Posted on 12/09/2021 6:23:25 PM PST by Jacquerie
While armed services often crave “gold-plated” weapon systems, Kaiser’s cheap jeep carriers showed how simple, affordable and numerous platforms well-suited to operational requirements can prove to be of greater value.
The Casablanca class’ finest hour came in the Battle of Samar, when sixteen CVEs and their escorts covering the amphibious landing at Leyte Gulf single-handedly took on a Japanese battlefleet consisting of four battleships and nineteen cruisers and destroyers. In a frantic few hours, the carriers’ combined air wings and self-sacrificing destroyer escorts managed to sink three cruisers and persuade Admiral Takeo Kurita to withdraw.
“Mass-production” isn’t a term one usually associates with ships as large and valuable as aircraft carriers. But that’s precisely what industrialist Henry Kaiser proposed to the U.S. Navy in 1942: dozens of carriers churned out in a matter of months using assembly-line techniques.
Following the Pearl Harbor raid, it was evident that carriers would rule the seas—but forthcoming Essex-class fleet carriers were years away from entering service. Kaiser was already assembling large “Liberty Ship” transports in just six weeks on average, and he promised to launch small escort carriers in just three months using interchangeable-part production techniques.
But the Navy initially spurned Kaiser’s offer. The “jeep carriers” would have only two-thirds the 30-knot maximum speed of fleet carriers, and carry roughly one-third the number of aircraft. But Kaiser reached over the heads of the Navy to President Franklin Roosevelt, who may have been more attuned to the political sensitivities of the war.
German submarines were then inflicting unsustainable losses on vital transatlantic convoys—particularly while traversing the “mid-Atlantic gap” which lay just outside the patrol radius of patrol planes based in North America and the United Kingdom. Land-based bombers like the Fw 200 Condor also exacted a toll.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Some say that Matthew McConaughey is the only one who knows the answer to that question...
That would figure.
same as the planes, with steam. They just don’t fly as good.
Yep, my father served on one in the Pacific. He liked the military so much that he enlisted in the Army after the war and became a career guy.
The “Casablanca Class” light/jeep carriers definitely had an important role to play in WWII, but they complimented the Essex Class fleet carriers and could not have been a replacement for them. The Casablana’s carried all their aircraft on the flight deck and did not have a hangar deck. An improved Casablanca class, did have a small hangar deck. The Casablanca’s carried up to 20 aircraft, while the Essex’s carried 60+.
Recommend that you read this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being
Regards,
Eighteen American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945 (an average of three ships every two days), easily the largest number of ships ever produced to a single design.
In WW II the Germans had great tanks. But they were expensive, and complicated.
Turns out the “Best Tank” is the one you have.
Another questionable stat was “It takes 5 Shermans to knock out a Tiger”. Leaving aside how many times US Shermans actually were confronted by a Tiger tank (there weren’t very many of them) the reason the number is 5 is because Shermans operated in Platoons whereas a lone German tank might be dug into an ambush position without other supporting tanks. Hence, 5 to 1.
Aircraft carriers have always been fragile things and if you push them too close to a coastline you risk losing them to land based aviation. This was true in WW2 as it is today. By 1945 the threat was the Kamikaze which tactically operated like a modern cruise missile.
What gets missed with all the attention on the glamorous aircraft carriers are the submarines. While US Carrier groups were making grand sweeps against Japanese held islands, individual US submarines were successfully blockading the Japanese Home Islands. That’s the kind of dirty blocking & tackling that doesn’t get much attention, but is vital to winning a war. In any modern war in the Westpac area US submarines will be carrying the load from Day one.
“The US and Soviet tanks were simpler and cheaper, and so were much easier to mass-produce. Allied quantity beat Axis quality.”
The US tanks had to be designed to load onto a ship, cross the stormy Atlantic and be unloaded. Logistics demanded a smaller, lighter tank that ended up being more nimble than anything the Germans had.
The Russians had to design their tanks so the average uneducated peasant could be trained to not only drive and fight one but also repair one. Simplicity was the key for the Russians.
True. OSHA would screw the whole thing up.
“We’re making a torpedo run. The outcome is doubtful, but we will do our duty.”
Lt Commander Robert Copeland
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