On 05Jun2020 0355, Ethan McKinney wrote:
> The armored flight decks are widely considered to be a disastrous
> design decision. They carried far fewer aircraft because of it, and
> plane handling was much slower. As a result, American carriers could
> conduct far better searches while still hurling bigger strikes AND
> maintaining a real CAP. Once the USN had all-folding-wing air groups
> and rebalanced the air group with two fighter squadrons, they were
> extremely dangerous.
>
> It's worth noting how big a danger torpedoes were to carriers (and the
> Bismarck). An armored deck does nothing to protect against them, and
> often makes you more vulnerable to capsizing after a torpedo hit.
The big thing was that the RN's carriers had to be able to operate
around Europe and in the Mediterranean where there was just no way
they'd be able to ensure air superiority over their fleets, and where
the threat from land-based aircraft was very high. Being able to take a
pounding and continue to port, and be quickly repaired was more
important than carrying a few more planes. They weren't really designed
to fight their peers, but to give air cover and support to a fleet under
attack from the land.

Also, note that during the war, the British didn't build a lot of large
armoured carriers - they finished the ones they were building, and then
built small carriers that could be finished quickly (and which aren't
armoured, or fast for that matter).

The rough equivalent in terms of design timeframe and size to the RN's
Illustrious-class carriers would be the USN's Yorktown-class. They were
not very different in capability - the US carriers carried more aircraft
(but quite a few of those were stored permanently on deck, something the
RN didn't do, and which works a lot better in the Pacific than the North
Atlantic), but had less armour and fewer AA guns.

Note that the last WWII designed USN carrier class, the Midway-class had
an armoured flight deck, and the Forrestal-class that followed them
moved to the British practice of having the armoured flight deck as part
of the ship's hull girder (they were so big that it had to be to provide
sufficient hull strength).

Amazing how many compromises become less of a problem when you can
afford to just build bigger. The problem then is persuading your
government to pay for the things of course.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>