Can you relate?

Ah.. gotcha.

WmB

e is dancing the dance of joyus obfucese explained with a lack of fearful symmetry. (guess what other i'm readin and win a shiny new nickel!)

Couldn't it just have been as simple as the availability of steel during the war effort? I mean, we were building ships, tanks, planes, guns and all sorts of machinery all at the same time, in quantities greater than we shall probably ever build them again. Even the Germans went back to wooden decks on U-boats because of a shortage of available steel. We (the USA) certainly had plenty of timber, in light of a bounded ability to produce steel. A carrier is a BIG boat...even then.

Seems like we might have been just managing our material distibution in light of the war effort...steel where it was absolutely needed only.

Barkeep - I'll have what he's having. To drink, that is.

WmB

Sounds reasonable enough to me, but I think the primary aim in using wood decks was more of a design consideration. The Essex class ships were extensions of the Yorktown class and the later half-sister Hornet design. Those prewar designs were hindered by tonnage limits imposed by the prewar naval treaties the US had signed. The use of wood allowed the designers to "spend" the tonnage in areas of the design where they felt it most mattered - as Ron mentioned. Which again is nothing against the selection of wood. As Ron pointed out it had its design advantages and the combat results shine favorably on the US designs despite the expediency of the design.

So as it happened, the war loomed in their faces, they locked in the Essex design and went to war with it. The Midway class came down the slips as the first fleet carrier free of any treaty limitations and the recipient of much hard won and valuable combat experience. Notably including in its options list, an armored flight deck and a slew of AA mounts. ;-)

WmB

barkeep dances the dance of joyess welcome at a regular customer's return.

Weren't most of the first carriers also conversions from other existing architecture? Might there also have been some engineering points that required those conversions use a lighter material for the decking? After all, we were just figuring out what a working, "modern" aircraft carrier should look like.

Only CV-1 Langley would have had that restriction. CV's 2 & 3 (Lexington and Saratoga) were not conversions per se but redesigns based on half built battelcruiser hulls that otherwise would have been scrapped due to treaty limits on type/guns/tonnage, when built as carriers they has less tonnage restrictions, if any. They were also the longest US carriers until the supercarriers were built. Engineering wise CV's 2 & 3 could have been built with armored decks but the perviously mentioned hangar deck capacity was deemed more important. All following fleet carriers (CV not CVE/CVL) were designed as carriers from the keel up.

I'd have to guess something from Keith Laumer's Reteif series.

"To raise your manipulative members above your sense-organ cluster"

-Kevin in Indy

to join your hive mates in the breeding pits, oh soft ones..... yep, retief it is. reread retiefs war and the pangalactic pagent of pulchritude last night. more today. to laugh in appreciation of one's own wit.....

This assumes that the U.S. Navy saw the Kamikaze program coming. They didn't! It was a real psychological shock when Ohnishi unleashed this new form of attack off the Philippines. Ask any veteran of the Philippine landings about that. I had an Uncle who was there and he said it was absolutely frightening, especially on the small carriers.

Bill Shuey

no, i was actually thinking that just aerial bomb damgae and what we saw from the brits would have been enough. nobody in the west but a real japophile could even have concieved of the kamikaze's. mark peatty, my old prof and the guy you see on the history channel said his japan professor said kamikazes were obvious in hindsight IF you knew the japanese really well.

From what I have read, it was more that they did not want to pay the penalty in reduced payload of the carrier. Armoured decks would have resulted in less planes, bombs, fuel, etc. We wanted to put as many planes in the sky as possible. Again, during the war, most US carriers that were lost were lost to torpedos, not bombs. If I remember right, no fleet carrier was lost to Kamikaze. Damaged, yes, but not sunk. I think only one was lost to bombs, and that was not a Kamikaze.

And that's kind of what I was getting at - even if they weren't "conversions", they were built on existing hull designs of the period. This may hav placed a limitation on just how much additional structure (weight) could be carried above the waterline for that particular hull, being that it was originally designed for a different purpose.

I'm not a naval architect...but that would seem to make some sense. Please school me on the subject if I've got it wrong.

They did study the effects of an armored deck but the restrictions it placed on airwing capacity ruled it out. As built there wasn't much tophamper and the massive AA fits of late WWII were not yet envisioned, most likely the additional weight of the armored deck and structure would not have had much effect as built. It would have had a deterimental effect later in WWII. As it was CV-3 got extra blisters during the war not only for torpedo protection but also added bouyancy as the AA and radar fit increased her tophamper significantly. The blisters were asymmetric as well since the starboard side (island) had very different tophamper weight than the port side.

Thanks. Very interesting, from the engineering of it. I got to spend nine days aboad USS Lincoln a few years ago and walked off the ship fully impressed by what a marvel of machinery a modern carrier is.

Ship design is amazing, especially late WWI on. The Tennessee and Colorado class battelships were the first "all electric" ships. Designed in 1916, launched between 1920 and 1924 they featured powerplants that drove generators which in turn powered everything on the ship with electricity, from the main propulsion motors to the potato peelers. Reading war damage reports on some ships is also a good way to find out design features that worked and those that didn't. After Lexington CV-2 went down almost every combat ship that carried avgas had the lines rerouted outside the hull, they pieced together enough information from the DC parties and others on CV-2 to determine internal piping of avgas contributed the fires and ultimate demise of the ship.

One of the things that I didn't get to see aboard Lincoln that I have since becomeinterested in is the fresh water generating system. I got to thinking about how much steam must be needed to operate the boat and service the personel. (I also learned not to try and shower while the cats were running...)

e again dances the dance of obfucese explained....