no Pacific War means the UK and USSR were able to defeat Germany, or that the USA was a latecomer, I would propose that lessons to be drawn mainly from British experience in the North Sea, Altantic, and Med would be mixed. Taranto would show that heavy ships at anchor could be sunk or disabled by a daring carrier-based raid (but is that really news?). The Bismarck situation would show that a "lucky" Swordfish torpedo hit on a single battleship operating in the Atlantic being chased by a major navy could lead to its eventual sinking by gunfire and ship launched torpedoes, but again is that really news? The effectiveness of carrier aviation against the u-boat offensive would also be demonstrated. On the other hand the ability of German battleships to intercept and sink a british carrier in the north sea by gunfire would lead to other possible conclusions.

It was the experiences of Japan and the USA in the Pacific War that clearly made the fleet carrier, and task forces centered on them, the core of naval power. I would suggest that, absent battles like Midway, Coral Sea, Leyte, etc featuring abundant carrier aviation on both sides, neither the US nor Japanese navies would completely abandon the notion that carriers were basically still just very important adjuncts to well-rounded navy, but not its core.

Like others, I suspect carriers would remain smaller and perhaps be produced in designs that reflected British experience (armored decks with correspondingly reduced aviation compliments, and more dedicated ASW and shore attack capabilities). Other navies might (as Britain's obviously did) accept the "fact" that carrier-based planes might never be the true equal of their best land-based opponents, leading to the even longer survival of biplanes, two-seat fighters, and less than fully successful lash-ups of single-seat land-based types. As jets are introduced, rather than make the major jump from 15,000-25,000 ton carriers to 50,000-60,000 ton supercarriers with angled decks, the basic inferiority of naval aviation to landbased airpower might be ceded, leading to the survival of special purpose smaller carriers in an airpower environment dominated by land-based airforces with high performance long-range jet fighters and bombers.

One might also propose that navies with the cash might rather invest it in long-ranged jet powered flying boats bombers such as the USN's P6M Seamaster, various smaller jet powered patrol boats like the Beriev Be-10 or the sea effect planes, and waterborne jet fighters like the US Sea Dart and British Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 rather than double or triple the size of aircraft carriers. An earlier greater emphasis on air breathing cruise missles might occur.

I think this would make an interesting (and not completely implausible) technical history.

I think you are quite wrong concerning your ideas as to the conclusions the RN was drawing from carrier ops in the Atlantic and Med.

They were moving to bigger carriers, around 28kt before deciding it was too small and going for the Ark Royal class. This is driven by the estimates of the future sizes of aircraft (a carrier in the 35kt class was considered the smallest fleet carrier likely to be viable). Armoured decks were still seen as useful, and as this driver occures before the Japanese get involved, it isnt going away.
The question is at what point will the generation of 50kt carriers emerge? I would guess mid 50's, as the forecasts for planes yet again get heavier, but they may occur as OTL as the ability to fly big nuclear capable bombers is again a driver that isnt going away.

While there may be one more generation of BB's, it will certainly be the last - there wont be any new BB race as the capability of aircraft is so obviously increasing. Once an all weather aircraft with ASW radar is flying surface ships are toast. The RN at least already knew that they couldnt build a BB to take guided bombs, so the only defence is to shoot the bomber down before it gets in range.

Floatplane jets are a lovely concept, but there are so many problems they are never going to be feasable.
 

Markus

Banned
The technical changes might be very small. Both the Corsair and the SB2C date back to 1938. The Essex-class was the successor of the Yorktown class and work began once a naval expansion act had been passed, also in 1938.
 
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Floatplane jets are a lovely concept, but there are so many problems they are never going to be feasable.

The Convair Sea Dart was not a floatplane. It floated on its integral fuselage/delta wing, and used hydroplanes--basically water-skiis--to stand out of the water to achieve takeoff speeds and initially on landing.

It had problems all right. For one thing, the engines it was designed for were not available and it tested with markedly inferior engines. For another, it like many other planes meant to be supersonic in its generation suffered from the lack of area-ruling. Convair by the way was developing landplane delta-wing fighters in parallel--the F-102, which like the Sea Dart failed to break the sound barrier as designed. They went back and redesigned its fuselage with the "Coke-bottle" waisting at the junction of the wing's leading edge with the fuselage, in accordance with Whitcomb's area rule, and then it performed OK. Had something like this been done with the Sea Dart and had it been equipped with engines of the designed thrust, I am sure it would have performed as designed in the air.

The hydroplanes were another problem. As the plane accelerated toward takeoff speed, the waves gave them a good hard pounding. They had shock absorbers but it was still pretty bad.

My own notion is, to use hydrofoils, fully submerged surfaces generating lift in a manner exactly analogous to how wings get it in air. I think if Convair had tried this they could have demonstrated that the concept of an airplane that lifts its hull clear of the water at a relatively low speed and accelerates on foil lift to takeoff speed is perfectly viable.

Seaplanes could be made by modifying standard landplanes, moving their engines as necessary to avoid spray ingestion (and there would be less spray due to a far smaller segment of the craft cutting the surface--just the streamlined struts holding the foils below the water and the rest of the plane above it would penetrate). Making the lower surface of the plane watertight and strong enough to resist dynamic water pressure at speeds up to the speed the foils can lift the hull clear would be the other major modification, other than the foils themselves which I believe could retract flush to wing or fuselage exactly like wheel landing gear. In fact such a plane could be equipped with both wheels and foils, and thus be amphibious.

There would be weight penalties, mainly from strengthening the body of the plane, and moderately from the foils themselves. But there need not be much in the way of streamlining penalty.

This is the sort of waterborne jet fighter (and bomber, and transport) I am thinking of. I'd think that if Convair ever got the Sea Dart right (as I am sure they could with enough of a commitment to the concept from the Navy) it would wind up looking like a modified F-102, with air intakes higher up and farther back to shield them from spray, and a sealed bottom and some provision of a lower lip on the exhaust to keep water from freely seeping or spraying in. Also, the Navy wanted twin engines in case of engine failure while the F-106/F-106 used a single engine. Otherwise there were a lot of similarities of design, since they came from the same designers at about the same time to perform similar missions.

Meanwhile the basic design of fast subsonic big jets like the Boeing family of bombers and transports lends itself to the concept too, if we can switch the engine pods to above and behind the wing instead of below and ahead--at least one small commercial passenger jet, designed by VFW in Germany, did this in the 1970s. Then it is a matter of making the wings strong enough to serve as sponsons during low-speed taxiing while floating on the water.

So in addition to fighters, we could have medium to big bombers, and transports as big as you like--C-5 sized, 747-sized--shuttling to and from the vicinity of a fleet at sea and fixed bases, ready to accompany fighters and other attack planes part of the way or to resupply the fleet units with urgently needed supplies. Even if such planes don't replace carrier planes, they certainly would allow smaller vessels to serve as detached units and still have their own air cover and airborne resources.

I have also been toying with the idea of small aircraft carriers that use hydrofoils or hovercushions to achieve speeds like 120-150 knots in surges; if a surface vessel can reach such speeds they can launch and retrieve airplanes much as the airships Akron and Macon (ZRS-4 & -5) did. The latter would simply fly at 60 knots or so, and the biplane Sparrowhawk fighter/scouts, which could stay airborne at that speed, would hook on to a trapeze hung below. A hydrofoil or hovercraft carrier would be stationary relative to a low-flying jet, which could be caught with guiding hooks and set down on a platform. Haven't yet finished estimating what sort of engine power that would take--clearly it depends on how big the "carrier" has to be.

I'm thinking 500 tons or so, a frigate or very small destroyer, capable of carrying maybe five 25-ton fighter or attack planes. Major maintenance would be done on a dedicated fast armored and armed tender ship, but again small task forces could be detached for specific missions.

Another thing to consider about these alternatives is the vulnerability of a big carrier and the utter dependence its planes have on their being a carrier deck (or some kind of airfield) for them to land on. An accident on a carrier deck can take that ship's flight deck out of commission for weeks; this is why carriers are assigned to task forces at least in pairs. Even so it would be easy for both to be damaged enough that any planes airborne would have no choice but to ditch. If instead the task force were made up of seaplane tenders carrying an equivalent number of planes that could land on water (takeoff can be via catapult, JATO rockets, and the like) then even if all surface units dedicated to serving the planes were sunk, the planes could still land and presumably be towed or hauled aboard any ships that did survive.

High-performance seaplanes might even be based on a submarine, though it would have to be small planes and a big sub, and the planes' takeoffs and landings would tend to give away the sub's position.

Or if they relied on fast hydrofoil/hovercraft "decks," there would be many of them and presumably at least one or two would survive and be able to land planes.

Big carriers have worked out well for the USN post-WWII largely because no one dares to try and sink one; such an attack is of course tantamount to declaring war on the USA. If an all-out war does break out, obviously a carrier has some ability to defend itself via its planes which will protect it. But the enemy will try hard to get through as just a little damage can take a carrier out of commission for a long time, and both theory and WWII experience show that it need not take much to destroy one permanently. Even a nuclear-powered flattop that needs no flammable fuel to propel itself or power its operations still carries a lot of the stuff anyway for its planes, along with lots of ordinance. Something nasty getting through the defenses is particularly likely to do major damage to a carrier as opposed to other sorts of ship, armored deck or no.

It seems only smart to have some alternatives handy to fall back on.
 

Bearcat

Banned
The technical changes might be very small. Both the Corsair and the SB2C date back to 1938. The Essex-class was the successor of the Yorktown class and work began once a naval expansion act had been passed, also in 1938.

Most of the ww2 platforms and weapons are like that. Started or conceived before the war. Some things like radar and VT fuzes came more quickly to pressure of the war, but designing a whole ship or plane generally doesn't come that quickly.

Where you'll see differences is 1945 on. A lot of the designs that incorporated the wars lessons will be delayed. No F8F Bearcat here, jets probably derail it like many other late ww2 prop designs. No Des Moines class cruisers. Upgrading from the Baltimore / Oregon Citys would not be a priority without the Solomons campaign.

By 1950, things start to diverge quite a bit. But carriers will still grow, as the aircraft they host grow. Angled decks are a response to the faster speed of jets and the need to bolter rather than crash into the deck park.
 
There is also the issue of Japan. If there is no war in 41, what happens in the East after the war in Europe finishes? What is the IJN doing/building??
It would affect the composition of any post-war building 'race'

With the planes available in the late 40's (high performance props and early jets), carriers have an obvious use in the Pacific due to its size. The capabilities of the planes make surface ships vulnerable, so carriers get a bigger part.
In OTL, the US went to a carrier-centred force out of necessity. The RN kept with a mixed force (heavy ships + carriers). In WW2, I'd see the RN concept staying the main one (no pacific experience to counter it), and then the heavy surface units steadily declining (wearing out and not being replaced), while carriers keep getting bigger and better. By 1960 I dont think we'd see any real difference with OTL, but the transition from BB -> Carrier will be a bit more gradual after the war.
 
Well if there has been no Pacific War-perhaps there was a slightly different and less confrontational regime in Tokyo? Anyway lets now try to turn the picture. We can probably imagine that the Germans have been defeated in late 43/early 44 with all those resources that were used in the Pacific being arrayed against them. We haven't yet established what the cassus bellei was for the States to get involved-maybe a repeat of the Luisitania but on a grander scale? News of the main extermination programmes don't reach Churchills ears until later after all (if you were to have that as the reason). Anyway I digress.

Germany has been defeated. Perhaps the Western Powers got further into Germany as a result and maybe we have a free Poland-all very interesting and worthy of its own thread but I'm off task here. So we've had the RN striking Taranto and the RN is thoroughly aware of the power of naval air power. Existing designs and designs being worked through in UK include the beautiful Sea Hornet, various improvements to Seafire (Seafangs...) the Sea Fury, the very ugly Shorts Sturgeon and so on-and of course then there are the jets...

IF we have an earlier ending to the Second Great European War then UK economy is in slightly better shape, US economy is in post war boom as in real world. I'm guessing Jap economy is so-so. (Not quite booming as it was). So as a result the UK has concentrated on building its Illustrious class carriers and all the experimentation it would do with angled flight decks, flexible landing decks, deck landing systems and so on-all of which the US takes up with great enthusiasm even in this world (after all safety and operationaility are good things). I'm guessing that the Majestic and Collussus class carriers that gave service to many of the worlds minor leading navies might never have been bothered with (a distraction from building convoy escorts?), so RN only has 30KT sized carriers available-the Audacious class (later Ark Royal and Eagle) perhaps all 4 have been built. Perhaps even the Malta class got built after all. In 1950s as IJN is still a coherent threat the 1950s medium fleet strike carrier programme is also built with older Illustrious class now going to razor blades/sale.

So overall my guessing for naval aviation from a UK perspective is slightly rosier future.
1950s-60s rather than the 5 fleet carriers and 2 commando jobs we did have probably 7 fleet carriers and up to 3-4 commando (LPH). Perhaps its this Navy that fights alongside the USN in the Great Pacific War?
1960s-70s remember that any nuke programmes might have slowed down too changing the emphasis on naval doctrine. Then perhaps RN retains 5 strike carriers (the ones built in the 50s and maybe some form of CVA01) and some commando jobs plus up to half dozen ASW jobs coming on in the 70s (if there is a cold war soviet sub based Navy and the UK economy aint as shot as it was). Carrier air mix of SR53, Buccaneer, HS125s and what have you.
1980s-present day. today RN would be operating 2 carriers, ASW jobs gone and 1-2 commando carriers. Carrier air would have developed too with SR53 being replaced by navalised Typhoon (although I'm presuming here that it would be 10 years earlier than IRL and look more like EAP)....
 
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