How Carriers Ruled the Sea in WW2 - WW2 Documentary Special
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2024
- How did the carrier task force come to be the premiere weapon in the US Navy’s arsenal, eclipsing the mighty battleship? Today Indy takes a look at how the Navy worked overtime to produce flattops, train the men who sailed them, and develop new doctrine for the war against Japan. What does the future hold for the carrier force?
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Jake McCluskey
Research and writing by: Steve Coffman
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Editing and color grading by: Simon J. James
Artwork by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Simon J. James & Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by: Mikołaj Uchman
Source literature list: bit.ly/SourcesWW2
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Among the Clouds - Helmut Schenker
Annihilation - Jo Wandrini
Byrr - Hampus Naeselius
Additional sound effects provided by Zapsplat.com
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Thanks again to Steve Coffman for researching and writing this episode alongside his important work as a community ambassador! It’s Timeghost Army members like Steve who make this channel possible.
Join them on timeghost.tv or www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
so quick question, Are you planning on doing videos like this for all the combatants of the war? i think that would be very interesting viewing
After talking about aircraft carriers, there is still no Timeghost Navy!
Sailors on Escort Carriers sometimes called them "Kaiser's Coffins" and often joked that the abbreviation, CVE, stood for "Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable".
Drachinifel did a great breakdown of this for his Battle of Samar video. Worth 40min of your time.
that CVE abbreviation is synonym for every military troop or personel :) regardless of rank or money thrown at it :)
Thanks for sharing and thanks for watching!
It's not entirely wrong?
CVE were used to lure Kamikaze away from Fleet carriers
The number of ships the US built during WWII is staggering.
And you don't really get how staggering until you look up the photographs of the Mothballed Fleet.
US Navy fleet in 1941 ~450; US navy fleet size in Fall 1945, 4,500+ ships/subs
@@BV-fr8bfdoubt we will ever see anything like that again
Lesson is: Don't poke the Giant.
And at the Kaiser shipyards the working mums needed childcare for their kids. Kaiser had on site child care facilities 24/7. And each care centre had a registered nurse on duty. Kaiser had doctors on staff during each shift and some shipyards had on site health care centres where employees could be seen for ailments and illnesses. After the war Kaiser expanded his healthcare and it is now the Kaiser HMO.
The moral of the episode :
Don't mess with Steve
Eehhhh I mean the era of seaborne airpower is here
I wonder if he has a Tommy Gun, not that I plan on misbehaving in the comments,
Who is tommy and why do he have a gun@@charliedontsurf334
@@charliedontsurf334 Ten small holes from a Thompson or one big hole from a bazooka. Same outcome. 😀
So. Much. Airpower.
-Steve
As a *non* American former infantryman, I find it terrifying that any country would allow an individual to own any of the weapons listed.
There were several changes to US Carrier doctrine not mentioned here. When the Pacific Theater started the US had each carrier heading its own task force. This was done to assure that a single battle would wipe out a carrier group. The success of Japanese concentrated carrier tactics changed this. There was also substantial change to the Anti-Air tactics and equipment over the course of the war. Not just the VT shell, but air fire directors and other systems made CAP and AA fire much more impactful. One could argue that the WWII US Navy was one of the great learning organizations in military history.
They learned, but often the hard way. Most of all the naval leadership at the beginning of WW2 was firmly entrenched in tactics and thinking of the past, resisting any changes to that. And most Navies are still like that to some degree.
I daresay that while the British invented every technical innovation of the aircraft carrier, including the carrier itself, it was the USN that wrote the doctrine book on how to handle them. To the point that the largest British carrier force ever assembled, the British Pacific Fleet, operated as close as it could to USN doctrine. And I think it started with the Lexingtons, which allowed the USN to operate a massive air group and gain experience with them, at a time when the RN only had a handful of aircraft per carrier. That pretty much set the trend.
@@ChaptermasterPedroKantor-kv5yw I would say the Japanese did the carrier strike group - see the Kido Butai. However, the Royal Navy did Taranto before the Japanese did Pearl Harbor.
also, damage control was an area where USN had a massive lead over IJN.
The single carrier per task force structure at the start of the war was more about the number of carriers and air groups than doctrine. There just weren't enough carriers to support multi-carrier task forces. The USN had practiced multi-carrier operations in the pre-war Fleet Problems and the concept was not foreign to them.
You did well with repeating that there were 151 US carriers, otherwise I would have checked myself if I heard correctly
"built during the war."
yes, but they did not do a good job of representing the difference in combat power between the 122 escort carriers, the 9 Independence class light carriers, and the 17 Essex class fleet carriers (24 in total built but "only" 17 finished during the war, the rest after it ended).
You can count those 17 Essex class ships (up to 24 depending on your definition regarding construction and service) and the 9 Independences as THE carriers. Plus the 5 pre war fleet carriers that were actually worth something (the USN didn't think highly of Wasp and Ranger). Count those as the main carrier fleet. Exclude the escort carriers, they were shitboxes. Its like comparing the combat power of an M1 Abrams tank with that of a Humvee and saying they are on the same level.
The early escort carriers were literally only cargo ships (of which the US built hundreds during the war) with a flight deck strapped on top. The earliest versions didn't even have a hangar. And their aircraft numbers on board were VERY small. We are talking about 10-20 aircraft for the first half of them and up to 25 at most for the later ones. I have no idea why Indy said in the video they would carry half the number of the fleet carriers, that is factually completely false, that would be around 35-40 aircraft, no escort carrier even came close to that. The only exception to that being when they were used to ferry aircraft from the US to the UK, but in that case they could not launch or recover any aircraft at all since their flight decks were completely filled front to back. Another thing that made them not great was their very slow speed (18 knots max), which means they often had trouble launching aircraft if they couldn't get enough wind over the bow; that slow speed also made them unable to participate in any proper naval fleet operations. There were more limitations that I wont go into detail with.
The escort carriers almost never participated in actual naval combat. Their job was convoy escort and the support of marine landing forces during the Island hopping campaigns in 1944 and 1945 as mentioned in the video, as well as to act as aircraft ferries (how do thousands of lend lease aircraft get from the US to the UK and USSR when ranges are short and aerial refuel doesn't exist yet? By ship). They also neglected to mention that almost half of these ships were transferred to the British under the lend lease program to supplement their own construction, which could not keep up with demand. Those ships saw almost exclusive service in the Atlantic and European theater, where they almost always operated against german submarines only.
Again, the escort carriers weren't even close in combat power to the light carriers, or god forbid a fleet carrier. If you are talking about actual naval engagments, meaning naval battles between the US fleets and the Japanese fleets, escort carriers were never a factor (except once when they got ambushed by a japanese surface fleet). Those naval battles were exclusively fought with the 5 pre war carriers and the Essexes and Independences. If the question arises how many carriers the US fielded against the japanese navy, the answer would be 5 + 9 + 24 = 38. Not over 150.
A bloke who goes by the name of Drachinifel did an excellent video on the doctrine of British & American aircraft carrier...
Yup, quite an interesting video. he also had one on Sable and Wolverine.
The Fleet Problems series is a must watch
Don't forget about Dr. Alexander Clarke! They should get him as special guest on this channel
The navaal historiographer
And two blokes named John Parshall and Anthony Tully wrote an outstanding book on Japanese carrier doctrine, possibly THE #1 best book on the Pacific War.
Its name...
Shattered Sword.
Unsurprisingly, Drach made a video on Sable and Wolverine. Probably the only freshwater aircraft carriers.
And I believe they were coal fired. Probably the only two in the fleet using coal.
@@Blipvertus yup, that's correct, coal-fired too.
Also the name of a yet to announced X-men movie
I was at an aviation museum with a model of one of these ships. Paddle wheel!
My uncle Jim was being transported to Kwajalein on an escort carrier. He was an aircraft mechanic (land based carrier planes) in CASU44. Carrier Aircraft Service Unit 44. The baby flattop had 40 and 20mm AA guns, plus one 5 incher on the fantail. On the way over it was decided to test fire the 5 incher. They fired one round, that ended up cracking bulkheads on the ship. The Captain said, "That's enough". My uncle was so happy when he was delivered to Kwajalein.
Fun fact, because broken down planes were often pushed of the flightdeck to clear it as fast as possible for landing planes. A lot of WW2 carrier aircraft can be found(and sometimes salvaged) from the bottom of the Great Lakes.
If I remember correctly the Yankee Air museum at the Willow Run airport has a display featuring a navy plane at the bottom of Lake Michigan. It also features a brief history of the two fresh water carriers. Very nice air museum. Check it out if you are ever in Michigan.
The naval aviation museum in Pensacola has one of those, an early Dauntless that was at Pearl Harbor, transferred to the Marines at Midway and survived that battle, then transferred to the Great Lakes training squadron, where it did not survive its final pilot trainee.
“Sir Tom went down with the Prince of Wales and with him a whole era. Never again were large ships sent into enemy waters without air support; Billy Mitchell was right.” - Douglas MacArthur: Reminiscences, New York 1964
Billy Mitchell also said that aircraft carriers were obsolete due to the long range of land based bombers which was ABSOLUTELY WRONG!
@@randywarren7101 Mitchell maybe off on carriers (shouldn't be a surprise given his beef with the Navy) but he was right about air power effects on battleships.
Modern battleships were surprisingly hard to sink by aircraft (especially bombing). And even in 1941 aircraft were far less effective than they would become by the end of the war.
Prince of Wales & Repulse were supposed to have an aircraft carrier (HMS Indomitable) sent to the Far East with them as part of Force Z. (Although some sources dispute this.) But HMS Indomitable ran aground in the Carribbean and needed repairs.
Billy Mitchell's inter-war tests on sinking ships with bombs had many, many flaws - not least the use of obsolete pre-Dreadnaughts as targets and the fact they were stationary, not moving. Even by 1941 hitting a moving ship with level bombing was a matter of luck and had been widely abandoned. Even by the middle of the war, it was still difficult to sink ships under way by aerial bombing. (The Royal Navy had been intensively studying how to use aircraft to sink enemy ships since during WW1. And throughout WW2 they still concentrated on aerial torpedoes as the most effective method.)
Although the RAF was critically short of planes in Malaya & Singapore, there were fighters available to give Force Z air cover during their voyage to attack the Japanese landings. But due to communication errors they didn't know what Force Z's intentions were.
It wouldn't have taken much to protect Force Z. The Japanese bombers had only just been moved to French Indo China, but were still operating at the very limit of their range. A few fighters disrupting the Japanese bomber formations (as was RN doctrine for their carrier fighters), making them easier targets for the ship's AA guns & causing some to run low on fuel might have been enough to save Force Z.
Even without any air cover, they were not quite the sitting ducks they are portrayed to be in popular histories. What doomed them was an extremely lucky torpedo hit on Prince of Wales, which hit outside her torpedo defenses just where one of the propeller shafts exited the hull. Until then both ships had managed to evade numerous torpedoes. The few bomb hits did no significant damage and the bombers alone almost certainly couldn't have sunk either ship. But any hits could damage/disrupt the ships AA defenses and command & control. As well as drawing fire from the torpedo bombers.
To show how hard it is to sink a battleship by aerial bombing, in late 1943 it took a direct hit from a 1500Kg Fritz X guided bomb to sink the Italian battleship Roma (ex-Littorio), a very modern (& large - treaty breaking) battleship. But the smaller & much older WW1 vintage HMS Warspite survived a direct hit from a Fritz X.
And numerous British attempts to destroy the German battleship Tirpitz (as a stationary target in a Norwegian fijord) failed. Until late in the war they eventually managed to score hits & a near miss with 5 tonne supersonic Tallboy bombs.
That first sentence has really good meter; very easy to sing it. Doug needs to rework his second line though. Maybe replace 'without air support' to 'un-attended'. Or, 'un-airtended' ? lol. The implied comma in the second sentence is after "sent", to fit the meter. :)
I mean, Billy Mitchell also lied about being the greatest video gamer of the century, so, who are you going to believe?
Childhood us when you idolize battleships. Adulthood is when you realize aircraft carriers are the way.
This segment should have included the Taranto attack in 1940...which was _the_ lesson that carriers were the new king of the seas.
Well Taranto after all gave the Japanese the idea for Pearl Harbour, and that was done by a handful of Biplanes
@@devvy_01 the japanese already had plans for Pearl Harbour before Taranto happened, but that was the proof it would work and they studied the attack closely to refine their own attack plans.
@@devvy_01 The IJN's plan to attack Pearl Harbor with carriers predates Taranto, although the Japanese did take great interest.
@@Cailus3542 The Battle of Taranto took place on the night of 11/12 November 1940 during the Second World War.
see you guys in 30 years when the last Japanese soldier finally surrenders
Won't they make a few appearances as a few who didn't quite hold out for 30 years decide to finally surrender?
Great video. 151 carriers is staggering. Add to that the production of battleships, cruisers, destroyers etc. Incredible.
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors tells that story well - for anyone that hasn't read it, strongly suggest doing so (Also Drach has a video on it, no surprise).
Don't forget the vast numbers of large merchant ships.
Thanks for the shoutout for the Great Lakes Naval Training Center here in the North Shore Chicago Suburbs. I live 5 mins away from the base. Currently, the only Navy training center in the U.S. for enlisted personnel.
Thanks for watching!
When it comes to US carriers, usually the first thing that comes to mind for me is the USS Enterprise (CV-6), also known as The Big E. One of the few pre-war carriers to survive the war and seeing more action than any other US carrier ship...
It also had a massive impact on pop culture. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was fascinated by the history of the USS Enterprise and used it as the namesake of the starship in his TV series.
As an aside, Roddenberry was also a WW2 veteran, serving with the USAAF and piloting a B-17 Flying Fortress in the Pacific Theater, as part of the 394th Bomb Squadron.
It's a shame it was preserved as a museum ship, CV-6 is pretty much legend status.
@@themiddlecase At some point in 1943 she was alone (and still damaged) for the entire Pacific. Before the essex were out, this was pretty tense with Lexington, Yorktown, wasp and Hornet gone. Lady Sara is the only one that survived with big E... waiting for the essex class, 25 of them in 1943-45.
They tried twice but failed. Cause the Navy said they would have to pay for everything to get her a pier or dock to stay in. All the maintenance @@themiddlecase
True, the name 'USS Enterprise' has been on 2 previous carriers before and another one will take a new carrier in the future so that's 3 overall. Interestingly, previous parts and metals of the predecessors are passed down generation to generation.
As for the other carriers like the Essex class, I kind of wish the other ships were preserved as well. I mean come on, they fought other battles/wars too as well as enduring tragedies and enjoying victories. Only 4 are museums and 1 is a wreck diving site and the rest are all scrapped with bells, anchors and ship plaques of just names and photographs that remain. Then again, where would those ships be preserved in USA?
The documentary film, "The Final Countdown" is a must see for historian buffs.
ROFL
I disappointed with the ending.
@@riff2072 I know, you wanted the big splash down too. But as far as time travel movies go that movie was a perfect time travel movie. Setting into motion events that had to happen for the present to be.
"Splash the Zeroes, I say again, splash the Zeroes..."
Aaaand just like that I hear the song. Thanks
One thing that evolved with carriers throughout WW2. Was the Royal Navy and later, the US Navy began implementing night carrier ops. For the Royal Navy, they had been using their swordfish for night and bad weather attacks. Most notably at Taranto and the hunt for the Bismarck. Both use radio beacons between the aircraft and carrier. Plus, flares for target identification. Later, aircraft such as the Swordfish and Avenger Torpedo bombers were fitted with radar. As well as F6F Hellcats
For the US Navy, they began their night carrier ops towards the end of 1943. With Enterprise launching night fighters under the guidance of a radar equipped Avenger.. To hunt IJN bombers during Operation Galvanic. The tactic worked as it shot down a few aircraft and scared off the rest. But at the unfortunate cost of the mastermind behind all this, CDR Edward "Butch" O'Hare. At the start of 1944, Enterprise was given a 4-plane section of VFN-101. Comprised of radar-equipped F4U Corsairs. These 3-4 plane night fighter sections would operate from the fleet carriers to protect them from Japanese night bomber attacks. In Operation Hailstone, Enterprise's VT-10 would launch a night attack on Truk. Marking the first-night carrier attack since Taranto. Later, Independence was fitted with Night Air Group 41 for the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Which helped track Kurita's centre force coming through the San Bernadino Strait. After having turned around at the loss of Musashi.
At the end of 1944, Enterprise was fully committed to night ops. First, with the arrival of Night Air Group 90, CV-6 was redesignated to CV(N)-6. Additionally, a number of her Avengers were modified for electronic warfare. To intercept, track and jam enemy radar. The highlight of this deployment was 174 hours of nonstop Air ops by Enterprise over Iwo Jima. After Enterprise was withdrawn for repairs. Bon Homme Richard was bought in with Night Air Group 91 for the war's end.
Bring it on Steve. I have a few WW2 weapons myself. Lol.
Thank you Steve Coffman for doing the research for this episode!
Steve did a great job!
@@WorldWarTwo He sure did.
Drachinifel explains a lot of this, and his channel deserves all the recognition it can get. This is a great video also
May history never forget the name Enterprise.
Need to keep all the old names alive. We don't need another carrier named after Kennedy. We need one names Saratoga or Constellation or Ranger, not named after politicians. Yes, I know Kennedy served in the Navy. I want to remake the movie PT-109, only this with Predator. Unfortunately, any vision I have of Kennedy and his crew escaping that island results in the Predator watching them escape, vowing to not stop until he gets that man and the movie's final scene going: Dallas, Twenty Years Later.
Not quite sure how I got derailed to the point of claiming Predator did it. Makes about as much sense as any other conspiracy theory only it looks cooler on the big screen.
US Carrier design had a bit more nance than being cheap and fast (though it certainly was a big factor for Escort Carriers). Saratoga and Lexington were hull conversions from what were originally going to be battlecruisers, so they were a bit of a special case. These happened because of the naval treaties in the interwar period that tried to slow down the arms race among the world's largest navies. It just so happened that making carriers kind of got around some of the restrictions. The Japanese ended up doing the same with Akagi and Kaga.
For actual fleet carriers starting with the Ranger and going through the Yorktown-class and into the Essex-class, wooden flight decks were the norm. The actual armored deck was under the hangar deck. This meant it was lower to the water which helped balance and seakeeping. The hangar deck itself was kept open to the air aside from light weather shutters which partially was to allow for novel launching methods like the side catapult on the Wasp, but was more for letting it be as large as possible to fit as many aircraft and parts as it could. Another benefit was that fumes couldn't get the opportunity to build up and any sort of explosion would not be concentrated. For the wooden flight decks, these were lighter and much easier to patch damage from, especially without requiring the need to head back to port for the repair.
Contrast with the British designs which had armored flight decks and enclosed hangar decks. I've read that these were more for considerations with where they'd be fighting. Assumed to be within range of land-based bombers as well as potentially gun-based warships, the armored flight deck would help mitigate damage. The enclosed hangars were again for better protection as well as a consideration toward the usual poor weather of the North Atlantic. The British didn't see as much of a need for aircraft numbers.
The Japanese had their own way of shipbuilding, but it appears they ended up with the worst of both worlds. Enclosed hangars that became a hazard under combat conditions while not carrying quite as many aircraft as the rival Americans, and wooden flight decks that couldn't shrug off damage (except for Taiho's armored flight deck, but that got destroyed because of its ventilation issues).
By the time the US was designing the post war Midway-class, they had better manufacturing methods and an even better understanding of ship design. They settled on an armored flight deck with an open-air hangar deck. This did necessitate a deeper hull. Going forward, these qualities would last even with the shift to supercarriers.
The Royal Navy opting for armoured flight deacks was indeed about survivability. They knew that war with Japan was likely to happen sometime and if it did they would be operating carriers on the other side of the world. In the North Sea, Atlantic & Mediterranean they would never be far from major repair facilities at home or in Alexandria. But neither Singapore, Australia or India had facilities for major repairs. (Churchill blocked the funding the RN requested to upgrade the facilities in Singapore & Australia when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1930s.) So minimising damage sustained so it could be repaired locally was vital.
It's widely believed that Ark Royal (built as an 'unarmoured' carrier, with a larger air group) was built for the Pacific. But this is incorrect. She was built as the RN's 'strike carrier', to launch a large attack in one go (like the US designed their carriers for). But RN carrier doctrine from the very beginning (going back to WW1) was for multi-carrier operations. The plan was that Ark Royal would be held back, screened from the enemy by the armoured carriers (designed aroung continuous operations, not one big strike) ready to launch a large strike. But losing Courageous & Glorious so early in the war, and Churchill needlessly pausing work on the new carriers already under construction, limited their ability to operate carriers together.
The numbers given for aircraft carried by different carriers is a bit misleading. The US & Japan carried extra aircraft parked on deck. The Royal Navy didn't do this, after losing so many deck parked aircraft in the 1920s; the rough seas of the North Atlantic & North Sea kept washing them overboard. Also the numbers given also include a significant number of non-operational spare aircraft. (The US used to suspend spare aircraft from the hangar ceiling and these often get included in the totals. The RN generally carried their spare aircraft crated.) So while the US carriers generally could operate a larger air group than RN carriers, the difference is not as great as the numbers suggest.
Britain could have done what the US (& Japan) did with Lexington & Saratoga and convert two of the incomplete Admiral class battlecruisers (Hood's sisters) to carriers, they were allowed to under the Washington Naval Treaty. But whereas the US navy could concentrate their forces in the Pacific, the Royal Navy needed to cover almost the entire globe. The Royal Navy had to get as many aircraft carriers out of their treaty cumulative tonnage limit as they could, so they had to build smaller & more efficiently. So for their hull conversion carriers they chose Admiral Fisher's infamous WW1 'large light cruisers' - Courageous, Glorious & Furious and get 3 carriers for about the same displacement tonnage as the two US battlecruiser conversions.
@@ibex485 frankly I have to laugh at the claim that the number of aircraft in the British carriers were not that much less
Looking at the record the average fleet carrier of the USN through the war operated a carrier air group of around 80
RN less than 50.
@@gruntforever7437 Again, you don't seem to have actually bothered to read what I wrote before responding. No such claim was made.
@@ibex485 Don't forget HMS Unicorn, Honestly not an aircraft carrier, a forward Aviation Support Ship.
@@ibex485 oh come on I read all your drivel and you made it clear that the British carrier groups were only slightly smaller which is a joke
There were actually 3 main classes of carriers during WW2. You had the big fleet carriers, like the Essex-class that could carry anywhere from 90-100 aircraft. The light carriers, like the Independence-class which were built on converted cruiser hulls and carried about half of the aircraft that the Essex carried. The escort carriers, like the Casablanca-class, were built commercial ship hulls and usually only carried about 2 squadrons
The light carriers could also keep up with the speed larger task forces and the fleet carriers for the most part. Earlier in the war the Japanese had some pretty good light carriers.
151 carriers...
Wow.
Hoi4 is really off with numbers. lol
That is why having a massive industrial base is a plus, and why outsourcing that industry to China has proven to be a colossal mistake.
A lot of them were escort carriers though, which were a lot more easier to build.
@@cpj93070correct. Of those 151 carriers, only about 33 were Essex class fleet carriers or Independence-class light fleet carriers.
@@kemarisite 33 Fleet Carriers is still an impressive number
@@cpj93070still 20 light Air craft carriers are more than the stipulate nowadays.
Is a moustrosus quantity of material, also 130 escort still are an issue because you need crew supplies, navy construction material and factories and shipyards for production, maintenance and repair.
I have played World of Warships for years and I have all United States CVs and their rivals Japanese CVs as well. I love the feel of being captain fighting against the enemy fleet.
I would love an episode comparing logistics between the European theatre and the pacific. Fielding such massive armies, navies and air wings is ridiculously expensive when it comes to fuel, food, spare parts and ammo. But moving all those items thousands upon thousands of miles just to deliver them to a dock... Its mind boggling, putting that into perspective could be really, really cool
Reading Black Shoe Admiral drove home how few oilers the USN had to provide fuel to the fleet. Also by the end of his time on station in the Coral Sea, Fletcher's task force was running out of food.
Look for Samuel Eliott Morison's History of US Naval Operations in WWII . It's 15 volumes and covers more logistics details than you can possibly imagine.
The US Navy also had the USS Essex under construction before Pearl Harbor. So, the importance of the carrier was known before. What was not fully known or appreciated was how vulnerable were ships to air attack and that a ship's air defenses were not adequate at the start of WW2.
Your conclusions were spot on. The carrier you tried to remember was the USS Langley, the US first carrier. By WW2 Langley had been converted to a seaplane tender. Even in this role she did not make it to the end of the war. The USs Ranger although considered too small, did participate in operation Torch and the Normandy invasion. I believe she finished the war as a training ship. Escort carriers started as ASW carriers in the Atlantic.
Langley was lost early, late 41 early 42 ferrying planes to the south Pacific.
"Retaliation"... so refreshing to enjoy a platform which is not cowed into refraining from making an obvious joke. Hopefully your collective talents will be around for a long time.
I had no idea Indy was going to go there and I spit coffee when I saw it.
-Steve
I recommend “Sustaining the Naval Carrier Airwar” by Stan Fisher. It’s about how the navy organized and ramped-up training programs to train the people who worked on the aircraft. The unsung heroes who kept the aircraft o the fleets and ground-based operational.👍
Excellent as always Indy. Can I add a comment, historians and the public do not give enough credit to Admiral Chester Nimitz for the development of US carriers in WW2. He arrived at Pearl Harbor with the old battleships out of action and the new battleships and new carriers still being built. He used what resources to go after Japan and these were carriers.
I served on a WW2 carrier, USS Hancock CVA-19 in the early 70's. She had recieved an angled flight deck, New 4 pendant arresting gear and 2 steam catapult but forward of the island she was still wooden decked. The wood was teak and teak is so heavy it doesn't float. I am not saying it was as strong as steel but it was pretty tough. My neighbor's father served on the same ship in WW2 and he was on her when she sustained a kamikaze strike. Obviously the ship survived for many more years.
I live near where 3 of the Kaiser shipyards were in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.
You can still see remnants of the slipways in Vancouver along the Columbia River where escort carriers were constructed. Not much else remains except memorials.
We do have Oregon Iron Works that constructs some ships at the Vancouver site today.
I've seen those, such an amazing legacy and important regional history.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Father in Law trained as a Coxswain at Great Lakes then later on the newer Lexington. Stayed in the USNR til 1953. Great guy.
Thank you for sharing.
A big plus for the construction of a fleet carrier compared to a battleship? They're easier and quicker to make. Battleships require a lot of fancy techniques for their armor during the war. They also required far more steel.
Some Iowa-class Battleships' construction times.
It took 37 months to build USS Missouri.
Her sister Wisconsin took 35 months.
New Jersey took 27 months.
Iowa, the lead ship of her class, took 26 months.
Essex-class Carrier examples:
Yorktown (ex-Bonn Homm Richard) required 16 months.
Intrepid required 18 months.
Hornet (ex-Kearsarge) required a mere 15 months.
Franklin only needed *13* months.
Brought to you by Dauntless®
"If you have been thinking it,
We can be sinking it!"
(Enterprise upon spotting the enemy)
Enterprise: Go my children.
Paddlewheel Galactica! I bet she would look good in a steampunk setting.
Great video. I knew several vets of the US carriers in WW II when I was a younger. An officer on Saratoga, and a sailor on a CVL (he missed being on Interpid CV-11 by three men. His ship was not hit. I worked with a marine who was in boot camp the first time Saratoga was hit. An officer came into a room asking for welders, Bruno puts up his hand. Told he is going to San Diego to help fix Sara and back to boot camp. Well VJ comes, Bruno is still a private, welding in San Diego shipyard and never finished Boot Camp. There was always another ship that was damaged he was needed to do welding on. Sad to say all these men passed away.
Shame they didn't make him a specialist and promote him a few times.
The fast carrier task force of the US Navy was the strongest and most powerful naval force in the world in 1945, the ability to control the sea area that they wanted, seek and destroy any naval force and also overwhelm any enemy land based aircraft, in 1945 the task force in many particular raids sortie more aircraft in the air than the number of aircraft the Japanese could to counter the raid.
LEST WE FORGET the Light Carriers, the CVLs, that started out as Cleveland Class Cruisers and ended-up as CVLs. Not as big as a Fleet Carrier, but with those Cruiser well armored hulls made them tougher and more durable than the CVEs.
And fast enough to keep up with the rest of the battle fleet, not plodding around with transports and merchants.
Very informative and entertaining as always.
Thanks!
-TimeGhost Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwo that reply was ridiculously quick. Your activity in the comments is a big part of what makes the TG Army feel like a family. And I’m not just talking about the on air talent. It’s all of you in the background who have helped to make the most detailed account of WW2 in history. Time Ghost is becoming the definitive source, especially with your standard of not injecting any personal politics into your videos. Thanks so much, to EVERYONE behind the scenes, for making something so important.
One detail note. The wooden flight decks of American carriers (Especially the fleet carriers) was not a production shortcut,
but a design trade-off driven by pre-war aviation philosophy - the theory was that dispensing with the armored flightdeck
allowed each carrier to carry a larger airwing - which was thought to be greater value in both offence and defense than the armored flight deck.
The US Navy's experience late in the war, forced a certain amount of re-thinking on this concept -
though factors such as the speed and weight of aircraft postwar were other factors against using wooden flight decks.
Aside from breaking the enigma code, the rapid production of escort carriers was probably the next most important factor in the Allies winning the Battle of the Atlantic.
Hard to separate out the impact of carriers from the impact of 10-cm radar, which was a massive force-multiplier for Allied aircraft. Spotting a periscope visually was exceedingly difficult even for a well-trained pilot; with radar, it was a snap.
@@DarklordZagarna The use of radar equipped Avengers allowed the air gap in the middle of the Atlantic to be well and truly closed.
I had no idea we produced so many carriers, even if they were smaller.
The 120+ escort carriers were essentially cargo ships with a flight deck on top. The US built hundreds of cargo ships during the war. The escort carriers construction style had basically nothing to do with the proper fleet carriers. Of those, the US finished 17 during the war and 7 after its end. Plus 9 light carriers during the war, which were based on cruiser hulls, and thus were actually built to good military standards and could operate together with a battlefleet (which the escort carriers could not).
The number of carriers that could actually realistically be brought to combat against the japanese navy, was 31. 5 of the 7 pre war carriers (Lexington and Yorktown classes), plus 17 Essex class, plus 9 Independence class (which were much, much smaller than the others).
Comparing the different carrier types is like comparing an M1 Abrams tank and a Humvee. They dont even have close to the smae combat power, and are used for very different things. And both are needed.
This was a fantastic special, thanks Indy and team!!❤
And thanks to Steve for working on this one!
The escort carriers also played a big part in winning the battle against the U-boats by providing air cover over the convoys. Britain also built some of the escort carriers and flew Gruman Wildcats off of them. Escort carriers also worked in the Mediterranean and in the India Ocean supporting and protecting shipping in those waters. There were actually three classes of escort carriers: the auxiliary carriers built on the hulls of Cleveland class cruisers that were capable of higher speed and carrying more aircraft, the Sangamon class and Commencement Bay class carriers and then carriers built on the hulls of tankers allowing for more aircraft.
Coming into WW2, the 3 major carrier powers had different visions of what was still a nascent fleet element. The RN's focus was the European context, in which carriers supported fleet operations, possibly within range of land-based air. The USN saw carriers as supporting fleet operations and raiding relatively isolated enemy bases, i.e. largely in the Pacific. The IJN envisioned what the USN did, BUT also figured out that with surprise or near-surprise, a massed carrier fleet could overwhelm even a fairly large base. The IJN did that in the PH attack, using 6 fleet carriers as a striking force. In 1942 the USN did not see that vision, operating in task forces of 1 or 2 carriers, until after Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz, the USN did not have more than 2 or 3 simultaneously operational carriers in the Pacific (sometimes just 1, wounded, carrier). BTW, the video may mention this, but USS Ranger and USS Wasp (CV-7) were not full-sized fleet carriers, sacrificing robustness and upgradeability to reduce displacement (because Naval Treaty).
An aspect of the United States that I do not think the Japanese appreciated was the ability of the United States to produce the needed ships and aircraft and the logistical expertise to support the forces worldwide.
Yamamoto tried to warm his superiors that the American economy would be insurmountable if mobilized.
they 100% did, Yamamoto stressed if they went to war with the US they'd have to sweep them off the board immediately as the longer the war went on, the stronger the US would get
the japanese were well aware of this fact, its postwar myths that persist which lead to people thinking the japanese were incompetent and ignorant
it wasnt even just yamamoto who was aware of this, practically all of the japanese navy general staff acknowledged this fact which is why they werent optimistic against a full victory against the US
their goal was to capture as much territory as possible using surprise and local naval superiority, dig in and pray that they can inflict enough casualties against US landings to cause enough attrition to retain their empires possessions after a negotiated peace
this was assuming that they could retain an extremely high kill to loss ratio across all their branches (which ended up being the opposite) and the US population would eventually grow tired of war, but the delay in declaring war to the US before the attack on pearl harbour had significant repercussions for this doctrine
for what its worth, japan punched WELL ABOVE its weight in ww2 but nothing would eventually change the swarm of essex class carriers and thousands of pilots aboard them obliterating the IJN in the latter years of the pacific
Japanese military leaders were aware of US production capabilities but the more hawkish among them hand-waved it, believing Japan could score a decisive victory over the United States before American industry could be fully utilized. The Japanese made a similar mistake as the Germans while planning Operation Barbarossa. Similar to Hitler's belief that they "merely needed to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come down, " they believed their enemy lacked resolve and if a truly decisive blow was stuck, the US would seek peace on terms favorable to Japan.
All comments are 11 likes it’s 11 11 11 is that a coincidence I think not 😅
Excellent special!
A great episode on the subject. Well done!
Thanks for watching!
“Quantity has a quantity all its own,” unofficial motto of the Sherman tank in the battles of western Europe.
But probably mostly attributed to Stalin.
*laughs in T-34*
As always, the writing for this show is money. Great job.
I really admired your information, and presentation style.
Great episode.
Excellent and Outstanding!!!
Respect Steve!
Great episode, Indy & Steve!
Thanks! Indy really turned it up to 11, along with James, our main writer. Looking at my notes, sources and what I wrote and then the episode shows how much work everyone else put into this.
-Steve
The American mantra of WW2: Build a lot of everything and build them good enough.
It was effective, and it had the advantage which many others lacked of being able to replace anything lost in battle fairly quickly. That's what ended up stopping the Axis navies who could not replace battle losses at all.
Indy. This video is an excellent primer on this subject. Why not a series of videos about the naval battles of WW II in the Pacific?
Always a good day when it's an Indy video released.
The sheer number Essex class fleet carriers and Independence class light carriers, along with newer aircraft types also played a key role in the US carrier domination in the Pacific.
I can testify it is true, this channel is the best of the best when it comes to retaliation
Thanks!
Thanks a lot, great job
Excellent.
I've seen and read the US navy combat tactics from 1941 and it lists the carrier as an escort vessel! I have a copy of the 1943 combat tactics from 1943 and it lists the carrier as a main strike weapon, and the battleships on the third page!
But in the 1950's page one chapter 1 of naval combat air tactics is written by Commander Genda on attacking ships!
That's pretty cool to know
Given the enormous casualty rates among Japanese Navy personnel of all stripes, it's somewhat astonishing that both Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fuchida survived the war basically unscathed. Fuchida even somehow managed to survive being sent to Hiroshima shortly after the bombing. The man had a charmed life.
@@DarklordZagarna Fuchida became a Farmer and a Christian missionary and met his war hero in the 1950's admiral Nimitz!
Genda retired to a quiet life and was technical consultant on the original movie of Midway! And he met the hero of the famous battle while filming the movie!
Excellent thanks
Thanks for watching! -TimeGhost Ambassador
When you think about it, it's kinda wild to realize that the carriers against carriers warfare on a relatively even ground only lasted for like 5 months, between the battle of the coral sea in early may 1942 and the battle of the santa cruz islands in late october 1942. After that, the matter was settled.
Well, there weren't any carrier-to-carrier battles at all from Santa Cruz until the Philippine Sea in June 1944. The air aspect of the Solomons campaign was basically done by the USAAF with a few Marine squadrons thrown in for variety.
Essentially, each side's prewar carrier fleet destroyed the other (Harry Turtledove, in one of his alternate history novels, has a character describe those early war battles as the equivalent of "a duel with submachine guns at three paces" because of how mutually destructive they were), but the US was able to rebuild theirs (ours, for me, being an American) far more effectively.
@@DarklordZagarna You left out a few orphaned Navy Squadrons that were transferred to the unsinkable carrier that was Guadalcanal.
Again another fantastic show
US carrier production was stupendous. During its involvement in WW2 and on average, the US produced a carrier every two weeks, a truly mind numbing rate.
Escort carriers were essentially cargo ships with a flight deck on top. Never compare them to actual real aircraft carriers. They are worlds apart in capabilities. Its like saying a Humvee has the same combat power as an M1 Abrams tank. The number of actual fleet carriers that were completed during WW2 was 17 Essex class ships. Still very impressive of course, no other nation came close to that.
Thank you.
There are many reasons the USN chose wooden flight decks over steel for WWII. There is an excellent Wikipedia article on the subject which goes into detail far beyond what I can do in a UA-cam comment.
Drachinifel also has a great video on the subject.
@@fguocokgyloeu4817 Was going to post the same comment :-)
Well just tell us the basic gist of what was wrote?
@@cpj93070 quicker to repair flight deck damage. Larger plane capacity, less threat of dive/level bomb attack. (The British was operating in the Med and North Atlantic where the theat of land based aircraft was significantly higher and thus opted for armored flight decks)
As soon as they were free from the treaty tonnage limits and could build the carriers they really wanted all along, the US Navy adopted armoured flight decks too.
The Essex class were always designed to be their mass produced quickly carrier, as they knew war with Japan was almost certain (and the war in Europe was already underway). Reducing the armour allowed them to be built much quicker and without competing as much with other warships for limited production of steel armour.
The classes of carrier which came before the Essexes were all constrained in size by the Washington & London Naval Treaties.
It wasn't until the Midway class that the US Navy was free of these restrictions. They were the kind of carrier they had wanted all along.
They also benefitted from the wartime experience of the British carriers - the USN was able to examine battle damaged RN carriers in detail when they were sent to the US for major repairs. And experience of operating a British carrier (HMS Victorious) when it was loaned to the USN in December 1942 when the US were reduced to a single operational carrier in the Pacific. But it's highly likely they would have gone for armoured flight decks anyway.
The Royal Navy went through a similar generational process with their carriers. The never completed Malta class were their equivalent generation to the Midways, and the Audacious class (only completed after the end of the war) equivelent to the Essexes.
I love these specials ❤
So cool!
This was a shift in warfare as profound as gun powder. Thanks for covering the carriers.
I read a book from the mid 20's, The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater, where he envisioned a war between Japan and the U.S. The book seems to illustrate the thinking of the 20's with regards carriers (including the U.S. rigid airship carriers), i.e. that they would serve well for aerial scouting and spotting of fire from the battleships but would otherwise not effect an outcome of a battle.
This thinking may have started to change for some in the 30's with improved airplane technology, but I suspect that the thinking of the 20's became entrenched in the minds of proponents of battleships especially those of high rank. It's my perception that four things influenced a change in this thinking: the Washington naval treaty (battle- ships/cruisers were restricted, aircraft carriers were 'experimental' and exempted), the Battles of Taranto and Pearl Harbor (successful fleet air arm attacks on capitol ships in port), and the sinking of HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales in open waters where the capital ships could maneuver.
It was the last part you mentioned that totally sealed the fate of Battleships as a useful Naval warfare tool, A similar scenario is being seen as the future today with massed drones replacing piloted planes.
I didn't realize until recently that the Essex carrier swarm construction began prior to the U.S. entering the war. As the situation deteriorated and Congress opened the money spigots, the Navy got to begin building the successors to Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise.
I grew up in the Chicago area so was happy to hear you mention the Lake Michigan carrier fleet. I was in the Marine Corps so never spent time at the Great Lakes Naval station.
Steve here. I got involved in this episode because I'd found and purchased Admiral Whitehead's sword, his uniform is on display at the naval museum in Chicago. The whole story of the Great Lakes station is fascinating.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
The British contribution to the rise of the aircraft carriers should not be forgotten. And even to the attack against Pearl Harbor. After all the aircraft of the Royal Navy made their harbor strike against Italian battleships at Taranto in November 1940.
Really like this channel, but when the conversation started at Pearl Harbour I had to switch straight off. Taranto was the beginning of the change and the Japanese learnt from that.
I guess we should thank the Brits for teaching the Japanese how to attack Pearl?
Yes but that's Iike comparing Waterloo to the Somme. Taranto was a masterstroke for sure but this video is about Carrier fleet tactics not just the use aircraft carriers. As inspired as Taranto was it was done as one option among many and frankly probably shouldn't have succeeded with how much went wrong. But the air arm had its day and if the Japanese could do anything it was learn and plan. What followed was the movement of the world's largest carrier fleet across thousands of miles of open ocean past several early warning and patrol sites and the flawless deployment of hundreds of aircraft using specialized weapons to render a fleet twice the size of the one at Taranto completely inept with minimal losses. Taranto was a proof of concept to Pearl Harbors practical application at scale.
Exactly especially since we invented the thing, why would you start from Pearl Harbour and not give any background on the start of what actually was the reason to build carriers in the first place?
@@r3d5ive87 it is not just Taranto, IJN learned from Brits
USN had CV, CVL and CVE designation for 3 types of aircraft carriers.
-"Admiral King, sir! But we have already constructed over hundred carr-"
-"I DONT CARE! I WANT MORE!!!"
It makes sense to use cheaper materials for the smaller carriers. A lot them served in Atlantic, where enemy submarines and their torpedoes were the threat - not aircraft. There would not have been any real downside to using a wooden deck in that theater of the war. A submarine would not stay surfaced to use it's deck gun against a carrier, unless the submarine was damaged and the crew had any other choice. Having a wooden deck also meant less weight, making the carrier less prone to sink if damaged. Using wood would have made the ship slightly more flammable, but that would not have made much difference. If a fire starting below decks spread all the way to the top, the damage would be massive before the wood even became an issue. And as pointed out by others, a wooden deck is cheaper and easier to replace if damaged.
Very interesting
Another great video! Time Ghost ought to do special on the American work force that cranked out ships, aircraft, tanks, weapons and food to keep the troops supplied and fighting. The Axis really didn't know who they messing with when they declared war on the United States of America. Will we ever be as tough as the Greatest Generation?
Love your tie Indie, clearly you support the Fremantle Football Club
Steve sounds cool. I'm impressed with that collection.
Thanks!
-Steve
Hello from India Indy. Can you please do a video on prisoner exchanges in ww2?? And I am really scared of Steve's Arsenal 😅😅😅😅
😂 I love Indy's humour
if only they really built that ice ship...
Slight corrections:
1. American escort carriers carried a maximum of between 15 and 34 aircraft, with the vast majority holding between 19 and 27. By contrast, the full-blown fleet carriers held as many as 100. Some of the old models (Lexington, Saratoga, Wasp) carried smaller complements, but in general CVEs had more like a quarter the aircraft of a fleet carrier than half.
2. There was a third important class of US carriers in WWII, those being the Independence class light carriers, built because the US had excess capacity to produce light cruiser hulls and could convert those hulls into... let's say, passable, albeit quite mediocre, aircraft carriers. They held only about 33 planes each, but the big difference between them and escort carriers was that they could sail at fleet speeds (30 knots). And given that those nine ships added the equivalent of three fleet carriers' worth of planes to the US task forces, I'd say that it was an effective use of the ships in question.
And one additional note: wooden flight decks were a lot easier to repair than metal decks, so there was some good reason for using them. Even the core fleet carriers, the Essex class, had wooden flight decks. Admittedly, this was controversial (the metal decks were less likely to get badly damaged in the first place, obviously). But there was some method to the madness.
The Independence class was also built due to concerns about the timing of the Essex swarm being later than it was.
By the 1930s, the main British naval doctrine documents from the chief admiralty had already made clear that carriers were the future and should be prioritised over battleships. The US twigged to this in part as a side effect of of Pearl Harbor, and observing the Japanese, but were also persuaded from across the Pond.
"In this connexion I could not help being struck by a telegram in the Daily Telegraph to-day in which Admiral Cunningham was asked his opinion on the future of the battleship which has been a subject of controversy in the United States since a decision was made to concentrate on producing aircraft carriers. Admiral Cunningham said it was too early yet to say that the battleship was obsolete, though at present the type might be considered to be obsolescent. The future, he said, might lie with some hybrid type of carrier-combat vessel. That is a great advance. I hope the Government will look into that question and see whether the right proportion between the types of ships is being properly preserved. I noticed in that connexion that the noble Lord, Lord Winster, recently writing in another paper, said he wanted to do away with the battleship. Generally he does not agree with me, but in this case I hope to-day he will go further and agree with much of what I have said. I am well aware of the criticism I shall bring down on my head for even asking such a question as this from 604
the naval authorities who sit in this House, but they have not hesitated in the past to make suggestions about the air, and so I now make these suggestions about naval communications."
CONDUCT OF THE WAR.
HL Deb 01 July 1942 vol 123 cc551-613
Good story, & funny Indy
The Vancouver Kaiser shipyard in Washington alone built 50 escort carriers
Old testament week by week, a companion publication to the korean war. automatic subscribe!
Hmmm… flex deck also had a huge impact on carrier doctrine. It allowed our carriers to operate more aircraft with more flexibility than the imperial navy.
Could you please do a special on the largest avation training program ever? The British Commonwealth Air Training Program. Thank you for your great content.
On Feb. 2, 1951, CVE 92. USS Windham Bay became the first US vessel to navigate the Mekong river and drop anchor in Saigon as part of OOTW (Operations Other Than Warfare.) Her mission there was to deliver F-8-F Bearcats and F-4-U Corsairs to the French forces in Vietnam. Aircraft with advisors, mechanic and flight instructors were offloaded while the escort carrier took small arms fire. I have a copy of the San Diego Tribune reporting the event which my mother kept because my father was on the Windy. He had served in WWII and was in the active reserve, he was called back into service in late 1949. He had previously served through out WWII on tug boats and destroyers, and was a veteran of Operations Crossroads.
0:20
"...letting the days go by..."
The value of escort carriers was shown at the Battle of Samar when the planes from the escort carriers of Taffy-3, Taffy-2, and Taffy-1 were extremely important in causing the IJN Central Force to withdraw.
Wrong. That was NOT the value of escort carriers at all.
That was the only time during the entire war any of the escort carriers saw action against surface ships. Out of over 120 ships, a handful of them saw enemy warships ONCE. Their value lied mostly in convoy escort (thus protecting merchant ships against submarines) and ferrying aircraft from A to B, mostly from the US to the UK, as well as supporting amphibious landings. Their strength was their ease of construction (which also made them rather bad at doing carrier things) because that meant you could have aircrafts in locations you otherwise couldnt.
@@xxnightdriverxx9576 The US Navy airmen in the Taffys did as much or more than the tin can sailors to turn back the Center Force by keeping up constant air attacks through the day.
@@user-gl5dq2dg1j I am aware of that. But it has nothing to do with what I wrote. The value of 120+ ships who never see enemy warships but do A LOT of important tasks that aren't "fight enemy warships" is not defined by a single engagement where 3 of those ships did see enemy ships once. That engagement was not the value of the escort carrier. The value of the escort carrier was in other roles.