RMAllnutt wrote:
Part of the reason the Royal Navy carriers had lower ceilings in the hangar deck was due to the heavily armoured flight deck, (which meant that none of these carriers were sunk or due to dive bombing, or kamikaze attacks, unlike US Carriers, which suffered greatly in those cases). They couldn't carry nearly as many aircraft though, which was a significant problem at times. Also, the Spitfire had folding wing tips as well as the main wing fold, so they could fit more easily in the carrier.
Dave Homewood wrote:
Yes I have talked with several Kiwis and Brits who were aboard fleet carriers which were hit by Kamikazes. Only one case of the stories I've heard did the ship list badly, etc but they soon regained control. In the other cases they said that the crews simply swept the Japanese mess off the deck, filled the slight dent with concrete to level it out again, and within an hour they were operating again. A huge advantage having the steel decks. I don't know why the US Navy went that way in WWII.
The RN armoured-deck carrier story is an interesting one. While all of the above is true, it's not often realised that several of the armoured carriers couldn't be refitted post-war because the ships were actually warped out of true, and as anyone knows whose dealt with an armoured structure, rebuilding them straight was just unviable.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armoured_f ... r_analysisClassic case of trade-offs, and ultimately an example of Napolion's 'big battalions' concept - the USN could build, refit and supply carriers at a rate the British Empire couldn't. In the end, it
didn't matter whether the USN had armoured carriers or not - it was the supply of new and rebuilt materiel that mattered. In the short term, the RN's armoured carriers stayed in the battle and the war, and 'held the line', which was crucial then. The RN couldn't have afforded
not to have had armoured carriers - the loss of the earlier, unarmoured carriers before the US entry to the war, and HMS
Eagle soon after, were sore holes in the RN's capability.
And... a double-fold wing (such as the Seafire's) is a poorer engineering and performance solution to the lighter, simpler single fold. Of course Grumman's famous 'eraser & paperclip' fold seems to me the most neat solution.
http://heroicrelics.org/info/grumman-pa ... rclip.htmlRegards,
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