Michael Vorrasi wrote:
Top weight was an issue for sure, however, of greater concern, particularly for the late Essexes remaining in active service in the immediate post-war period, was the fact that the outboard 40 quads prevented the ships from clearing the Panama Canal. Many of the early ships went straight into mothballs with all their wartime quad mounts.
While Canal transit was an issue, the two ships in question remained in the Pacific and Antietam was only deactivated in 1949. The outboards had already been removed from both before then. Other signs point to topweight, like the removal of the on-mount shields from the remaining 40MM quads on all of the active Essex's on both sides of the Canal. Topweight was increasing due to the increasing weight of the aircraft and electronics. This was coupled with the removal of the Kamikaze threat and no equivalent threat was in immediate prospect. Something had to go. The Korean War, to some extent, increased the threat level, thus the outboards reappeared, but not in the same numbers as seen on Princeton and also shown by some empty tubs on Bon Homme Richard following her reactivation. (CV-31's on-mount shields had also been removed.) But the outboards could still be removed relatively quickly if the Canal needed to be transited, as on Franklin when she went to the east coast for her 1945 repairs.