WI: Armored Deck Essex Class Carriers

Newport News schooled everyone on building Essex class chips. CVs 13 and 14 went from keel to commissioning in 13 and 14 months respectively.

Fore River did pretty good too, but the Naval Shipyards took their own sweet time building them.
 
It's a cultural thing...

And then there were the cultural differences between operations on British and American carriers. The Brits, training in their home waters pretty early resorted to keeping their aircraft below deck as long as possible. Meanwhile US carriers resorted to parking aircraft on their flight decks pretty much from the start. Theirfore an armored flight deck would protect almost all of your aircraft if you were sailing on a British ship. On an American ship it would only protect the ones below deck. The ones parked topside would be toast either way.

(And note once more that the Essex class actually had an armored floor on their hangar deck to protect the lower hull.)
 
It was not the designs that delayed the British carriers - it was the degradation of certain industries - for example - the Armour plate construction industry had effectively been allowed to die in the UK - indeed Illustrious and her sisters were delayed as much of her armour had to come from Czechoslovakia!

I remember reading a (small) article, some years ago, on how UK shipyards were also far less eficient that US ones, leading to longer construction times.

And the yards were also full of ships under repair and being bombed...
 
It wasn't just number of aircraft. While not entirely due to the armored deck, RN carriers also had far smaller fuel resources available, both for aircraft as well as bunkerage. This was part of the basic design compromise that every warship designer has to live under and ships are built to reflect their mission and the strategic perspective of their country.

RN designs (not just the carriers, but other capital ships as well) were actually built with the idea that they WOULD operate inshore, hence the armored decks, but also with the clear understanding that the Royal Navy had a vast archipelago of bases circling the globe where fresh supplies would always be available. That didn't survive first contact with the enemy, but it was still a reasonable assumption to make since it had been the truth for around 300 years. The British ships were also built to fight in the North Atlantic, with the Med being more of an afterthought, something that made them very difficult ships in the tropics (all ships were something of roasters, but the RN had even greater difficulty than the U.S. or, remarkably, IJN ships). The heat vastly reduces personnel endurance and effectiveness, and by published accounts from the era, BPF personnel suffered more than their fair share, even with a dedicated brewery ships as part of their fleet train (!).

The other issue was this problem was recognised very early (pre war) and the idea was to produce 3 Aircraft support carriers (HMS Unicorn) - 1 for each 3 carriers.

However a lot of unnessasary angst was wasted on them being considered a proper carrier and thereby breaking the 2LNT (IMO while this was being discussed the 2LNT had become worth less than a roll of Toilet paper) and in the end only one ship was laid down - later than it should have been.

3 such ships delivered by 1940/41 would have allowed the task of general aircraft Maintenace, light damage repair, engine overhauls etc to be conducted on these ships and largely freed up the Fleet carriers for more of the shooty bombing tasks, while allowing fleet carriers to have an aircraft reserve relatively nearby making up for the smaller airgroups.

And never underesimate the force multiplier that is a Fleet Brewery ship :D
 
Top