US admiral: Carrier killer won't stop US Navy

Associated Press ^ | Feb. 15, 2011 | ERIC TALMADGE

[ArrogantBustard]

a whole lot was learned in a short time about how to design, build, fight and save a damaged aircraft carrier.

One would hope so ...

OTOH:

How many hits did Franklin receive? How many of those were below the waterline?

How many hits did Yorktown receive? How many of those were below the waterline?

I realize there's more to the story than that ... Franklin was loaded with armed and fueled aircraft when she was attacked, Yorktown was not. Yorktown was attacked 3 separate times at Midway, Franklin "only" once. Franklin was "saved" once, Yorktown was "saved" twice before being sunk while under tow.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the OP, other than that even in WWII, it was darn hard to sink a CV.

[Colonel_Flagg]

We lost six carriers to enemy action {sank} in WW2. The Langley, Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, Hornet, and Princeton.

You mean six fleet carriers. My late father-in-law served on an escort carrier that was sunk from underneath him off Samar.

[hosepipe]

good point..

[joe fonebone]

Cool information....did you know we shot down a 155mm shell in flight with one of these thingies, about 8 years ago???If you are given this info, what do you think of the possiblity that these thingies are already deployed???

[Mariner]

"At its most capable, the DF 21D could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 900 miles (1,500 kilometers)."

A capability that has never been demonstrated even in a test flight.

When they can hit a towed freighter at 25kts...and no defense...in a test, then it will be time to consider other counter-measures.

Still, one rule remains: You sink a US Capital Ship, you have opted for total war.

[BroJoeK]

Colonel_Flagg: "You mean six fleet carriers. My late father-in-law served on an escort carrier that was sunk from underneath him off Samar."

At least two escort carriers were sunk at Samar: St. Lo and Gambier Bay.

Of nearly 40 larger CV & CVL type US carriers in WWII, six were sunk, all but one of those early in the war.
That one was the CVL Princeton -- 13,000 tons, 45 aircraft.
The typical larger Essex class weighed 27,000 tons and carried 90 aircraft -- none of those were sunk.

The US also built 122 small escort carriers, around 10,000 tons carrying 25 aircraft.
Of those, a good number (can't find exact figures) were sunk, including at least the two at Samar.

Even in WWII, escort carriers were never intended to be major "battle ships," though sometimes forced into that service.
No new US escort carriers have been built since WWII.

USS Palau CVE 122 in 1950

[BroJoeK]

AB: "I'm not sure what this has to do with the OP, other than that even in WWII, it was darn hard to sink a CV."

Exactly.
No one in his right mind claims any ship is "invulnerable."
But our guys build their ships to be as tough as possible, and then surround them with layers of destroyer & submarine type protections -- it's one reason they cost so d*mn much.

Then again, how much is it worth to maintain world peace?
Answer: in terms of pure dollars, not just $billions or hundreds of billions, or even $trillions -- but $tens of trillions per year in the world's Gross Domestic Product.
And no one could even guess the numbers of lives at stake in a major war.

And all that for a piddling 4% of US GDP devoted to national defense.
Pretty small price, I'd say.

So, are we still on the Original Point? ;-)

[Colonel_Flagg]

He was aboard Gambier Bay, the only American carrier of the war to be sunk by surface gunfire.

[cva66snipe]

The ability of well-escorted modern US supercarrier to survive hits is beyond impressive. They're not unsinkable, but it's going to take a LOT to put them down. The damage sustained by Forrestal and Enterprise (flight-deck ordinance mishaps) during Vietnam speaks to this. Their ability to avoid hits, even nuclear ones (the results of the Bikini Able and Baker tests showed that it would take a near-direct hit to sink capital ships), is equally impressive.

There was one more fire in that era. Big O caused by a flare I think. About equal to these other two fires. My point though was in war you expect loss. You try to limit it but loss happens.

The Damage Control lessons of WW2 era brought us the first Super Carrier Class Forestall. Forestall had a super carrier hull and flight-deck but was the last carrier built with a 600 PSI Propulsion Plant. Saratoga the second in Forestall class was the first 1200 PSI system. The next generation the Kitty Hawks were even tougher. The Navy did actually put a KH class into a deliberate conventional attack scenario to obtain Damage Control data for the newest FORD class carrier. The carrier was the America CV 66. It took days to sink it with the final act done by pre placed charges put there for just the final scuttling when it finally gave it up and went down fast.

When I was in we practiced for all types of attack Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, as well as conventional.

We still need to keep the carriers. We also need to build at least two conventional plant carriers and many more subs. Carriers are the only way you can move nearly 80 planes with full support to an area in the quickest amount of time. The only thing not with the carrier is an inflight tanker.

True Langley {former USS JUPITER} wasn't originally built as a carrier but it was the first ship designated as a CV.

[cva66snipe]

A friend of mine’s daughter is a surface warfare officer in a carrier battle group. She refers to Destroyers and Frigates in the group as “missile catchers”.....

The escort ships are an essential part of the carrier battle group. Carriers have some self defenses such as missle launch and anti-aircraft systems {the anti aircraft system is real wicked LOL a computerized high speed manuverability Gatlin Gun System}.

[cva66snipe]

Yes, but five of the six were lost in the first twelve months of the war, when the Axis were ascendent and the correct tactics and countermeasures to defend carriers had not been fully worked out. The Brits lost five carriers in WW2 (Courageous, Glorious, Ark Royal, Hermes and Eagle) and all of them were lost before mid 1942.

WW2 and later in the Nam era a lot was learned about Compartmentalization and Damage Control. DC also saved the USS Cole and would have made sinking the USS PUEBLO almost impossible when it was being attacked.

[tanknetter]

That's just plain false.

...

Yes, Yorktown was sunk by enemy action ... in spite of heroic and highly effective damage control efforts.

No, it's not false (plain or otherwise). Please note that I'm pointing out the flaws in the DC tactics not in the valor of the Yorktown's crew (some of whom I've met, including a good discussion with the late Bill Surgi on this very subject shortly after he returned from the Ballard expedition that located and documented the Yorktown).

In that regard, there were two significant lessons in Yorktown's DC efforts, both of which were identified and employed in the DC efforts for later operations on US CVs.

First was the decision to abandon Yorktown completely. Given her rapidly increasing list Captain Buckmaster, on the advice of his DC officer (Commander Aldrich) and putting his crew first, made a legitimate decision under the circumstances (understanding that there were several "legitimate" decisions he could have made). However, had he left a moderately-sized DC party aboard the ship to continue DC efforts throughout the night, Yorktown would have been in a much better position for re-boarding and towing much earlier than actually occurred. As a result the ability of I-168 to track and locate her (based on info provided by Chikuma's floatplane) would have been significantly more constrained. There is a good probability that I-168 would not have been able to locate, penetrate a renewed ASW screen and prosecute a successful attack.

Second was the decision (passive in nature), following the abandon ship call, not to consolidate the DC teams onto a single rescue ship. When the decision was made to re-board Yorktown the first step was to consolidate the DC party aboard Hammann. This cost time. Then Adm Fletcher made the decision to refuel his escorts. This took more time. While the impact of this lost time can be seen as having a lesser impact than the time lost due to the full abandon ship order, when it comes to DC, time truly is the "unrecoverable commodity", and as with the original decision to abandon ship every tick of the clock allowed I-168 to creep in closer to take the fatal shots.

[cva66snipe]

Here’s an idea of what all we had aviable in WW2
http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm#1993

[tanknetter]

Compare Yorktown which was lost in June, 1942 with Franklin, which was saved in March 1945, and you have to realize that a whole lot was learned in a short time about how to design, build, fight and save a damaged aircraft carrier.

Fight and save a damaged carrier, yes. Design and build, not so much.

Franklin's design, as a short-hull Essex-class CV, was fixed at the time that the four US fleet carrier losses of 1942 occurred and minimal changes were incorporated (mainly consisting of beefed up AA batteries, such as the additional 40mm mounts on hull sponsons next to the island).

The first US carriers that incorporated the lessons of the 1942 battles were the appropriately named Midway class. Design features of the Midways included an armored flightdeck, better compartmentalization and subdivision and increased 5" mounts located in better positions (on below-flightdeck sponsons running the length of the hull).

Although Franklin was arguably a "better" (from a damage sustainability perspective) ship than Yorktown due to her increased size (allowing more compartmentalization), she also absorbed significantly more damage than Yorktown did. What really saved her were the DC lessons from 1942, including the reluctance to abandon ship (although I've never read that Franklin's CO considered what happened to Yorktown or Hornet in making his decision to keep his crew aboard to save his ship).

[tanknetter]

Why has the USN deactivated so many ASW assets P-3 Squadrons and closed NAS such as Brunswick in Me? Once you lose these squadrons and their crews you lose valuable training and equipment.

Because there's no chance that the USN is going to fight a blue-water war with Russia in the North Atlantic. It makes much more sense to restructure assets to fight the conflicts that are likely to occur for the next 20-40 years.

Those conflicts are more than likely to be in the littorals of 3rd-world nations (including Iran). Where better capabilities in more limited numbers (such as the P-8A Poseidon that will replace the aged P-3 fleet, but on well less than a 1-1 basis) will be more than adequate.

The one potential major blue-water conflict nation is, of course, China. Engaging militarily with China requires a layered strategy based on carrier-based airpower and submarines. P-3s (and to a lesser extent P-8s) would play a negligible role, given range limitations and vulnerability.

[JSteff]

quantity is what these commie SOBs do

But it only helped in WWII. They lost the other ones. Even WWII would have been dicey if we hadn't been POURING assistance into soviet russia. And that is what kept them from being destroyed after the Germans actually made it all the way to Moscow.

That and bad generals on the part of the Germans. However, think how the situation would have been reversed had we given Germany the aid we gave to the Russians.

[maddog55]

Pretty soon NAS Whidbey will be without P-3s as well and it appears the P-8 won’t be going there either. USN has put ASW back high on their priority list after years of neglect. It’ll take time to get back to the proficiency levels of the early 80’s if they ever do.

[Gene Eric]

>> At Mach 6, would you have time to say anything?

That’s a good question for Lorentz or that other guy.

[Kenny Bunk]

in re: quantity is what these commie SOBs do
....But it only helped in WWII.

J, I am not sure about that. In Korea we caused the CHICOM well over a million KIA and twice that number of WIA. In VietNam, we caused the NVA and Viet Cong well over a million KIA.

Didn't faze them a bit. They know that we cannot take casualties and that they can. During the cold War, the Soviets were prepared to use and lose 10,000 tanks to take out 1500 of ours and take 500,000 casualties to get through Western Europe in their initial surge.

The evil ones out there are prepared for human and mechanical attrition, it is their best and most effective weapon.