The British Pacific Fleet, which included vessels from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, had been formed in late 1944 and was the biggest fleet ever assembled by the Royal Navy. It included six major aircraft carriers, four light carriers, two aircraft maintenance carriers and nine escort carriers, with a total of 750 aircraft, as well as five battleships, 11 cruisers, 35 destroyers, 14 frigates, 31 submarines and nearly 100 other warships and supply vessels.
Not sure even the Americans could produce that these days.
Yes, yes, obviously, modern carriers are larger etc. But do they have 6 at sea at one time?
Okinawa, for instance, had a very heavy RN presence.
The decks of the the RN carriers were armoured and so could withstand kamikaze attacks, whereas the US onees burned.
That’s in that obit. RN was closer to shore/Japanese air bases for that very reason.
Difference in philosophy; the RN regarded the aircraft hangars like a battleship’s magazines and gave them armour protection whereas the Americans, and Japanese, just wanted to get as many planes as possible on a ship. Post-war, the US started armouring its carriers.
Modern carriers take a lot of maintenance, and crews need a lot of time to train.
I think I read a few weeks ago that Congress passed a law that the USA should have 11 carriers, with the aim of ensuring that they always have 3 ready for action.
The ships may be much bigger but the planes are also. If you look at the size of a Spitfire and compare it to a modern plane like an F22 you can see why they need the bigger carriers. I don’t know exactly how many planes fit in aircraft carriers but I suspect modern ones don’t field that many more. I remember being at Fairford standing next to a Lancaster which was next to an F14 and they were about the same size.
Also we used to launch planes off much smaller ships. I can remember, but not where, where a small ship carried a single fighter for protection. In this memory it was a Boulton paul Defiant.
I think in some cases we would be better off with planes like that, that don’t take years to train on, don’t cost £250 million a pop and are less visible on radar.
Depends what you count as a carrier.
I believe the US have 4 of their 11 big carriers currently deployed, which has led to a bit of fuss as they have two in the Middle East so none are near China. There’s another 2/3 being prepped for their next deployment.
However they also have 9 amphibious assault ships, which are comparable to our previous carriers. (ie helicopters and Harriers)
@Jonathan
The reason for the different design philosophy was RN carriers were intended to be used in areas like the Med or the North Sea where they’d be vulnerable to coming under attack by land based aircraft. The USN was more of a blue water navy.
With a lot of US military planning it’s fairly obvious they didn’t expect in most cases to be confronting a peer opponent. Why would they? The world looked a lot bigger in those days.
“I can remember, but not where, where a small ship carried a single fighter for protection. In this memory it was a Boulton paul Defiant.”
More likely a Hurricane, launched off a rail with rockets from a merchant ship. Done to give convoys a way of attacking German long distance reconnaissance aircraft, in the days before escort carriers were available. Known as CAM ships – catapult aircraft merchant ship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hawker_Hurricane_launched_from_CAM_ship_c1941.jpg
I think in some cases we would be better off with planes like that, that don’t take years to train on, don’t cost £250 million a pop and are less visible on radar.
As we are seeing in Ukraine, drones are putting a big error bar on those calculations much faster than expected.
In the Yugoslavia bust up, I recall biplanes of the Tiger Moth ilk put up a good show despite US ‘command of the air’ by big triangular metal things.
The plane and missile radars couldn’t see the biplanes very well, and since they were virtually stationary, very hard to engage.
And just as with the current drone flux, the AAM cost more than the target, so for every attack the attacker loses out.
Quantity has a quality….etc
I think in some cases we would be better off with planes like that, that don’t take years to train on, don’t cost £250 million a pop and are less visible on radar.
There are planes like that. The Tucano is a gas turbine powered prop plane used in a ground attack role. Oddly they’ve been built in the UK but the RAF stopped using them.
The problem with the British military is it ends up with the equipment that the British defence industry wants to manufacture rather than what it needs. Why you have F35 in it’s vertical lift variation rather than versatile carriers with cat & traps. And a lot of other shit.
The thing I learnt recently about the F35 is that it is a force multiplier. Its job is to knock a bloody great hole in the air defences through which ‘cheaper’ planes can fly. So two F35 from a carrier take out the air defenses around an airfield and then 30 land based planes bomb the crap out of it. RN carriers only make sense against peer adversaries in the context of Nato .
Also we used to launch planes off much smaller ships. I can remember, but not where, where a small ship carried a single fighter for protection. In this memory it was a Boulton paul Defiant.
Are you thinking of the jeep ships? Or, at least, I think that’s the term Spig Wead came up with.
BiS: yes although, ironically, they never came under really serious air attack in the N Sea or the Med – except when in port.
I don’t think that before WW2 the US considered Japan a peer at all.
The Tucano is a gas turbine powered prop plane used in a ground attack role.
Lt Col. Tom Kratman has written a series of books, set in the near future, about a fictional mercenary army who use converted agricultural aircraft as ground-attack machines.
There’s a difference between wartime and peacetime force generation
If you simply want to generate as.many carriers and their battle groups a s possible the US could probably field 5 or 6 for a period, but all of them would be requiring maintenance etc at the same time
Peacetime generation smooths all this out and there are some significant support issues (dry docks, availability of nuclear engineers for example) and it would impact other areas like manning
You cannot run at 70-80% activity without a downside afterwards
Isn’t one of the issue with aircraft carriers that in a shooting war the enemy can just drop a nuke on each one, and with it being out at sea with little to no collateral damage?
a fictional mercenary army who use converted agricultural aircraft as ground-attack machines.
Makes sense. Military aircraft these days are basically weapon trucks. It’s the munitions carry out the attack. And that’ll increase as drones become more sophisticated. So you’re only really talking about getting ordnance to a point of release. Ground attack? No converted agricultural aircraft is going to survive over a combat zone. Even military aircraft can’t survive that environment. But if you’re standing off a hundred kilometres to deploy sensors & munitions, why not?
I am really very certain that there were some that carried either a Hurrican or pitfire. A Seafire with floats maybe? Had to be winched back aboard once used?
@Bloke in Germany
A carrier would be hideously vulnerable to a variable yield nuke detonating in the waters around it. That’s just one reason why it’s not a good idea to deploy a carrier on its own.
A US carrier strike group will in addition to the carrier have two guided missile cruisers and three destroyers. The cruisers are there to stop ballistic and other missiles and to deploy antiship and cruise missiles. The destroyers will provide anti-submarine and less capable missile defence. The group will also have a support ship and an unknown number of hunter killer submarines lurking below the waves and long range radar aircraft in support.
@Tim
As Jim said they used Hurricanes, which were much tougher than Spitfires. No floats. The pilot either headed for land or ditched at sea.
At present, the USN has 11 Nimitz class NCVs in its inventory. I believe there are 4 additional NCVs under construction. The last I heard there were 4 NCVs deployed.
Dennis, Oppressor, Warmonger, Capitalist & Consumer of Petroleum Products said:
“At present, the USN has 11 Nimitz class NCVs in its inventory. I believe there are 4 additional NCVs under construction.“
Now 10 Nimitz, if Wikipedia is correct, plus one of the new, modern, high-tech warfare Ford class. The ones under construction are to replace the Nimitz, which will be retired one by one as the new ones are built, keeping the total at 11. The Nimitz were designed in the 1960s.
So the modern US navy could just about equal the 1940s British Pacific Fleet (and they could also just about match the cruisers & destroyers; no-one has battleships any more), but only if they got pretty much everything they have afloat and in the same place.
And that was just one of our fleets then.
Does the US Navy still have the distinction of having the only ship in commission that has actually sunk an enemy ship (the Constitution), or has there been a recent ship-on-ship action that has superseded it?
Now 10 Nimitz, if Wikipedia is correct, plus one of the new, modern, high-tech warfare Ford class.
Yep, my bad.
Not normally as we only have 11 total, but in 2019 we had 7 at sea at once.
>Bloke in Germany
September 7, 2024 at 12:12 pm
Isn’t one of the issue with aircraft carriers that in a shooting war the enemy can just drop a nuke on each one, and with it being out at sea with little to no collateral damage?
You have to find it. And then you have to get close enough. Neither are easy tasks.
>Bloke in Germany
September 7, 2024 at 12:12 pm
Isn’t one of the issue with aircraft carriers that in a shooting war the enemy can just drop a nuke on each one, and with it being out at sea with little to no collateral damage?
This was a consequence of the different design conditions each ship was built for.
RN ships were built for use around Europe – where you’d always be close to ground-based aircraft and thus subject to massive attacks. American ships were designed for the Pacific where you’re main worry was aircraft carried by enemy carriers where attacks would be less dense.
Conversely, American carriers could hold more aircraft and larger aircraft because the armored deck didn’t cut down (significantly) hangar deck volume.
No solutions, only different tradeoffs.
The British Pacific Fleet was mainly Churchill’s grandiose attempt to stay relevant while the senior partners, Russia and America, got the hell on with winning the war. Any military gains were offset by the additional strain on American supply lines.
Jonathan: “BiS: yes although, ironically, they never came under really serious air attack in the N Sea or the Med – except when in port. ”
Illustrious took five 500kg bombs and a near miss. And survived. I don’t think any other carrier has survived in such a case British, USN or Japanese.
BiS
“Why you have F35 in it’s vertical lift variation rather than versatile carriers with cat & traps. ”
Well yes, but…. up to a point Lord Copper.
The problem there is that trap qualified pilots are rare beasts and the skill level required to be able to land on a carrier is _incredibly_ perishable: if you have not a trap landing for something as little as 2 weeks, you need to retest to check you’ve got it. The number of flying hours and the work rate on the US supercarriers required to keep their pilots current is extraordinary and reassuringly extraordinarily expensive.
I was right up there with you and Lewis Page on the insanity of dropping CATOBAR from the new carriers but I fear it was the correct decision – we just simply do not have the cash to maintain that level of flying commitment.
@TPG
There’s nothing to prevent automatic landing on carriers. The USN does piloted landings precisely because it gives their pilots lots of flying time. Not because they’re better.
Victory’s still in commission, isn’t it?
Tim Worstall said:
“Victory’s still in commission, isn’t it?”
Maybe it’s ‘in commission and seagoing’; I think Constitution still has a little annual sail.
But (and this may be heretical), did Victory ever actually sink an enemy ship? It didn’t happen very often in the days before explosive shells. There was only one ship sunk at Trafalgar, none at Cape St. Vincent.
And being a ship of the line, she’d have generally been in with the fleet, doing very occasional set-piece battles, rather than doing the one-on-one frigate scraps that Constitution did.
Her Wikipedia page says she sank a French rowing boat (which sounds a little unsportsmanlike), but doesn’t mention any actual ships sunk other than herself.
The British Pacific Fleet was mainly Churchill’s grandiose attempt to stay relevant while the senior partners, Russia and America, got the hell on with winning the war. Any military gains were offset by the additional strain on American supply lines.
All completely true, Michael, except for the part in bold above.
The USN valued the British Pacific Fleet, as it lessened the strain on US combat resources. The BPF did a lot of unglamorous but necessary work in secondary parts of the theater, and did it without causing the USN any fuss. In addition, the BPF lent the USN carriers prior to Leyte Gulf, helped the USN quite a bit in the course of that campaign (and not just to absorb kamikazes, either). Ernest King was no fan of the British, but he valued and respected the BPN. As to the BPN being a strain on USN logistics, well, that’s pure bullshit.
Yeah, I said something nice about the British. Mark it on your calendar.
@Jonathan
The use of “converted agricultural aircraft as ground-attack machines” is already a reality. For example, the Air Tractor AT-802 is available in both agricultural and military versions.
Agricultural:
https://airtractor.com/aircraft/at-802a/
Military:
https://802u.com/
To add to the armoured/unarmoured debate, I’ve heard that Ark Royal was designed when the RN considered a Pacific war against Japan more likely, so she had an unarmoured flight deck and maximized aircraft capacity. When it came to designing the Illustrious class, a European war was thought to be more likely, so they were armoured, for the reasons mentioned above.
WW2 combined all the RN’s worse-case scenarios, as the fleet was sized to take on Japan or Germany, not both at once. (The Dieppe raid was planned to take out the only Atlantic port capable of taking Tirpitz and deter her from sailing, as by that point the RN only had 1 battleship with the speed and firepower to engage her) Plus unlike in WW1, the Italians were on the opposite side so the Med and route to India was threatened. Finally, the constant actions meant most of the pre-war fleet was knackered by 1945.
‘Victory’s still in commission, isn’t it?’
In permanent dry dock, Constitution is still afloat.
@Jonathan
Tom Kratman: doesn’t sound like the Carrera series, so which is this, do I have a treat in store?
“ The Dieppe raid was planned to take out the only Atlantic port capable of taking Tirpitz and deter her from sailing, as by that point the RN only had 1 battleship with the speed and firepower to engage her”
That was the cover story for the need to capture the latest enigma machine so that Bletchley Park could continue its work.
Although a lot of lessons about amphibious assault were also learned.
There are a bunch of simulations on Youtube around modern carrier battlegroups using a wargame system.
For example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpe2QLBaP_0
But they also do US, China and Russian sims as well
The raid aimed at depriving the Tirpitz of a dry dock was against St-Nazaire, not Dieppe.
The most vulnerable aspect of a carrier group is its supply line. A nuclear powered carrier is OK for its own fuel but the rest of group will generally depend on liquid fuel and jet aircraft are gas guzzlers (and weapons expenders) par excellence. Consequently a carrier group has to have a fairly constant stream of supply vessels linking it to the nearest friendly port. Interdiction of the supply train will create a massive logistics problem which can cripple a fleet without the enemy ever getting close.
Tough to get close to the supply line without getting close to either the operating fleet or the (well protected) supply depot. Sure – attacking logistics is a pretty basic tactic. So is protecting them. And the force attacking the supply train itself has to be pretty extended, which creates its own vulnerabilities.
Projecting force over any sort of range is always going to be difficult. Is a carrier battle-group the best way to do it? Yeah, at the moment, probably .
@dcardno
Tough to get close to the supply line without getting close to either the operating fleet or the (well protected) supply depot.
Not necessarily so, that’s war gaming scenario stuff.. In 1967 I was on loan to the RN flying from HMS Eagle. Our task was to cover the withdrawal from Aden. Obviously Aden itself was out as a resupply point so our nearest practical source of fuel (FFO for the ships and aviation fuel for the aircraft) was the Persian Gulf. Have a look at the map, there’s a lot of unprotected water around that neck of the woods. For stuff like food and stores resupply, Mombasa was the nearest, which though technically friendly, was, of course, unprotected and liable to political interference too.
It will be interesting (though rather unpleasant possibly) to see how Aircraft carriers fare against an opponent with hypersonics.
Could it be the end of the carrier?
@Jim,
Now that you mention it I do remember Hurricanes being mentioned. Maybe it was something similar with the Defiant or a story somewhere I read.
“Maybe it was something similar with the Defiant or a story somewhere I read.”
There was that film with Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde about the Defiant. Don’t recall there being any aeroplanes in that one, though.
Tim,
If that’s not a Hurri, then i’m a Dutchman:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Hawker_Hurricane_launched_from_CAM_ship_c1941.jpg
Colloquially known as either a “Hurricat” or a “Catafighter”, apparently.
@ AndrewZ. Looks cool, payload of just over 4,000 kg is pretty useful!
@ Tim the Coder, yes it is the Carrera series – it’s ages since I read them so got a bit muddled on the details. Sorry.
It will be interesting (though rather unpleasant possibly) to see how Aircraft carriers fare against an opponent with hypersonics.
A hypersonic all-the-way-to-target is really no different from a ballistic missile. It would need to intercept the target according to its anticipated position at launch. To acquire terminal guidance, a hypersonic missile has to drop below hypersonic speeds because above that its sensor array is blinded by the hypersonic plasma sheath. So at that point it’s just a fast missile & can be countered by conventional anti-aircraft defences. So it really depends on what altitude & distance from target it does that. The target & weapon have the same problem. Each is trying to identify & locate the other. Higher & further gives better advantage to identify & locate. But that’s the same for both parties. More opportunity to intercept & destroy. To close & low & it won’t have the energy to achieve the correct vector.
Worth pointing out that the sensor suite on the target is going to be a lot more sensitive & accurate than that on the missile. Simply because one is on ships weighing several thousand tons & the other is a can on the front end of a missile.