Sauragnmon wrote:
I'm not so sure I agree on that aspect - if the flight deck were set at an angle to either side, or in a Y-style formation to trap and catapult on alternate sides of the tower (trapping along port side, launching to starboard for clarification) the bridge layout would be fine, as it centralizes the command aspects.
The only published plans of this thing don't show any angles; it's essentially a Furious-type arrangement.
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Put the elevator center just aft of the bridge, you have it all laid out in a rather decent perspective, and approximately double the deck area of the Ise Hybrids which seemed to have less problems.
The Ises are totally different in that they don't have a flight deck - just a platform atop a hangar for seaplanes. So the main problem - landing aircraft on deck - was one that never had any relevance to the Ises.
For a true carrier deck, turbulences are the key in determining its outline. With a central "island" this deck would have been a death trap to land on, already with late WW1 airplanes. Imagine a fuelled-up Stuka trying to land, failing to catch the wires and overshooting - he'll land squarely in the bridge
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If the aircraft are set up to launch on a modified version of a seaplane catapult, which the Germans had in a slightly raised deck-mount around that timeframe, you could get it relatively easily in some respects.
Assuming these whips were only used for seaplanes, then admittedly I could see it work. However, then you have a gross squandering of ressources - who needs a seaplane carrier armed with 280mm guns?
Incidentally, I don't have the paper at hand right now, but it has been argued (rather convincingly I think) that these studies as well as the super battleship ones fulfilled just one purpose - to keep the designing teams together and from being drafted into harms way. If you look at German aircraft carrier thinking you'll find that it's pretty much in line with what other European navies did, only lagging behind a couple of years; the Flugzeugkreuzer totally fail to fit into that picture.
Now, turning to a purely hypothetical scenario, what would be possible is something like an Oyodo-type arrangement on a Hipper hull (something I built a century or so ago...
), with turrets A and B remaining in place and X and Y replaced by a hangar for, say, six seaplanes.
Jorit