Any ideas as to how many Fleet carriers the USN had during the war? There's the Remembrance (CV-1) and several other fleet carriers, though not by name. My guess is that there's two or three carriers similar to OTL's Lexington class, maybe a Ranger (OTL's CV-4), then the Enterprise (Yorktown is an escort carrier) and Hornet, before going to OTL's Essex class. Not as many as were produced during OTL, but the Essex-class ships are there. Thoughts?
The only carriers mentioned by name in stories are
USS Remembrance,
USS Sandwich Islands,
USS Trenton, and
USS Chapultepec, totaling at least 4 carriers of varying classes in the US Navy, though there are likely a few more.
My guess as to how many fleet carriers the US Navy has by the time of the Second Great War in 1941 is rather conservative and low - 3 fleet carriers at best, or maybe 2 with one under construction, with no escort carriers in service. Maybe 4 carriers at best but this is really just a guess. However, given the focus that these carriers are given in the books, especially the USS Remembrance, I think its safe to say that the US just doesn't have that many carriers. The USS Remembrance alone over its long career seems to have been thrusted into many theaters of war, going from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back - you'd assume the US would have a few more carriers stationed in the Atlantic or the Pacific to address threats instead of making the handful of carriers it does have run marathons around Cape Horn.
The good news is that we can accurately guess what the existing carriers may be based on judging by how they were designed.
The
USS Remembrance (CV-1) is mentioned to have been converted from the hull of a US battlecruiser around the tail-end of the Great War, around 1917-1918. In fact it still retained a few of its lighter battlecruiser guns. While its a rough fit, I think its a good bet that the
USS Remembrance was based on either of the 2
Lexington-class carriers from our timeline -
USS Lexington or
USS Saratoga.
^^^ ---
Lexington-class schematic and design --- a possible design fit for the
USS Remembrance.
^^^ ---
USS Saratoga.
USS Sandwich Islands (CV-2) might be the sole sister ship to USS Remembrance, but given that its design was mentioned to have been purpose built as an aircraft-carrier and not built on the hull of a converted warship, it is also likely that
Sandwich Islands is an entirely new class. In fact it is specifically mentioned to have been
"built from the keel up" as an aircraft carrier. This to me hints that the ship may be based on the USS Ranger in our timeline - Ranger was also purpose built as an aircraft-carrier and its wiki pages states that it too was "to be designed and built from the keel up" as an aircraft-carrier.
^^^ --- USS Ranger --- a possible design fit for the USS Sandwich Islands.
If these two designs are in fact the inspiration behind the Remembrance and the Sandwich Islands, then it is possible to guess what the characteristics of the ships might be.
USS Trenton (CVE-1) and
USS Chapultepec (CVE-2) are described as escort carriers in the novels. They were described as being sisters ships of presumably the same class, built on the hulls of converted freighters. This is actually in line with how many escort carriers were built in our timeline during the early years of WWII - small, slow, lightly armored carriers that could carry a small complement of aircraft, but were very cheap to build and could be produced rapidly in the absence of larger fleet carriers. This situation was what happened in TL-191 and the two carriers could be said to have been built after the loss of the
USS Remembrance as a kind of stop gap to get carriers back into the Pacific Theater as quickly as possible to address the threat of the Japanese.
Since they're mentioned as being based off the converted hulls of "freighters", it might be possible that the two escort carriers in TL-191 could be based on the
Bogue-class of escort carriers, which were built on the converted hulls of Type C-3 cargo ships. The
Sangamon-class escort carriers were built on the hulls of converted oilers, but that class could be a candidate for what the
Trenton and
Chapultepec were inspired by.
^^^ --- Bogue-class escort carrier --- possible design fit for Trenton and Chapultepec.
^^^ --- USS Bogue
So, with all that in mind, my guess that the US Navy in TL-191 could be operating with two classes of fleet carriers by the time war breaks out. I still say that at best they could have between 2 fleet carriers with one under construction or 4 fleet carriers already active. Any more than that and I'd say that would be pushing it. War-time numbers though? That could easily change.
Here's my list below of what I believe the US Navy has in TL-191, based off what was mentioned. My guess is that they can have 2 more fleet carriers around at the start of the war, but I believe they would have any escorts carriers around until the war started.
US Navy Carriers:
- Remembrance-class - [x1] - USS Remembrance (CV-1)
- Sandwich Islands-class - [x1] - USS Sandwich Islands (CV-2)
- Trenton-class - [x2] - USS Trenton (CVE-1), USS Chapultepec (CVE-2)
