WesWorld

This seems to be a long and varied disscussion so I'll restrict myself to the intial thread, carrier aircraft. IMHO carriers have one purpose, to operate aircraft at sea and to maintain them, they are the main armament, armour is a sideline, nothing can guarantee protection from torpedoes and bombs. The airgroup is there not only for offense but defence by shooting down the bombers and bombing the enemy ships. You have to take chances, sailing in a ship loaded up with avgas, bombs, torpedoes etc is hazardous no matter if you have masses of armour. It only takes one lucky hit and your toast and if you trade airpower for protection you have less fighters and bombers to patrol and fight or you may be limited to one mission or the other at any one time.

This is the current, and future, aircraft complement of the RN;
HMS Furious: 824 Sqn with 12 Blackburn B-6 Shark, 804 Sqn with 12 Hawker Osprey III and 813 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.37N Sea Gladiator
HMS Ark Royal: 802 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.37N Sea Gladiator, 806 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet and 811, 812, 813 Sqns totalling 36 Fairey Swordfish. Capacity for 60 aircraft + 12 spares
HMS Majestic: 805 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.37N Sea Gladiator, 807 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet and 814, 815, 816 totalling 36 Fairey Swordfish. Capacity for 60 aircraft + 12 spares
HMS Swiftsure: 810 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet, 811 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet and 820, 821, 822 Sqns totalling 36 Fairey Swordfish. Capacity for 60 aircraft + 12 spares
HMS Bulwark: 812 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet, 813 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet and 823, 824, 825 Sqns totalling 36 Fairey Swordfish. Capacity for 60 aircraft + 12 spares
HMS Warrior: 814 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet, 815 Sqn with 12 Gloster SS.39 Gannet and 826, 827, 828 Sqns totalling 36 Fairey Swordfish. Capacity for 60 aircraft + 12 spares

Under construction;
HMS Eagle: 72 aircraft + 10 spares [817, 818, 819 fighter Sqns and 830, 831, 832 bomber Sqns]
Ocean Class: 48 aircraft + 6 spares [880-888 fighter Sqns and 850-858 bomber Sqns]

You can see strike has the numbers over fighters but in the newer ships I've gone for 50/50 splits to enusre enough fighters for CAP and escort in Eagle and the Ocean Class are limited in both respects but could do both missions at reduced strengths.

As for aircraft I've posted the stats for the current fighters and bombers and posted the replacements. note the improvements but also note the flaws, there is still no really effective aircraft and mass must always make up for lack of firepower. This drives the need for big carriers. Someone mentioned the Avenger earlier on, look at Midway, you send six in and get hammered, send 60 and its vice versa. Think what if the USN had not had enough Essex Class carriers, would the aerial battles have been as effective against the IJN with smaller airgroups? I doubt it.

Gloster SS.37N Sea Gladiator
4x .303in Vickers
Dimensions; 32.3/ 27.5/ 11.7/ 323 sq ft; 1x 830hp Bristol Mercury VIIIA; max speed 252mph; range 440 miles and service ceiling 33,500ft.

Gloster SS.39 Gannet
Powered by a Hercules radial, armed with six 7.7mm Browning belt-fed machine guns in the wings.
Dimensions; 38.2/32.6/10.2/230 sq ft; 1x 1,400hp Bristol Hercules I; max speed 326mph at 16,000ft; range 580 miles and service ceiling 34,000ft.

Fairey Swordfish
Two/ three crew are carried along with two Vickers MGs and one 21in torpedo or bombs and mines up to 1,500lbs under the wings.
Dimensions; 45.6/ 35.8/ 12.4/ 607 sq ft; 1x 690hp Bristol Pegasus IIIM; max speed 130mph; range 1,030 miles and service ceiling 10,700ft.

Fairey Barracuda
Three-seat monoplane carrier-based torpedo bomber/ reconnaissance aircraft. Armament is one 1,500lb torpedo or three 500lb or six 250lb bombs in an internal bomb bay and four wing-mounted .303in Browning MGs in the wings and one dorsal .303in Browning.
Dimensions 49.2/ 39.9/ 12.3/ 414 sq ft; 1x 1,080hp RR Merlin III; max speed 240 mph, range 1,150 miles and service ceiling 16,600ft.

Regarding maintance carrier groups need ships capable of looking after the aircraft, carriers do not have the space to carry enough spares and spare aircraft nor the space to make major repairs or overhauls.
The Naval Staff calculated the requirements of HMS Unicorn during the design phase. The Staff suggested Unicorn should not service three sqaudrons but three Illustrious class carriers, this required the need to ferry 42 erected aircraft while repairing 8 with spread wings. These figures were arrived at byt the following;
An aircraft is overhauled every 120 hours flying time, at most in wartime around 60 hours a month would be flown or as much as 42 hours in a fortnight or 30 hours a week in high-intensity operations. In peacetime 10% of the aircraft would crash (but repairable) and 20% replacements would be needed. With a three-shift system with six men per aircraft it would take 6 days to repair a crashed aircraft, 3 days to do the 120 hour overhaul and 2 days to assemble a replacement. Each of these required the wings to be fully spread in the hangar. So each month the ship would need to provide 40 aircraft-days to erect replacements, 60 aircraft-days to repair crashed aircraft and 35 for overhauls for a total of 205 aircraft-days in a thirty day period. This meant 6.8 aircraft (rounded to six by the staff if all serious repairs over three days were repalced instead) had to be spread simultaneously.
Flying 30 hours a week in wartime needed 10 replacements for write-offs, 5 for repairable crashes and eighteen for those on overhaul, total 33 replacements. The Staff asked for 42 replacements to equalise unequal flow or 20 crated aircraft a month. Also replacement pilots and aircrew has to be carried. Weapons carried eventually rose to 30 torpedoes, 240 250lb bombs and 240 100lb ASW bombs. The Staff soon realised the maintance role might well keep the ship in harbour for extended periods. While Unicorn did not arrive in service until 1943 she served mainly as a fighter carrier until 1944.

These requirements would still need to be met in WW, in fact larger air groups will push the need further. The absence of carrier tenders is worrying, Atlantis might build six new carriers but how long can they function effectively without maintence and resupply support? (Italy is near to its shore bases and can escape the need and most third-rate powers with carriers will never have the intensive operations to require the expense of such ships). Thus I intend to build a Unicorn clone as soon as possbile and I guess this trend will be repeated eslewhere.

Germany, for the moment, can make use of the fact that her carriers are likely to be relatively close to friendly shore bases, but in a pinch the training carrier Otto Lillienthal would be pressed into service supporting the carriers (though she's pretty small and would be limited).

Current plans for the airgroup on the Peter Strasser class carriers have them carrying 48 Bf-109Ts and 32 Ju-87Cs, though it's possible that some of the Ju-87s would be replaced by Fi-67s and the Bf-109s by He-100s. Junkers EF65/EF82s are a possible replacement (both afloat and ashore) for the Ju-87s (right now I'm leaning towards a combination of the two designs, using the BMW engine from the EF65 with the improvements of the EF82 like an internal bomb bay, etc, though the Jumo-213 could be substituted with good results in a later model).

Quoted

Originally posted by Hood
Thus I intend to build a Unicorn clone as soon as possbile and I guess this trend will be repeated eslewhere.

What you think the escort carrier Vel will be when completed? It was my intention all along to make it a maintenance/slow carrier in an emergency ship, but their main role will be as an maintenance ship. The Katar will be more of a CVX for some future uses.

I don't agree Avengers were deadly purely becuase of its design, air group mass and aircrew training play a big part. There is nothing special about the Avenger, it has a weak self-defence armament (single .50 cal turret, ventral .30 cal and one wing mounted MG), torpedoes and bombs can be launched by any torpedo bomber. The Swordfish was deadly too but it was a lumbering biplane (too low and slow for the Germans to accurately depress their guns). The common theme is the torpedo. That is the killer weapon here, the aircraft just gets the torpedo to where it needs to go. Take any torpedo bomber, fit enough self-defence guns and armour to get it through the fighters and bingo. If the enemy has crap AA guns that helps too...

Its the same with most American aircraft, big lumbering portly stuff that only succeeded due to high engine power and well trained pilots. That they were so big they could absorb massive battle damage is one good point although Zeros had weak armament throughout the war. Anyway tankers aren't battleships or cruisers are they, merely mobile bombs that will go up with a single decent sized bomb. That is not a fair arugement to make although the fleet train loss is a good strategical tactic and made Owaza retreat. It is effective but thats not to say any other warplane of the era could not have done as well.

I consider the Douglas Dauntless to be a deadly attack plane with 2 fixed forward 50 cals and a twin "stinger" 30 cal in the rear that made it a very risky target for fighters to take on.