The Ship Model Forum

Only a small reminder: to the end of 1942 the Royal Navy lost 5 of 6 pre-war carriers, the US Navy 4 of 7 and the Imperial Japanese Navy 5 of 8 carriers. These are really heavy losses. Carriers were eggshells armed with hammers. Their advantage was - and probably still is - the "hammer", not the "eggshell". Relative to the existing weapons carriers have still "eggshells". But even the relative easy to heavily damage "eggshells" (e.g. Essex class) did dominate the seas in the Pacific in 1944-45 - and it could be similar today.

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Maxim, my statement still stands. At first it was assumed that a single bomb would disable and possibly sink almost any carrier. I stated that they proved to be tougher than that, something that history proved to me, and something Friedman specifically noted in his books. I never stated that they were indestructible. But let us review the losses you listed up to the end of 1942.

Royal Navy:
Three were lost to torpedoes; Courageous received two hits, Eagle received four (massive damage for a ship her size) and Ark Royal one. Ark Royal was lost more to damage control failures than to fragility of design. The other two losses were Glorious to heavy gunfire (few carriers of the period were built to withstand gunfire) and Hermes to overwhelming dive bomber attack.

IJN:
The Japanese actually lost 6 carriers in 1942. The four at Midway were lost to fires after dive bombing. According to Parshall and Tully in Shattered Sword, most if not all needed to be scuttled before they sank. Had the fires been brought under control, salvage would have been possible in some, if not all, cases. Ryujo was lost to a torpedo hit and multiple bombs. Shoho was overwhelmed by multiple torpedoes and bombs. On the flip side, Shokaku was able to put out fires and return home for repairs after two instances of multiple bomb hits.

USN:
Lexington received two bomb hits and two torpedoes. She continued to operated aircraft for a time after that damage. She would have easily survived that had the gasoline vapor problem been discovered sooner. She was lost to fires (one of the loss causes mentioned in my earlier post). Even still, she had to be scuttled.
Yorktown survived one direct hit and several near misses at Coral Sea, but remained operational. At Midway, she absorbed two attacks. The first, the dive bombers, saw her directly hit three times with several near misses. She put out the fires and started moving again before the second attack - even launching more aircraft. In the second attack, she was disabled - but not sunk, by two torpedoes. Two days later, while under salvage, she was hit by two more torpedoes but didn't sink for another 18 hours. She was definitely hard to kill.
Wasp was hit by two to three torpedoes (references vary), the direct impacts of which she seemed able to survive. She, like Lexington, was lost to the fires, not the direct damage. And also, like Lexington, needed to be scuttled.
Hornet absorbed two torpedoes, two bombs, and two crashed aircraft in her first attack at Santa Cruz. She was later hit by another torpedo that removed her last hope or regaining self propulsion, but was not sinking. A couple more bomb hits followed. US attempts to scuttle her included the launch of most, if not all, of the torpedoes from two destroyers (which admittedly produced a dismally low proportion of actual detonations against a large, stationary target), and hundreds of 5" rounds which set the ship on fire. Still it took 4 IJN torpedoes to finish the job. This level of damage was far and away in excess of pre-war estimates of what should sink a carrier.
Saratoga survived two separate submarine torpedo attacks.
Enterprise was hit directly by three bombs at Eastern Solomons, along with several near misses. She was again hit by several bombs at Santa Cruz, and continued to operate aircraft. According to pre-war estimates, either attack should have sunk her outright.

So my statement that carriers proved much tougher than pre-war analysis indicated is still valid. I never said they were too tough to sink. And back to the original argument on modern cruise missiles, it will take actual combat damage and or losses to prove whether or not the claims of the missile makers have merit. The carrier damage and losses of WW-II proved that the reality of the situation was far different from the pre-war hype. Only combat will show the validity (or lack thereof) of the current claims. Calling the aircraft carrier obsolete based solely on biased hype is premature in the extreme.

True, but they were even easier to disable, few bomb hits could reduce the fighting capacity of a carrier to 0%. If all sunken ships and heavily damaged carriers are counted, the complete carrier forces in the Pacific were so much reduced that in 1943 carriers played only a minor role (for sure there was the spectacular comeback of the USN carriers in 1944). (One of the in 1942 sunken Japanese carriers was completed after Pearl Harbor, therefore I had not counted it). Also USN supercarriers (see Forrestal and Enterprise) were disabled by relatively minor explosions, which caused multiple additional explosions, which caused heavy damage.

For sure, similar statements can be made for other ship types and could not justify the statement that carriers are obsolete.


I agree - we have seen only tests. The last sea battles were already 30 years ago (First Gulf War, USN ships against Iran Navy), more 30 years ago were the air attacks on RN ships. There were no sea battles between major powers since the World War Two.

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An aircraft carrier is disabled, if flight deck operations are not longer possible - it can only retreat and is useless as a fighting ship. Both Forrestal and Enterprise were disabled by misfired Zuni missiles - really small missiles. But on a carrier there are a lot of things, which can cause additional explosions and fires, see also the causes for losses of several WW2 carriers.

There are different names for the wars in the gulf. The usual names I know are:

First Gulf War: Iran Iraq War 1980-88
Second Gulf War: 1990-91
Third Gulf War: Iraq War 2003-11 (or better till today)

It could be that in different countries different names are used (similar to the name of the Gulf itself, Persian or Arabian Gulf).

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Moderators,

Can you please merge this thread with the older one below since they're both on the same topic?

"Carriers to be obsolete in future wars?"

EDITED: Thanks to the moderators for the thread merge!

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"Haijun" means "navy" in Mandarin Chinese.

"You have enemies? Good. It means you stood up for something in your life."- Winston Churchill

I think you are missing the point I was trying to make. Pre-war hype would have had you believing that the first hit would always disable the carrier until it returned to the yard for repair. And first hit sinking was expected to be a common result. Combat proved that it wasn't that easy. Yorktown twice restored functionality to a damaged flightdeck within a couple of hours of the damage while in combat conditions. Enterprise also did that twice during 1942 alone. Saratoga conducted flight ops after her torpedo hits, in one case, while still under tow. And later in the war, significant flightdeck damage was field repaired frequently (admittedly not always) while the ships remained with their task forces. And don't forget that the carrier losses in the Pacific in 1942 were mostly the result of all-out battles rather than ships lost to the first minor hits. Of course, if you send the whole airgroup, you are going to do some damage. The lack of carrier combat in 1943 had as much, or more, to do with the Japanese lack of pilots as it did with the low carrier numbers. Enterprise, Saratoga and Victorious were all active in the Solomons during 1943.

The parallel I am trying to make is that today's "carrier killer missile" group would have you believe that their missiles will always disable the carrier with the first hit, and will always achieve enough hits to kill the carrier before it can return to base. (At least in the view of the author of the "article" in question.) It is that absurdity that I am disparaging. It is most likely as untrue now as the pre-WW-II hype was then.

Chain-reaction events are rare and hard to prevent. Only a relatively small percentage of missile hits on a CV are expected to start chain-reactions. The Forrestal fire was, as you said, the result of a Zuni mis-fire. However, the Enterprise fire was caused by the operator of a starter cart parking his cart with the hot exhaust only inches from a live warhead. Some sources have indicated that, had the need been present, Enterprise's crew could have done enough temporary patching to restore some flight capability. But the need wasn't there and so it wasn't attempted.

I understood that point.

But I would still not stress the resistance of carriers - they were easy to disable, perhaps not easy as thought before the war (I have never read about this hype). For sure usually more than one hit was necessary, even though e.g. one Kamikaze disabled USS Franklin.

From the description of the length of repair (Enterprise) and the costs of repair (Forrestal) it does not give the impression that repairs only required some patching up of the flight deck. I would call a carrier disabled if the landing deck is wrecked by explosions and heavy fire - the functionality of the catapults would be only relevant, if the planes could land somewhere else.

Catastrophic chain reactions were not that rare, see e.g. the loss of the Japanese carriers at Midway. Also the damage on e.g. Franklin is out of proportion to the explosives of the Kamikaze. Carriers are full of high explosives at exposed positions, mainly the ammunition and fuel of the planes.

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But 51 days for a repair indicate damage more extensive than some small damage, which could have been fixed in hours.

In case of Franklin I referred to second attack on the 19th of March 1945 (not sure, if really a Kamikaze, could be a conventional attack), but anyway the bombs caused a lot of secondary explosions and heavy fires.

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I have read that statement from you already about another type of ship. But anyway, what relevant is not, if it is easy or difficult to sink a ship, but how easy it is to disable it as a fighting ships. For most types of ships it is enough to disable its radars to reduce the fighting capabilities to zero.

Carriers could be relatively easily disabled, because of the large amount of high explosive fuels and ammunition on their flight decks. For sure heavy explosions on the flight deck or in the hangar usually do not sink a ship - therefore many carriers damaged by such explosions were scuttled, if the conditions did not allow to salvage them.



@ DavidP: there is stated the the case were two bombs from one plane. Apparently the statement on another site regarding kamikaze is wrong. But if it were two bombs, these were either very light bombs or more than one dive bomber... But anyway: they caused a chain reaction of explosions and heavy fires.

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For sure there are also communications, not only sensors. But for one ship the sensors are crucial if operating alone (which is for sure unlikely to be the case for a carrier). If the sensors are lost by damage, it is likely that also the main channels for communication are at least impaired. The crucial point is that the question is if the fighting capability is maintained - not if the ship is sunken.

@ DavidP: a Aichi D3A could deploy usually only one 250 kg bomb, in some cases two additional 60 kg bombs - it could not deploy two heavier bombs. The Yokosuka D4Y usually would deploy one 500 kg bomb, the Kamikaze version one 800 kg bomb (probably also two 60 kg bombs) (there appears to be some confusion about its bombs on different websites, perhaps is a confusion between kg and pounds?). Wikipedia mentions that there are reports that two 250 kg bombs could be deployed, but I have not yet found a confirmation that two of them fit into the bomb bay.

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Many ships have their sensors and communication antenna very close together - for sure close enough to destroy a lot of them with a single anti-ship missile (and I am not talking about the very heavy ones, but the normal Chinese and Russian ones). A good example for closely grouped antenna is the Arleigh Burke class - or carriers with most or all antenna on the island.

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Any hit which interrupts ship's power takes down all the sensors, along with everything else. Really eerie when you lose power at sea. Too quiet.

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https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/

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I won't pretend to know anything specific about taking down ship's power on a carrier. I have experienced it on two different battleships during normal peacetime operations though, and on a frigate on ship's power alongside a pier. So I suspect it's somewhat more likely on a ship which is receiving damage if can happen when everything is normal.

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https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/

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