How about taking old Carriers out of mothballs, redoing them and putting them in the fleet? Maybe develop a new class of carrier that uses drones only? Or bring back battleships but put flight decks on them so they can be combo Battleship-Carriers? Japan did that at the end of the last world war and they did well. They could serve until we get our ship building running well.
I’m all for rebuilding, refurbishing, and upgrading to modern standards older ships. It just makes sense to me, rather than making targets out of them.
“Or bring back battleships but put flight decks on them so they can be combo Battleship-Carriers? Japan did that at the end of the last world war and they did well. They could serve until we get our ship building running well.”
Reasonable questions. The IJN Shinano was a converted “Yamato-class” battleship. It’s important to understand that battleships have a lot of internal compartmentalization for flood-control & structural support of all that armor. They are designed to take a pounding from guns of their own caliber.
Aircraft carriers evolved with large internal volume devoted to maintenance of aircraft, special machinery (elevators), fuel and weapons storage, spare aircraft, and so on. Can’t easily duplicate that on on a battleship design.
Returning to the Shinano, the IJN did not consider it to be a fleet carrier (what we called an “Attack Carrier” post-WW2). It’s role was basically that of a aircraft transport (AVT). The idea is that it could carry the aircraft to resupply island air groups of to deliver spares to the fleet carriers at see. In other words, it was a very large, expensive aviation support ship.
Also, the experience with the 8” guns retained by the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga showed that flight operations were not compatible with the shock of large caliber naval guns. I can only imagine what 16” naval rifles on a “Iowa Class” would do.
The only existing pre-Nimitz carriers are JFK and Kitty Hawk, they’re both being scrapped. Smaller drone carriers might be a good idea. The two battleship-carrier hybrids Japan created never did anything of note. They didn’t have enough of either ship type to them to be of any real use.