Leyte was won by Jeep Carriers and reservist manned destroyers and DEs. None of the front line carriers were involved because after the sinking of the Mushashi the obstinate Halsey was out of range chasing empty Japanese carriers. So the small carrier idea has some history going for it.
I guess we are thinking in a similar direction. Except my aircraft don’t need pilots on board. You can launch them faster, they can fly in ways that you could not do with an onboard pilot. And you can have different drones for different tactics.
The ship would be a lower profile with more space for self defense and extra armor. With a airborne drone armada, you can program them to do this things en masse that piloted aircraft could never do.
This is not eliminate the need for pilots, it just eliminates these from the aircraft.
21st century internet admirals have a grand old time bashing Halsey, I think, for the most part, he has taken a bad rap.
Kurita’s central force in the Sibuyan Sea heading for Leyte, had turned back west after Halsey’s planes had sunk the battleship Musashi, the sister ship to the Yamato, the two biggest battleships ever built. A previous attack by US subs had sunk another part of Kurita’s fleet.
From the intelligence Halsey had, his planes had turned the central force back, and was no longer a threat. The southern force coming through the Surigao Strait would be contained by Admiral Oldendorf’s battleships. Halsey gets wind of another IJN force with carriers coming down from the north.
Sure, after the fact we can say he should have stayed at Leyte to protect the landing, instead of going after the northern force, but with the intelligence he had why not go after the northern force? We’d expect as much from “Bull” Halsey. McArthur called him “the fightingest admiral in the Navy.”