The Japanese didn’t have a “preservation of personnel” philosophy - the had a death for the emperor philosophy. The total lack of an air sea rescue plan was the result of that. That meant that the loss of experience was a given with a long war as ditching a plane was almost certainly a death sentence in Japanese service unlike the U.S. navy that deployed submarines specifically to rescue downed aviators. The IJN also sacked admirals for not being aggressive enough (but preserving their assets).
When I worked in IT, during my BA, my boss liked to talk also about information raiders, people/systems that would dive in and pick a collectors brain but not take the time to get the context and so would spout without understanding leading to all sorts of weird issues.
When I worked in IT, during my BA, my boss liked to talk also about information raiders, people/systems that would dive in and pick a collectors brain but not take the time to get the context and so would spout without understanding leading to all sorts of weird issues.
I don’t normally watch carrier videos but yours are absolute gold. Can you do a cruiser video comparing the world’s cruiser classes? I’m here for it regardless. Keep up the good work.
While watching my late Father's 8mm film reels while he served aboard the USS Forrestal CVA-59 and the time he spent aboard HMS Ark Royal during a NATO cruise as an exchange sailor in the North Atlantic, I can fully appreciate the Royal Navy's respect for the sea conditions operating in those waters. The poor escort destroyers were absolutely pummeled as I watched some of his films, let alone the curtailment of flight deck operations. It reminded me of what the Japanese Imperial Navy might have experienced in the Aleutians when striking those Islands in 1942. BTW he developed a severe adverse reaction to kidney beans while aboard HMS Ark Royal, somewhat humorous.
Non-treaty compliant Enterprise: Bow to your new god. But in all seriousness. If the culminataive tonnages were removed, an armoured Yorktown would likely survive the Pacific War. OTL Yorktown and Hornet took a battering to finally go down and Enterprise kept shrugging off hits like a champ. But add flight deck armour, a thicker belt and more distributed machinery space and they would most likely survive Midway and Santa Cruz, possibly while still under their own power. Other additions are lots of AA in the form of more 5-inch/38s, possibly twin mounts fore and aft of the island. Plus more 1.1 and 0.50 mounts. The island itself maybe larger with more space for communication areas and flag bridge. Which may mean that come August 1944, Halsey may choose Enterprise as his flagship instead of New Jersey when he takes over from Spruance. What you have is a larger and tougher carrier than what was originally designed and could survive a lot more damage than what was originally produced. Of course this raises the question on how the IJN would counter this.
The 5” was utterly useless until the VT proximity fuse was rolled out. That transformed its effectiveness in late 1942 based on British research shared in 1940. The VT fuse and RADAR guidance dropped the number of shells fired per downed aircraft from six thousand (6000) to five (5). The smallest shell that could take a WW2 proximity fuse was a 4”. The Japanese didn’t have Radar until 1942 when the Germans shared their technology.
@@allangibson8494 I know, especially if you read Enterprise's after-action reports from Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. But she did have a tonne of Oerlikons to make up for that.
@@ph89787 And the Oelikons were scrapped when the proximity fuse became available because they were utterly ineffective at dealing with kamikaze attacks… (Too short ranged and too light in impact to take down a determined attacker who needs his aircraft taken apart to stop him).
Maybe, but it was a spread of torpedoes that killed her, and torpedoes that knocked out her boilers. Shifting the armor from the hanger to the flight deck probably doesn't change that. If she's just a lot larger them you might argue for it, but then you have to guess at how CAP handling is effected. If she's Midway sized then you can have the best of both worlds (or, say, a Forrestal). -- Regarding any IJN peacetime building response, you have to look at how full their yards were and how absurd their military spending was. Japan can't just throw another carrier on the stocks yet, especially not something larger then an oversized Yorktown (Essex being iterative on Yorktown, btw). Japan's response to a carrier crisis wasn't really Taiho. It was a massive run of smaller Unryu types bases off the murdered CarDiv2 models.
@@josepetersen7112 As for oversized carriers - look up the “Shinano”. The Japanese limitation was lack of experienced pilots however caused by their military doctrine that stressed performance over achievement. Doing over succeeding.
Thinking through the question looking at USN, with a question for Scuttlebutt 5 thrown in: If you can build as much tonnage as you want, for sure the Yorktowns are built up to the limit and most of that extra 7200 long tons of standard displacement is going into surviveability in terms of armor, armor higher in the ship, and better torpedo defense. Given how well they did on ~20k t, that's going to result in a pretty...durable asset. And it's still going to be able to deploy the kind of air group and the mass strikes the USN craves. It's gonna be a cool boat. I also think it might come into service a little earlier than than OTL. It's a shorter, easier process to just design what you actually want on an adequate per unit tonnage allowance than it is to scale down what you want to what you think you can get and have to figure out what compromises you're willing to make and what balance you strike to squeeze 80-85% of the capability out of 75% of the displacement. If the USN was ready to go with the design they want, I think the Hoover administration and Congressional Republicans were desperate enough ahead of the 1932 elections that they would pull the trigger on ordering them, and the first two would be laid down a year earlier than OTL, so, spring of 1933. If the US doesn't have to be concerned with cumulative tonnage, there's no way they're going to even consider messing around with the design process that led to Wasp, and I think they just tinker with the super-Yorktown design (maybe your deck edge lifts come around at this point) and they're laying two improved super-Yorktowns down by the spring of 1936. I know that historically, only Wasp got ordered in this period, but I think the USN can get more in this scenario. They're not mucking around trying to figure out how to shoehorn a giant airwing onto a 15k ton hull. They've got a design that is for all intents and purposes their prewar wishlist carrier. By 1934/35 they're well into building the first pair, they'll be entering service by the end of 1936 at latest, and the Japanese are building THEIR wishlist carriers. It's a Keynesian moment in US politics. Plus, the US is not building capital ships yet. I don't think two carriers is a particularly heavy political lift at that point if you really like what you've got. I do think Japan still withdraws from the treaty system in 1936. For sure, they're going to be a lot happier being allowed to build the carriers they want, but I don't think it's enough to keep them in the treaty. By 1936, it had to be clear to the Japanese that war was coming with the United States and/or Britain. They probably still would be looking at their first new carriers to come into commission in 1937, though maybe they're getting the first two in closer succession (both the ersatz Soryu and Hiryu in service by 1938, possibly?). I do think there are impacts on the pace at which naval aviation and the capabilities of naval aircraft develop, but I think the real effects of that probably wouldn't really be coming into play until the war started. In 1936, I don't think the Japanese could possibly be confident that carrier air power could be THE decisive element in a fleet battle. They would still want build new ships for their battleline, and they still wouldn't be able to get within plausible fudging range of the capability they need in new capital ships if the unit limit is 35k t. They're still out. If Japan has left the treaty, the 1938 Naval Act still happens. By this time though, the Lexingtons and the first two batches of super-Yorktowns have established a consistent precedent of building carriers in pairs of the same design, so they order two more super-Yorktowns, and if they didn't put deck edge lifts on the second iteration, dollars-to-donuts, they're on this third batch. All told, I think you're looking at 8 large carriers the US Navy is comfortable operating in the Pacific in or imminently about to enter service by the time the war historically started. The same act will still also authorize the next generation carrier design. With the super-Yorktowns as the baseline, I think that next generation carrier is more or less a Midway equivalent, maybe somewhat simplified so they can be spam built. That late war "Big Blue Blanket" is made up of a perhaps a very slightly less numerous, Midwayesque Essex swarm, with a lot more surviving (maybe 4-5) super-Yorktown's in the mix (plus Saratoga, if here war career follows OTL). What gets interesting is what gets ordered after that, in place of the OTL Midways. With a just generally more survivable carrier force in place, these "wartime experience" carriers can be even more future/postwar needs focused than they historically were. Maybe they're even building in a projection of what it will take to operate jets from an early stage of the design process. They might easily end up building to a design that starts out at 50-60,000 long tons in standard and is really already approaching something on the order of a proto-supercarrier. At the very least, it will be a hull that can grow into that kind of capability relatively easily. With that kind of growth potential built in, actually completing four would make a whole lot of sense. From the late 1940s and through the 1950s, the US Navy could have built its naval deployments around battle groups centered on a super-Midway supported by a couple Essexes that were themselves more or less an OTL Midway level capability. They could put one battle group in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific, have one ready to respond to emergent situations, and one with its carriers in refit. That would still leave a few super Essexes on hand at any one time to handle second line duties, or be sent to plump out a battle group for active combat operations. That's a very capable, flexible force for the first 10-12 years postwar, and it's as far out as I'm prepared to speculate. I know this has been an exceedingly long comment (but wait, there's more!), but this was a cool thought exercise. Thanks for posing it Dr. Clarke. __________ Question for Scuttlebutt 5: If the cumulative tonnage restriction on carriers goes away and the RN, USN, and IJN are building the 27,000t carriers they really want, and building more of them sooner because they can get what they want and don't have to torture the design process weighing compromises they'd really, really rather not make (and everyone else is building them), what are the implications for the pace of development for naval aircraft and naval aviation doctrine and organization? More specific questions that brings to mind for me: A. For everyone: what happens with dive bombers? If the key powers are all building armored 27,000t dream machine carriers starting in 1933/34, no one is going to be able to count on a hit or two with 500 lb or maybe even 1000 lb bombs even forcing a carrier to cease flight operations, much less kill it or force it to withdraw from combat. Does that lead to the major powers reconsidering the dive bomber entirely in a naval context, or do they just start right away working on the technical problem of designing the aircraft that can carry a big enough payload to make hits count out to the necessary range? B. For the Royal Navy: if the RN starts building carriers that are more or less proto-Implacables in the mid-1930s, would that accelerate the return of procurement control for the Fleet Air Arm to the Admiralty in a way that impacts what aircraft are in service with the FAA by the early years of the war? C: For the US Navy: if the carriers being built mean that dive bombing is a more iffy prospect, does the US Navy take a hard enough look at their torpedoes to make sure that they enter war with fish that [redacted] work? D: For the Imperial Japanese Navy: does seeing the USN and RN build up their carrier forces faster and earlier lead them to reassess their organizational structure and training pipeline for aviation personnel in a way that makes it more possible for them to scale up their processes to better meet wartime attrition of those personnel? Glad to hear you're more on the mend. I always love your videos and your appreciate your willingness to share both your knowledge and your process with the rest of us!
In hindsight, the Royal Navy armoured design was very instructive for US naval architects. Perhaps this is reflected in the vulnerability of not only the flight deck, but the gallery deck below. I’m assuming RN carriers didn’t have an extensive gallery deck? Hence the much larger island superstructures.
22:58😆😆 DeHavilland Vampire Douglas A-4 Grumann F8F Bearcat Would like to talk to you being picked on for being small. 34:06 the Essex class was taken from one of discarded design study for a 27,000 ton carrier during the design development of the Yorktowns. 35:08 the Midway's are more of super Essex with a armored flightdeck and some design ques taken from the Montana class battleship. 48:42 I would agree with that using USS Wasp as an example, at least for the Americans. They found the Yorktown the most desirable and discarded the Ranger design for the last 15,000 tons of new carrier construction and commenced modifying the snot out the Yorktown design to get a ship that carried 75% of a Yorktown that they sacrificed all other metrics to get it. The Long hull Essex I think it was also about sea keeping with the clipper bow and the changes to flight deck to improve AA arcs of fire
With the cumulative limit removed, it's a tough call. I see everyone looking at bigger individual ships. But that likely means you have fewer of them. My question is does it alter Japan's Yamato related decision making?
Now I need to know what a longbow Essex looks like/uses. Shaping it like a longbow seems problematic. Having it launched longbow as strike weapons seems whimsical. But I'm going to need a video on carrier launched longbow. April fools project?
Aircraft need better engines. Better engines use more fuel, and that means we need more fuel storage. And to carry heavier engines. To make more power for the given fuel. While it is bigger we now have room to strap on more munitions. So it's even bigger. Ultimately we should just assume airframes will be 20% bigger than what we have, and if we make something smaller, just be glad we can cram more in at a later date.
Better engines don’t necessarily use more fuel - the DC-7 had more powerful engines than the DC-6 but burned 20% less fuel (due to power recovery turbines on the exhausts)… Travelling faster is more efficient in a ton mile per gallon basis.
Nuclear munitions were one example where they shrank. The smallest nuclear bomb in 1945 weighed 4.4 tonnes. By 1965 you could get the same yield out of a weapon weighing 40kg (the usual yield on deployed weapons went up by a factor of ten to a hundred however).
@@allangibson8494 to be precise the reason power recovery turbines provide fuel efficiency it's because turbines recover power that would be lost in the exhausted stroke. As opposed to superchargers which use useful power from the engine to compress extra air into the cylinders, which allows you to pretend you have bigger engine volume to enable you to burn more fuel. I'm not sure of the specifics of the power recovery turbines noted, but usually they use them for supercharging. There are limits on the maximum fuel efficiency of an engine within practical considerations, and as a result trying to make more power ends up hitting design limits. so more powerful engines being heavier isn't a bad assumption to make. It's certainly not a rule, but it's not a bad guess.
War experience carriers… You need war experience to get war experienced designs. Once again, having experience means you had to get experience…and experience is a hard teacher most of the time.
Bravo Zulu. Hi Alex, hoping the pneumonia continues to dissipate at a faster than expected pace. To answer your question, I think the cumulative tonnage limit never happening would be very interesting. For the RN, they could get their 27,000t design, although I do wonder if they do one experimentally, and then iterate on a modified version after they're happy with their confirmed findings. So, perhaps Ark Royal is the initial 27,000t ship, and then a modified Ark Royal class of at least 6 ships gets done quickly in the late 1930s, with the older carriers getting replaced and placed in reserve, or maybe (to steal an idea you suggested with "war delayed" scenario) the RN distributes them in a refurbished state to the RCN and RAN? Perhaps Courageous and Glorious to the RCN, and Hermes and Furious to the RAN? With Eagle to India? It would be a good way to make sure you've still got the assets available if needed, and it expands the pool of carrier-trained personnel considerably. I can't disagree with your suggestion of armoured Yorktowns for the USN, although probably at the same rate and time frame as originally done. Which is a terrifying idea, as an Enterprise that can play rope-a-dope as well as giving the big punch is pure plot armour. For the Japanese, if there are no cumulative limits, I do wonder if that changes their development path considerably. The ability to build at the same rate at the RN and USN gives them an ability to create a scenario where they could reduce their numerical inferiority. Ok, it's not battleships, and in the 1930s carriers are still not seen as a replacement capital ship, but the Japanese will still be able to see that building more carriers rather than placing all the resources into a trio of Yamatos might give them the ability to more effectively pursue their doctrine. Building a batch of 6 Soryu/Hiryu class ships could give them 3 pairs of fleet carriers to either do multiple ambushes of greater scale, or do the same ambushes, and then have a much larger final blow. It's the scenario that lets the Japanese fight on more equal strength than the alternatives, so they might commit to more carriers, not do the Yamatos, and instead add the cruisers and destroyers to protect those carriers, meaning the Japanese would have a much greater number of ships for the war, rather than having a large battleship fleet always in reserve, but struggle for numbers for taskforces they really needed in various operations.
It's the year of leadership... doctrine probably will be part of it, as it has been part of every year, but honestly doctrine is not something that wants to be separated off - it is the fibres & sinews which bind the body of decisions together, not so much a seperate organ
Hey, this isn't a Drachinifel video! 🤔
One of the days Dr. Clarke will be as recognized as one of his good mates.
The Japanese didn’t have a “preservation of personnel” philosophy - the had a death for the emperor philosophy.
The total lack of an air sea rescue plan was the result of that. That meant that the loss of experience was a given with a long war as ditching a plane was almost certainly a death sentence in Japanese service unlike the U.S. navy that deployed submarines specifically to rescue downed aviators. The IJN also sacked admirals for not being aggressive enough (but preserving their assets).
This Channel is solid gold
Indeed !
Then where are the DANCERS?
In my IT career the process you described about information is called information radiators and information collectors
When I worked in IT, during my BA, my boss liked to talk also about information raiders, people/systems that would dive in and pick a collectors brain but not take the time to get the context and so would spout without understanding leading to all sorts of weird issues.
When I worked in IT, during my BA, my boss liked to talk also about information raiders, people/systems that would dive in and pick a collectors brain but not take the time to get the context and so would spout without understanding leading to all sorts of weird issues.
I love this video, I wish you would make one for other types of warships; battleships, cruisers and destroyers.
I don’t normally watch carrier videos but yours are absolute gold.
Can you do a cruiser video comparing the world’s cruiser classes?
I’m here for it regardless. Keep up the good work.
While watching my late Father's 8mm film reels while he served aboard the USS Forrestal CVA-59 and the time he spent aboard HMS Ark Royal during a NATO cruise as an exchange sailor in the North Atlantic, I can fully appreciate the Royal Navy's respect for the sea conditions operating in those waters. The poor escort destroyers were absolutely pummeled as I watched some of his films, let alone the curtailment of flight deck operations. It reminded me of what the Japanese Imperial Navy might have experienced in the Aleutians when striking those Islands in 1942. BTW he developed a severe adverse reaction to kidney beans while aboard HMS Ark Royal, somewhat humorous.
Non-treaty compliant Enterprise: Bow to your new god.
But in all seriousness. If the culminataive tonnages were removed, an armoured Yorktown would likely survive the Pacific War. OTL Yorktown and Hornet took a battering to finally go down and Enterprise kept shrugging off hits like a champ. But add flight deck armour, a thicker belt and more distributed machinery space and they would most likely survive Midway and Santa Cruz, possibly while still under their own power.
Other additions are lots of AA in the form of more 5-inch/38s, possibly twin mounts fore and aft of the island. Plus more 1.1 and 0.50 mounts. The island itself maybe larger with more space for communication areas and flag bridge. Which may mean that come August 1944, Halsey may choose Enterprise as his flagship instead of New Jersey when he takes over from Spruance.
What you have is a larger and tougher carrier than what was originally designed and could survive a lot more damage than what was originally produced. Of course this raises the question on how the IJN would counter this.
The 5” was utterly useless until the VT proximity fuse was rolled out. That transformed its effectiveness in late 1942 based on British research shared in 1940.
The VT fuse and RADAR guidance dropped the number of shells fired per downed aircraft from six thousand (6000) to five (5).
The smallest shell that could take a WW2 proximity fuse was a 4”.
The Japanese didn’t have Radar until 1942 when the Germans shared their technology.
@@allangibson8494 I know, especially if you read Enterprise's after-action reports from Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. But she did have a tonne of Oerlikons to make up for that.
@@ph89787 And the Oelikons were scrapped when the proximity fuse became available because they were utterly ineffective at dealing with kamikaze attacks… (Too short ranged and too light in impact to take down a determined attacker who needs his aircraft taken apart to stop him).
Maybe, but it was a spread of torpedoes that killed her, and torpedoes that knocked out her boilers. Shifting the armor from the hanger to the flight deck probably doesn't change that.
If she's just a lot larger them you might argue for it, but then you have to guess at how CAP handling is effected. If she's Midway sized then you can have the best of both worlds (or, say, a Forrestal).
--
Regarding any IJN peacetime building response, you have to look at how full their yards were and how absurd their military spending was. Japan can't just throw another carrier on the stocks yet, especially not something larger then an oversized Yorktown (Essex being iterative on Yorktown, btw).
Japan's response to a carrier crisis wasn't really Taiho. It was a massive run of smaller Unryu types bases off the murdered CarDiv2 models.
@@josepetersen7112 As for oversized carriers - look up the “Shinano”.
The Japanese limitation was lack of experienced pilots however caused by their military doctrine that stressed performance over achievement. Doing over succeeding.
Thinking through the question looking at USN, with a question for Scuttlebutt 5 thrown in:
If you can build as much tonnage as you want, for sure the Yorktowns are built up to the limit and most of that extra 7200 long tons of standard displacement is going into surviveability in terms of armor, armor higher in the ship, and better torpedo defense. Given how well they did on ~20k t, that's going to result in a pretty...durable asset. And it's still going to be able to deploy the kind of air group and the mass strikes the USN craves. It's gonna be a cool boat. I also think it might come into service a little earlier than than OTL. It's a shorter, easier process to just design what you actually want on an adequate per unit tonnage allowance than it is to scale down what you want to what you think you can get and have to figure out what compromises you're willing to make and what balance you strike to squeeze 80-85% of the capability out of 75% of the displacement. If the USN was ready to go with the design they want, I think the Hoover administration and Congressional Republicans were desperate enough ahead of the 1932 elections that they would pull the trigger on ordering them, and the first two would be laid down a year earlier than OTL, so, spring of 1933.
If the US doesn't have to be concerned with cumulative tonnage, there's no way they're going to even consider messing around with the design process that led to Wasp, and I think they just tinker with the super-Yorktown design (maybe your deck edge lifts come around at this point) and they're laying two improved super-Yorktowns down by the spring of 1936. I know that historically, only Wasp got ordered in this period, but I think the USN can get more in this scenario. They're not mucking around trying to figure out how to shoehorn a giant airwing onto a 15k ton hull. They've got a design that is for all intents and purposes their prewar wishlist carrier. By 1934/35 they're well into building the first pair, they'll be entering service by the end of 1936 at latest, and the Japanese are building THEIR wishlist carriers. It's a Keynesian moment in US politics. Plus, the US is not building capital ships yet. I don't think two carriers is a particularly heavy political lift at that point if you really like what you've got.
I do think Japan still withdraws from the treaty system in 1936. For sure, they're going to be a lot happier being allowed to build the carriers they want, but I don't think it's enough to keep them in the treaty. By 1936, it had to be clear to the Japanese that war was coming with the United States and/or Britain. They probably still would be looking at their first new carriers to come into commission in 1937, though maybe they're getting the first two in closer succession (both the ersatz Soryu and Hiryu in service by 1938, possibly?). I do think there are impacts on the pace at which naval aviation and the capabilities of naval aircraft develop, but I think the real effects of that probably wouldn't really be coming into play until the war started. In 1936, I don't think the Japanese could possibly be confident that carrier air power could be THE decisive element in a fleet battle. They would still want build new ships for their battleline, and they still wouldn't be able to get within plausible fudging range of the capability they need in new capital ships if the unit limit is 35k t. They're still out.
If Japan has left the treaty, the 1938 Naval Act still happens. By this time though, the Lexingtons and the first two batches of super-Yorktowns have established a consistent precedent of building carriers in pairs of the same design, so they order two more super-Yorktowns, and if they didn't put deck edge lifts on the second iteration, dollars-to-donuts, they're on this third batch. All told, I think you're looking at 8 large carriers the US Navy is comfortable operating in the Pacific in or imminently about to enter service by the time the war historically started.
The same act will still also authorize the next generation carrier design. With the super-Yorktowns as the baseline, I think that next generation carrier is more or less a Midway equivalent, maybe somewhat simplified so they can be spam built. That late war "Big Blue Blanket" is made up of a perhaps a very slightly less numerous, Midwayesque Essex swarm, with a lot more surviving (maybe 4-5) super-Yorktown's in the mix (plus Saratoga, if here war career follows OTL).
What gets interesting is what gets ordered after that, in place of the OTL Midways. With a just generally more survivable carrier force in place, these "wartime experience" carriers can be even more future/postwar needs focused than they historically were. Maybe they're even building in a projection of what it will take to operate jets from an early stage of the design process. They might easily end up building to a design that starts out at 50-60,000 long tons in standard and is really already approaching something on the order of a proto-supercarrier. At the very least, it will be a hull that can grow into that kind of capability relatively easily. With that kind of growth potential built in, actually completing four would make a whole lot of sense. From the late 1940s and through the 1950s, the US Navy could have built its naval deployments around battle groups centered on a super-Midway supported by a couple Essexes that were themselves more or less an OTL Midway level capability. They could put one battle group in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific, have one ready to respond to emergent situations, and one with its carriers in refit. That would still leave a few super Essexes on hand at any one time to handle second line duties, or be sent to plump out a battle group for active combat operations. That's a very capable, flexible force for the first 10-12 years postwar, and it's as far out as I'm prepared to speculate.
I know this has been an exceedingly long comment (but wait, there's more!), but this was a cool thought exercise. Thanks for posing it Dr. Clarke.
__________
Question for Scuttlebutt 5:
If the cumulative tonnage restriction on carriers goes away and the RN, USN, and IJN are building the 27,000t carriers they really want, and building more of them sooner because they can get what they want and don't have to torture the design process weighing compromises they'd really, really rather not make (and everyone else is building them), what are the implications for the pace of development for naval aircraft and naval aviation doctrine and organization?
More specific questions that brings to mind for me:
A. For everyone: what happens with dive bombers? If the key powers are all building armored 27,000t dream machine carriers starting in 1933/34, no one is going to be able to count on a hit or two with 500 lb or maybe even 1000 lb bombs even forcing a carrier to cease flight operations, much less kill it or force it to withdraw from combat. Does that lead to the major powers reconsidering the dive bomber entirely in a naval context, or do they just start right away working on the technical problem of designing the aircraft that can carry a big enough payload to make hits count out to the necessary range?
B. For the Royal Navy: if the RN starts building carriers that are more or less proto-Implacables in the mid-1930s, would that accelerate the return of procurement control for the Fleet Air Arm to the Admiralty in a way that impacts what aircraft are in service with the FAA by the early years of the war?
C: For the US Navy: if the carriers being built mean that dive bombing is a more iffy prospect, does the US Navy take a hard enough look at their torpedoes to make sure that they enter war with fish that [redacted] work?
D: For the Imperial Japanese Navy: does seeing the USN and RN build up their carrier forces faster and earlier lead them to reassess their organizational structure and training pipeline for aviation personnel in a way that makes it more possible for them to scale up their processes to better meet wartime attrition of those personnel?
Glad to hear you're more on the mend. I always love your videos and your appreciate your willingness to share both your knowledge and your process with the rest of us!
In hindsight, the Royal Navy armoured design was very instructive for US naval architects. Perhaps this is reflected in the vulnerability of not only the flight deck, but the gallery deck below. I’m assuming RN carriers didn’t have an extensive gallery deck? Hence the much larger island superstructures.
The plan for the invasion had a key role for the RN armored carriers with U.S. fighters…Corsairs was an essential element.
BZ, thanks!
Excellent as always. Will / has there been a discussion around the CVA 01 project?
22:58😆😆
DeHavilland Vampire
Douglas A-4
Grumann F8F Bearcat
Would like to talk to you being picked on for being small.
34:06 the Essex class was taken from one of discarded design study for a 27,000 ton carrier during the design development of the Yorktowns.
35:08 the Midway's are more of super Essex with a armored flightdeck and some design ques taken from the Montana class battleship.
48:42 I would agree with that using USS Wasp as an example, at least for the Americans. They found the Yorktown the most desirable and discarded the Ranger design for the last 15,000 tons of new carrier construction and commenced modifying the snot out the Yorktown design to get a ship that carried 75% of a Yorktown that they sacrificed all other metrics to get it.
The Long hull Essex I think it was also about sea keeping with the clipper bow and the changes to flight deck to improve AA arcs of fire
Re? question - not with the RN, but Japan and the US might build some giant Zippos....
For the algorithm
With the cumulative limit removed, it's a tough call. I see everyone looking at bigger individual ships. But that likely means you have fewer of them. My question is does it alter Japan's Yamato related decision making?
Now I need to know what a longbow Essex looks like/uses. Shaping it like a longbow seems problematic. Having it launched longbow as strike weapons seems whimsical. But I'm going to need a video on carrier launched longbow. April fools project?
Silly Razorback. The Bow string is for launching and recovering airplanes.
@@Yandarval longbow shaped airplanes
Does the arrester gear double as the launch mechanism?
Albacore: Hi best buddy.
Taiho: AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
@@ph89787 Wasp: Told ya.
43:20 - 43:32 Does that also help with keel-breaker torpedoes?
I'll answer this in Scuttlebutt 5 as I think it'll require more than a comment
@@DrAlexClarke the *pieces* would float... 😀
I'm begging you to use chapters.
I do, that's what the parts are... but I have signed up to hopefully trial the AI chaptering system next time that becomes available...
I think a video just talking about how the different countries cheated on the treaty would be interesting
I have done that when I did a series on the treaties from memory... probably as part of the Equitable Treaty Series
Same evidence and different conclusions? There's a lawyer joke in there somewhere
Aircraft need better engines. Better engines use more fuel, and that means we need more fuel storage. And to carry heavier engines. To make more power for the given fuel.
While it is bigger we now have room to strap on more munitions. So it's even bigger.
Ultimately we should just assume airframes will be 20% bigger than what we have, and if we make something smaller, just be glad we can cram more in at a later date.
Better engines don’t necessarily use more fuel - the DC-7 had more powerful engines than the DC-6 but burned 20% less fuel (due to power recovery turbines on the exhausts)…
Travelling faster is more efficient in a ton mile per gallon basis.
Nuclear munitions were one example where they shrank.
The smallest nuclear bomb in 1945 weighed 4.4 tonnes. By 1965 you could get the same yield out of a weapon weighing 40kg (the usual yield on deployed weapons went up by a factor of ten to a hundred however).
@@allangibson8494 to be precise the reason power recovery turbines provide fuel efficiency it's because turbines recover power that would be lost in the exhausted stroke.
As opposed to superchargers which use useful power from the engine to compress extra air into the cylinders, which allows you to pretend you have bigger engine volume to enable you to burn more fuel.
I'm not sure of the specifics of the power recovery turbines noted, but usually they use them for supercharging.
There are limits on the maximum fuel efficiency of an engine within practical considerations, and as a result trying to make more power ends up hitting design limits. so more powerful engines being heavier isn't a bad assumption to make. It's certainly not a rule, but it's not a bad guess.
War experience carriers…
You need war experience to get war experienced designs.
Once again, having experience means you had to get experience…and experience is a hard teacher most of the time.
Bravo Zulu. Hi Alex, hoping the pneumonia continues to dissipate at a faster than expected pace. To answer your question, I think the cumulative tonnage limit never happening would be very interesting. For the RN, they could get their 27,000t design, although I do wonder if they do one experimentally, and then iterate on a modified version after they're happy with their confirmed findings. So, perhaps Ark Royal is the initial 27,000t ship, and then a modified Ark Royal class of at least 6 ships gets done quickly in the late 1930s, with the older carriers getting replaced and placed in reserve, or maybe (to steal an idea you suggested with "war delayed" scenario) the RN distributes them in a refurbished state to the RCN and RAN? Perhaps Courageous and Glorious to the RCN, and Hermes and Furious to the RAN? With Eagle to India? It would be a good way to make sure you've still got the assets available if needed, and it expands the pool of carrier-trained personnel considerably. I can't disagree with your suggestion of armoured Yorktowns for the USN, although probably at the same rate and time frame as originally done. Which is a terrifying idea, as an Enterprise that can play rope-a-dope as well as giving the big punch is pure plot armour.
For the Japanese, if there are no cumulative limits, I do wonder if that changes their development path considerably. The ability to build at the same rate at the RN and USN gives them an ability to create a scenario where they could reduce their numerical inferiority. Ok, it's not battleships, and in the 1930s carriers are still not seen as a replacement capital ship, but the Japanese will still be able to see that building more carriers rather than placing all the resources into a trio of Yamatos might give them the ability to more effectively pursue their doctrine. Building a batch of 6 Soryu/Hiryu class ships could give them 3 pairs of fleet carriers to either do multiple ambushes of greater scale, or do the same ambushes, and then have a much larger final blow. It's the scenario that lets the Japanese fight on more equal strength than the alternatives, so they might commit to more carriers, not do the Yamatos, and instead add the cruisers and destroyers to protect those carriers, meaning the Japanese would have a much greater number of ships for the war, rather than having a large battleship fleet always in reserve, but struggle for numbers for taskforces they really needed in various operations.
I'm going to grab some bear and watch this episode
What if 2025 is the year of doctrines?
It's the year of leadership... doctrine probably will be part of it, as it has been part of every year, but honestly doctrine is not something that wants to be separated off - it is the fibres & sinews which bind the body of decisions together, not so much a seperate organ