Posted on 05/28/2015 6:52:21 AM PDT by C19fan
History, it has been written, does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Today its rhyming with Gen. Billy Mitchell. In the 1920s, Mitchell challenged conventional thinking by advocating air power at sea in the face of a naval establishment dominated by battleship proponents.
The hubris of the battleship Navy was such that just nine days before Pearl Harbor, the official program for the 1941 Army-Navy game displayed a full page photograph of the battleship USS Arizona with language virtually extolling its invincibility.
Of course, the reason that no one had yet sunk a battleship from the air in combat was that no one had yet tried.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
During wartime carriers would forgo constant overhaul and the cycles of operations sped up. 10 carriers allows for loses while still providing wartime service in theatre.
The problem with small deck ships is the ability to generate sorties. Small decks can't conduct strikes and protect themselves at the same time. I won't even get into the speed differential between a small conventional ship and a nuke.
Project Habakkuk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
lol, Mate For Life? As in The Show tells it how it is? ;)
Britain’s carriers were essential during the Falklands War, so I would not scrap ours just yet.
Who said a million civilians? It doesn’t have to be a strategic attack.
A ChiCom monitor reading this thread would be astonished at the A/C Carrier mentality shown here.
we need carriers to project strength but the reality of a carrier is all it is , is a Mobil airfield. a carrier is a high valued target easy to take out. we need the carrier but we also need the support fleet that goes with it.
They are part of the total CTF defensive package.
Great for nation building, humanitarian aid, and migrant rescue operation. Aka our foreign policy.
I’m not talking overhaul or such. If an enemy gets a lucky hit and disabled a carrier or destroyed it, how fast could we plug the gap?
If this one ship is vital to operations, what will it take and how quickly can we adapt to its loss?
The first question a president asks (well, maybe not this one...) when there is an international crisis is “Where are our carriers?”. Bad idea.
I believe this is incorrect...the RAF had attacked Italian battleships at Taranto prior to Pearl Harbor
My sentiments, as well.
You can disable an A/C Carrier with one or two torpedoes. But there are 3,000 guys trying to get the damage under control and back operational. If watertight doors are all shut it is almost impossible to sink one. The question is can air wing bingo to the beach while A/C gets back operational.
This is one of the reasons for the navy's requirements for the F35. VTOL means a smaller flight deck and a smaller, less expensive carrier. Of course bringing up the F35 here will open a whole new can of worms on this discussion.
no, you obviously didn’t read the article. you’ve missed the point completely. they aren’t saying carriers are bad. they are saying building additional and maintaining the existing carriers at the expense of a support fleet is bad. what makes carriers “invincible” is the fleet you surround them with. the navy is cutting production of other ships so they can continue the carrier force at its existing size. dropping the number of support ships makes the carriers vulnerable and ultimately useless because you cant afford to risk them in combat due to their value.
I just read anti carrier jive talk.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.