Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
As to who had the better carrier, many people forget that the primary mission of the carrier is to project power; this is executed by the carrier's airgroup (both in size and capability). By this standard, the British did not have the finest carriers of the war, they had the most surviveable carriers, but their protection was paid for by smaller airgroups and above all, less storage space for avgas and munitions.
The Japanese carriers started the war with a small, hand-picked group of pilots. The primary failure of the IJN aviation is that they had no means of expanding or replacing the loss of the pre-war pilots. Many people consider the Battle of Midway to be the critical turning point, it wasn't. The key turning point for the IJN was the brutal fighting in the Soloman Islands were many of their most experienced pilots died, the IJN never recovered and their losses in the 1944-45 battles reflects this.
The American carriers stumbled in the early war but as more decks and additional air groups entered the war, they quickly became the major factor in the Allied advances in the Pacific.
|
I think survivability in the Pacific was highly important in a war which became dominated by air power more than anywhere else. Most British carriers up until the two Implacable Class ships and the Indomitable Class were built within the confines of ship design and the Second London Naval Treaty to which they complied, unlike the Japanese who had withdrawn from it. America was able to produce the pre-war Lexington's as they were originally to be battlecruisers, but they were cancelled after work had begun under the terms of the Washington Treaty and the tonnage was allowed for aircraft carriers instead. Once the war started America could build whatever it liked to what size it wanted hense the rapid production of the Essex Class, which neither Britain or Japan could match in numbers for industrial reasons, and Britain also had different naval ship buiding priorities. British heavy units and carriers were pretty much absent from the Pacific after early 1942, and only started returning from 1944. Different design philosophies for different priorities influenced the differences between US and British carriers. Although the American carriers had bigger air wings the werent as survivable as the British units until the Midway Class.