USS Enterprise sunk at Pearl Harbor

How would this all affect the British request for the Wasp to fly planes to Malta? Would the Wasp be unavailable and would this have a significant impact on the battle of Malta and the interdiction of supplies to Rommel?
 
How would this all affect the British request for the Wasp to fly planes to Malta?


It won't.

The "Germany First" policy will not have changed and reinforcing Malta will have a priority over nearly anything that can occur in the Pacific.

The historical operations in the Atlantic and Med, like Calendar and Bowery, will go on as they did in the OTL. In the Pacific, Coral Sea will be different, if it occurs at all, as will the IJN's attempt to lure, trap, and destroy the USN at a "Midway".

Whether the US wins, loses, or draws the Pacific battles after the loss of Enterprise at Pearl, when the fruits of the 1940 Two Ocean Navy Bill begin arriving in 1943, Japan's ass will start being repeatedly kicked on schedule until Little Boy, Fat Man, and the Red Army arrive in August of 1945.
 
Don,

No. Starting in the summer of 1944 when the IJN was essentially anchored in the western Pacific, she spent a little over one year training carrier borne night fighters out of first Pearl and later San Diego.



She delivered aircraft in the Atlantic, a very different combat environment than the Pacific, and her two combat operations were Torch, where French North Africa didn't present much of a threat, and a two day raid on northern Norway where the Luftwaffe didn't present much of a threat either.



When the US was down to one carrier in the Pacific, there was still no pressure to use Ranger. She's too slow, too small, and too old for combat. She's also too valuable in her actual wartime role; training carrier squadrons.



That isn't my suggestion. That's what actually happened.

The 9 Independence-class light carriers were converted from either previously laid Cleveland-class light cruiser hulls or planned hulls of the same class.

Note that I originally said that the Ranger was used in a non-combatant role in the Pacific. Conducting carrier training (night training, if I remember correctly) off of the California coast and Pearl Harbor in 1944 and 1945 certainly seems to fit that definition (non-combatant activity in the Pacific) quite neatly.

As for her (the Ranger's) activities in the Atlantic, she was certainly exposed to environment where enemy activity was unlikely but possible. Given the size of the Pacific, and our intelligence advantage from Magic, it is not impossible to imagine how she might have been used in secondary theatres where the overall threat level is low.

The Ranger carried 86 aircraft, and was able to sustain 25-27 knots (29 knots was a one-shot, as you correctly point out) which means that she was certainly not a fast task forces carrier. Her lack of armor would have left her vulnerable to attack, but in truth this could be said of just about every American carrier, since none of them had any armor protection worth discussing. The US made the conscious design choice to leave out armor (especially the flight decks) in the interest of greater aircraft capacity, which seems to have been a good choice given the historical record. The Ranger was smaller, slower, and a bit more fragile than the Enterprise and other fast carriers, but certainly not useless, and certainly not without some value in a resource constrained Pacific.

As has been pointed out already, resupplying and reinforcing Malta could have been handled by CVEs, and in any event, it is unlikely that in the event that resources were truly as constrained as you suggest re: the Victorious, that the USN could not have agitated to get the Wasp committed to the Pacific. The Europe-first dictum was violated on numerous occasions (landing-craft come immediately to mind), and was more of a general goal, not a hard and fast rule.
 
Light carriers...

Don,

Sorry I didn't comment early on your point re: the Independence class...yes, I know that the Clevelands were converted to Light Carriers, but I thought you were referring to doing this on a larger scale (there were certainly more hulls to do this with) than in OTL. Given the relative inefficiency of CVLs, I am not sure that it would have been anything more than a stop-gap measure, but still...
 

Rubicon

Banned
We're not "misscommunicating". You're simply wrong.



What you meant is of no consequence because Victorious didn't leave the yards in Norfolk to begin her service with the USN until January of 1943.

Your opinion means as little to me as mine does to you, HMS Victorious left the ETO in December -42 which is what matters to me. If she then was in Norfolk, South Pacific or on the moon is just a matter of semantics.
 

elkarlo

Banned
There were some war protests towards the end, ie Okinawa and Iwo Jima. If they can keep the war going a bit longer, perhaps a peace movement would grow. That is if A bombs don' exist.

My Q is how many caus would the US public put up with?
 
Enterprise sunk--no rebuild

One consideration regarding Enterprise, or any other carrier. I think that it's unlikely any carrier sunk there would be worth rebuilding. Carriers were the primary target, and so would attract a LOT of bombs and torpedoes--probably taking far more damage than needed to sink them. They are also far less robust than the battleships, and there's a good chance of an AvGas fire, so odds are, IMVHO, very good that the ship is a total loss.

Also, with equal time to rebuild a carrier and a battleship, a battleship might be worth the work, and a carrier not worth it. Battleships take far longer to build than carriers. (Essex class carriers seem to take about a year anmd a half from the time the keel is laid until commission, battleships take MUCH longer. In World War II, NO battleship laid down while the nation was at war was finished in time for the war.)

So, unless really good luck causes Enterpirse to sink with relatively little damage, I'd guess she'd be left where she is, like Arizona, or dragged elsewhere in harbor to be out of the way, or at best, refloated and scrapped.
 
USS Enterprise in port on that morning means her air group and escorting cruisers and destroyers are also on the ground or in port. This likely leads to heavier losses for the attackers, and the loss of even more planes for the US than historically. What about the human losses? With Enterprise in port, are cruicial personnel killed or badly injured?

Regarding USS Ranger, she stays in the Atlantic unless the situation in the Pacific is even more dire than historic, like there being no other USN CVs left at the time. Anyway, the direness of the situation will be decided not by us with hindsight, but by the people back then with the knowledge they have available.
 
Brain glitch - the first time I read the title of this thread, I saw it as the starship Enterprise having been sunk at Pearl Harbour.

Butterflies the size of Mothra
 
Note that I originally said that the Ranger was used in a non-combatant role in the Pacific.


Only after suggesting she was suitable for light-to-moderate combat operations in the Pacific. Here's what you wrote:

CV-4 was smallish (though she could embark 86 aircraft, certainly an adequate number for some operations), and her protection though limited, was acceptable for light-to-moderate combat operations. She spent almost 2 years in the Pacific in a non-combat role...

The combat operations she undertook during Torch and for two days off Norway are nothing to what she would have experienced in the Pacific.

Even when the USN was down to one carrier, Ranger was never considered for combat duty. Even when MacArthur was raising holy hell for a carrier to work with Lexington in the southwest Pacific, Ranger was never considered for combat duty. It is rather telling that King, an arch Anglophobe, swallowed his pride and borrowed a carrier from the Royal Navy for the southwest Pacific instead of dispatching Ranger for the job.

Ranger was not an option ever.

As has been pointed out already, resupplying and reinforcing Malta could have been handled by CVEs...

No. The CVEs were too slow. Calendar and Bowery required the carrier and her escorts to sprint into the Med. In each of the operations, Wasp passed Gibraltar before dawn of the first day, flew off her embarked reinforcements during the afternoon of the second, and was back in the Atlantic by night of the third day. No CVE would be able to cover the distance needed in that short a period of time.

The Europe-first dictum was violated on numerous occasions (landing-craft come immediately to mind), and was more of a general goal, not a hard and fast rule.

The dictum with regards to landing craft wasn't violated. After the landings in Sicily and Italy, large numbers of landing craft would not be used until D-Day. Having those landing craft swinging at anchor in Europe while some could be put to good use in the Pacific was a wise allocation of resources. Once the final stages of the D-Day preparations began, those "loaned" landing craft were returned because no operation in the Pacific had that level of priority.
 
The Ranger

Since I pointed out that the Ranger was used in a non-combatant role after suggesting that it was a viable option for limited combat duty (do you dispute this?) I don't see any inconsistency. We certainly disagree about the viability of the Ranger for combat operations, and that is entirely reasonable. Reasonable people, can (after all) disagree... I merely point out that not every amphib operation was a high-intensity combat with deadly danger, particularly if two or more carriers were available. If matters got desparate enough, I suspect that the USN would have considered using wooden planks on life-rafts, but the Ranger was a far better choice than that. Finally, your comment regarding MacArthur is telling, as the USN was unlikely to voluntarily provide him with any support (he was Army, and beyond that...he was MacArthur, and thus - rightly in my mind - despised by the USN) that wasn't pulled kicking and screaming from them. MacArthur was faced with the immovable resistance of the USN to his SW Pac sideshow, and thus went outside channels to find a solution. Wonderfully creative, but it proves precisely zero.

As for the Ranger being viable for Calendar and Bowery, just because we did do things that way, does not mean that was the only way we could have done them. The threat surrounding Malta was not sufficient to prevent a more circumspect approach using CVEs , though this certainly was a less desirable solution. Just because we didn't try an alternative when we didn't have to, doesn't mean that we wouldn't try one if we did...
 
The War in the Pacific would propably not have been much different, besides the less frequent USN early Carrierraids, due to the missing ship.

Strategically, the lost carrier could be replaced by a speeding up of the building and reconstruction programs, as mentioned before, but also be converting the four first Iowa class hulls, who were all on stock at the time of the Pearl Harbor Attack, into something of an enlarged Independence Class carrier, with a single hangar, but much larger flightdeck. Such a conversion woudl be relatively easyy, since the main armament and large superstructures were yet to be fitted and therfore resemble much like the later HMIJS Shinano in layout. The two first could be ready in their converted outfit about the same time as the first Essex Class ships, speeding up carrieroutput, to replace lost ships in the early months. (assuming the USN would still loose one or other carrier in this early period, as in the OTL.)
 
I know that there were plans drawn up to convert the Alaska's to CV's. I think that's a reasonable plan and would certainly make them far more useful that they were historically.
 
I know that there were plans drawn up to convert the Alaska's to CV's. I think that's a reasonable plan and would certainly make them far more useful that they were historically.


The Alaska's were not started yet, so would not be ready before late 1944, when redesigned and actually constructed. When there was a need for flightdecks fast, this would not be a serious option.
 
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