In <20080306.1243.108871snz@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> dbell@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
("David
G. Bell") writes:
>On Thursday, in article
> <memo.20080306104707.3392A@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> prd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Paul Dormer" wrote:
>> In article <fqnhb2$7n0$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Keith
F.
>> Lynch) wrote:
>>
>> > Okay, I guess I should have said allied lives. Americans tend to
>> > think of the European Theater as an allied effort, but the Pacific
>> > Theater as just US vs. Japan.
>>
>> The Duke of Edinburgh (husband to the Queen) served in the Pacific War.
>> I saw him being interviewed on TV about his experiences many years ago.
>>
>> He mentioned that he was on the bridge of his ****p with an American
>> officer standing next to him. There was a British aircraft carrier
>> alongside his ****p. Suddenly, a kamikaze plane crashed into the deck
>> of the aircraft carrier. The American officer started to panic,
>> expecting a big explosion.
>>
>> Turned out that US aircraft carriers had wooden flight decks. He was
>> expecting the plane to go right through and blow up the magazine.
>>
>> British aircraft carriers had armoured flight decks. The duke said
>> that what happened next was, after the smoke had cleared, a number of
>> ratings appeared with brooms and swept the wreckage over the side.
>There's an interesting bit of naval architecture in all this, which
>apparently explains some of the secrecy still surrounding the
>construction of modern US carriers. The British designs had the armoured
>flightdeck as part of the hull structure--the "hull box"--and by the end
>of the war several carriers, which had taken battle damage, were having
>problems with things such as shaft alignment. It's like bending the
>chassis of a vehicle.
Exactly. Postwar, several of the UK's armored deck carriers were retred
prematurely because of permanent hull damage. Formidable was written off
in 1947, Illustrious (which, admittedly, took major hits off Malta) was
limited to 22 knots, and made a training carrier in 1948.
Whereas all of the Es*** carriers (even ones that took major hits, like
Franklin), survived the war, and would have been back in service had the
war not ended. The only post-Es*** carrier that was lost was Princeton,
which was a CVL built on a light cruiser hull.
It was harder on CVEs -- they weren't built on war****p hulls at all, and
had no armor either above or below the hangar deck.
>The US carriers, with the wooden flightdeck, had the hangar space
>outside the hull box, and this also avoided problems with aircraft
>lifts. The big hole in the flightdeck didn't affect the hull structural
>strength.
Another issue was metacentric height. An armored flight deck meant so
much weight so high up that the hangar decks had to be shorter, in order
to maintain some semblance of stability.
>When the US Navy introduced armoured flight decks, which means protected
>hangar space, they seem to have done something clever to minimise
>effects on the key structure of the hull box. And deck-edge lifts, while
>they have implications on the structural strength, seem to include
>similar clevernesses.
>Whether it works in combat, I doubt anyone can be sure, unless we're
>doing serious computer simulations.
>And, paradoxically, the wooden flight deck was reparable. Yes, you had
>the ****p out of action, and you had a hangar fire, but the USN did have
>very good firefighting. Repairing that damage might not need the same
>major ****pyard resources that an armoured flightdeck, holed or just
>buckled, would need.
Several US carriers were hit hard and recovered very quickly. The sort of
damage that Yorktown took at Coral Sea would have needed a lot longer than
the several days at Pearl Harbor that it took to get her fixed up well
enough to participate at Midway.
>--
>David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Ben
--
Ben Yalow ybmcu@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
speaking for anybody
|
