How come USN operated their carriers with draftees during WWII, Korea and Vietnam?
Lots of career NCOs, Annapolis graduates, NROTC Reservists, and battlefield commissions.
You mean the JF, don't you? That is the Grumman Duck.
Know your history.

The JFU was the
Jap Fucker Upper. A bunch of shipping crates covered by a tarpaulin set aside by the runway. In the shape of a covered aircraft, it was the only "target" that appeared to the Japanese to be an aircraft. Since every other plane stationed on Midway was either searching for Nagumo, launching a strike against him, or in the air defending the airstrips, they went for it, dropping a bomb on our Secret Weapon. The JFU died gloriously,

giving up its existence for Mom, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.
The Tu-4 Bull worked, right to the exploding engines catching on fire.
The Soviets didn't have the experience gained from fighting "The Battle of Kansas". It cost them. Then there was the apparatchik order to copy the air-pirated B-29, right down to copying the bullet holes put in the fuselage by the Soviet fighter that pirated it.
It was a failure of coast defense that would and did cost the CCCP the Cold War and would have seen it fall quickly during a hot war. The operation was betrayed by John Walker and his crew, but it went ahead anyway. THAT and the game of "tag, you are dead" fought under the ice-caps showed the Russians they could not ever win even with a first strike. By contrast, how many times do you read about a Russian boat detected off the US coasts? Think detected means a threat? It means tracked torpedo bait.
There's also the issue of the Soviets not having the metallurgy to cast single giant propellors for their subs, forcing them to use much noisier twin blades. Now, with the treason of a Norwegian company selling the Russians the secrets for making those giant blades, that advantages no longer exists.
*SHEESH* You would have thought the US selling all that scrap iron to Imperil Japan would have taught our allies something. For the sake of a few million $$$, this will cost us
billions to counter.
WWII was a time of massive build up and growth for the US; there's no way an all-volunteer force would grow fast enough. So it made do. And I'm sure it caused problems.
Especially in the first 18 months.
As for efectiveness of draftees in normal times, note the ratio of officers/enlisted sailors in the soviet navy submarines vs that in western volunteer services. Soviet subs needed a lot more officers because the enlisted were short-time draftees who were given pretty much basic tasks. The Alfa class carried only officers.
An Alfa had a cook that was an officer?
It was the "draftee navy" that fought at Samar. I honor those guys down to my socks.
Very much agree with the rest.
ALL of the US Navy in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in ALL actions, had draftees. I believe you are thinking of the reservists. The Battle of Surigao Strait and the Battle of Samar were the greatest victories ever won by the United States Naval Reserve.


Which to be blunt is IMVHO why we see so little reflection in our popular culture of Leyte Gulf. Though it was the largest battle in naval history in terms of firepower and numbers of ships, it also represented a gross humiliation for the US Navy "professionals". That is, the boys from Annapolis. Most of all, for the "hero" William F. Halsey, who got all the headlines, over Kincaid and Ohlendorf, who won all the battles that counted.
can't speak about sailors,but I hear the army suffered from quite some motivational problems during that time...
Up until well into the Reagan buildup, the US Navy has always enjoyed (at least starting in the 1880s) (1) greater largesse and respect than the US Army. Circumstances have changed since Panama and Gulf War One.
1) In 1879, Chile threatened to bombard the US West Coast over an economic dispute. The problem was solved diplomatically. But when Congress (who was to blame in the first place) was told that if Chile's then very powerful fleet had tried to attack the US, there would have been nothing the US could have done to stop them. Thusly, they started the long delayed naval buildup, beginning with the ABCD ships.
Don't forget the US army was stuck in that hell hole called "Vietnam war" for a long time... that dropped morale like a stone. I've read Afganistan had a similar efect on the sov army.
100% correct. Vietnam was MORE hopeless, but the Soviet Army was still stuck in its WWII "damn the casualties" mode, making getting killed proportionately more likely. Even the
mujahideen could not believe the readiness that the Soviets displayed to abandon their comrades. Leaving behind troops in a damaged or stalled vehicle, all in the name of "fulfilling the mission". That is, giving up half-a-squad KIA just to complete a routine convoy delivery ON TIME!
Oh they were. But not in the same way as during WWII. Think about it. In the Cold War, you had an opponent that was a theoretical threat, someone you often got into pissing matches and dick measuring contests against, but only extremely rarely were punches actually thrown. You had a desire to be better than him. Not necessarily a desire to wipe him from the face of the Earth.
Compare that to WWII. Your enemy stabbed you in the back when you weren't looking, killed THOUSANDS of your people, ran roughshod over half the Globe and very clearly despised you. Halsey said it best: "Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."
There's motivated, and then there's motivated
It should be pointed out that other than in thwarting spy missions the US and Sovs were never in a situation where they knowingly engaged each other in active combat. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK's biggest worry was having to engage a Soviet warship.
