Dark Earth: Histories of the Aircraft Carrier

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:04 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 1: 1900-1919

Warfare at the end of the 19th Century was undergoing several revolutions, the most significant of which was that if technology. On land, sea and air, massive advances were being made in the introduction of new and powerful machinery that replaced the labour of man and beast with far more potent artificial means. The invention and first flight of the powered aircraft in 1895 opened up new areas of potential development, offering the opportunity for far smaller flying machines than the ponderous steam airships and far less expensive than the cavorite vessels that plied the waves of the aether in space. Sir William Henson's initial ponderous flyers were very much experimental machines and it would take the breakthroughs achieved by the Wright Brothers in the United States at the dawn of the 20th Century to allow the advancement to an effective weapon of war.

However, the first use of flying machine operated from ships predated the aeroplane by almost a century. Both the British and French had employed kite ships and balloon ships during the Napoleonic Wars, although neither managed to find a decisive use for these niche vessels. It would take the American Civil War in the 1860s to see balloon tenders employed on a more effective scale, with the Union Army Balloon Corps operating off converted coal barges in the Potomac River, however these watercraft were purely littoral in nature and did not venture onto the high seas. The paucity of naval battles outside of the general vicinity of land throughout the conflict limited the role of balloon observation to action on land, primarily in the Peninsula Campaign. Balloons also encountered the distinct difficulty of operating in an environment where they could possibly face dragons and the advancing offensive threat of modern battle magics.

Some consideration was given by the Admiralty for the development of an iron steamship capable of supporting the independent operation of dragons in the late 1860s, but this was seen as an uneconomical solution to a problem that was largely absent in the light of Britain’s expanding network of coaling stations across the seven seas. Two Royal Navy balloon tenders, HMS Julia and HMS Emulous, were converted initially to support operations in China and Japan in 1869, but were then altered to support the initial flights of the Imperial Space Programme in man’s first steps towards the heavens. It was not to be an indicator of what was to come, with the last decades of the 19th Century being the age of the airship, which proved just as able in reducing the relative 'size' of the world as the steamship in the previous generation.

The first aeroplanes were flimsy, short-ranged contraptions of no apparent military utility beyond mere curiosity, but the evolution of their power, range and performance began to open new opportunities for their use, primarily as reconnaissance platforms. Progress of aircraft development in the first decade of the 20th Century was rapid, encouraged both by international conflicts in Southern Africa and Manchuria and the ongoing impact of the War of the Worlds. The Austrian Kress Drachenflieger represented the first operational aquatic plane, but was primarily used on rivers and reservoirs as it was gradually tested from 1902 to 1905. It was to be the French who developed the first seaplane proper in the form of the Hydravion of Henri Fabre in 1907, which was rapidly followed by similar developments in Britain and the United States, where aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin broke distance and speed records in his Avalon Zipper. At this time, whilst the seaplane was rapidly developing into an obvious naval weapon of war, the very first take off from a naval vessel occurred when a specially adapted Royal Navy Short S.29 took off from a platform onboard the battleship HMS Dreadnought on March 14th 1908. Across the Atlantic, Eugene Ely was the first individual to successfully land an aircraft on a ship and take off, albeit on separate occasions, in early November 1908.

The first ships designed to support the new generation of aircraft were seaplane tenders, with the French La Foudre being converted from a torpedo boat tender in February 1909, being equipped with a deck, hanger and crane for lifting seaplanes. She displaced 7680t and carried six seaplanes, whilst still sporting a conventional gun armament of six Canon de 100mm Modele 1891 and four Canon de 75mm Modele 1904. It was successfully tested in fleet exercise in 1910, providing valuable service in extending the range and vision of the French battlefleet and warding off surprise attacks by torpedo boats. La Foudre was used to train increasing numbers of seaplane pilots and was fitted with a 10 metre long flying-off deck in 1912 for further experiments with wheeled landplanes, but this turned out to be too short for any optimal employment.

The Royal Navy rapidly followed suit, converting the old cruiser HMS Hermes into a seaplane carrier capable of supporting an initial complement of eight seaplanes. The 6400t vessel had a relatively high top speed of 20 knots and, in the manner of La Foudre and most other first generation carriers, was equipped with a strong array of guns in the form of six QF 6”, eight single QF 12pdrs and six QF 3pdr Hotchkiss anti-torpedo boat guns. She was recommissioned on May 6th 1911 and was initially attached to the Channel Fleet at Portland, carrying out extensive training and testing of various new seaplanes. Hermes followed by the similarly obsolescent Pegasus, Perseus, Aeolus and Hermione over the next two years. In the manner of the French, the Royal Navy primarily employed Hermes and her later sisters in an experimental role, both at Home and in the Mediterranean, examining the uses of seaplanes in fleet exercises and general reconnaissance, but additionally tested their use as armed platforms. The various seaplanes examined did not offer any great capability in terms of their bomb capacity or range and were thus considered not to be of immediate use as military flying machines.

In the United States, the protected cruisers Columbia and Baltimore were similarly converted to support seaplane operations, with the larger vessel providing a much more versatile platform, whilst the smaller cruiser retained more of her heavy gun armament. The two United States Navy seaplane carriers thus operated as a pair, with Columbia carrying nine seaplanes to Baltimore's four, and their participation in joint exercises with the United States Fleet gave valuable experience for the Navy's fliers. America's increasing rival in the Pacific, the Empire of Japan, also entered into the age of the seaplane carriers when the Imperial Japanese Navy acquired the captured Russian transport Wakamiya-Maru for experimental aviation purposes. She could carry a middling group of half a dozen seaplanes, but was equipped a lighter armament than the Continental vessels, with only a pair of 79mm guns.

Aeroplanes had seen combat use in the Mexican Uprising, the Italo-Turkish War and the Balkan Wars that saw Ottoman Turkey finally expelled from Europe after five centuries, but none of the combatants made use of seaplanes in a military context due to a combination of circumstances and their own limitations. The Royal Navy employed seaplanes operating from HMS Pegasus in a reconnaissance role over the Aegean in 1912 as it sought to protect the neutrality of British shipping and interests in the heated conflict, where the smaller amphibious aircraft provided a much more flexible option for aerial photography than the larger, higher-flying dirigible airships. The operation of aircraft from the sea, whilst it appealed directly to the world's largest navy, was not a development that was ignored by any of the Great Powers, with the most pressing need being regarded as extending the capacity of a battlefleet at sea to detect and outmanoeuvre their opponents. Military sorcerers carried out a range of divinations on that matter, all of which indicated that the operation of aeroplane carriers would be decisive in victory in a future conflict, which decided the matter for those naval establishments which could afford their acquisition; future interpretation of these decidedly unclear predictions have indicated that they may have been somewhat precipitous.

As these developments were occuring, the true birth of the aircraft carrier was imminent. As early as 1908, the French inventor Clément Ader had postulated the essential features of an aeroplane-carrying vessel in his prescient work L'Aviation Militaire, stating that "An airplane-carrying vessel is indispensable. These vessels will be constructed on a plan very different from what is currently used. First of all the deck will be cleared of all obstacles. It will be flat, as wide as possible without jeopardizing the nautical lines of the hull, and it will look like a landing field." These observations were shared by American and British officers on either side of the Atlantic, leading to the Admiralty acquiring a large merchant freighter recently laid down by the Blyth Shipbuilding Company in Northumberland in March 1913. This new ship was built from the frames up as a specialist vessel for the operation of both aeroplanes and seaplanes and was commissioned as HMS Ark Royal, a long and storied name, redolent in history, on December 29th 1913. Displacing 12,460t and armed with four BL 4" Mk VIII and eight QF 12pdr 12 cwt guns, Ark Royal had a top speed of 17 knots and could carry an initial group of 16 aircraft, usually made up of a mixture of seaplanes and wheeled aeroplanes. Two further merchant liners, Argus and Eagle, were acquired for similar development, being commissioned in May and July of 1914 respectively. These ships were capable of launching wheeled landplanes whilst underway at sea, but lacked the ability to recover them after their flight, fundamentally limiting their tactical utility.

The other major naval powers followed the example of the Royal Navy in the acquisition of aeroplane carriers over the course of the latter part of 1913 and 1914, their rapid development being very much a consequence of the heated naval arms race of the time. France converted the liner La Rochelle to a composite aeroplane/seaplane carrier in late 1913, christening it with the warlike name of Oriflamme to reflect its new position. She had a greater displacement and speed than Ark Royal, capable of a top speed of 19 knots, but only supported an air group of twelve aeroplanes. Across the Atlantic, the French developments were followed in the United States by the old battleship Indiana, which was converted to an aeroplane carrier from May 1913 to February 1914. She was capable of operating fourteen aeroplanes, but her arrangement of her flying-off platform was not seen as completely optimal. The Japanese, Russians and Germans began the conversion the battleship Fuji, the protected cruiser Admiral Kornilov and the armoured cruiser Friedrich Carl to experimental aeroplane carriers in early 1914, but all three operated smaller aircraft groups than the earlier ships.

Upon the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, the fleets of the belligerent Great Powers were mobilised and placed onto a war footing. Unlike some prewar predictions made by civilian experts and journalists, the war did not begin with a grand naval battle, as both the Royal Navy and Imperial German Navy exercised decidedly cautious strategic approaches. The widely anticipated close British blockade of the German coast, upon which many pre-war plans in Berlin were based, did not occur, with a distant blockade at the other end of the North Sea preferred. The main battlefleet of the Royal Navy was concentrated at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, along with the three aeroplane carriers, even though they were viewed as lacking speed for proper fleet employment. In the south, the British Expeditionary Force was successfully transported to France under the guard of the battleships and cruisers of the Channel Fleet, whilst the Royal Navy's seaplane carriers transported aircraft to France and provided aerial reconnaissance cover to the huge convoys of troopships. A number of civilian vessels were taken up from trade for conversion to seaplane carriers by the Admiralty, consisting of the Cross-Channel packet ships Riviera, Empress, Engadine and Ben-My-Chree, the liner Campania and the seized German freighters Rabenfels and Aenne Rickmers, later renamed Raven and Anne. Two additional liners, Aragon and Cantabrian, were requisitioned for conversion to aeroplane carriers, but this process was to be rather more protracted than planned due to the sheer volume of work undertaken in the Royal Dockyards at the beginning of the war.

The first use of aircraft carriers of any sort in combat occurred at the First Battle of Heligoland Bight on August 20th 1914, where Admiral Sir David Beatty lead a force of battlecruisers, cruisers and destroyers on a successful ambush of patrolling German cruisers and torpedo boats. In addition to the surface action, which was acclaimed by many at home as a harbinger of future British victories at sea to come, Hermes, Ark Royal and Eagle launched a total of 25 seaplanes to attack the German fortress island of Heligoland. The raid itself had only a pinprick effect on the German defences due to cloudy conditions and sporadic anti-aircraft fire, but demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft striking from the sea. Twenty of the aircraft were recovered, with the crews of the others being taken onboard destroyers and submarines and their planes scuttled due to the urgency of the need to draw back to Britain with the battlecruiser force.

In the Far East, the German concession of Kiautschou Bay and its model Teutonic port city of Tsingtao stood out as one of the jewels in the crown of the German colonial empire and a threat to the British and Allied position in China. Upon a request from their British allies, the Japanese issued an ultimatum to Germany on August 12th to withdraw its forces and ships from Chinese and Japanese waters and to transfer the port of Tsingtao to Japanese control. The majority of the heavy ships of the German East Asia Squadron had broken out to the Pacific at the beginning of hostilities, where they would be hunted down and destroyed by British and Dominion battlecruisers, but four older cruisers remained in Tsingtao, blockaded within its harbour by a force of Imperial Japanese Navy and Royal Navy predreadnoughts. The Japanese deployed a reinforced infantry division, several batteries of their heaviest artillery, two dragons and a not-insubstantial battlefleet, whilst Britain dispatched the old predreadnoughts Canopus, Empress of India, Nelson and Duke of Wellington and an ad hoc division of British and Indian troops from Hong Kong. Wakamiya launched several waves of airstrikes from its seaplane preceding the initial naval bombardment on August 25th as the Imperial Japanese Army began to land its forces and move up to the intended siege lines and these raids were followed on a near daily basis over the next month. The formal siege and bombardment of Tsingtao began on September 30th and culminated with a devastating barrage on October 12th, as the Anglo-Japanese battlefleet, the 280mm and 305mm howitzers of the land forces and the dragons rained ruin down upon the city. Tsingtao would finally capitulate on October 29th as the remaining 1600 German troops marched into Japanese captivity. Wakamiya and Fuji would see action alongside Allied forces as the Chinese Front developed in 1915, but other events would overshadow their role.

On Christmas Day 1914, German and British troops took part in a spontaneous truce that marked that last gasp of peacetime niceties, but at sea, there was no let up from hostilities. The Royal Navy's Harwich Force sortied in strength, covered by the Battle Cruiser Fleet, in an operation escorting the seaplane carriers Hermes, Empress, Engadine, Riviera and all three of the operational aeroplane carriers in a strike on the Zeppelin sheds at the Imperial German Navy's base at Cuxhaven. 39 aircraft were launched, with 30 reaching their targets and dropping their loads of four 25lb bombs. Just as over Heligoland, the impact of the raid was limited by issues of accuracy and poor weather, but marked the first large attack by naval aircraft on a base in the enemy's homeland. The German reaction in the form of the authorisation of the first Zeppelin raids on Britain in January 1915 was the first escalation that would culminate in the newly established Royal Air Force's strategic bombing campaign against German cities in 1918. There was some consideration given to use of German naval aircraft to strike against England after the Kaiser's personal suggestion, but this was not seen as an optimal employment of German naval forces at this time due to the disadvantageous correlation of forces in the North Sea, particularly in the light of the British victory at the Battle of Dogger Bank at the end of January.

Russia would be the first of the major belligerents to employ naval aircraft in the next year, using Grigorovich seaplanes from Admiral Kornilov to attack Turkish coastal shipping around Trebizond. This would be a precursor to the most notable use of aircraft carriers to date in the great Mediterranean campaign launched by Britain and France to break through to the beleagured Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Planning for such an operation had been underway since the beginning of the war, with Ottoman Turkish entry into the war on the side of Germany presenting a significant challenge. January saw the dispatch of Raven, Hermes, Empress, Engadine, Ben-My-Chree, Ark Royal and Eagle to the Mediterranean, where they joined Oriflamme and La Foudre in build-up of forces prior to the Gallipoli Campaign. The aerial reconnaissance capacity of the carriers would prove instrumental in the successful coordinated landing operations at Anzac Cove, Suvla Bay, Cape Helles and Bulair, providing useful spotting for naval gunfire support through the agency of new arcane wireless communication sets and harassing Turkish coastal defence positions as the 25 Allied battleships and over 100 smaller vessels forced their way through the Dardanelles. The 18" shells of the new super dreadnoughts Queen Elizabeth and Warspite, sent to the Mediterranean to undergo testing and working up under fire, proved devastating to Ottoman defences. As the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force battled their way up the peninsula and along the coast of the Sea of Marmara, a Short 184 seaplane piloted by Flight Commander Charles Edmonds operating off Ben-My-Chree became the first naval aircraft to attack and sink an enemy vessel underway at sea with an aerial torpedo on May 23rd. This success was somewhat offset by the loss of HMS Hermes to a German U-Boat in the Aegean on June 28th. The relief of the besieged city of Constantinople on September 12th 1915 would bring the campaign to a successful end and the assembled forces were once again dispersed, with the seaplane carriers deployed to Egypt to support the advance of Sir Edmund Allenby's Middle Eastern Expeditionary Force into Palestine, whilst the Royal Navy aeroplane carriers would return to Malta and thence to Britain.

Oriflamme would join with the new Italian aeroplane carrier Alessandro Volta to operate along the Otranto Barrage, which defended the strategic straits from the Adriatic to the broader Mediterranean from any attempted breakout by the surface fleet of the Austro-Hungarian k.u.k. Kriegsmarine and the few surface vessels of the Imperial German Navy that had fled for the relative safety of the former's fortress in Pola. Consideration was given to a carrier attack upon Pola, but the tactical problems involved with forcing a heavily escorted surface force to within range of Istria in the face of heavy torpedo craft and submarine opposition proved to be insurmountable given the forces available and their limited capabilities. Proposals were also raised for their deployment to the Aegean to support the static fighting along the Salonika and Thrace fronts, but their possible contribution was viewed as comparatively minimal compared to the risk of their loss. The Italian and French carriers would operate alongside each other in support roles over the next two and a half years before they would be risked in pitched battle in the Adriatic.

Upon their return to Britain, the earlier Royal Navy aeroplane carriers were docked for refurbishment and expansion of their flying off decks in line with the newly commissioned Aragon and Cantabrian, which were equipped with three-quarter length platforms that had allowed them to operate more effective wheeled landplanes whilst at sea with the fleet. They were equipped with a mixture of aircraft, including Sopwith Camel fighting planes, Blackburn TB anti-Zeppelin destroyers, Short 225 torpedo planes and Fairey Fleetwood general purpose scouts. All of the aeroplane carriers were grouped together into a specific fleet scouting force, with a secondary role of attacking enemy warships with aerial torpedoes after the successes encountered at Gallipoli. This was fortuitously timed, as the High Seas Fleet had now come under the command of Admiral Von Scheer, who supported far more aggressive action by Germany on the North Sea in order to wear down the numerial advantage of the Royal Navy. The main method of this was to be a series of raids on British ports that would lure out the Grand Fleet into concentrated submarine ambushes and engagements that would attrit their numbers. A large operation, incorporating the German surface fleet, U-Boats and Zeppelins, was planned for the end of May 1916, in order to gain a significant advantage prior to the expected entry of the United States of America into the war on the Entente side.

Unfortunately for the Germans, their wireless communications and ciphers had been deciphered by British naval intelligence due to the capture of a German codebook and Room 40, the secret cryptological analysis section of the Admiralty, had indicated that the High Seas Fleet was definitely preparing to sail on May 31st. Upon receipt of this information, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet, decided to sortie the fleet and position it to take up a position off the southern coast of Norway to intercept the Germans. Jellicoe sailed from Scapa Flow with 32 dreadnoughts, 54 cruisers, 42 frigates and 136 destroyers at 22:30 on May 30th, linking up with an additional force of 4 super-dreadnoughts, 6 cruisers and 18 destroyers from Cromarty, whilst Sir Horace Hood's Battlecruiser Fleet of 12 battlecruisers, 28 cruisers, 18 frigates and 48 destroyers departed the Firth of Forth before dawn on the 31st. The two forces were scheduled to rendezvous 100 miles west of the mouth of the Skagerrak in the afternoon; the egress of the British battlecruisers was detected by German picket U-Boats on station off the coast of Scotland, but the Grand Fleet evaded detection through the sheer strength of its anti-submarine screen.

The Aircraft Carrier Force, consisting of the five aeroplane carriers and four seaplane carriers, operating detached from the main battle force with an escort of armoured cruisers and frigates, put up a continual aerial screen to aid the reconnaissance capacity of the Grand Fleet, in conjunction with twelve airships of the Royal Naval Air Service. The outer elements of both fleets met from 13:30 on the afternoon of May 31st, with the initial clashes taking place between the light cruiser screens and then the armoured cruiser forces, just as the Battle Cruiser Fleet ran directly into the German counterparts. Imperial German Navy Zeppelins seeking out the main body of the Grand Fleet were harassed by Sopwith Camels launched from the Royal Navy carriers, but none were badly damaged due to the limited armament of the British aeroplanes. 16 torpedo bombers were launched from Eagle and Aragon to attack the German aeroplane carrier Friedrich Carl and succeeded in scoring one hit on the enemy vessel, forcing it from the growing mayhem of the battle. When the main fleet action commenced at 1740 with Jellicoe crossing Scheer's T, a moment noted by German survivors as one where the entire arc of the horizon erupted in an enormous sea of fire as the Grand Fleet began to pour broadside after broadside through the smoke and mist into the unfortunate Hoche See Flotte, the role of the various aircraft carriers was sidelined, with the loss of HMS Cantabrian and 537 of its crew to a German U-Boat being on of the more greivous losses suffered on the day.

The Battle of Jutland has been rightly called the 'Second Trafalgar' due to the decisive nature of the British victory and whilst the role of the aircraft carrier is considered distinctly secondary to the exploits of those daring battlecruisers, the 'Splendid Cats', the performance of the Iron Dukes and of course the deeds of the new Queen Elizabeth and Royal Sovereign class super dreadnoughts, particularly the great HMS Warspite, but it also marked the first clash of aircraft carriers at sea. Amid the public acclaim and fanfare, the Admiralty noted the potential capacity brought by the new vessels to both inflict damage and also defend the vital battlefleet from the depredations of enemy aeroplanes and airships. The extent of the triumph opened up a number of new offensive options for the Grand Fleet as well as allowing the release of destroyers and frigates to augment the convoy escort forces in the deepening Battle of the Atlantic against the U-Boat menace and First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher, who was to be created the Duke of Somerset in recognition of his role in the victory, had particular plans for the employment of aircraft carriers in these future operations.

Meanwhile, as the war on land, sea and air showed no sign of a swift ending, the naval construction programmes of the Great Powers changed in response to the nature of the war. The Royal Navy had viewed its current battlecruiser programme of the eight King Alfred and Renown class as sufficient to counter known German construction, but First Sea Lord Fisher had formulated a daring notion of penetrating the Baltic Sea and landing a force of Royal Marines and British Army troops on the shores of Pomerania, supported by over 700 ships, including new, shallow draft battlecruisers equipped with very heavy guns. His strident support lead to the laying down in early 1915 of four large light 18" battlecruisers, the Courageous class, and two even larger ships to be equipped with guns of the incredible calibre of 20", named the Incomparables by Admiral Fisher, who was ever fond of such rhetorical gestures. Whilst these under construction, the circumstances of the war and Allied grand strategy in the aftermath of Jutland shifted away from the viability of the so-called Baltic Project in favour of two much more circumspect objectives - the seizure of the German fortress island of Heligoland and a 'Great Landing' on the Belgian coast to eliminate the increasing scourge of German U-Boat bases in Flanders. Such plans did not called for quite the same forces as originally envisaged, resulting in the second pair of the Courageous class, Furious and Fearless, being converted whilst under construction to aeroplane carriers and the suspension of work on the Incomparables so that priority could be shifted to monitors and lighter forces; this also lead to the slowing of work on the so-called 'super-battlecruisers' of the Admiral class, which Admiral Fisher fought ferociously hard to preserve.

In the United States, their preparations for full engagement in the World War had accelerated to fever pitch upon the declaration of war against Germany on March 3rd 1916 and the U.S. Navy began an unprecedented mobilisation. Sixteen super-dreadnought battleships and eight battlecruisers were under construction or ordered in addition to the existing fleet of two dozen battleships and eight battlecruisers as part of President Theodore Roosevelt's plan to build a navy second to none and bring about the complete defeat of Imperial Germany. Even with the German defeat at Jutland, the necessity for the sheer numbers of capital ships was only somewhat reduced, with the attachment of four US Battleship Divisions to the Grand Fleet being a definitive sign of the growing Anglo-American relationship, but the necessity for the large battlecruiser force was reconsidered in favour of new aircraft carriers to provide for a fully rounded fleet. Four seaplane carriers were under conversion from large fleet colliers and an intended replacement for the prewar conversion of Kearsarge in the form of a combined aeroplane and seaplane carrier similar to the British Ark Royal was underway in New York, with the 21,000t USS Wright commissioned on March 24th 1917. Most significantly, the Department of the Navy began studies on the possible conversion of some or all of the planned Lexington class super-battlecruisers into aircraft carriers and also laid down the Langley, the first dedicated aircraft carrier built from the keel up as such in September 1916.

Japan, whilst it was increasingly focussed on the confused Chinese Front and the maintenance of the Japanese Expeditionary Force in France, also put great emphasis on the continued development of a modern fleet, even now in the midst of war looking forward to the changed strategic circumstances of peacetime where their relations with their erstwhile American and British allies may not be quite as salubrious as those of war. The service of the four Kongo class battlecruisers with the Royal Navy Grand Fleet from July 1916 and the ongoing deployment of the battlecruisers Tsukuba, Ikumi, Ibuki and Kurama with the Allied Mediterranean Fleet provided the IJN with a valuable opportunity to observe the use of British, French and Italian aircraft carriers at sea and this information was transmitted back to Tokyo for extensive consideration. Fuji and Wakamiya had been joined by two other converted cruisers in 1915 and 1916, Matsushima and Nisshin, forming the Shina Kantai (China Fleet) alongside older dreadnoughts and cruisers and they had proved adept at the projection of naval airpower along the Chinese coast. Whilst Japan's much reduced resources compared to the British Empire and United States precluded it from the same level of wartime construction programme, the Empire of the Rising Sun placed considerable emphasis on quality over quality. A new construction aeroplane carrier with a full length flight deck was ordered in December 1916 and laid down in May 1917.

The aftermath of defeat at the Battle of Jutland had been the cause of much introspection in the German Empire. The High Seas Fleet could deploy but 17 predreadnoughts, 14 battleships and 4 battlecruisers to cover both the North Sea and the Baltic and the current construction programme of five super-dreadnoughts and four super-battlecruisers had slowed to a crawl in the latter half of 1916 as the Royal Navy blockade began to bite. One project that did proceed was the conversion of the 27,000t passenger liner SS Graf Zeppelin into an aeroplane carrier from August 6th 1916, with the intent of using a combination of aircraft and U-Boats to deal a resounding blow of vengeance to the 'treacherous English', as they had been memorably characterised by Kaiser Wilhelm II in his period of shock following the death of Grand Admiral Von Tirpitz from apoplexy upon receipt of the news of Jutland. Work upon the Graf Zeppelin continued steadily until the shock of the British seizure of Heligoland in July 1917, where 95 seaplanes took part in a predawn bombing raid prior to an assault landing by the Royal Naval Division covered by the guns of the Grand Fleet and ten dragons. Possession of Heligoland permitted the Royal Navy to substantially tighten the blockade of Germany, albeit at an increased cost of light surface vessels to the continual menace of mines, torpedo boats, U-Boats and German naval aircraft. By the end of the war, Graf Zeppelin was nominally complete save for its armament and it would be allotted to the United States in the postwar division of spoils, whereupon it would serve many roles before being converted to a specialist dragon support ship USS Flambeau in 1931 and remain in service until 1959, becoming in the process the last surviving warship of the Imperial German Navy.

The effective neutralisation of the German High Seas Fleet by the naval effort of the Allies by mid 1917 put paid to some of the more expansive plans for the aggressive employment of aeroplane carriers, such as a surprise attack by over 240 of the new Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo bombers on Wilhelmshaven never reached fruition. Many military historians have considered the comparatively slower pace of aircraft carrier development in the latter years of the war as being directly connected to the reduced threat of the German surface fleet. The Royal Navy's carrier force engaged extensively in support of the Royal Marines' landings on the coast of Flanders, providing effective spotting for naval gunfire and striking at enemy torpedo boats in the crowded waters, with HMS Aragon and HMS Campania being lost to a German mine and coastal artillery in the process. Perhaps the most effective aeroplane carriers operated by the Royal Navy in the fighting of 1917 was HMS Furious, which became the first carrier to launch and recover an airstrike of wheeled aeroplanes whilst underway at sea in July. Upon Germany's acquiescence to the Allied armistice on November 11th 1918, Ark Royal, Argus, Eagle, Fearless and Furious made up the Aircraft Carrier Force of the Grand Fleet which received the surrender of the High Seas Fleet at sea. They were accompanied by a new ship, the Royal Navy's first purpose built full deck aircraft carrier, HMS Arion, which had been commissioned just three weeks earlier.

At war's end, the aircraft carrier had given extensive proof of its potential future value to the navies of the world, albeit without ever quite getting the opportunity to prove their mettle in the same manner as other wartime inventions such as the tank and the strategic bomber. The elimination of the Imperial German Navy from the calculations of international military power and the effective removal of Russia as a major naval player due to the terrible civil war which even now raged within its borders had created a new world in so far as the naval balance of power was concerned. The United States, Britain and Japan all operated brand new purpose-built aircraft carriers in addition to their array of prewar and wartime conversions, although in the cases of all three nations, they were still distinctly regarded as experimental vessels. As the clouds of war cleared in the hopeful light of peace as 1919 began, it was not yet apparent what shape this new world would take, nor if this war to end all wars meant the end of the great battle fleets of the victorious nations.

This would be the first great question of the peace.

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:07 pm

I'm putting what is done of this back up (under a slightly different name) whilst the question of the back up of the former forum is resolved. I plan to add a bit more to it over the coming weeks and months. It is important to note that, after the general WW1 and Interwar sections, it shifts to a subjective British history; I plan to have American and Japanese counterparts eventually; I stress the subjective part, as this is an 'in-universe' text from the postwar era, with all of the biases that entails.

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:09 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 2: 1919-1939

The aftermath of the Great War did not see an end to conflict across the globe, with the armed forces of the victorious Allies not fully demobilising for several years due to their commitments in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, China and the terrible circumstances of the Russian Civil War. Red revolutions threatened to topple the teetering monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary and even Italy underwent considerable internal political strife. In the light of this uncertain international situation, the impetus for widescale postwar disarmament encountered some obstacles of reality. Nevertheless, the military forces deployed by the triumphant Allied powers were far from suitable for the requirements of peacetime security in terms of their modernity and their economy. This was particularly evident at sea, where the great fleets assembled by the British Empire, the United States, France, Japan, Italy and Spain contained many vessels that, whilst still young in their years of service life, were distinctly obsolete in the face of new advances. In Britain, the twelve remaining seaplane carriers and Aragon had been returned to merchant service, leaving only Ark Royal, Eagle, Argus, Arion, Furious and Fearless as the peacetime carrier fleet; Argus was subsequently damaged beyond repair after colliding with a kraken in a training cruise to the West Indies in November 1920. Both British and French aircraft carriers saw action in the Baltic and Black Seas supporting Allied and White Russian troops in the Civil War in the initial two years after the armistice, prior to a general withdrawal in the face of Bolshevik success.

The Royal Navy remained the world's largest and most powerful, but a substantial percentage of its strength was made up of obsolete or obsolescent warships and its mass of wartime construction was focused on the German threat that had been eliminated. The United States Navy had leapt ahead in the measures of international naval strength to be a clear second to Britain and it desired to supplant it in rapid course, reflecting its soaring confidence and enormous economic and industrial might. Japan was now unrivaled in the Far East and Pacific and considered itself as not just the world's third navy, but as destined to be its finest. France had been sorely wounded in the long and bitter fighting on land and, although it still maintained the second biggest fleet in Europe, a large number of its men of war had been been made badly obsolete by the formidable vessels built by the United States, Britain and Japan. Spain and Italy vied for the position of the second greatest naval power in the Mediterranean throughout the war and now sought to gain advantage in the peace.

These competing interests combined to create the circumstances for a renewed arms race, yet none of the Great Powers had either the stomach or treasure for such an endeavour, with even the United States considering the cost involved as ideally avoidable. Washington had long viewed the cessation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as being strongly in its strategic interests and considered that the question of naval armaments as a possible means to do so. The circumstances of the immediate postwar recession put additional strain on public finances in Europe and Japan in 1919 and 1920, yet now the pressures for a new building race rose as first Britain, then Japan and then the United States announced expansive naval estimates for 1921. American diplomatic sources became aware of Britain’s desire to call an international conference regarding the situation in the Far East and Pacific and, not wishing to miss an opportunity to proactively address the issue, the Cox Administration persuaded the French Premier Raymond Poincaré to propose a naval conference to be held in Paris in March 1921.

U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing presented the initial American proposals to the conference, calling for direct steps in disarmament through the decommissioning and scrapping of 12" dreadnoughts and older battleships, the disposal of the former German capital ships possessed by the Allies and a pause in the construction of capital ships. This was countered by a British proposal for further acts of disposing of its 15" battleships and the limitation of new construction capital ships by Britain, the United States of America, the Empire of Japan, France, Italy and Spain on a ratio of 8:8:4:4:2:2, provided that the British Dominions were able to retain a portion of their current strength and that the new super battlecruiser HMS Hood was similarly excluded from any cuts. Spain was partially mollified by the sale of the four Lion class battlecruisers and both Italy and France were broadly in favour of the combined proposal, which would preserve their relative positions. Further reductions of fleet strengths would occur over the ten-year life of the treaty. Japan, which had a previous ambition of securing a ratio of 75% of the strength of the United States battle fleet, found the effective ratio of 2:3 as acceptable, but insisted upon being able to retain the Fuso class as demilitarised training vessels. New battleships were limited to a displacement of 75,000 tons and a maximum armament of 20" guns. Attempts to limit total cruiser tonnage proved unsuccessful in the face of stern British and French objections, with only a broad limitation of a maximum tonnage of 20,000t and 8" guns being accepted.

It would be in the new field of the aircraft carrier that the Paris Conference would achieve some measure of success in limitation of armaments growth. Tonnage limitations were agreed upon based on a 5:5:3:3:2:2 ratio and individual ships could not exceed 35,000 tons, nor carry more than 10 guns of 8" maximum calibre. Britain had argued for a lower displacement of 25,000 tons in order to build a larger number of ships, but the requirements of the USN and IJN for large ships with long range for Pacific operations overcame these objections. The United States, Britain, Japan and France were each permitted to convert two larger capital ships to aircraft carriers that would otherwise be scrapped under the terms of the Agreement, which was seen as particularly advantageous to the United States and Japan. This resulted in the US conversion of the battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga, the British conversion of the hulls of the incomplete super battlecruisers Incomparable and Inflexible, the Japanese conversion of Kaga and Myogi (later replaced by Akagi after being destroyed in the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923) and the French conversion of the battlecruisers Suffren and Océan. Britain argued successfully for vessels displacing under 20,000 tons to be considered experimental ships capable of being replaced by new construction, as it had the intent of handing down its older ships to the Dominions for service in the 'Fleet Units' recommended by Admiral Jellicoe in his great report that resulted from his tour of the Dominions in 1919 and 1920, which lead to the structure that the Royal Navy adopted between the wars. Overall, the Paris Naval Agreement, signed on June 5th 1921, did not provide for an optimum solution for any of the Great Powers with regards to capital ships, but did open the door for significant carrier development.

The Admiralty had decided that the optimum use of the remaining pair of Courageous class light battlecruisers would be as full conversions to aircraft carriers and the process began in Chatham and Rosyth in early 1923, whilst Incomparable and Inflexible underwent similar reconstructions at Devonport and Portsmouth. It was intended that these four ships, along with Furious and Fearless would provide the Royal Navy with the world's most powerful aircraft carrier force in this postwar world and predominantly be deployed in the Mediterranean and Far East Fleets. The four Courageous class carriers, once completed and refitted in March 1926, would have much the same physical characteristics, with a length of 842ft, a beam of 90ft and a draught of 27ft, a speed of 32 knots and displacing 27,580 tons at standard load whilst carrying an air group of 64 aeroplanes and a defensive armament of 20 4.7" guns and 32 2pdr light anti-aircraft guns. They would pale in comparison to the Incomparables, which displaced 47,625t at standard load (with a length of 1012ft, a beam of 124ft and a draught of 32ft), had a top speed of 34.5 knots and carried an air group of up to 120 planes. They carried ten 8"/50 guns on new rapid fire mounts and two dozen 4.7" secondary guns, packing a powerful punch. It was intended that their deployment in the Far East would be a definitive statement of British naval might in the area.

Long term plans called for a further pair of 25,000t aircraft carriers to be built from 1929, but these were to encounter difficulties due to economic and political circumstances. At the beginning of the 1920s, however, there were still considerable pressures to make economies within the naval budget, given the expenses of the new capital ships and the extensive 'County' class cruiser programmes. As part of these, Ark Royal was transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in 1923 and Eagle to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1924. HMS Arion and HMS Furious, operating with the Home Fleet, served as the Royal Navy's main testing carriers in the first half of the decade, experimenting with landing wire systems, launch and recovery systems and optimal air groups. The first night landing on an aircraft carrier took place aboard Furious on March 7th 1925, when a Blackburn Dart torpedo plane successfully landed in operations south of Lyonesse. The Admiralty considered that the primary purpose of the carrier force was to be fleet reconnaissance and damaging enemy heavy surface forces prior to an engagement between the main bodies of the two opposing fleets, with secondary roles of trade protection and colonial policing. At this time, the main potential opponents of the Royal Navy were considered to be Japan, France, Italy and the Soviet Union; the United States, whilst an economic and political rival, was not considered to be a realistic military opponent in light of the ongoing growth in cordial relations between the two powers.

HMS Incomparable was commissioned on January 23rd 1927, followed by Inflexible in March. The typical air group of Royal Navy carriers in the mid 1920s consisted of two squadrons of Fairey Flycatcher fighters, two of Blackburn Beagle torpedo bombers, one squadrons of Avro Buffalo reconnaissance bomber and one of Fairey III spotter planes, depending on their area of assignment. The middle of the decade saw plentiful opportunities for the Royal Navy's carrier arm to test their new aircraft and tactical concepts in operational environments, taking part in operations against rebel Chinese forces in Shanghai in 1925, sweeping pirates from the seas around Hong Kong and assisting in the maintenance of order in Britain's Middle Eastern protectorates. The primary factor that drove Britain's employment of the aircraft carrier force in this period was the Anglo-Soviet War Scare of 1926-27, which saw the deployment of a Royal Navy battle fleet of 22 capital ships and 4 carriers to the Baltic to dissuade the Soviet Union from open war. A large force was maintained at Copenhagen until January 1928 at considerable cost, pushing back plans for the construction of a fourth pair of fleet aircraft carriers. The subsequent onset of the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression put paid to any thought of major naval construction for some time to follow.

The United States Navy began the 1920s with the new aeroplane carrier USS Langley and the three large seaplane tenders Wright, Curtiss and Potomac. The 24,000t Langley was capable of a top speed of 25 knots, broadly equivalent to the battlefleet, and could deploy a total of 48 aircraft under its normal configuration, whilst bearing a fair defensive armament of eight 5"/25 guns. In the aftermath of the Paris Naval Agreement, the two battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga, which had been 54% and 60% complete respectively, were converted to aircraft carriers between July 1922 and November 1924. The Lexingtons had a nominal displacement of 48,000 tons, although this was achieved through the extensive limitation of onboard fittings and extraneous weight, and measured 960ft long with a beam of 124ft and a draught of 32ft. They carried a heavy gun armament of four twin 8"/55 and sixteen 5"/25 in single mounts and were regarded as relatively well protected with their maximum tapered belt of 8" and an innovative torpedo defence system. The new carriers were well suited for Pacific operations, with a range of 10,000 nautical miles at 12 knots and a brand-new turbo-electric propulsion system that drove them through the waves at a top speed of almost 34 knots. Their initial air group consisted of 24 Boeing F2B fighters, 24 Martin T4M torpedo bombers, 18 Douglas O2D scout planes and 24 Curtiss A2B attack bombers, with considerable room onboard for spare aircraft.

With the establishment, consolidation and shifting of the United States Fleet to the Pacific in 1922/23, all three aircraft carriers were nominally based with the Battle Fleet at San Diego, although Langley was often deployed to the Atlantic and Caribbean for operations with the Scouting Fleet and experimental training exercises. The primary focus of the United States Navy in the interwar period was on the potential for a Pacific war with the Empire of Japan and this contingency was explored in various forms in the annual 'Fleet Problems' of the 1920s and 1930s. Lexington and Saratoga were typically attached to opposing forces, designated the 'Blue' and 'Black' fleets, which clashed in exercises designed around the defence of Hawaii, the Panama Canal and California. Initially, the carriers found themselves employed for screening and reconaissance, but as the decade proceeded and aircraft technology further developed, they began to be used on longer range raiding missions against sea and land targets. One of the key lessons of the annual exercises was that a single carrier did not make an efficient force and they were better suited to operating in pairs, whilst several US admirals postulated that at least three and preferably four pairs of ships would be needed for any successful fleet campaign against the Imperial Japanese Navy. Larger carriers were also seen as more survivable, both in terms of resistance to damage and by virtue of the size of their air group. By 1928, this had lead, through consideration of the optimal combination of carrier strength and size, to the ordering of the first of four planned 32,000t fleet aircraft carriers, USS Ranger. She combined the considerable 33 knot speed of the large carriers and a capable air group of up to 90 aeroplanes with a strong defensive armament of 16 5"/25 guns and an acceptable size and cost. Unfortunately, the onset of the Great Depression lead to the suspension of her sister ships and a slower construction pace, only being completed in August 1932. The relatively small number of carriers in United States' service was seen as a distinct problem by the Naval War College, but not one that extended to the level of an existential threat, given the general parameters of war plans against Japan (which called for the requisitioning and fast conversion of ten ocean liners into carriers in the event of conflict) and the dominance of America in the revolutionary field of military skyships, which offered another means of deploying air cover over the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean. This debate also occurred within the context of the shifting power struggle within the United States Navy between the 'brown shoe' admirals, or those experienced in aviation, with their 'black shoe' counterparts, who specialised in surface combat vessels such as the battleships.

In Japan, the aftermath of the Paris Naval Agreement was met with a mixture of grudging acceptance and a sense of the true destiny of Japan as a dominant world power being foiled by the machinations of America and Britain. The conversions of Akagi and Myogi proceeded slowly, as the Japanese economy encountered the limits of reality upon its expansive plans for military and civilian development. In 1924, the devastating Kanto Earthquake shattered Myogi beyond repair, forcing the IJN to substitute the incomplete battleship Kaga in its place. This pair of ships, like the Lexingtons in the United States and the Incomparables in Britain, were to prove the backbone of the Imperial Japanese Navy's carrier fleet for the next decade upon their completion in 1926. Akagi was the larger of the two, with a standard displacement of 47,000 tons on her dimensions of 950ft in length, 118ft in beam and 30ft in draught, being capable of a top speed of 32.5 knots over a range of 10,000 nautical miles and carrying a powerful airgroup of 90 planes, usually consisting of 24 Mitsubishi B1M3 torpedo bombers, 24 Nakajima A1N fighters, 24 Aichi C1A bombers and 18 Mitsubishi 2MR reconnaissance planes. Kaga was slightly smaller and slower, with a displacement of 42,000t and a top speed of 29 knots; both ships carried a heavy armament of 10 20cm/40, 16 12.7cm/40 and 20 25mm guns, following the general pattern of the larger carriers of the 1920s.

The now aging Wakamiya soldiered on as an initial training carrier for pilot acclimitisation and flight trials, whilst the robust 23,000t Hosho operated with the Combined Fleet to test new aircraft and tactical concepts, remaining useful as a frontline ship even as it was officially classed as an experimental vessel. Japan's inferior numerical situation with respect to the United States lead to extensive study and consideration of the optimal means to defeat the United States Navy through a strategy of attrition and a key part of this approach was through the use of aircraft. Whilst no carrier based planes had yet succeeded in severely damaging capital ships at sea, let alone sinking them, the IJN put great importance upon and faith in the torpedo, both as a surface weapon and in an aerial capacity. The Japanese grand strategy for a successful campaign against the United States Navy called for aircraft and submarines operating out of Japan's newly-won Pacific territories to wear down the advancing American battlefleet, followed by carrier attacks to eliminate the US carrier capacity and further weaken the enemy prior to the Combined Fleet engaging it in a decisive battle between the Bonin and Mariana Islands. To reduce the American fleet sufficiently, it was viewed that at least two more carriers would be required, leading to the design and development of the Ryūjō class carriers. These lighter ships, Ryūjō and Ryūhō, had a displacement of 25,000t and were built from the keel up as aircraft carriers, combining a swift top speed of 32.5 knots with a capable air group of 72 aircraft; they carried a reduced defensive armament of a dozen 12.7cm/40 guns and a number of 13.2mm Hotchkiss machine guns, later replaced by the effective Japanese 25mm weapons. Their construction, beginning in 1928, was disrupted by the effects of the Great Crash and subsequent worldwide economic Depression, although Japan was arguably the Great Power least affected by the global economic downturn. Their entry into IJN service in early 1932 was a considerable factor in the development of the Yorktown class carriers of the United States Navy.

France commissioned Suffren and Océan in 1925 after a protracted conversion process, which involved the partial rebuilding of the former after an accidental fire in the wine store almost lead to catastrophe on multiple counts. The now venerable Oriflamme ended her service life as a stationary accomodation and aviation school ship in Bordeaux after being severely damaged in a collision with the destroyer Aventurier in 1923, remaining in service until sunk in 1940 during the Great Retreat. The converted Hercule-class battlecruisers would serve as the backbone of France's naval aviation during the latter half of the 1920s, being deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Anglo-Soviet War Scare and operating with the main battlefleet of the Marine Royale through numerous exercises and maneuvers. Displacing 46,000 tons, the French carriers were the fastest of the interwar period, capable of reaching a top speed of 35 knots on trials, and this was not accompanied by any great loss of capacity, with the French ships being capable of carrying upwards of 80 aircraft; their actual components were often smaller, depending on their mission. Armed with eight 203mm/50 Modèle 1921 and sixteen 120mm/54 Modèle 1924 guns, Océan and Suffren were highly regarded by the French public, an esteem further developed by their appearance in the popular 'talkie' film La Grande Course, an account of the remarkable Suez to Paris race of 1927. Their air component reflected the postwar changes in the French aviation industry and usually consisted of 20 Dewoitine D.1 fighters, 20 Levasseur PL.10 reconnaissance planes, 18 Gourdou-Leseurre GL.40 bombers and 18 Levasseur PL.7 torpedo bombers in the late 1920s. To augment their two large fleet carriers and replace Oriflamme in operational service, the French Admiralty began design of a smaller carrier specifically suited to operations in the more confined waters of the Mediterranean. After a protracted development process, the new 24,000 ton carrier, later to be named Brennus, was laid down at Brest in February 1929. Construction slowed after the Crash of 1929, but she entered service in August 1933 as France's economic conditions improved. Whilst slower at 30.5 knots and with a smaller air group of 54 aircraft, Brennus was well-armed for her displacement with sixteen 120mm and twenty-four Hotchkiss 37mm anti-aircraft guns and operated primarily with the main battle fleet of the Marine Royale in the mid 1930s.

The two other Mediterranean powers, Spain and Italy, had been limited to a total carrier tonnage of 100,000t under the terms of the Paris Naval Agreement, in addition to their Great War aeroplane carriers, Magallanes and Alessandro Volta. Both had been on the side of the victorious Allies in the Great War, but the 1920s saw internal political strife and discontent at the lack of the rewards seemingly gained by Britain and France. Furthermore, both Italy and Spain had significantly fewer large shipbuilding slips and less overall industrial capacity, constraining their ambitions within the limits of stark reality. Significant voices in both fleets contended that the provision of naval aviation support was not an optimal use of resources given the nature of the narrow sea and the availability of shore based air cover, but these were overcome by the need to provide air cover for a fleet at sea and to project power in support of their African colonial holdings. Despite these broad similarities and the financial constraints that limited each in the 1920s, both powers approached the question of carriers in a different manner. Italy elected to design and produce as a first priority a large fast carrier equipped with 52 reconnaissance and torpedo bombers for operation with their battlecruiser force, the 34,000t Galileo Galilei, whilst the Volta would serve as a battlefleet carrier carrying an air group of fighters. Spain preferred to develop a pair of balanced 26,000t carriers, Hernando Cortez and Francisco Pizarro, which had a slower speed of just 29 knots, but carried 68 planes of all types.

The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 shattered the illusions of many that the Great War had seen an end to international aggression. Manchuria, having been an effectively autonomous territory under significant Japanese influence since 1915, declared independence from China following a convoluted series of political machinations backed by Japan culminating in a coup by local Manchu nobles and generals. The Kwantung Army moved into Manchuria from the Liaodong Peninsula in support, occupying key cities along the Southern Manchurian Railway. The Imperial Chinese government lacked the military power to directly oppose Japan and appealed to the League of Nations for intervention on their behalf. By its defiance of international pressure and the League, the Empire of Japan demonstrated that the organs of collective security lacked the power to enforce them against a determined aggressor power. Sanctions and condemnation from the United States, Britain and France had no effect upon Japanese policy and attempts to bring Tokyo to account in the League of Nations simply lead to Japan walking out of the League in February 1933. The failure of attempts to extend the terms of the Paris Naval Agreement in 1930 had not lead to any overt naval arms race due to the circumstances of the Great Depression, but now, the world began to stir.

The actions of Japan and the gathering war clouds in the Far East lead to the first substantive programme of rearmament since the end of the Great War, with the emergency programmes put in place during the Anglo-Soviet Crisis paling in comparison. In Britain, a Defence Requirements Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, chaired by Earl Haig,was appointed in June 1932 to examine the worst deficiencies of the armed forces and make recommendations for priorities. The Army advocated full implementation of the Liddell Hart Report, the Royal Navy supported their New Standard Fleet Plan and the Air Ministry and RAF put forward the expansive Air Defence Scheme, which called for the Royal Air Force to double in size to a frontline strength of over 5000 aeroplanes. Given the circumstances of the threat in the Orient from Japan, the British Cabinet and Imperial Council decided that the Royal Navy would receive first priority, placing orders for four aircraft carriers, eight light cruisers, twelve submarines and two dozen destroyers, beginning the process of modernising the 18" battlefleet and placing long lead-in orders for classes of new super battleships and battlecruisers. £18 million was allocated to expanding the defences and fortifications of Hong Kong, but the primary Royal Navy focus in the Far East was the world's largest naval base at Singapore, completed in 1930. It was designed to accomodate and support over two dozen capital ships under the grand strategy of dispatching the 'main fleet to Singapore' in the event of a war with Imperial Japan. Significantly for the carrier forces of the Royal Navy, a number of Admiralty aircraft specifications for the Fleet Air Arm and Royal Naval Air Service were issued over the course of 1933, including a monoplane carrier single seat fighter, a monoplane carrier torpedo bomber, a monoplane carrier dive bomber, a very long range flying boat, twin engine and four engine land based patrol bombers and a land based twin engine torpedo bomber. The four carriers, Ark Royal, Eagle, Hermes and Centaur, were commissioned between May 1936 and August 1937, displaced 39,000t and carried a strong anti-aircraft armament of 24 new 4.5" guns and had a top speed of 34.5 knots; many vessels exceeded this on operations. They were designed to carry an airgroup of 96 planes, depending on their role, and were well protected with a 4” armoured flight deck. Their entry into service allowed much needed refits for the Courageous class vessels in the latter half of the decade.

The other major action taken by the Admiralty in this period was the conversion of four of the Hawkins class cruisers to aircraft carriers. The question of trade protection had been initially raised during the Anglo-Soviet War Scare, with the Royal Navy considering that it required a minimum of 110 cruisers to provide for protection of trade routes and battlefleet operations; in 1927, only 84 were available, with 47 of these being the wartime light C and D class ships, not ideally suited to long range duties. Construction of sufficient cruisers to meet all of the roles required would prove astronomically costly, so the use of aircraft carriers to augment the cruiser force was considered as an economical solution to the pressing problem. The 17500t Hawkins class cruisers, armed with eight 7.5" guns, were regarded as ships with excellent endurance, but outmatched by subsequent heavy cruisers that had been built under the terms of the Paris Naval Agreement and provided a quicker and more efficient means to add to the Royal Navy's carrier fleet. Hawkins, Raleigh, Effingham and Frobisher were converted between 1929 and 1933, but the result was viewed as mixed due to their relatively small air group of 20 planes. They would serve primarily in the Far East and the Indian Ocean for the rest of the decade, with at least one vessel assigned to China Station at Hong Kong.

The United States Navy also responded to the end of the Paris Naval Agreement and Japanese aggression with the gradual beginning of naval rearmament in the form of the Washington class super battleships and, perhaps equally as significantly, the ordering of the Yorktown class aircraft carriers. The latter were undoubtably the best all-round aircraft carriers of the 1930s and arguably superior to the Kaga and Akagi of the Imperial Japanese Navy, displacing 39,000t standard, carrying an air group of 100 planes and capable of a top speed of 32.5 knots. The first pair, Yorktown and Enterprise, were laid down in 1934, with Hornet and Wasp following in 1936. Along with the modernisation and reconstruction of Langley between 1935 and 1938, they provided the USN with 8 frontline carriers by the end of the decade, all of which enjoyed a qualitative edge over their most likely opposition in the view of the Navy Department. This increase in the carrier force was accompanied by the entry into service of a number of powerful monoplane naval aircraft from 1936 in the form of the Grumman F3F and Brewster F2A fighters, the Douglas TBD torpedo bomber and the Vought SB2U scout dive bomber. As the new Yorktowns entered service, their participation in the annual Fleet Problems allowed the U.S. Navy to test the optimal arrangement for carrier employment, which resulted in the grouping of two carrier divisions into a combined Aircraft Carrier Task Force assigned to the Battle Force, United States Fleet. In the 1939 exercise, built around a defence of the Panama Canal, the four carriers assigned to the Black Fleet were adjudged as successfully putting the vital locks of the Canal out of operation, demonstrating that the aircraft carrier was truly coming of age.

The challenges to the international system were not limited to the Far East, as Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini began to expand aggressively in Central Europe and Abyssinia. German rearmament had begun prior to the Nazis taking power in 1933, but not accelerated at a pace unsustainable with long term peace and prosperity, establishing an air force in the form of the Luftwaffe, reintroducing conscription and fielding tanks all in contravention of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. At sea, the ambitious German fleet expansion plan began in earnest with the laying down of the four Scharnhorst class battleships and the first two Graf Zeppelin class aircraft carriers. The latter were 36,000t fleet carriers, capable of a fast top speed of 35 knots and carrying a respectable air group of 80 aircraft, but Germany's period without designing or operating aircraft carriers showed in several of the flaws of the design, such as their relatively ineffective gun armament of 150mm and 105mm guns, the top heaviness of the ship and its rather temperamental power plant. None of these issues was to be truly problematic in and of itself, but when combined with the necessity of having to learn and develop institutional experience in carrier operations, made for a number of teething problems for the German naval air arm. The first two vessels, Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser, were commissioned in June and August 1938, whilst the second pair of ships, Hermann Göring and Max Immelmann only entered service in the middle of 1939.

The Regia Marina also expanded its carrier arm in the 1930s, laying down a pair of vessels in 1934, Lorenzo de' Mediciand Enrico Dandolo, with the 38,000t vessels commissioning in 1937 and 1938, finally allowing the retirement of Alessandro Volta to second line duties. Mussolini had even greater plans for the expansion of his much beloved fleet, ordering the development of an aircraft carrier design that would outmatch any vessel in service with the fleets of Britain and France. The resultant ship, Aquila, laid down in January 1936 and commissioned in March 1940 was certainly the largest aircraft carrier yet built at 59,000t, yet did not carry a substantially larger air group than many of the smaller carriers then in service, typically deploying 102 aeroplanes. In terms of protection, speed and armament, Aquila was superior to any other carrier in the Mediterranean, but this came with a very high financial cost and a sizeable requirement in escort vessels. It had the additional effect of substantially delaying the construction and entry into service of a repeat pair of de' Medici class carriers, neither of which were completed before the end of Italy's war; the conversion of two liners into aircraft carriers, postulated after the breakdown of relations with Britain and France after the invasion of Abyssinia was also considerably delayed.

The Royal Netherlands Navy, whilst smaller than that of the Great Powers of Europe, was still one of the world's stronger fleets, charged as it was with the defence of their vast colonial empire in the Dutch East Indies. The main part of their naval armament efforts in the 1930s went of course to the construction of the two modern De Zeven Provincien class super battleships and their larger successors of the de Ruyter class, but in the light of the powerful naval aviation forces deployed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Dutch began the process of design and developing their own indigenous carrier force, in conjunction with assistance by British experts. Two ships, Van Speyk and Johan de Witt, were laid down at Rotterdam and Scheidam in March and May 1936, both compact ships with a displacement of 24,000t, a top speed of 31 knots and a respectable air group of 54 aeroplanes. Their intended role was to provide fighter cover to the battleships and cruisers of the Royal Netherlands Navy in defence of the Java Sea and the Makassar Strait approaches to the Dutch colonies in the Far East, in conjunction with shore-based torpedo planes and long-range submarines. Dutch finances, the necessities of home defence and the eye-watering cost of the battleships meant that the aircraft carried on the Van Speyk class were a more economic mixture of Royal Navy surplus Gloster Gauntlet biplane fighters, Fairey Shark torpedo planes and Blackburn Skua monoplane dive bombers obtained on favourable terms from Britain.

Japan's threat in the Far East grew considerably during the 1930s, as new vessels entered service with the Imperial Japanese Navy, not the least of which was their expanded carrier force. The first addition to the fleet came in the form of the two ships of the Hiryu class, both designed to provide a counter to the American and British ships now under construction and to serve as a fast wing to the carrier force. They were powerful 38,000t ships, with their top speed of 34.5 knots and range of 10,000 nautical miles giving them significant flexibility and their air groups of 92 planes giving them an exceptionally powerful offensive punch. Hiryu and Soryu were laid down in November and December 1934 and entered service in late 1937, seeing service with their older compatriots in support of the advancing Imperial Japanese Army in the Sino-Japanese War which had broken out in earnest in 1936. All of the IJN's carriers were used extensively in the early stages of the war off Shanghai and Canton, gaining significant experience for the IJN's pilots, although the efforts of the Japanese to corner the Chinese battlefleet and sink it came to naught thanks to the costly intervention of the Imperial Chinese Air Force's Dragon Corps. The utility of carrier aviation lead to two modified repeat Hiryus being ordered in October 1937, Hiyo and Junyo, in addition to the large Shokaku class carriers that had been under construction since 1936; these two latter vessels had been ordered as fast carriers suitable to accompany the huge new battleships upon which Japan based its long term Pacific strategy.

As international tensions continued to rise in the second half of the decade, British rearmament in particular began to gather pace and the annual construction programmes of the Royal Navy began to rival those of the pre-Great War period in both tonnage and the number of ships ordered. The first form this took was the ordering of the Illustrious class, an improved variant of the Ark Royals, with their general similarity leading some observers to consider them a single class. A total of sixteen ships would be ordered in the 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1938 construction programmes, with five commissioned prior to the outbreak of war in September 1939.

With growing expectations of a war with Germany, Italy and Japan, the question of trade protection strategies was again raised, this time with added urgency. Several liners and large merchant ships were identified for conversion into auxiliary carriers in the event of war and in 1936, these were joined by a new design light carrier based on the successful hull of the County class cruisers. These vessels were designed as cheap, utilitarian carriers capable of both fleet operations and trade protection, with an emphasis on the latter. They would not be armoured beyond a 2" belt and have only light anti-aircraft guns for their own protection, relying rather on their own air group of 52 aeroplanes for their defence. Four ships were laid down each in 1938 and 1939, with plans to employ them in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, allowing the Royal Navy’s larger carriers to be deployed to the Far East. They were joined by four sister ships built in Australia and Canada to equip the R.A.N and R.C.N in the role of Empire protection, augmenting the Imperial fleet units based in Halifax, Vancouver and Sydney. These vessels were built with substantial imports from Britain and Canada in the case of the Australian ships.

The Royal Navy viewed the prospect of conflict with four large Great Power navies as a daunting one since the combination of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Japan became the British Empire’s likely foe from 1937. In that year, the Mediterranean Fleet began the process of planning a night-time carrier strike on the main Italian naval base at Taranto employing a force of several carriers. These plans were built around the capability of several of the Fleet Air Arm’s new carrier aircraft, the long range Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber, which could strike out to a combat range of 320 nautical miles at a top speed of 280 mph, and the Blackburn Buccaneer dive bomber, which could carry up to 2000lb of bombs to a greater range at an even higher speed. This offensive capacity was accompanied by the versatility of the Supermarine Eagle fighter, whose top speed of 350mph and armament of four 25mm cannon was matched by a large combat radius of 420 nautical miles.

The United States Navy did not stand idle as the clouds of war gathered in Europe, with four new carriers ordered and laid down in 1939, representing the first of what would be the 20th Century’s largest class of capital ship, the Essex class. At a standard displacement of 42,000 tons, they were the most advanced carrier design in the world as of the end of August 1939 and would be part of a force equipped with powerful new naval aircraft that could match anything in Europe or Asia. The old seaplane tenders Curtiss and Wright were surveyed for conversion to auxiliary aircraft transports in July as the world began its inexorable descent toward war.

The eve of the Second World War saw the aircraft carrier at the heart of the fleets of every major naval power and regarded as one of the key measures of power at sea, second only to the battleship. Advocates of naval air power had often proclaimed that they would prove the battleship to be utterly obsolete and rapid advances in the performance and capability of carrier aircraft seemed to support this hypothesis. The world had not seen a major naval battle since Jutland and much had changed.

....................................

“The terms of the Paris Naval Agreement limited the aircraft carrier fleets of the major signatory navies in a number of ways:

1.) Total tonnage for each of the signatory powers was set at the following levels:

British Empire: 250,000t
United States of America: 250,000t
Japan: 175,000t
France: 150,000t
Italy: 100,000t
Spain: 80,000t
Netherlands, Sweden: 60,000t

2.) The Maximum tonnage of individual carriers was to be 35,000t, with Britain, the USA, Japan and France permitted to build two ships over 48,000t. In order to effect economy any of the Contracting Powers could use for this purpose any two of their ships, whether constructed or in course of construction, which would otherwise be scrapped under the provisions of the treaty governing capital ships.

This resulted in the US conversion of the battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga, the British conversion of the hulls of the incomplete super battlecruisers Incomparable and Inflexible, the Japanese conversion of Kaga and Myogi (later replaced by Akagi after being destroyed in the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923) and the French conversion of the battlecruisers Suffren and Océan.

3.) All currently extant carriers would be considered as experimental and could be replaced by new construction”

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:20 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 3: British Carriers 1939/40

At the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1st 1939, the Royal Navy was the largest and most powerful fleet in the world, deploying over 700 vessels and possessed of a vast global network of fortified bases to support its operations. It's major warships consisted of 32 battleships, 10 battlecruisers, 12 fleet and 4 light aircraft carriers, 102 cruisers, 280 destroyers, 121 escorts, 66 sloops and corvettes and 86 submarines, with its most substantial forces concentrated in the British Isles and the Mediterranean. It faced a complex threat in the form of the growing German Kriegsmarine and its Austro-Hungarian allies, spread between the North Sea and the Adriatic. The expectation that Fascist Italy would join Hitler in his war for global domination at some point required the maintenance of strong British and French forces in the Mediterranean, where they also kept a wary eye on the Spanish Armada and Imperial Ottoman Navy. The growing threat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Far East required a strong force to be maintained at Singapore and Hong Kong as a deterrent and, in the event of war with Japan, the only means that the Admiralty considered capable of defeating their enemy was the deployment of the main fleet of the Royal Navy to Singapore.

Against Germany, the Royal Navy had a several key objectives. First and foremost, it had to defend the trade routes between Britain, the Empire and the rest of the world through the organisation of convoys and escorts to counter the anticipated threat of German U-Boats and surface raiders. Secondly, it had to maintain a distant blockade of Germany and its allies, interdict its trade with mines and submarines and starve the enemy of the necessary resources required for a modern industrial world war. Thirdly, it had to defend the coasts and approaches to the British Isles through minefields and aircraft and surface ship patrols. Fourthly, it would need to transport and protect the British Army, Commonwealth and Imperial forces as they deployed to France and the Middle East. Finally, the Royal Navy would have to take the fight directly to the enemy, attacking its ships, ports and dockyards, destroying its merchant shipping and harrying it in every way possible. This last approach was considered as an aggressive, necessary step, given the preponderance of seapower possessed by the British Empire and the lessons of the Great War regarding the efficacy of blockade. The reduced size of Hitler's Kriegsmarine compared to the High Seas Fleet of Kaiser Wilhelm gave the Admiralty a great deal of faith in their ability to defeat it in detail when it could be brought to battle at sea.

Upon the immediate outbreak of war, the Admiralty requisitioned 72 merchant liners for conversion to cruisers and auxiliary carriers based on peacetime. Whilst the majority of such ships were in the former category, eight large fast ships had been selected for conversion to trade protection carriers; the necessary balance between the protection of maritime trade and maximising the number of vessels dedicated to carrying said trade and supply erred more on the side of the Merchant Navy than the RN, given the relative paucity of suitable fast cargo liners. Windsor Castle, Edinburgh Castle, Campania, Cuba, Atlantic, Strathnaver, Lancastria and Gothic were converted in the National Shipyards and the ports of Haven, Cork and Pembroke Dock between November 1939 and September 1940. Their role, with their speeds of between 20 and 25 knots, would be to be attached as convoy protection ships to important routes on the Atlantic, where the U-Boat and surface raider threat was considered the most perilous. They would be equipped with the venerable yet still effective Fairey Shark torpedo bomber and Gloster Gauntlet fighter, with the biplanes proving more suitable for operations on slower ships designed for ocean escort. The conversions followed a generally similar format based on a relatively swift yet efficient conversion, carrying a total of between 20 and 30 aircraft, usually consisting of more Sharks due to their longer range and offensive capacity against submarines.

In September 1939, though, the prospects of a decisive fleet engagement in the immediate future were considered slim. The immediate tasks that confronted the Royal Navy at the start of the war were, the establishment of convoys and the blockade and the establishment of the Grand Fleet, the wartime formation combining the concentrated squadrons present in home waters. The escaped ships of the Polish Navy and the newly arrived units of the Royal Canadian Navy swelled the strength present at Scapa Flow to a decisive level in mid-September, allowing the deployment of four flying squadrons formed around aircraft carriers, battlecruisers and cruisers to sweep the German merchant navy from the seas and hunt down their elusive surface raiders. These initial operations did not meet with any great success in terms of finding and defeating any German warships, but did result in the capture of several German liners on the high seas. SS Potsdam was captured near the Faroes by Force D on September 25th, lead by HMS Renown and HMS Courageous, and SS Columbus was taken by HMS Hood in the West Indies on October 3rd, but the greatest prize was taken by Force A, lead by HMS Hero and HMS Fearless, which was the capture of the 68,000t SS Bremen in the Norwegian Sea on December 10th, 1939. All three would be converted into auxiliary aircraft carriers, named Hibernia, Caledonia and Rhodesia respectively. They would carry decidedly more aircraft than the British merchant aircraft carrier conversions, deploying 32, 46 and 84 aircraft respectively. Their conversion and refitting for active service was not completed until late August 1940, upon which time they were employed on the North Atlantic convoys in the case of Hibernia and Caledonia, whilst Rhodesia was mainly deployed in the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, until such time as it was assigned to duty as a support and maintenance carrier for the Grand Fleet when it moved east to Singapore.

The pursuit of German surface raiders and anti-submarine patrols had rather less initial success in September and October, as the three Kriegsmarine pocket battleships and the two auxiliary cruisers Ruprecht and Albrecht caused considerable consternation amongst the Allied and neutral shipping in the North Atlantic. These five ships, along with the limited numbers of long range U-Boats that could reach the trade routes, drew the attentions of over one hundred and fifty British and French men of war, either escorting convoys or engaging in long patrols of the vast oceans. The role of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers in this process was quite invaluable, as three of the Hawkins class light carriers, Fearless, Furious and Arion were assigned to the various hunting squadrons spread out across the Atlantic, extending their patrol range and vision considerably. Hawkins operated in the West Indies out of Port Royal, Raleigh from Bermuda and Effingham from Freetown, whilst Furious and Fearless were assigned to North Atlantic Command at Gibraltar and Arion to South Atlantic Command at Caerleon in Prydain. The first major success came just two days after the capture of SS Bremen at the Battle of the River Plate, where the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was caught and badly damaged by HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles, before being sunk the next day by the combined gunfire of the Royal Navy cruisers and the aircraft of the newly arrived Arion, which delivered the coup de grace with a strike by her Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. The victory at the River Plate was followed by the sinking of the Deutschland by HMS Hood northwest of the Azure Islands on December 23rd. It was a testament to the growing importance of the aircraft carrier that the Mighty Hood was able to catch the elusive German raider thanks to the wide-ranging aerial reconnaissance supplied by Raleigh and Hawkins; Hitler's reaction to the Christmas news was said to be particularly expressive, even by his own standards.

The War Emergency Programme of naval construction for 1940 saw similar steps to that of the First World War, with further orders of new fleet carriers and capital ships eschewed for the time being in favour of light carriers, destroyers and escorts. 8 cruisers, 8 light fleet carriers, 32 destroyers, 56 destroyer escorts, 20 sloops, 27 submarines, 44 corvettes, 78 minesweepers, 65 trawlers and 156 MTBs were ordered in several tranches over the year. The additional light fleet carriers were directly motivated by the needs of trade protection along with the anticipated role of dedicated fighter carriers for operations with the battlefleet. They would then allow the fleet carriers to concentrate on the more decisive strike missions against enemy carriers and the battleline. It was viewed as a swift means of maximising the carrier airpower available to the Royal Navy, given that new fleet carriers would take at least four years to be completed. There had been broad plans for the construction of an improved version of the Illustrious class fleet carrier in the 1940 Construction Programme prior to the outbreak of war, with their increased displacement of 46,000t allowing a larger airgroup of 108 planes and an improved protective scheme. Ultimately, the 1940 Carrier did not present a substantial enough improvement upon their predecessors to support their construction in the changed circumstances of the war. However, the conflict was anticipated as being a lengthy one due to the formidable estimates of the strength of Germany and its allies and future carriers were viewed as needed to counter the suspected developments in large enemy vessels in the Mediterranean and Far East. This would lead to the genesis of the Malta class large aircraft carrier, in combination with the developments of 1940.

The first major naval action of the year saw the Royal Navy launch its first aircraft carrier raid on a defended enemy base since 1918, Operation Wildfire. Admiral Sir John Tovey took the Grand Fleet out from Scapa Flow on January 11th, ostensibly on a preventive sweep to the Dogger Bank, before forging southeast to allow HMS Ark Royal, HMS Eagle and HMS Glorious to launch an airstrike of 58 Swordfish, 67 Eagles and 52 Buccaneers on Emden in the late afternoon. Heavy damage was done to the Nordseewerke shipyard, sinking the incomplete light cruiser Lübeck and severely damaging supporting facilities, although Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighters put up substantial resistance, shooting down 20 RN aircraft for the loss of only 11 of their own. A simultaneous raid by 82 RAF Vickers Wellington bombers escorted by 56 Gloster Reapers on German shipping in the Heligoland Bight did less damage, but split the efforts of German forces. Wildfire was at most a middling success, with the destruction of one light cruiser being seen as a slightly favourable exchange for the loss of valuable aircraft and pilots. German intelligence was convinced, through the interception of signals, and multiple reports from sources in Britain, France and Sweden that the stiff resistance offered to the raid had dissuaded the Royal Navy from further attacks on defended ports. The Admiralty considered the chief operational lesson of the operation as the necessity to provide more escort fighters by increasing the fielding of the Hawker Firefly light fighter/reconnaissance plane; long term plans for decisive strikes on enemy ports continued to be refined in the light of operational wartime lessons. The Firefly would enter Fleet Air Arm service in growing numbers over the course of the final months of winter and would comprise the fourth of the Royal Navy's ubiquitous quartet of aircraft in the first half of the war, alongside the Eagle, Buccaneer and Swordfish.

Both the Allies and Axis looked upon the ongoing Winter War in Finland and the situation in Scandinavia in general with profound interest at the beginning of 1940. Germany and Britain each viewed the access to Swedish iron ore as a key piece in long term economic warfare and, due to the icing of the Baltic Sea, year-round availability would come through the northern Norwegian port of Narvik. The Kriegsmarine viewed the possession of Norway as a substantial strategic advantage, allowing both U-Boats and surface ships easier access to the North Atlantic and outflanking the British blockade in the North Sea. Grand Admiral Raeder had begun initial planning for a future invasion of Denmark and Norway in late 1938, but the Luftwaffe and Heer at that stage preferred to focus on the main contingency of an invasion of the Low Countries and France. The outbreak of war saw a change of circumstances and heart and OKW was ordered to begin preparations for the seizure of Norway on December 15th. Initial plans called for the use of two army corps, two airborne divisions and the entirety of the German Marine Korps to seize Oslo and the main Norwegian ports by coup de main and this was refined under the direction of General Nikolas von Falkenhorst, with its final iteration being known as Operation Weserübung. An early variant calling for the simultaneous occupation of Sweden was dismissed out of hand in light of Sweden's great mobilisation to come to the aid of Finland. At the same time, British planning for intervention in Norway was well underway, with an expeditionary force to be landed at Trondheim and Narvik to secure the iron ore and railways of the north and maintain the integrity of the blockade.

In early April, all indications available to British intelligence pointed towards an imminent German invasion of Scandinavia and the Grand Fleet was placed on a 24 hour alert to prepare to sail on April 5th. RNAS patrol aircraft and the Royal Navy's escort force began aggressive patrolling off the Orkneys and Shetlands, whilst hundreds of Royal Air Force fighters and bombers moved into position at airfields across the north of Scotland. The next day, patrolling aircraft detected German convoys at sea heading towards Norway and Admiral Tovey ordered the Grand Fleet put to sea, with 20 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 10 aircraft carriers, 32 cruisers, 129 destroyers, 20 escort destroyers and 25 frigates sortieing from Invergordon and Scapa Flow, covered by long range RNAS fighter and reconaissance patrols and heading towards an interception position west of Trondheim. Troop convoys departed Rosyth, covered by an escort of over 100 warships, bound for Narvik and Trondheim, with the latter to be directly attacked by a force of older battleships. The German invasion of Norway took place on April 9th with the capture of Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger Kristiansand and Narvik by seaborne and airborne forces, heavily supported by over 1200 Luftwaffe aircraft, but this remarkable initial success on land was in contrast to the great events at sea.

The Kriegsmarine main force of 7 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 4 aircraft carriers, 12 cruisers, 32 destroyers and 12 fleet torpedo boats was located by scout aircraft of the Grand Fleet 56 nautical miles south west of Smola at 1135 hours and an airstrike of 138 Fairey Swordfish, 126 Blackburn Buccaneers, 68 Fairey Fireflies and 72 Supermarine Eagles was launched by HMS Ark Royal, HMS Eagle, HMS Hermes, HMS Fearless, HMS Courageous and HMS Victorious at a distance of 164 nautical miles from the northwest, whilst the other four carriers continued to provide fighter cover of the fleet and fly strike missions against German forces ashore. A German airstrike of 24 Bf-109s, 67 Ju-87 Stukas and 64 Arado Ar-192 torpedo bombers had been launched against the suspected position of the Grand Fleet on the basis of an interrupted report from a U-Boat at 1111 hours. It was intercepted by 64 Supermarine Eagles and 69 Hawker Fireflies guided in by RDF at 1256 hours, which succeeded in shooting down 20 Messerschmitts, 25 Stukas and 22 Arados in a ferocious air battle in exchange for the loss of 9 Eagles and 12 Fireflies. The German airstrike was further interdicted by the fleet's outer defence of anti-aircraft cruisers, which shot down 9 Stukas and 8 Arados, before hitting the main body of the Grand Fleet at 1305 hours, which put up a tremendous barrage from their hundreds of 5.25" and 4.5" RDF directed anti-aircraft guns, shooting down 17 Stukas and 20 Arados and disrupting the attacks of the remaining German aircraft. Two battleships, three cruisers and six destroyers sustained moderate damage and two destroyers and one frigate were sunk, with the fleet subsequently splitting up into several task forces. The bulk of the fleet, consisting of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battle Squadrons, 8 aircraft carriers, 17 cruisers and 60 destroyers broke north to continue striking German positions and coastal fortifications around Trondheim, while HMS Hood, HMS Renown and HMS Repulse headed north to Narvik with 6 cruisers and 24 destroyers; upon arrival there on April 11th, Hood would a devastating attack on German forces at Narvik, proceeding to sink 12 German destroyers and submarine U-34 with gunfire and bombard the German troops ashore in support of the advancing Royal Marines and Foreign Legionnaires. The 1st Battle Squadron of HMS King George V, HMS Lion, HMS Temeraire, HMS Prince of Wales, the battlecruisers HMS St. George and HMS St. Andrew, the carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Victorious, 9 cruisers and 36 destroyers continued on a closing course with the German force at 32 knots.

Meanwhile, the German carriers had put up a fighter screen of 80 Bf-109s over their own fleet, which put up a furious resistance against the British planes, shooting down 37 Fleet Air Arm for the loss of 42 German fighters in a bloody engagement at 1249 hours, but did not substantially interdict the power of the air strike. As they fought their way through the German anti-aircraft barrage, which claimed a further 18 aircraft, the RN Swordfish and Buccaneers concentrated on the enemy carriers and capital ships with devastating effect. The carriers Peter Strasser and Max Immelman were hit by 4 torpedoes and 5 1000lb bombs and 3 torpedoes and 4 bombs respectively, sinking rapidly, whilst Baden was hit by 2 torpedoes and 4 bombs, Wotan by 3 torpedoes and 3 bombs and Gneisenau struck by 2 torpedoes and 5 bombs, crippling all three battleships and setting them afire. The light cruisers Leipzig and Essen and 5 destroyers were sunk, Graf Zeppelin and Hermann Goering hit by single bombs and all of the remaining battleships and battlecruisers sustained some degree of damage, causing the German fleet to turn for the south to get back under friendly air cover. As they withdrew, the 1st Battle Squadron pursued and a long range gunnery action ensued after dusk, resulting in the lagging Scharnhorst being hit by five 24" shells, Tirpitz sustaining significant damage and KM Preussen and the battlecruiser KM Von der Tann being destroyed in catastrophic magazine explosions, whilst Temeraire, KGV and St. Andrew all took moderate damage. Vice Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser ordered that the pursuit be halted under his orders to not push the pursuit beyond the point where he could not rejoin the main body of the fleet by the next day, particularly as two destroyers were sunk by U-Boat attack during the night and the Allied troop convoys required maximum air and surface cover.

The Royal Navy had sustained substantial aircraft losses in the first major engagement of the campaign, but demonstrated full control of the sea and, for the vital first few days of the fighting in Norway, provided the main part of Allied airpower to cover the landings at Namsos and Andalsnes and the direct attack on Trondheim by the 2nd Royal Marine Division, Operation Hammer, until such time as the RAF's Spitfires and Hurricanes could begin operations from airfields ashore. The Grand Fleet's aircraft carriers, operating in three groups, were reinforced by Fleet Air Arm squadrons flying in via relay airfields in the Shetland Islands for their task of defending the fleet against daily attacks by German bombers and striking at enemy targets across Central Norway. Long range Royal Air Force Gloster Reapers and Bristol Beaufighters operating out of RAF Sumburgh and RAF Scatsa contributed with interdiction of enemy strikes as much as possible whilst the airfields at Bodo, Brønnøysund and around Namsos were swiftly prepared by construction arcanists of the Royal Engineers. Particularly heavy raids took place on April 12th and 14th, resulting in the sinking of four RN destroyers and three frigates and two cruisers being damaged, whilst the most damaging attack took place on April 21st, when almost 240 German medium bombers escorted by 100 fighters attacked the Grand Fleet 96nm off Trondheim, being intercepted by 261 Royal Navy fighters. 83 bombers and 36 German fighters were shot down for the loss of 29 RN fighters, with 5 destroyers and 2 frigates being sunk and 5 cruisers, 11 destroyers and 2 battleships damaged. The capacity of the Grand Fleet to maneuver at sea and obscure their location with misdirection and illusion magics made precise targeting by land-based German bombers and fighters difficult for the most part. German U-Boats also took a heavy toll on the fleet, with a total of 5 destroyers and 11 escorts being sunk between April 9th and April 24th, when the Grand Fleet was ordered back to Scapa Flow for resupply and refit; at that point, the RAF had 327 fighters and 205 bombers based in Norway, augmented by 75 fighters and 82 attack bombers of the RNAS operating from land bases. Luftwaffe reinforcement had firmly established German air superiority over Bergen and Southern Norway, whilst heavy aerial combat continued over Trondheim and the inland battlefront between the Luftwaffe and the RAF and RNAS.

The Royal Navy's aircraft carriers had come through their baptism of fire off Norway with flying colours but now, as May began, the attention of the world shifted southwards. The German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and France bought the whole focus of the British armed forces upon the Continent, although the role of the RN's larger ships was not to come to the fore at this juncture. After the success of the second German invasion and the beginning of the Fall of France, Royal Navy aircraft carriers of the Mediterranean Fleet assisted in the Great Evacuation of French forces, civilians and equipment to North Africa by providing part of the covering force which kept the battle fleet of the Regia Marina from sortying from Taranto. Marine Royale losses to Italian, Austro-Hungarian and German submarines and aircraft were substantial during the chaos of the huge maritime exodus, just as the Royal Air Force had bled over Dunkirk to preserve the British Expeditionary Force, but these losses would have been even more bloody had the larger warships of Fascist Italy been able to intervene. The treacherous entry of Italy into the war had lead to the Allied Supreme War Council ordering the reinforcement of the Mediterranean Fleet with four of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers and three new super battleships, which was possible after the successful attrition of the Kriegsmarine off Norway. The onset of the Battle of Britain and the threat of German invasion kept the Grand Fleet on high alert to sail south to interdict any attacking force; in these plans, the aircraft carrier and battlecruiser force would strike at German bases in Norway and Denmark to allow the battleships to steam down into the English Channel and destroy the invasion fleet. When the Kriegsmarine did make an abortive attempt at invasion on the night of September 15th, they were badly mauled by the Royal Navy's surface forces in two bloody night engagements collectively known as the Battle of the North Sea that saw the Channel aflame and choked with burned and drowning bodies by the next dawn, the old battleships Markgraf and Konig Albert having been sunk. However, this was not immediately followed by any strikes against German naval bases, again under the justification of the seeming threat posed by the Luftwaffe to the Fleet Air Arm, a consideration that was passed along by German agents across Western Europe.

The end of the immediate threat of invasion allowed the redeployment of troops from Britain to North Africa in one of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill's more daring calculations, along with the much quieter dispatch of elements of the Royal Navy to the Atlantic and Mediterranean for what was to be the British Empire and Commonwealth's most effective counterattack in the disastrous year of 1940 - the combined offensives on land, sea and air in the Mediterranean. The Italian navy at Taranto stood astride the Imperial lifeline to Suez and presented the most serious threat to Malta and the parlous Allied position in North Africa, based as it was on the broken-backed French in the west and greatly outnumbered British Desert Army in Egypt to the east. Over 320,000 Italian troops had invaded Egypt on September 13th, but had made comparatively light advances against the 64,000 strong Imperial forces, made up of the 7th Armoured Division, the Indian 4th Infantry Division, the Australian 6th Infantry Division, the New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division and the South African 1st Infantry Division. The supply situation for General Wavell's troops was fundamentally limited by the threats to the Mediterranean sea route presented by the main battle force of the Regia Marina at Taranto, where 9 capital ships, 3 aircraft carriers, 25 cruisers, 42 destroyers and 26 submarines were poised like a sword of Damocles over Malta and the passage to Egypt.

Plans for an aircraft carrier strike upon Taranto had been prepared and refined since 1935 and were now put into place as part of a much broader offensive operation in the Mediterranean, involving separate heavily escorted convoys to Malta from Gibraltar and Alexandria, the reinforcement of Commonwealth forces deploying in Greece and a diversionary airstrike on Cagliari in Sardinia by a task force of HMS Argus and HMS Furious. It would occur on Trafalgar Day, October 21st 1940. Taranto was heavily defended in a conventional sense, with 227 anti-aircraft guns and 332 machine guns providing a strong coverage, although their barrage balloons had been blown away in an arcane storm two days before the raid. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, had taken the main battle fleet out to escort the troop convoy to Crete, whilst a fast carrier task force of Illustrious, Invincible, Ark Royal, Eagle and Victorious provided air cover. The combined convoy operations had succeeded in lulling the Italians into a false sense of normality and the lack of Italian RDF left them open to an aerial surprise attack at night. The carrier force under Admiral Lyster, escorted by the battleships South Africa, King George V, Prince of Wales, Lion and Temeraire, the super battlecruiser Hood, 12 cruisers and 20 destroyers, broke away from the remainder of the fleet in the early afternoon and slipped westward under cover of experimental cloaking enchantments to reach their launching point in the Ionian Sea, some 240 miles away from Taranto, by 2200 hours that evening. Now was the time for the Empire to strike back.

64 Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers (40 with torpedoes and 24 with bombs and flares) and 60 Blackburn Buccaneer dive bombers attacked the harbour in two waves, with the first hitting at 2258. Several large oil tanks were set ablaze, followed by numerous explosions as shore facilities were hit by 1000lb bombs. The battleships Leonardo da Vinci and Caio Dulio were hit by 3 and 2 torpedoes respectively and began to sink, with Giulio Cesare being struck by 4 torpedoes and 3 1000lb bombs and capsizing and Conte di Cavour hit by 4 1000lb bombs and 2 torpedoes, suffering a devastating magazine explosion. Enrico Dandolo was hit by 3 bombs and set afire, whilst her sister carrier Lorenzo de' Medici was put in a sinking state by a pair of torpedoes. The heavy cruiser Verona was hit by two torpedoes and 4 1000lb bombs and suffered a catastrophic magazine explosion which crippled two nearby destroyers, with Napoli, Turin and Gorizia were struck by torpedoes and bombs and began sinking. 6 Buccaneers and 5 Swordfish were lost in the attack. The second wave arriving at 2346 concentrated on the four Littorio class battleships. 58 Swordfish and 52 Buccaneers attacked into heavy anti-aircraft fire, with 5 Swordfish and 4 Buccaneers shot down. Littorio was hit by four torpedoes and 5 bombs, Vittorio by 2 torpedoes and 4 bombs, Sicilia by 3 1000lb bombs and Italia by 2 1000lb bombs, with Littorio blowing up half an hour later despite desperate attempts to save her. Vittorio was barely saved from sinking by running her aground with significant damage. The light cruisers Armando Diaz, Prospero Colonna and Luchino Visconti all sustained heavy bomb and strafing damage and three destroyers sunk in the second wave. The aircraft were recovered by 0158 and the fleet retired to the southeast at 30 knots. The first Italian reconnaissance bomber flights took off at 0549 on October 22nd, but the carrier task force had continued its withdrawal under cover of RAF and RNAS fighter squadrons operating out of Crete. They were located by a Regia Aeronautica SM.82 flight at 0754, whereupon the Italian plane was shot down by Supermarine Eagles on combat air patrol, eliminating the possibility of an aerial counterstrike in revenge for the devastation inflicted upon Taranto. For the loss of 20 naval aircraft, the Regia Marina had been crippled and a famous victory achieved. 5 battleships, 2 carriers, 4 cruisers and 5 destroyers had been sunk, with 3 battleships, 5 cruisers and 12 destroyers damaged. The Battle of Taranto would have wide reaching consequences for both the Allies and Axis, but the night had been busy elsewhere.

As darkness fell over the North Sea, the Grand Fleet was moving towards its launching position for a daring nocturnal strike on Kiel. Operation Lightning. This is a considerably more dangerous operation given the necessity to make part of the approach over land. RAF reconnaissance flights over the previous weeks have indicated that a tempting target is present – the new capital ship Moltke, the damaged battleships Bismarck, Gneisenau and Tirpitz, the damaged carrier Hermann Goering, the pocket battleship Lutzow and the heavy cruisers Admiral Roon and Seydlitz. Covered by 12 battleships, 20 cruisers and 56 destroyers, the aircraft carriers Formidable, Indefatigable, Implacable, Hermes, Glorious and Courageous launched 135 Fairey Swordfish from 280 miles out and flew in at very low level to avoid RDF detection. They struck in two waves at 2244 and 2306. The first wave discovered that part of the intelligence on German naval units present had been faulty, with Bismarck having moved to Gotenhafen during the day. This provides only momentary discouragement as the first attack proceeded. Tirpitz was hit by five bombs and two torpedoes, developing a significant list; Gneisenau was hit by six bombs and three torpedoes before sinking in flames; Admiral Roon is hit by three bombs and four torpedoes and gradually sank; Moltke was hit by four bombs and one torpedo, causing a significant fire topside and severely damaging one of the forward turrets; and Hermann Goering was hit by seven bombs and four torpedoes, causing a catastrophic explosion. Five destroyers were also sunk by torpedoes. The attack costs a total of 24 Swordfish, a comparatively high number compared to the losses of the Mediterranean Fleet, but less than expected by the Admiralty. The final strike of the night did not involve aircraft carriers, but Operation Lucid, the first fire ship attack conducted by the Royal Navy since the Napoleonic Wars, saw the destruction of over 200 invasion barges by five converted oil tankers sent into Boulogne harbour, along with three torpedo boats and fourteen E-Boats in the resultant conflagration. The effect on British public opinion and morale was electric, with Admiral Cunningham of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Fraser of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Ramsay of the Channel Fleet and Commodore Augustus Agar being hailed as heroes of the Empire. Newsreel footage of the attacks was rushed by flying boat to the United States, where The New York Times ran several excited stories calling for a military alliance with the British Empire. The impact of Lightning and Lucid would bring an end to any prospects of a German invasion of the British Isles in 1940.

A month later in November, the Regia Marina demonstrated a wariness of the capacity of the Royal Navy in surface and aerial action when it attempted to interdict an Allied supply convoy to Malta, but the Commando Supremo's decision to keep its heavy units in port at Naples and Genoa. In what was later termed the Battle of Cape Spartivento, Italian patrol aircraft located a large British convoy of 24 with a strong escort in the Western Mediterranean heading for Malta. 86 Regia Marina bombers from Sardinia attacked the convoy heading for Malta at 1030 hours on November 27th 1940. The heavy covering force consisted the battleships Valiant and Barham, the aircraft carrier Argus, 6 cruisers and 20 destroyers. 40 RN carrier fighters intercepting the Italian aircraft over the convoy, resulting 23 Italian bombers were shot down for the loss of 4 Supermarine Eagles and 5 Hawker Fireflies, with one destroyer being sunk, a merchant ship crippled and two cruisers and four destroyers damaged. French fighters operating from Bizerte provided additional air cover as the convoy headed south, but the engagement had demonstrated the ability of even a single carrier to break up an uncoordinated airstrike.

The performance of the Fleet Air Arm over Taranto and Kiel did not go unnoticed by other major carrier navies, with new consideration given to the capabilities displayed by the Swordfish and Buccaneer. The Royal Navy regarded the results achieved by its strike aircraft as extremely satisfactory, but the margin of superiority of the Supermarine Eagle and Hawker Firefly over German and Italian aircraft was not seen as sufficiently advantageous to offset the capabilities of shore-based aircraft against carrier raids. Newer models of both fighters began to enter service in October and December respectively, with the Supermarine Eagle Mark III, carrying an improved armament of four 25mm cannon and powered by a new 2000hp Rolls Royce Merlin anticipated as clearly extending the Royal Navy's edge in air-to-air combat. The needs for a greatly expanded Fleet Air Arm at the same time as the Royal Air Force was engaged in the Battle of Britain saw the latter naturely given priority and 12 FAA fighter squadrons were seconded to Fighter Command operational control, delaying the entry into service of taxed the training establishment of the first of the light fleet carriers and the fleet carrier Ocean into the new year. At the same time, the increasing pressure of the German U-Boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic took its toll upon the RN as the number of Kriegsmarine submarines in the crucial sea lanes greatly increased when new bases in France and Southern Norway became operational. HMS Fearless was sunk by U-99 in the Western Approaches on October 28th and the light carrier HMS Frobisher was declared a total constructive loss after being torpedoed by U-78 within sight of Reykjavik whilst transporting aircraft to the British garrison of Iceland. The entry of the first auxiliary carriers into the fray did provide a not-insubstantiable measure of relief and slowly, in conjunction with increased long range patrols by RNAS Short Stirlings and airships, the tide began to turn by the end of the year.

.....................

Fleet Aircraft Carriers

1933 Programme
Ark Royal (Cammell Laird, Birkenhead)
Ordered 12/4/33, Laid Down 12/8/33, Launched 6/5/35, Commissioned 23/10/36
Eagle (John Brown, Clydebank)
Ordered 25/3/33, Laid Down 24/8/33, Launched 4/6/35, Commissioned 29/12/36

1934 Programme
Hermes (Armstrong-Whitworth, Elswick)
Ordered 26/2/34, Laid Down 7/3/34, Launched 2/9/36, Commissioned 5/7/38
Centaur (Vickers, Barrow)
Ordered 2/3/34, Laid Down 8/6/34, Launched 12/11/36, Commissioned 6/8/38

1935 Programme
Illustrious (Vickers, Barrow)
Ordered 24/1/35, Laid Down 15/5/35, Launched 24/7/37, Commissioned 27/9/38
Invincible (Swan Hunter, Wallsend)
Ordered 22/2/35, Laid Down 22/6/35, Launched 1/10/37, Commissioned 4/12/38
Victorious (Beardmores, Govan)
Ordered 4/3/35, Laid Down 24/6/35, Launched 13/11/37, Commissioned 14/1/39
Formidable (Harland & Wolff, Belfast)
Ordered 20/3/35, Laid Down 2/7/35, Launched 20/9/37, Commissioned 29/1/39

1936 Programme
Indomitable (Palmer's, Jarrow)
Ordered 12/1/36, Laid Down 13/5/36, Launched 24/10/38, Commissioned 17/12/39
Indefatigable (John Brown, Clydebank)
Ordered 5/3/36, Laid Down 11/6/36, Launched 2/9/38, Commissioned 25/1/40
Implacable (Fairfield Shipbuilding, Govan)
Ordered 12/4/36, Laid Down 15/7/36, Launched 21/8/38, Commissioned 23/2/40
Argus (Vickers, Barrow)
Ordered 10/4/36, Laid Down 12/8/36, Launched 22/11/38, Commissioned 13/4/40

1937 Programme
Pegasus (Palmers, Jarrow)
Ordered 20/4/37, Laid Down 13/6/37, Launched 24/9/39, Commissioned 1/11/40
Unicorn (Harland & Wolff, Belfast)
Ordered 5/5/37, Laid Down 25/7/37, Launched 26/10/39, Commissioned 24/12/40
Leviathan (Cammell Laird, Birkenhead)
Ordered 4/6/37, Laid Down 1/8/37, Launched 10/11/39, Commissioned 18/2/41
Ocean (Armstrong-Whitworth, Elswick)
Ordered 15/5/37, Laid Down 10/9/37, Launched 13/12/39, Commissioned 26/5/41

1938 Programme
Albion (Swan Hunter, Wallsend)
Ordered 19/4/38, Laid Down 24/8/38, Launched 30/11/40, Commissioned 3/5/42
Bulwark (Harland & Wolff, Belfast)
Ordered 27/3/38, Laid Down 31/9/38, Launched 29/12/40, Commissioned 6/6/42
Remarkable (Beardmores, Govan)
Ordered 18/6/38, Laid Down 20/10/38, Launched 20/12/40, Commissioned 30/9/42
Spectacular (John Brown, Clydebank)
Ordered 17/4/38, Laid Down 26/11/38, Launched 15/1/41, Commissioned 24/12/42

Light Fleet Carriers

1938 Programme
Theseus (HM Dockyard Portsmouth)
Ordered 16/2/38, Laid Down 20/5/38, Launched 8/3/40, Commissioned 21/11/40
Hercules (HM Dockyard Devonport)
Ordered 1/3/38, Laid Down 24/6/38, Launched 6/7/40, Commissioned 23/2/41
Achilles (HM Dockyard Rosyth)
Ordered 24/3/38, Laid Down 19/6/38, Launched 8/6/40, Commissioned 2/4/41
Ethalion (HM Dockyard Chatham)
Ordered 10/4/38, Laid Down 1/6/38, Launched 2/10/40, Commissioned 15/5/41

1939 Programme
Mars (Hawthorn Leslie, Tyneside)
Ordered 2/2/39, Laid Down 1/4/39, Launched 6/5/41, Commissioned 7/12/41
Agamemnon (Stephen & Sons, Clydeside)
Ordered 2/2/39, Laid Down 6/3/39, Launched 17/6/41, Commissioned 2/3/42
Perseus (Caledon Shipbuilding, Dundee)
Ordered 25/3/39, Laid Down 27/4/39, Launched 28/8/41, Commissioned 12/6/42
Hector (Scotts Shipbuilding, Greenock)
Ordered 26/3/39, Laid Down 15/5/39, Launched 30/8/41, Commissioned 16/6/42

The RN's strategy is straightforward -
1.) Give the Germans a very heavy blow as soon as possible so they can be bottled up.
2.) Wear down the Italian numbers, especially with a strike on Taranto.
3.) Defeat the Spanish and Turks in detail through sharp, decisive battles that neutralise their threat
4.) Bring the Italians to battle and defeat them decisively.
5.) Main fleet to Singapore as soon as possible, whilst residual forces keep the Germans pinned down from Britain and the French handle the Mediterranean.

The Fall of France complicates this, but the French Fleet joins the British from the beginning.

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:22 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 4a: British Carriers 1941

At the beginning of 1941, the general situation faced by Britain and her allies remained parlous. The Battle of the Atlantic, although beginning to shift in Allied favour, was still a vast and complex one fraught with existential danger and German U-Boat production was increasing by the week. In Norway, the grinding fighting in the centre of the country had slowed over winter and German control over the most populous and productive parts of the country seemed increasingly secure. Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill had declared that the main focus of the British Empire's war effort for the year must lie in the Mediterranean, the 'crucible of victory', which was now looking further away than ever. The presence of Austro-Hungarian and German forces in North Africa had shifted the nature of the conflict there, even as British and Commonwealth forces were now committed to Greece. The initial Turkish offensive in the Middle East had been blunted by Imperial forces, which even now gathered in Israel and Iraq for an audacious counterattack, whilst the British and French expeditionary forces in Portugal did not seem capable of decisive offensive action against the Spanish and Italian foe. This necessary division of force to aid beleagured democratic allied states and protect the vitally important positions in Egypt and the Suez Canal was mirrored by affairs at sea, which saw the strength of the Royal Navy spread over multiple theatres, denying it the ability to concentrate and deliver decisive blows in the manner of October 1940. The Admiralty ever looked to the situation in the Far East and knew that time was running short to begin the dispatch of a sufficient battle fleet to deter the increasingly expansive ambitions of Japanese expansionism. Increased deployments of warships and auxiliaries east of Suez in the final months of 1940 had been however, it was but the beginning of what was required; Admiralty plans called for 6 months notice to gather, provision and send the fleet and Royal Marines.

Whilst the demands upon the Royal Navy had taxed it to the limit in the first full year of war, now the process of prewar rearmament and emergency naval construction would begin to bear valuable fruit. Three fleet and five light aircraft carriers, six battleships, four battlecruisers, a dozen cruisers, forty invaluable destroyers and over a hundred escorts were scheduled to enter service over the course of the year, aircraft production was increasing and the 11 auxiliary aircraft carriers converted in the early part of the war were now becoming operational. They would now be joined by the first of a new type of smaller, versatile carrier, as three merchant vessels, including the captured German SS Hannover, began conversion into small 'merchant auxiliary aircraft carriers', later better known as escort aircraft carriers. It was estimated that at least 75 such ships would be required to provide full coverage to every convoy operating in the North Atlantic, a daunting prospect for British shipbuilding capacity, even when augmented by the burgeoning military industrial power of the Dominion of Canada across the ocean, which was mustering its might for the challenge with a fierce pride and determination. Already in January, very quiet discussions were occurring regarding the ordering of new auxiliary ships from the United States of America, which was being bought ever closer to full involvement in the world war.

The 1941 War Emergency Naval Construction Programme reflected the priorities of the British Empire in this dark hour, mostly consisting of anti-submarine escorts for service on the vital convoy routes and light surface combatants to harrass and raid the imprisoned continent of Europe as it sweltered under the tyrannous Nazi yoke. The voracious demands of tank manufacturing for the active fronts in Norway and North Africa drew much of British armour production and the first priority for light and medium anti-aircraft guns went to Anti-Aircraft Command and the Royal Air Force. Tentative plans for the construction of a new class of fully armoured super battlecruisers were set aside in light of these necessities and it took exceptional efforts on the part of First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound to save the Tiger class cruisers projected to be laid down that year. A final group of four light aircraft carriers were approved, rather than the eight that the Admiralty had asked for, with the demands of merchant ship repair and maintenance of the Grand Fleet after punishing long term operations in the North Sea and off Scandinavaia putting paid to them. The finally agreed programme consisted of 4 light aircraft carriers, 8 cruisers, 32 destroyers, 32 destroyer escorts, 48 frigates, 20 sloops, 39 submarines, 56 corvettes, 62 minesweepers, 80 naval trawlers and 268 torpedo boats, with one important addition - the Malta class large aircraft carriers. The design of these successors to the Illustrious class fleet carriers had been underway since 1936 and had undergone many alterations along the way, the latest of which incorporated some of the improved features of the cancelled 1940 Aircraft Carriers, but, through a supreme effort of will, argument and bitter compromise, four ships were authorised for 1941. They represented a clear leap in size and capability over the Ark Royal and Illustrious class ships, coming in at over 1000ft in length, displacing upwards of 56,000t and protected by a stronger armoured deck and belt than their predecessors, all at an increased speed. The Maltas were designed to operate 120 aircraft and carried the formidable anti-aircraft gun defences yet put to sea on a British carrier, consisting of 24 5.25", 72 40mm Bofors and over 100 25mm Maxim guns. These were ships designed for global operations, with a particular view towards the threat posed by Imperial Japan in the Far East, yet even as dark war clouds began to gather over the Orient, it seemed that it may be too late.

In the Mediterranean, the setbacks delivered to the Italians on land and sea had lead to reinforcement by Germany and Austria-Hungary in the form of the Austro-German Mediterranean Squadron moving their heavy units to Ancona and a cruiser-destroyer force to Taranto and the preparation of an expeditionary force for service in North Africa. The most direct form of assistance came in the deployment of the German X and XII Fliegerkorps and the Austro-Hungarian V Fliegerkorps with a total of over 850 aircraft to airfields in Sicily and Southern Italy. They would have their first test against aircraft carriers in Operation Excess, a complicated British operation designed to reinforce the aerial defences of Malta from both Alexandria and Gibraltar. The Marine Royale would provide a diversionary raid on Sardinia to draw out Axis airpower, but this proved to be less successful than the attempts of the previous year. A large escort provided by the Mediterranean Fleet would accompany Convoy MW 5, consisting of 11 freighters, from Alexandria to Malta, whilst a force from the Atlantic Fleet would sortie from Gibraltar alongside the 8 ships of Convoy MC 4. Italian reconnaissance aircraft located the Mediterranean Fleet task force, which consisted of Ark Royal, Eagle and Illustrious on the afternoon of January 7th and initial attacks were launched the next morning, with 37 SM.79s broken up by carrier fighters. From the west, the Royal Navy's Atlantic Fleet's Force H, consisting of Formidable and Indomitable came under heavier attack from the initial German staffeln of Heinkel He-111s flying out of Sicily, which succeeded in hitting both carriers and crippling a destroyer. The advantage rendered by the large numbers of Fleet Air Arm carrier fighters allowed each task force to fight its way through moderate land-based opposition with comparatively light losses, but it signaled that the Central Mediterranean was now very much contested airspace and that the days of operating there with impunity were over. This was shortly followed by Unternehmen Sonnenblume, the movement of German and Austro-Hungarian troops to Italian North Africa from Sicily, a process that was unimpeded by aerial operations from the Royal Navy, several of whose Mediterranean based carriers were undergoing urgently needed maintenance in Alexandria and Haifa after the punishing pace of operations of late 1940. The Admiralty had considered launching a daring carrier raid on Genoa to attack Regia Marina battleships under repair and construction, but it was viewed as simply too risky in light of the increased Axis airpower deployed to Italy. Instead, there was to be a reckoning with two of the lesser enemy states at either end of the Mediterranean.

Ottoman Turkey, flush with confidence in light of German successes in Western Europe, had declared war on the Allied powers on July 1st, as France teetered on the edge of collapse and Britain looked set to join them. Their invasions of Syria and Iraq had encountered initial success before the combination of the terrain, parlous supply lines, heavy attacks by the Royal Air Force and skilled resistance by the forces of Middle East Command ground them to a halt in early September along the line of the eastern mountains of Syria and northern Iraq. The siege of Mosul focused much of both Turkish and British attention throughout October, as reinforcements from India joined the Arab Legion, Templars and irregular cavalry of General T.E. Lawrence's Ninth Army. The Imperial Ottoman Army, reinforced by token German forces and operating older Italian and Austrian tanks, deployed over two dozen divisions across the 500 mile front against only 11 British, Israeli and Indian divisions and were poised to fall down upon the plains of Assyria like a wolf on the fold. The major constraint upon their offensive capacity came through the limited railways through the rugged border mountains, placing exceptional importance upon the coastal routes from Alexandretta through to Antioch and Aleppo. Defending this vulnerable flank was the task of the Imperial Ottoman Navy, operating out of its great bases at Mersin, Antalya and Alexandretta and deploying a strong fleet of four new battleships, Süleymaniye, Osmâniye, Mahmûdiye and Mecidiye, the Italian built battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim, seven modern cruisers, twenty-six destroyers, thirty torpedo boats and seventeen submarines. Their strategy was one of denying the seas to the Royal Navy and ultimately sought to accomplish this through the capture of Cyprus, but British land and air reinforcements had made this approach moot by September 1940. A large build up of shipping and aircraft was begun, with a view towards an invasion in early 1941, and these preparations were evident to long range RAF reconnaissance aircraft observations.

Prime Minister Churchill declared that such a setback would imperil the Imperial position in the Eastern Mediterranean and ordered the Admiralty to prepare a plan for the neutralisation of the Turkish Navy. Admiral Cunningham's staff in Alexandria soon formulated an approach that would facilitate this outcome with the least threat to the vital carriers and capital ships of the Mediterranean Fleet, Operation Beowulf. In the final week of January, RAF Middle East launched several daylight raids with its precious four-engine Vickers Wellington bombers on targets deep inside Turkey, including one on Angora itself, whilst hitting Ottoman airfields around Lake Van with tactical fighters, leading to suspicions of a push on the battlefield to finally break the siege of Mosul. This had the effect of drawing Turkish airpower to both the defence of its industrial heartland and towards the battlefront of Northern Iraq, weakening its fighter defences of its southern flank for a sharp and deadly blow.

On January 25th, a fleet of 6 aircraft carriers, 8 battleships, 12 cruisers and 40 destroyers slipped out of Alexandria, ostensibly to escort a large troop convoy to Crete. Once at sea, it swung back to the east and headed for Cyprus at top speed. Two airstrikes were launched from Ark Royal, Victorious, Eagle, Formidable, Invincible and Illustrious on January 27th shortly after nightfall on Mersin and Antalya, consisting of 72 and 76 Fairey Swordfish respectively. Operating at the very edge of their range, the British aircraft struck each Turkish naval base shortly after midnight on January 28th, encountering a large volume of light anti-aircraft fire and heavy torpedo net defences. These proved to be an effective defence against aerial torpedoes, but not against the new weapons being employed on that night, the 1600lb armour piercing bomb and the 1250lb enchanted incendiary bomb. Large areas of the dockyards were set afire by the devastating fire bombs and the upperworks of all of the battleships were severely damaged. Only three torpedo hits were achieved, two on Mahmûdiye and one on Süleymaniye, which caused both to suffer a severe list. During the raids, RN submarines had laid several minefields in the approaches to both ports to further discombobulate efforts to either sortie or repair the damaged vessels. The next morning, rather than withdraw to safety, Cunningham sent in his two battle squadrons to bombard each port from a range of 72,000 yards, whilst covered by his carrier fighters and RAF and RNAS Spitfires and Beaufighters operating out of Cyprus. His Swordfish and Buccaneer strike planes launched several raids on the railway station at Alexandretta and nearby rail bridges throughout the day before he retired back through the Levantine Sea in the late afternoon, the Turks having been dealt a stinging blow that they would never fully recover from. Beowulf was a small precursor to the success of the British Army and Royal Air Force in Operation Swiftsure in April, but it demonstrated the ability of a strong carrier force to inflict heavy damage on an enemy without sufficient air cover.

In the Western Mediterranean, the sole threat to the naval dominance of Britain and Free France came in the form of the Spanish Armada Real, which was concentrated in the Mediterranean. Spain had been embroiled in its own front of the wider conflict in the Spanish-Portuguese War since August 25th 1940, when 350,000 Spanish troops poured across the border and were stopped dead on the Braganca Line in the north, whilst making substantial advances in the south. Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill declared that the British Empire would honour Portugal's desperate plea for assistance, even as a German invasion of Britain seemed likely, and dispatched an expeditionary army to Portugal and southern Spain, which relieved the immediate pressure on the Portuguese and opened up the Andalusian Front. This was followed by Italian forces crossing the Pyrenees after Mussolini had declared that he would stand as the champion of Fascism in the Mediterranean, although the deepening winter made decisive advances by either side difficult. Free French and Polish troops reinforced the Allied bridgehead in the south, securing a deep perimeter inland from the vital base at Gibraltar supported by aircraft flying in from aerodromes in Morocco. The large Spanish naval base of Cadiz had been evacuated in the final days before British intervention and it was often felt that an opportunity was missed to engage and sink the Spanish squadron as it steamed through the Straits of Gibraltar on September 6th. Now, in 1941, the Armada Real was concentrated at the ports of Cartagena and Valencia, where 8 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 2 aircraft carriers, 13 cruisers, 25 destroyers, 19 torpedo boats and 11 submarines were poised within striking distance of French North Africa and the Allied lifeline through the Mediterranean. The experiences of the Italian and Turkish fleets at the hands of British carrier aircraft was a fresh and terrible one for the Spanish admiralty and there was a determination not to simply sit back and await destruction in darkness, but to strike out and engage the Royal Navy's Atlantic Fleet from a position of strength. At the end of January 1941, the latter, based at Tangiers and Gibraltar, consisted of the aircraft carriers Argus, Indomitable, Furious and Hermes, the battleships King George V, Prince of Wales, Duke of York, Black Prince, Collingwood, St. Vincent and the battlecruiser Hood, 10 cruisers and 28 destroyers; the French battlecruisers Dunkerque and Strasbourg, 2 cruisers and 8 destroyers were attached directly to the Royal Navy squadron, with the main Marine Royale fleet of 12 battleships and 3 carriers back at Mers El Kebir and Algiers to cover any Regia Marina sortie.

On the night of February 4th 1941, 87 Spanish Air Force Savoia-Marchetti SM.82s bombed Mers El Kebir, inflicting minor damage but substantive disruption, providing cover for the laying of multiple minefields by Spanish submarines in the approaches to the port. The Spanish battlefleet sortied early on the next morning, proceeding along the coast under heavy fighter cover from inland airbases, being detected by the submarine HMS Unseen at 1034 hours. Admiral Sir James Somerville took his fleet to sea out from Gibraltar, veering down towards the Moroccan coast to maximise its distance from the Spanish airfields around Granada. The first stage of the action took place south of Alboran Island, as 65 Spanish bombers escorted by 72 Hispano HA-1109s struck at the British fleet in conjunction with a carrier strike by 38 Stukas and 40 Arado torpedo bombers, detected by Hood's powerful RDF over 125nm away. They were met 20 miles north of the fleet by a strong CAP of 52 Supermarine Eagles and 50 Hawker Fireflies from the carriers and a land-based force of 48 Royal Service Aeronautique Dewoitine D.520s and 36 RAF Hawker Hurricanes flying from Oran and Tangiers. The following aerial melee was one of the most vicious in the Battle of the Mediterranean to date, with the performance advantages of the Fleet Air Arm fighters neutralised by the confused close-quarter dogfights. 38 Spanish SM.82s and 36 carrier aircraft managed to get through the Allied fighter screen, with 42 of the Hispano fighters being shot down in exchange for 12 Eagles, 15 Fireflies, 13 D.520s and 10 Hurricanes, before being hit by a further wave of 24 Eagles as they approached the British fleet, losing a further 10 carrier planes and 11 SM.82s. The remaining Spanish aircraft pushed home their attack on the Atlantic Fleet, suffering so greatly from the RDF-guided gunfire of the new anti-aircraft cruisers Dido and Astraea and the three modern super battleships that only 12 SM.82s and 14 Stukas and Arados managed to strike the RN vessels. Collingwood was hit by two torpedoes, Black Prince by three bombs and St. Vincent by a single bomb which destroyed one of its 4.7" secondary battery turrets, whilst the light cruiser Southampton was hit by a torpedo and had to retire back on Gibraltar and two destroyers were crippled. Crucially, none of the British carriers were damaged, having been held back closer to the North African shore.

Somerville now launched his own strike, launching 236 aircraft (85 Swordfish, 75 Buccaneers, 36 Eagles and 40 Fireflies) at the advancing Spanish fleet, whilst leading his own eight capital ships towards them at 30 knots. The British aircraft were intercepted by 56 HA-1109s and 54 Bf-109s from the Spanish carriers, which shot down 10 Eagles and 12 Fireflies in addition to 15 Swordfish and 14 Buccaneers in exchange for the loss of 52 Spanish fighters and largely breaking up the cohesion of the air strike. Nevertheless, enough British aircraft were able to get through to the Spanish fleet to inflict serious damage, with the carriers Hernando Cortez and Francisco Pizarro both hit by a pair of torpedoes, the battlecruisers Santo Domingo and San Carlos struck by three and four bombs respectively and set afire, the battleship Jaime I hit by three torpedoes and two bombs and the cruiser Canarias destroyed by a direct bomb strike to its main magazine. The sheer volume of anti-aircraft fire coming from the four modern Spanish battleships prevented the British aircraft from inflicting any decisive damage on them, even if much of it was ineffective in terms of shooting down enemy planes.

The subsequent surface action began at 1732 hours, as the British battleline opened fire at a range of 64,000 yards, with their 20" and 24" guns directed by powerful magically enhanced fire control systems, well outside of the accurate range of the Spanish ships. In the opening minutes of the engagement, St. Vincent scored seven hits from twelve salvos on the old Santiago, knocking out two turrets and destroying its bridge, Collingwood hit Lepanto five times, damaging her steering gear and slowing her to 18 knots and Hood hit Isabel la Católica ten times, penetrating her aft deck on the last shot and exploding her aft magazine, causing a catastrophic explosion that destroyed the ship. King George V hit Principe de Asturias on her sixth salvo and scored nine hits, blowing off her bow and jamming her A turret; Prince of Wales hit España with her eighth salvo, knocking out her X turret and penetrating her armour belt in two locations, starting serious fires, Duke of York hit Emperador Carlos V on her fifth salvo and scored eleven hits, predominantly on her superstructure and secondary armament amidships; and Black Prince hit Santissima Trinidad seven times from ten salvos, reducing her speed to 24 knots and starting a huge fire on her aft superstructure and aircraft hanger. The Spanish battlefleet seemed in peril of destruction even as they began to bring the British ships under fire and began to break off the battle at the direction of Admiral Don Juan Sanchez de Alvarez, who himself had been mortally wounded by a shell splinter aboard his flagship Santissima Trinidad, but even this seemed to be a vain effort as shells continued to rain around them. It was only the intervention of El Campeón Escarlata, the great wyrm Xeldroso, Spain's mightiest dragon, who sacrificed his life to allow the fleet to escape, that enabled the four Principe de Asturias class battleships to break away. Santiago was pounded into a burning wreck in the process and Lepanto blew up under the concentrated fire of King George V and Prince of Wales. Admiral Somerville launched an initial pursuit of the retreating Spanish as night began to fall, but St. Vincent was severely damaged by a daring torpedo attack by Spanish destroyers acting as a desperate rearguard at 1926. Faced with potential damage to his remaining capital ships, he withdrew back to Oran to temporarily refit and repair his ships, but the Spanish minefield outside the French port was to claim the damaged Collingwood, breaking her back and forcing her to be grounded; she would later be considered a total constructive loss.

The Battle of Alboran was a decisive defeat for the Armada Real, losing three battleships to one of the Royal Navy, but the decisive initial role had once again been played by airpower. Spanish coordination of land and sea-based airpower had been less than optimal, but had still succeeded in inflicting heavy losses on the carrier planes of the Royal Navy, demonstrating that a determined attack could break through their defences. It would lead to further critical thinking and debate by the Fleet Air Arm on the optimal formations and tactics for large carrier engagements, whilst some criticised Somerville for his choices before and during the battle. Ultimately, the main impact of the battle would be both strategic and political. The Spanish Navy would limp back to port and subsequently relocate its capital ships to Barcelona and Valencia for repair; it would never be risked at sea again for the remainder of the war. The sheer scale of the defeat and its psychological impact significantly damaged the image of the Fascist regime as it slowly became public knowledge over the coming months and played a significant role in providing the impetus for the Royalist counter-coup of April that would transform the Iberian campaign.

With the effective neutralisation of the two weakest Axis powers in the Mediterranean, the focus of Britain returned to Italy, which still presented a significant threat. The Fascist state was now deeply engaged in fighting on the Greco-Albanian border and it seemed that the matter of Greece would be a key one for the control of the Mediterranean. In possession of the Axis, the British could be cut off from Malta and their use of the middle seas essentially neutralised; on the side of the Allies, the oilfields of Romania and Austria-Hungary's industrial heartland would be within range of RAF bombers and the Balkan offensive of the Great War could be successfully replicated. Mussolini had long had designs on his eastern neighbours, just as Rome had looked to expand into Greece in the classical age. His ambitious invasion through Albania in late October 1940 had been intended replicate German success in the West and counter the setbacks experienced in North Africa and Taranto, but came up against the determined and grim resistance offered by the Imperial Army under Megas Stratarches Ioannis Heraclius, which stopped them dead in the rugged mountains of Epirus. This failure raised the spectre of German involvement and Britain, who had guaranteed Greek independence and sovereignty prior to the outbreak of war and provided a garrison of the strategic island of Crete, began preparations for the deployment of direct support to head off such a dire contingency. Constantinople had deployed troops away from its Macedonian and Thracian borders to defend against the Italian threat and thus sought British aid; secret discussions in Athens saw a request for 12 fully equipped divisions and 800 aircraft, which the British were unable to supply. As German troops began to move into Bulgaria in late February 1941, a compromise agreement was reached for the deployment of a British Expeditionary Force of six divisions. The initial convoys between Alexandria and Pireaus were routed through the Aegean Sea, but the increasing threat of Turkish and Italian aircraft and torpedo boat attack from the Dodecanese lead to the decision to route traffic around the west of Crete.

This presented the Regia Marina in March 1941 with an opportunity to disrupt British deployment through a naval attack on the convoys and avenge the losses of Taranto. With the availability of the new Roma and Impero, they could now deploy a strong active force of five super battleships, four battlecruisers and the aircraft carriers Aquila, Galileo Galilei and the converted ocean liners Falco and Sparviero. The latter two ships had been reconstruction since 1936 and been hurried through their remaining sea trials into operational service in the aftermath of Taranto, as the two fleet carriers under construction, Francesco Morosini and Dante Aligheri, had only just been launched at La Spezia and Venice. They could operate a creditable air group of 64 aircraft apiece at a top speed of 31 knots and had been heavily equipped with the fine Cannone da 90/53 and Cannone-Mitragliera da 37/54, carrying sixteen and thirty-six guns respectively. The Regia Marina had been reinforced in the aftermath of Taranto by the German Mittelmeergeschwader, consisting of the battlecruiser KM Siegfried, the battleship KM Bayern and the light cruisers Essen and Augsburg, and the Austro-Hungarian battleships SMS Wien and SMS Budapest; Vienna had endeavoured to hold back its new Viribus Unitis class super battleships on the grounds of fuel availability and necessary refits, when actually their non-deployment can be ascribed to a desire to hold an edge over their erstwhile Italian allies. Intelligence sources had reported that the Mediterranean Fleet was down to four operational aircraft carriers and four super battleships, with Invincible in dock at Haifa and Formidable undergoing maintenance at Alexandria; Hood had successfully transferred from the Atlantic Fleet after a successful high speed run to replace Monarch, which had been under repair after striking a mine off Cyprus during Beowulf. These increased collective forces and the accompanying shifting balance of power emboldened the Commando Supremo to order the Regia Marina to sea to intercept a major convoy that signals intelligence had indicated would sail from Alexandria on March 24th. Unfortunately, British cryptological intelligence at Bletchley Park had succeeded in breaking the Italian naval Enigma codes.

Admiral Cunningham received a message on March 25th that an Axis fleet of 9 capital ships, 4 battlecruisers, 4 carriers, 19 cruisers and 35 destroyers had sortied from their temporary base of Bari and took out the Mediterranean Fleet under cover of darkness to meet one powerful addition at sea, the RAN super battleship HMAS Australia, which was en route to the east coast of the United States and had just passed through the Suez Canal in an unprecedented short time under cover of illusion spells. In addition to his four carriers Ark Royal, Eagle, Victorious and Illustrious, Cunningham could call upon the battleships Lion, Temeraire, South Africa, Hood, Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Marlborough, Queen Victoria and Barham, the new battlecruisers Orion and Neptune, the superheavy cruisers Hero, Powerful, Challenger and Thunderchild, 4 heavy and 8 light cruisers and 25 destroyers, along with the French battleships Gloire and Soleil Royale, the aircraft carrier Saint Louis, the cruisers Magnifique, Sans-Pareil, Imperieuse and Dauphin-Royal and 11 destroyers which was already at sea escorting a returning convoy. He planned to lure the Italians forward onto his cruiser screen and then strike at their carriers and battleships with his own heavies in an effort to smash Axis seapower in the Mediterranean. It was a risky gambit, given the enemy's advantage in heavier gunpower, but he was confident that his more experienced forces would be able to win the day.

Early on the morning March 28th, an Italian reconnaissance floatplane spotted a British cruiser squadron operating south of the island of Gavdos and the Italian cruiser screen proceeded a top speed to engage them, with the battle force and carriers following on behind; extensive Italian aerial searching by its carrier aircraft failed to detect any presence of British aircraft carriers to the east or south east. Cunningham had in fact held his carrier group well back from his battleships and planned to launch an airstrike at the edge of their maximum range. The Italian commander, Admiral Iachino, followed on behind his cruisers with his multinational battle fleet of Roma, Italia, Impero, Marco Polo, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Siegfried, Bayern, Wien and Budapest, the battlecruisers Marcantonio Colonna and Bartolomeo Colleoni, the heavy cruisers Venezia, Firenze and Bologna, 4 light cruisers and 26 destroyers some 50nm to the northwest, whilst his four carriers lay a further 45nm back with the battlecruisers Cristoforo Colombo and Francesco Ferruccio, 6 light cruisers and 10 destroyers. The sole ship under his command equipped with air detection radar was the German battlecruiser Siegfried which he kept in close proximity to his flagship Roma.

The Italian screen of and the heavy cruisers Milano, Genova, Palermo, Padua, Ravenna and Bolzano opened fire on the RN cruiser group of HMAS Sydney, HMAS Perth, Gloucester , Amphion, Apollo, Telamon, Avalon, Somerset and York at a range of 25,000 yards at 0815 and exchanged protracted fire with the Australian and British ships over the next hour at maximum range, pursuing them to the southwest. They were met by heavier gunfire from the British battlecruisers and superheavy cruisers at 0946, causing the Italian cruisers to fall back upon their own advancing battleline, which opened fire on the British ships from a range of 42,000 yards aided by spotting planes from Aquila. Cunningham ordered his cruisers to now fall back, drawing the enemy ships onto his own battleline, which now waited to open fire.

As the surface action was beginning to escalate at 1230 hours, the Axis battleline was struck by a British airstrike vectored onto their targets by surface radar. Victorious and Illustrious had launched 42 Swordfish, 36 Buccaneers and 24 Fireflies escorted by 25 Eagles from a distance of 230nm at 1125 and they now flew in at very low level towards the enemy, who detected them visually at a range of 36,000 yards and engaged them with their fighter cover of 28 Reggiane Re.2001s, whilst calling for urgent reinforcing air cover from the carriers. The Eagles engaged the Italian fighters and shot down 16 Falcos for the loss of only 6 of their own number, with their heavier guns and more experienced pilots proving effective. The Axis battleships and cruisers put up a considerable barrage that partially disrupted the attack, shooting down 6 Swordfish, 4 Buccaneers and 2 Fireflies, but sustained damage of their own, with Italia, Roma and Marco Polo struck by one torpedo apiece, Giuseppe Garibaldi by a pair of torpedoes and three bombs, Siegfried hit by two bombs, Wien knocked out of formation by four bombs, Venezia hit on her stern by a torpedo and left dead in the water and the unfortunate Bartolomeo Colleoni being hit by three torpedoes and four bombs by virtue of her position at the head of the formation, drifting out of line whilst on fire. The strafing and light bombing attacks by the Fireflies failed to inflict significant damage on the ships, but did wreck considerable havoc on the light anti-aircraft positions on the capital ships, none of which substantive protection.

As the first British strike withdrew at top speed at 1256, a wave of Italian fighters from Aquila took position over the damaged fleet, whilst a further airstrike of 25 Fiat torpedo bombers, 29 Breda Ba.201 dive bombers and 32 Falco fighters from the other carriers headed towards the expected position of the British fleet, locating the battleline at 1342. The RN combat air patrol of 44 Eagles and 36 Fireflies from Ark Royal and Eagle moved to intercept the Italian force 15 nautical miles out from the fleet at 1356 and an intense dogfight ensued; 12 Bredas, 15 Fiats and 20 Falcos were shot down in exchange for 9 Eagles and 10 Fireflies. The Italian airstrike was then met with an enormous barrage of RDF-directed anti-aircraft gunfire from the fleet below, downing 6 torpedo bombers and 8 dive bombers. South Africa was hit by two 500lb bombs, Lion by one torpedo and a 500lb bomb, Queen Victoria by one 500lb bomb and Marlborough by a pair of torpedoes which heavily damaged her steering and knocked her out of line. Garbled transmissions of the size of the British fleet were received back on Roma, but by this stage, it was too late.

Cunningham ordered his battleline to open fire on the enemy at a range of 59,000 yards, with the larger Italian ships returning fire within minutes, followed by the older vessels. South Africa hit Impero with her fourth salvo and scored 17 hits, slowing her to 20 knots and knocking out her rear 24" turret, whilst sustaining eight hits of her own, starting numerous fires and destroying two 5.25" turrets. Lion hit Roma with her seventh salvo and scores 12 hits in the next five minutes, jamming her ‘A’ turret. Roma scored 7 hits in return, smashing up Lion’s rear superstructure and damaging her ‘X’ turret. Temeraire hits Italia with her fifth salvo and scored a rapid succession of 14 hits, slowing her to 24 knots and destroying three 6” secondary turret; Italia scores 9 hits, penetrating her armour amidships and starting several fires. Australia straddled Marco Polo with her third salvo and scored 21 hits, destroying her bridge and knocking out both of her forward turrets as she slipped out of control on fire. Hood scored a direct hit on Giuseppe Garibaldi with her fourth salvo, penetrating her armour deck and causing a terrible magazine explosion, setting her ablaze and sinking. Warspite hit Bayern with her first salvo at 56,000 yards and proceeded hit her opponent no less than 20 times, blowing off her stern and leaving drifting off from the battle, struggling to regain control. Queen Elizabeth fired nine salvos before striking the faster Siegfried, having one of her own secondary turrets and her aircraft hanger demolished by a direct hit amidships, but then proceeded to score 15 hits before the German broke off the engagement having had her upper works thoroughly wrecked and her 'B' turret disabled. Queen Victoria hit Budapest on her seventh salvo, but only hit her 8 times before they broke apart in the flow of battle, having been struck thrice amidships by the tough Austrian battleship. Valiant and Barham both focused their fire upon the stricken Wien and scored 33 hits, smashing her guns into silent submission and leaving her adrift and helpless. The British battlecruisers Orion and Neptune focused their 16" guns on their older counterpart Marcantonio Colonna, hitting her on their sixth and eight salvos respectively and battering her into submission in a hail of gunfire, whilst being hit seven and nine times by the tough Italian battlecruiser before she began to slip beneath the waves.

As the fleets met, the two destroyer screens clashed in a wild melee that resulted in 7 Royal Navy and 8 Italian destroyers being sunk; the Italian 135mm gun proved to be a most effective weapon at medium and short range, whilst the greater rate of fire of the RN 4.5" guns had a devastating impact. The 6 heavy and 4 light cruisers of the Italian screen initially concentrates its fire on the RN cruiser force of Rear Admiral Vian, but is disrupted by fire from Rear Admiral Holland’s superheavy cruiser squadron, which more than evened the odds. Thinking the British ships were even more battleships in the confusion, the Italian ships withdrew at top speed to the south west. In the fierce engagement, York had her steering knocked out, Amphion and Telamon were left sinking, Avalon lost her ‘X’ turret and Somerset was hit three times, with Milano and Palermo heavily damaged by a hail of 6” shells and two torpedoes and Padua shot to pieces by 9.2" gunfire and left in a sinking condition. The RN destroyers then closed in on the Marco Polo and Wien and hit them with eight and six torpedoes at point blank range respectively, sending them to their fate. The remaining five Axis battleships broke off the engagement at 1529 hours and headed north-west at top speed, with their destroyers making smoke and urgent wireless transmissions being made in the clear calling for air support. Cunningham, having five of his own ships damaged, elected to withdraw to the south-east to Egypt, maintaining contact with the withdrawing enemy by aerial surveillance and keeping Hood, his battlecruisers and the cruiser squadrons south of Crete with the French who were now in range.

During the fleet battle, the British carriers had recovered and rearmed their strike aircraft and, at 1524, launched a concentrated air strike of 219 planes from all four ships at the Italian carriers, which were trying to pull back whilst maintaining air cover over their own fleet. They reached their targets at 1632 and fought their way through an Italian CAP of 44 fighters for the loss of 10 Eagles, 9 Fireflies, 6 Swordfish and 8 Buccaneers in exchange for 26 Italian fighters. Aquila was hit by 4 torpedoes and 6 1000lb bombs and Galileo Galilei by 2 torpedoes and 4 bombs, leaving both carriers gradually sinking, whilst the light cruiser Duca d’Aosta was badly damaged by a 1000lb bomb hit and two destroyers were sunk in exchange for the loss of 7 further FAA planes. With the approach of night and the threat of enemy submarines, the British carrier group began to fall back in conjunction with the battle fleet, although they were subjected to an opportunistic airstrike by Italian bombers flying on patrol out of Tripolitania, which hit Victorious with two 500lb bombs and Ark Royal with a single bomb. Attempts to tow Marlborough back to Crete were abandoned at 1833 and she was sunk by torpedoes by her accompanying destroyers after her crew was taken off. At 2116, Orion picked up radar contacts to the south west, apparently dead in the water. It was the Venezia, which has been immobilized by a torpedo hit from the earlier action, and other Italian cruisers attempting to recover her. The RN vessels closed in by 2210, illuminated the enemy with Hood’s and Gloire's searchlights at a range of 5000 yards and opened fire. Some British gunners witness the main turrets of Italian cruisers flying dozens of yards into the air. By 2354, Milano, Genova, Bolzano and 3 destroyers were ablaze and sinking, with Venezia and Ravenna boarded and put under tow as prizes.

The three surviving Italian, German and Austro-Hungarian ships limped back to Taranto during the night, having suffered a devastating blow. The loss of two aircraft carriers, three battleships, two battlecruisers, six heavy and one light cruiser and thirteen destroyers in exchange for one battleship, two cruisers and seven destroyers demonstrated that the Royal Navy had the clear measure of the Regia Marina in open battle at sea and possessed a definitive edge in aerial operations and night-fighting; the morale effects of the defeat were more difficult to measure, given the control of information during wartime, but certainly set back the nascent cooperation between the three Axis powers at sea. Perhaps the best measure of the impact of the Battle of Cape Matapan can be seen in the reticence of the Regia Marina to put to sea in force for the rest of 1941, which in turn permitted the redirection of British forces to other theatres.

As intense as the fighting in the Mediterranean had been during the course of 1941, of far greater import to the survival and victory of the British Empire was the Battle of the Atlantic. At the beginning of the year, German U-Boats, in conjunction with the long-range maritime bombers of the Luftwaffe and the Italian submarine squadron at Bordeaux, were still inflicting punishing losses on the British Merchant Navy, averaging 550,000t sunk on a monthly basis since the previous June, but Die Glückliche Zeit, or 'Happy Time' was rapidly drawing to a close. Increased numbers of escorts, particularly the able River class frigates and Hunt class destroyer escorts that were equipped with the Hedgehog ASW spigot mortars, and the air cover provided by the Sterling and Sunderland maritime patrol aircraft of the RNAS operating out of Ireland, Iceland, Newfoundland and the Azure Islands, provided the vital convoys with growing protective strength. Furthering this reinforcement was the deployment of the ten auxiliary carriers, which when attached to Atlantic convoys, began to build up a formidable defensive record, their aircraft driving off multiple U-Boat attacks and sinking nine of the German submarines by the end of January. Larger numbers of long-range patrol aircraft had effectively closed the troublesome 'Mid-Atlantic Gap', where convoys had not been been covered and thus subject to the predations of the German wolfpacks, by the middle of 1941. Increasing production of U-Boats offset these gains throughout the year, but their successes were increasingly taking place in peripheral sea lanes to the south around Africa and South America and in the northern seas around Greenland and Iceland, where harsh weather often prevented the optimal employment of aircraft. The Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe struggled to develop a counter to the British use of skyships to transport valuable cargo across the North Atlantic, as they employed variable routes and often proved to be faster than the converted Focke-Wulf Condors which made up the majority of the German oceanic interdiction force; whilst the regular aerial convoys to North America only provided 5% of the 2.5 million tons of supplies Britain required per week to continue the fight, it provided a reliable source of cargo delivery for the expansion of industry and the armed forces.

Given the confluence of these factors, great weight was place on the acquisition of auxiliary escort carriers from the United States, with an initial agreement for the construction and transfer of 42 such vessels for the Royal Navy under the terms of the Lend-Lease Agreement reached in April 1941, whilst a further 20 vessels would be built in Canadian shipyards. The former SS Hannover was commissioned on April 29th as HMS Audacity, the first escort carrier of the Royal Navy and her successful initial trials with the Home Fleet and Western Approaches Command lead to orders for the conversion of a further six merchant hulls and the development of a design of a custom built ship suitable for construction in the National Shipyards; this last process would take more time than anticipated due to the practical limitations imposed by the number of available naval draftsmen and architects. Proposals for the conversion of further armed merchant cruisers to auxiliary aircraft carriers were declined on the grounds of the ongoing threat of German raiders. Perhaps the most unique proposal to emerge from the requirements of the U-Boat war was the proposal for the capture and use of icebergs as floating aircraft carriers, which was quickly discounted as impractical after a disastrous experiment off the coast of Greenland. This did however inspire an adaption of the notion by the brilliant boffin Professor Geoffrey Pyke, an inventor attached to Combined Operations Headquarters who had already attracted attention after his design of Caribou Snow Carrier for use in the Norwegian Campaign. He proposed that, rather than employing a natural iceberg, one should be built out of a new composite material of woodpulp and ice, later dubbed pykrete after its inventor, with the advantage of saving steel and providing for a ship much larger than would be conventionally practical. The proposal soon attracted support from Admiral Sir Roger Keyes and subsequently from Prime Minister Churchill and Prime Minister Richardson and, by the end of the year, experimental construction of a secret test model was underway in Canada.

The Kriegsmarine's High Seas Fleet had been bled badly by the Norwegian Campaign, the Battle of the North Sea and the Kiel Raid and could deploy a total of five operational battleships at the beginning of 1941, Scharnhorst, Goeben, Yorck, Bismarck and Derrflinger along with one battlecruiser, one aircraft carrier, two pocket battleships and six heavy cruisers. This was further reduced after the newly repaired Scharnhorst struck a mine whilst moving from Kiel to Gotenhafen, which had been selected as a more secured operational base for the Kriegsmarine's battleships given the demonstrated reach of British carrier airpower. Already, German ambitions were looking east to the Soviet Union and Grand Admiral Raeder saw it necessary to advocate for an appropriate role for the Kriegsmarine's expensive surface fleet in the grand battle, particularly in light of the setbacks in prestige experienced in 1940. At the same time, commerce raiding and interdiction of British convoys was seen as a high priority, with Admiral Scheer and Lutzow successfully breaking out into the North Atlantic and sinking 156,000t of shipping in late January before subsequently docking at La Rochelle. At a conference in Berlin in early April, the Oberkommando der Marine determined that the optimum time to strike against the British convoy system would be as soon as practically possible, given the increasing production of British heavy bombers and maritime patrol aircraft, the schedule of Royal Navy heavy ship commissioning and the shifting balance of naval power in the Mediterranean. The British successes at Cape Matapan and Alboran did mean that more ships would be available in the Atlantic, but in the immediate future, there was a window of opportunity where a number would be undergoing post-operational maintenance; the strategic calculations that this notion was based upon was subject to relatively rapid change, with the reassignment of British and French ships in the aftemath of the meeting raising some interesting questions. Despite being outnumbered and largely in order to redeem the Kriegsmarine surface fleet from its failures earlier in the war, a strong squadron based around the super battleship Bismarck and the battlecruiser Kaiser Barbarossa would be assigned to break out into the North Atlantic, raid the convoy lanes and cause a redirection of British naval power and to that end, a number of tankers and supply ships were surreptitiously deployed to the Atlantic; this would be the proof of the strategic prewar concept of the German Navy as successful commerce raiders.

Admiral Gunther Lutjens was assigned command of Unternehmen Rheinübung, which would see Bismarck, Kaiser Barbarossa, Prinz Eugen and the four operational Spahkreuzers break out under cover of experimental arcane misdirection spells projected on a mass level by the Grosse Zauberspiegel in Wewelsburg, one of several mystical artifacts of great power developed by the Ahnenerbe after their shadowy prewar expeditions to the Middle East, Tibet and South America. More prosaic diversions would be supplied by air raids on Scapa Flow and an abortive sortie by the pocket battleships into the Bay of Biscay. The German squadron left Gotenhafen after nightfall on the night of May 15th and were observed by the Swedish battleship Sverige whilst passing through the Kattegat on the afternoon of May 17th, with the information being passed along to the British naval attache in Stockholm and thence to London. They refueled briefly at Kristiansand on May 18th under heavy Luftwaffe cover and then, taking advantage of the unnaturally foggy conditions, broke out towards the Denmark Strait, evading RNAS patrols and British cruisers alike. Admiral Tovey had taken the Grand Fleet to sea on news of the Bismarck coming out, with Indefatigable, Princess Royal and HMCS Canada covering the Faroes-Iceland passage; Implacable, Monarch and Renown covering the Denmark Strait; Emperor of India, Nelson, Richelieu, Jean Bart and Glorious at Skye to cover the Fair Isle Channel; and a reserve squadron of Indomitable, King George V, Hood and Prince of Wales at Cork, whilst Hermes, Lion and Temeraire held at Gibraltar, putting off their planned maintenance.

The German force encountered considerable luck at the inconclusive Battle of the Denmark Strait on May 22nd, fought in atrocious conditions which prevented the majority of Royal Navy aircraft from locating their enemy, although Kaiser Barbarossa had one of her fuel tanks badly ruptured by a lucky 18" shell from Renown. Monarch sustained moderate damage from her engagement with Bismarck, being hit 13 times whilst only being able to strike the German battleship four times in return, slightly slowing her to a top speed of 29.5 knots. Lutjens ordered his force to proceed south into the North Atlantic shipping lanes, devastating one lightly defended convoy, sinking all twelve merchant ships and her four accompanying frigates, but this initial diversion far to the north of her target area did allow Royal Navy crusiers to reestablish contact, with Norfolk and Suffolk subsequently joined by a rotating series of RNAS Short Sunderlands out of Reykjavik. A long range air strike by Stirlings flying out of Ireland failed to substantially slow the Bismarck and her accompanying ships, although Kaiser Barbarossa was now running low on fuel and broke for France, whilst Admiral Lutjens reluctantly ordered his fleet to turn away from another nearby convoy to the southwest when one of his search spells reported the presence of two older Canadian battleships. The Royal Navy squadrons were now however closing in on the German fleet and her chances of breaking out decisively into the North Atlantic were being reduced by the hour, with U-Boats reporting that a United States Navy battleship was also heading towards her from the west.

An early morning airstrike from Implacable changed the German calculations, as Bismarck was hit by two torpedoes and three bombs, causing her to start leaking fuel from her own tanks badly and slowing her to 25 knots Lutjens made the decision to follow Kaiser Barbarossa for the safety of France, although the only dock capable of taking the Bismarck was dangerously close to the range of British airpower at Saint-Nazaire. Captain Lindemann of the Bismarck maneuvered her deftly, shrugging off his pursuing cruisers, but his best efforts could not rid him of the aircraft that constantly tailed him from outside the range of his anti-aircraft guns and radioed her position to the closing Royal Navy and her allies. Another carrier airstrike from Glorious on May 25th failed to hit Bismarck, although the Spahkreuzer Horst Wessel was sunk by seven 1000lb bombs after being mistaken for Prinz Eugen, but the next wave of Swordfish from Indefatigable later that afternoon succeeded in hitting the German battleship with four bombs and five torpedoes, three of which inflicted bad damage on her steering gear, jamming her rudder and further slowing her to a top speed of 20 knots. Kaiser Barbarossa, now only 600 miles from Brest, was located by search aircraft from Hermes, which was steaming up at full speed from the south and subsequently sunk by a full airstrike of 74 planes on May 28th. Despite the reluctance of her captain, Prinz Eugen broke away from Bismarck to the south east overnight, leaving the battleship with Herbert Norkus, Dietrich Eckhart and Anton Drexler to face the enemy on the following morning. The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine desperately tried to commit all available aircraft to aid the Bismarck, but the Royal Navy's Supermarine Eagle fighters proved adept in keeping them away from the battle. Bismarck was engaged by Hood, King George V, Prince of Wales, Lion and Temeraire from 0815 on May 29th, with Richelieu, Jean Bart and Canada moving within range as she was gradually pounded into submission over the next hour and half and her accompanying cruisers blown to pieces by heavy calibre gunfire. Finally, as all vestige of resistance ceased, the cruisers Dorsetshire, London, Edinburgh and Sheffield moved in to deliver the coup de grâce with twelve 24" torpedoes and to pick up survivors alongside their escorting destroyers; 2597 Germans were picked up from Bismarck and the Spahkreuzers before the British ships broke off their efforts due to reports of U-Boats closing on the battle area. The operational lesson of Rheinubung was clear - when a naval force without aircraft capacity went up against one with carriers and land-based airpower, the latter would win decisively; this much was clear to Raeder's successor, Karl Donitz, after the former's arrest and execution in Hitler's titanic rage upon the news of the disaster, with no Kriegsmarine surface force ever attempting a breakout without carrier support. Increased emphasis was placed upon the U-Boat as Germany's main weapon of war, although work continued on the mighty battleships approaching completion in light of the relative strength of the Soviet Baltic Fleet. The Kriegsmarine would come again.

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:22 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 4b: British Carriers 1941

The sinking of the Bismarck, following as it did from the striking successes in the Mediterranean, removed the final obstacle for the initiation of the large scale movement of the Royal Navy east to Singapore in order to deter increasingly apparent Japanese designs upon South East Asia. The Kriegsmarine's remaining three operational battleships were subject to continual air raids until the movement of Moltke and Derrflinger to Gotenhafen provided some measure of relief. Military intelligence analysis concluded that Bomber Command's increasingly heavy campaign against German industry was having a sufficiently deleterious affect on the construction of the Hindenburg class battleships and Thor class battlecruisers through reducing production of particular steels, heavy armour and machinery that the residual forces of the Home Fleet, chiefly the five Vanguard class vessels in service or working up, would be sufficient until such time as the remaining Superb class super battleships were commissioned over the next 24 months. In the Mediterranean, the Regia Marina and k.u.k Kriegsmarine could muster seven operational battleships and two carriers, a force which could be ably deterred by the combined Royal Navy and French ships in the theatre which outnumbered them more than two to one. More crucially, it was the success directly resultant from the achievements of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers and the Fleet Air Arm in 1940 and 1941 that allowed such calculations to be contemplated and executed.

As such, the first element, Force W, made up of Ark Royal, Eagle, Lion, Prince of Wales, Hood and Repulse ten cruisers, thirty-six destroyers and sixteen frigates was ordered to move from Alexandria to Bombay and thence to Singapore on June 1st 1941, staggering their journey as needed for the accompanying deployment of tankers which had to be drawn from the British Isles, South Africa and the West Indies in addition to the Mediterranean Fleet. They were followed by Force X on July 30th, which saw Victorious, Invincible, King George V and Iron Duke, twelve cruisers, twenty-four destroyers and twelve frigates depart from Gibraltar on the long route around Southern Africa, sailing alongside a fast troop convoy of the British Army also destined for Malaya. A third squadron, Force Y, consisting of St. George, Duke of York, Thunderer, Temeraire, Renown, Retribution Formidable, Hermes and Centaur, twelve cruisers, thirty destroyers and sixteen frigates would follow via Cape Town on September 1st with the commissioning of the first the United States' Navy's South Dakota class super battleships improving the strategic position of the Allies in the Atlantic accordance with the agreements reached at the ABCF conference of 1940.

These deployments were counterbalanced by the redeployment of the King Alfred class battlecruisers from the East Indies to the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, providing an opportunity for much needed refits, whilst the four Revenge class ships would take over their role in the Indian Ocean. The Royal Navy Dockyards at Alexandria and Cape Town now hummed with activity as the hard pressed Queen Elizabeth class ships were able to undergo much needed refits after the hard and exacting years of war service that they had rendered in the conflict thus far, whilst the older French ships of the Agamemnon and Hercule class could finally be laid up. It was planned that subsequent maintenance and refits would be carried out in Canada and the United States, freeing up the support infrastructure east of Suez for the support of the main fleet. This in turn provided the necessary manpower to allow Richelieu and Jean Bart, the carriers Henri IV and Saint Louis, six cruisers and fifteen destroyers to begin the long voyage from Casablanca to Trincomalee.

The deployment of the fleet to the Far East had in many ways been underway since the middle of 1940, with the gradual shifting of tankers, support ships and tenders to the Mediterranean, South Africa and the East Indies to support the large scale movement of substantial elements of the most modern vessels of the Royal Navy. New naval air stations had been under construction in Ceylon, India, the Andaman Islands and Malaya to support the operation of the carrier fleet since the end of the previous year, whilst the older Revenges deployed at Singapore saw constant service convoying supply vessels across the Indian Ocean. The most complex operation was perhaps the painstaking movement of a large floating dock from Suez to Calcutta along a heavily escorted coastal route. Few of the huge British superliners serving as troopships could be spared for the movement of Royal Navy support personnel and the Royal Marines to the Far East, so the great French Normandie and the Dutch Amsterdam were utilised to transport the bulk of the 1st and 2nd Royal Marine Divisions to India in August and September. The auxiliary support carrier HMS Rhodesia saw near constant service from May onwards, ferrying FAA aircraft to India, Malaya and Singapore where they would support the great build-up.

After a heavy RAF air raid on Trieste on October 3rd caused substantial damage to Szent Istvan and Tegetthoff and the commissioning of the Canadian battleship HMCS Dominion, the War Cabinet authorised the dispatch of the fourth group to the Far East, Force Z, made up of ships drawn from the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets. This squadron, consisting of Vanguard, St. Andrew, Emperor of India, Black Prince, Princess Royal, Redoubtable, Illustrious, Indefatigable and Indomitable, sixteen cruisers, forty destroyers and a dozen frigates, departed on October 15th and would take longer to proceed through the Indian Ocean due to the sheer complexity that supply bottlenecks created in respect to food, fuel and ammunition, but finally arrived at HMNB Singapore on November 16th. Admiral Cunningham, having flown in from India the previous day, was authorised by an express signal from the Admiralty to officially raise his flag as the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet.

The Main Fleet had come to Singapore.

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RN Losses (Sep 1939 - Feb 1942)

6 Battleships

Royal Sovereign (Scapa Flow 1939)
Marborough (Cape Matapan 1941)
Collingwood (Alboran 1941)
St. Vincent (Mediterranean 1941)
Ranger (Mediterranean 1941)
St. David (2nd South China Sea 1942)

1 Battlecruiser

Redoubtable (South China Sea 1942)

4 Aircraft Carriers

Fearless (Western Approaches 1940)
Arion (Mediterranean 1941)
Incomparable (2nd South China Sea 1942)
Inflexible (2nd South China Sea 1942)

2 Light Aircraft Carriers

Frobisher (Iceland)
Effingham (North Atlantic)

7 Heavy Cruisers

Cavendish (1939 North Atlantic)
Grenville (1940 North Sea)
Sussex (1941 Med)
Fife (1942 1st SCS)
Durham (1942 1st SCS)
Dorsetshire (1942 2nd SCS)
Berwick (1942 2nd SCS)

18 Light Cruisers

Dasher (Western Approaches Feb 1940)
Dauntless (North Sea April 1940)
Leeds (Norway April 1940)
Phaeton (Bay of Biscay May 1940)
Delight (Norway May 1940)
Dunedin (North Sea December 1940)
Amphion (Cape Matapan 1941)
Telamon (Cape Matapan 1941)
Europa (Med 1941)
Bonaventure (Med 1941)
HMAS Sydney (Indian Ocean 1941)
Daring (Aegean 1941)
Atlas (Med 1941)
Plymouth (1st SCS 1942)
Leicester (1st SCS 1942)
HMAS Adelaide (2nd SCS 1942)
Despatch (2nd SCS 1942)
Diamond (2nd SCS 1942)
Cathbad (2nd SCS 1942)
Chester (2nd SCS 1942)

120 Destroyers

Active, Acasta, Achates, Aylmer, Amethyst, Affleck
Brazen, Buckingham, Brisk, Bear, Bruce
Charger, Cobalt, Caprice, Charon, Comet, Crescent, Cavalier, Crafty, Clarence
Diana, Dextrous, Dryad
Esk, Escort, Escapade, Esperance, Earnest, Egmont
Fortune, Fox, Forte
Greenwich
Hostile, Hyperion, Hargood
Icicle, Incessant, Ilex
Jade, Java, Jersey
Kangaroo, Kratos, Kite, Knave, Kandahar, Kashmir, Keen
Louis, Lasso, Lynx
Milne

Zande, Dayak, Kamba, Garwhali, Naga, Yoruba, Hadendowa, Punjabi, Watusi, Swahili, Somali, Rajput

Romola, Rowena, Radical, Rosario, Satyr, Simoom, Skillful, Simoom, Sirdah, Scot, Stygian, Scythe, Seabear, Searcher, Serene, Sesame, Spear, Sidon, Setter, Sylph, Sarpedon, Spindrift, Stonehenge, Serapis, Supreme, Thanet, Truant, Tyrant, Tornado, Torrent

Whirlwind, Venetia, Whitshed, Vidette, Walnut, Warbler,Whiting, Wolverhampton, Weazel, Whitley, Winchelsea, Westcott, Witherington, Wryneck, Wye, Vashon, Virulent, Wayfarer, Waldegrave, Walton, Woolston, Wishart, Willoughby, Whitaker, Watson

1939: 7
1940: 67
1941: 29
1942: 17

54 Frigates/Destroyer Escorts/Sloops

1939: 7
1940: 27
1941: 13
1942: 7

43 Submarines

1939: 6
1940: 18
1941: 12
1942: 7

Deployments for major combatants 1/1/1941

Germany (236 divisions)
France: 53
Low Countries: 22
Germany: 74
Poland: 62
Denmark: 4
Norway: 17
Italy/Moving to North Africa: 4

Italy (149 divisions)
France: 10
Sicily: 16
Corsica: 3
Spain: 8
Greece: 28
Italy: 54
North Africa: 20
East Africa: 10

Austria-Hungary (100 divisions)
France: 4
Norway: 2
Greece: 8
En Route to North Africa: 2
Poland: 26
Austria-Hungary: 58

Ottoman Turkey (82 divisions)
Middle East: 29
Anatolian Front: 27
Caucasus: 16
Reserve/Coastal Defence: 10

Britain (73 + 14 Imperial divisions)
Britain: 42
Norway: 6 (+ 1 Imperial)
India: 5
Mediterranean: 5 (+ 1 Imperial)
Egypt: 5
Middle East: 4
East Africa: (4 Imperial)
West Africa: (4 Imperial)
Spain: 3 (+ 1 Imperial)
West Indies: 3 (3 Imperial)
Malaya: 2
Atlantic: 1

India (42 divisions)
India: 20
Afghanistan/Persia: 6
Middle East: 6
East Africa: 3
Egypt: 2
Malaya: 2
Burma: 2
Ceylon: 1

Canada/Newfoundland/New Avalon (29 divisions)
North America: 14
Britain: 9
Norway: 2
Iceland: 1
Spain: 2
Egypt: 1

Australia/New Zealand (16 divisions)
Australasia: 11
Egypt: 3
Malaya: 1
Middle East: 1

South Africa/Rhodesia (6 divisions)
Southern Africa: 5
Egypt: 1

Israel (5 divisions)
Middle East: 5

British Empire Deployments 1/1/1941

Britain: 32 British infantry + 6 British armoured + 4 British airborne divisions; 6 Canadian + 1 Newfoundland infantry divisions + 2 Canadian armoured divisions + 3 Polish infantry divisions; 2 Royal Marine divisions
India: 20 Indian infantry divisions + 4 British infantry divisions + 1 British armoured division
Canada: Canada: 10 Canadian infantry divisions + 2 Canadian armoured divisions
Australia: 6 Australian infantry divisions + 2 Australian armoured divisions
New Zealand: 2 NZ infantry divisions + 1 NZ Armoured division
South Africa: 2 South African infantry + 2 South African armoured divisions
Rhodesia: 1 Rhodesian infantry division
New Avalon: 2 New Avalon infantry divisions
West Indies: 3 WI infantry divisions

Afghanistan/Persia: 4 Indian infantry, 2 cavalry divisions
Malaya : 2 British, 2 Indian, 1 Australian infantry divisions
Ceylon: 1 Indian infantry division
Burma: 2 Indian infantry divisions

Iceland: 1 Canadian infantry division
Canary Islands: 1 British infantry division
Spain: 2 British, 1 Polish, 1 Canadian, 1 New Avalon, 1 West Indian infantry divisions, 1 British armoured division
Norway: 4 British infantry + 2 armoured divisions, 2 Canadian, 1 Polish, 1 Gurkha, 4 Norwegian infantry divisions
East Africa: 3 India, 1 South African, 1 Rhodesian and 4 African infantry divisions
West Africa: 4 African infantry divisions
Middle East/Ottoman Front: 5 Israeli, 4 Indian, 2 British infantry + 2 Indian cavalry, 2 British and 1 CW cavalry
Egypt: 3 British, 2 Australian, 1 NZ, 1 South African, 1 Canadian, 2 Indian infantry divisions, 2 British armoured divisions
Crete: 1 British + 1 Gurkha infantry division
Malta: 2 British infantry divisions
Cyprus: 1 British infantry division
Balearic Isles: 1 British infantry division

The problem of Main Fleet to Singapore:

- The consistent strategy of the Andrew since the early 1920s for war with Japan has been to send out the fleet, recapture Hong Kong (which was presumed as an early loss), enforce a distant blockade of Japan in conjunction with submarine, cruiser and carrier attrition and, when and if the time was right, engage in a fleet battle. The RAF made a lot of noises about seizing an appropriate forward base for strategic bombing operations, but did not have the clout to have it included.
- Plan for the Royal Marines to seize Formosa or Okinawa as a forward fleet base proceeded very roughly, as Hong Kong was the preferred option.
- The proposed fleet size in the 1920s, based on IJN strength post Paris Naval Agreement, was 25-30 capital ships, 10 battlecruisers, 10 aircraft carriers, 60 cruisers, at least 150 destroyers and escorts and 70 submarines, which would require a minimum of 550 tankers in support.
- The plan would be split into 3 phases:
1. Period of Pre-reinforcement (Hold Singapore as fleet base, Distant blockade at Suez, Cape of Good Hope, East Indies)
2. Period of Consolidation (Re-establish Hong Kong as forward fleet operating base)
3. Period of Advance (Destroy IJN and institute closer blockade to bring about victory)

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:54 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 5a: British Carriers 1942

1942 would see both the nadir of Allied fortunes across the world and the dawn of victory as the conflict, hitherto based in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, now truly became a global war. The main instrument of this transformation was the massive assault across Asia and the Pacific launched by the forces of the Empire of Japan, who now put into action their carefully laid plans of aggression against the United States, the British Empire and Commonwealth, France and the Netherlands in an effort to destroy their numerically superior military forces and establish a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The presence of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet at Singapore was the most direct obstacle to Japan's plans for a successful centrifugal offensive down through the Philippines and Borneo and through Siam and Malaya to the key prize, the Dutch East Indies. Allied strategy called for the holding of the Malay Barrier with land, sea and air forces until such time as the United States Pacific Fleet could go onto the offensive. Japanese plans were based around the maximisation of their limited resources, particularly with regard to shipping and manpower, and the success of each stage would be instrumental in the overall success of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group. The build up of Imperial Japanese Army forces in French Indochina over the course of 1941 had been unmistakable to British Far East Command, which had formulated a plan for an advance into Siam to counter any Japanese invasion, in conjunction with naval operations to prevent amphibious landings on the vital Kra Isthmus in Northern Malaya. The arrival of the Grand Fleet provided the necessary force to accomplish this defensive mission and they were shifted onto high alert on the night of December 8th 1941 after reports of Imperial Japanese Navy warships leaving Cam Ranh Bay in Indochina.

In the early hours of the morning, 178 Imperial Japanese Air Force bombers struck the naval base, air bases and city of Singapore in an undeclared surprise attack, signalling the start of a long and terrible war. 27 Nakajima Ki-49s were shot down by the anti-aircraft guns of the fleet and Singapore itself, whilst a further 40 planes were downed by her two squadrons of RAF Gloster Reaper nightfighters, but moderate damage was inflicted on several airbases and ships of the fleet, with 3 cruisers and 5 destroyers being unable to put to sea. This would be the first of more than thirty nightly air raids by the IJAF over the coming months, in addition to the daring daytime attacks that would soon attempt to put Singapore out of action. Admiral Cunningham sortied the bulk of his fleet during the morning in accordance with standard war plans, joining the two carrier task forces already deployed at sea. Reports began to arrive rapidly of attacks on Hong Kong and the Philippines, of the invasion of Siam by a Japanese field army of over 250,000 men and then the disastrous news of a massive Japanese carrier raid on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Indications of damage were heavy, although details varied wildly, ranging from the destruction of all 12 battleships and several aircraft carriers to mere partial destruction. Whatever the facts of the situation, it was clear that the British Empire was at war with the Empire of Japan and that estimations of the latter's strength and capacity had been significantly inaccurate. Submarine reports of the presence of a Japanese convoy heading south off the coast of Indochina heading towards the Gulf of Siam lead Cunningham to take the fleet north along the Malay coast to intercept, adding the support of the Royal Air Force's fighters in Malaya to those of his alerted carriers. He planned to eliminate the amphibious threat and then attack Japanese airfields in Southern Indochina, which were already being struck on that night by Wellington heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force, even as Field Marshal Lord Ironside initiated Operation Lionheart, sending the 12th Army into Siam in force.

His attack was precluded by the first of many Japanese surprises of the Malayan campaign in the form of a large air raid being detected by RDF some 175 miles to the northeast. The carrier air groups of the Grand Fleet now swung into action, rapidly arming and launching every Supermarine Eagle and Hawker Firefly that could be spared, whilst five RAF and RNAS fighter squadrons moved to provide direct coverage to the fleet from Malaya. The range of IJN G4M naval bombers had long been a matter of keen interest for British naval intelligence and this indicated that it was markedly greater than even the most generous estimates. The first waves of Fleet Air Arm fighters were guided onto the IJN 5th Air Fleet by RDF, but the Eagles were met with the surprise presence of Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighters. A total of 276 Eagles and 240 Fireflies would engage the Japanese force of 190 G4Ms and 157 A6Ms in a titanic naval air battle, which saw 68 G4Ms and 42 Zeroes shot down in exchange for 36 Eagles and 32 Fireflies, with the rate of losses being another unpleasant surprise for the Fleet Air Arm; Japanese bomber losses verged on the horrific, with many aircraft bursting into flames from the heavy firepower of the RN fighters. 122 torpedo bombers made it through the outer airborne defences of the fleet, but then found themselves engaged by two separate waves of fighters, firstly by 48 RAF Tomahawks and 24 Lightnings operating out of RAF Kota Bharu , and then by 42 RNAS Eagles that had been forward deployed to RAF Singora, resulting in a further 27 Zeroes and 29 torpedo bombers being shot down. The anti aircraft guns of the fleet’s cruisers, destroyers and battleships engaged the remaining bombers and shot down 36 before they were able to strike. The aircraft carriers Centaur and Illustrious were both struck by two torpedoes, St. Patrick was hit by four torpedoes and Emperor of India and Thunderer were each hit by three torpedoes. The cruisers Fife, Durham, Plymouth and Leicester were sunk along with seven destroyers, with two carriers, three battleships, three cruisers and five destroyers damaged. This represented a greater degree of damage than any previously inflicted on the Royal Navy during the war, but at a considerable cost in Japanese aircraft. The damaged carriers and battleships began to limp back to Singapore under strong RAF fighter coverage and heavily escorted by destroyers, whilst their air groups were directed back to Singapore or available Malay bases. Admiral Cunningham recovered his fighters and proceeded to launch his own airstrikes on the suspected Japanese invasion fleet and the airbases of Southern Indochina, inflicting significant damage on some facilities and destroying over 150 aircraft. The First Battle of the South China Sea was but the first of many engagements between the Royal Navy and the Japanese, with the damage to the Grand Fleet offset by the effective decimation of the IJN's land based bomber force deployed to the southern theatre.

Cunningham withdrew the Grand Fleet back to Singapore on December 10th, having suffered greater losses than expected in his clashes with IJN bomber forces and the fighter defences of the IJAF, but these were rebuilt rapidly from Fleet Air Arm reserve stocks preplaced in Malaya. A major reinforcement group drawn from the Home Fleet and Mediterranean was ordered to prepare for movement to the Far East, but would not be able to leave European waters before the end of December at the earliest; in the meantime, the Marine Royale forces in the Far East moved up to Singapore to augment the operational strength of the Grand Fleet. The immediate Japanese response was to move aircraft reinforcements to Indochina from China and the Home Islands, both in the form of two further IJN air fleets, the 8th and 12th, and four IJAF air groups in addition to scheduled follow-on forces; this would have the effect of curtailing some offensive operations towards Chungking. This was accompanied by a full sortie of the Combined Fleet to the south, where it would join up with its vanguard forces and the returning Kido Butai off the Philippines before bringing the Grand Fleet to a decisive battle. Upon this battle would rest not just the course of the Southern Offensive, but the very destiny of two mighty empires. The Japanese battle fleet arrived at its destination in Lingayen Gulf on December 20th, escorting a special reinforcement convoy of elite IJA troops drawn from crack units of the Imperial General Reserve Army, and were joined by the victorious returning aircraft carrier force nine days later, having been refueled off the Marianas. Long range British patrol aircraft and forward deployed submarines monitored the build-up of Japanese forces, whilst Admiral Cunningham prepared his own plans to counter them. The Admiralty had resisted increasing political pressure to mount any sort of relief operation to besieged Hong Kong, keeping its fleet concentrated for the engagement to come.

The opening moves of the largest naval battle that had been fought to date came on January 10th, as attacks were launched on Allied positions in Eastern Borneo and the highly trumpeted arrival of the Imperial Guard Corps and Samurai Division at Saigon drew the primary attention of intelligence assets in the Far East, when the bulk of the Combined Fleet was reported as moving southwestards off the northern coast of Palawan. Allied codebreaking had indicated that the Japanese were preparing for deploy and confront the Royal Navy in open battle, which gave the British a tactical advantage that allowed predeployment of certain assets athwart their route of advance. Admiral Cunningham sortied the Grand Fleet out from Singapore and authorised the execution of Operation Gauntlet. As the Japanese armada reached the Spratly Islands at midnight of January 11th, 25 Royal Navy submarines began a series of attacks from multiple directions in a carefully timed ambush, sinking five destroyers and the heavy cruiser Chokai and damaging two cruisers, the aircraft carrier Junyo and the battleships Omi and Yamato; the latter vessel, serving as Admiral Yamamoto's flagship, was hit by three 24" torpedoes by HMS Upholder and forced to retire on Manila as Yamamoto shifted his flag to Musashi. The high command of the Combined Fleet was aware that the British were at sea and that an engagement was likely at some stage in the next 24 hours, but their immediate preparations were disrupted by the nocturnal chaos of the submarine attacks, which had resulted in up to ten enemy submarines being suspected as sunk; only four RN boats were actually lost in the ambush. The second stage of Gauntlet came in the hours immediately before dawn, as a long-range strike force of 124 RNAS Beaufighters and 156 Beauforts struck at the Japanese vanguard with aerial torpedoes before rapidly withdrawing as the IJN carriers began launching fighters in response; a further five destroyers and two cruisers were sunk and three cruisers and two battleships damaged, comparatively light losses against those inflicted on the British the previous month. Admiral Chūichi Nagumo ordered the First and Second Air Fleets to prepare their strike aircraft for an anti-ship strike on the Grand Fleet, following up his initial wave of fighters with reconnaissance aircraft from his accompanying cruisers and battlecruisers.

Meanwhile, behind a heavy screen of destroyers and frigates 256nm away, the Grand Fleet was beginning to launch its aircraft, having painstakingly eliminated shadowing Japanese flying boats as they moved out from Singapore. Admiral Cunningham intended to hit the enemy carriers and battlefleet with a first strike and then seek a surface action with the Combined Fleet to force it back from the South China Sea, although he was ever cognizant of the threat of IJN land based bombers. To this end, over 380 RAF and RNAS bombers from Malaya had struck Japanese airfields in Southern Indochina overnight in their heaviest raid to date in order to provide the Royal Navy with a window to strike their enemy at sea. By 0529, the ten fleet carriers of the Grand Fleet had launched a maximum effort strike of 236 Fairey Swordfish and 254 Blackburn Buccaneers escorted by 176 Supermarine Eagles and 213 Hawker Fireflies, with their remaining fighters remaining to provide CAP over the fleet in conjunction with the air wings of the four light fleet carriers. The 108 IJN A6M fighters launched in pursuit of the RNAS bombers caught and inflicted substantial losses on the withdrawing Beaufighters and Beauforts, shooting down 36 and 42 planes for the loss of just 23 Zeroes, but in the process were open to engagement by the first wave of Fleet Air Arm carrier fighters at 0647. Upon receipt of the first garbled radio reports of hundreds of British aircraft, Admiral Chūichi Nagumo ordered his carriers to immediately begin launching their alert Zeroes and remaining air groups. In the resulting air battle, over 350 Zeroes engaged the F.A.A. fighter escorts, shooting down 44 Eagles and 58 Fireflies in exchange for 77 Zeroes, whilst 35 Swordfish and 32 Buccaneers were also downed. The coordination of the Royal Navy air strike was heavily disrupted by the intense Japanese resistance and their anti-aircraft fire proved substantially heavier than that of the warships of the European Axis powers, shooting down a further 55 strike planes, but enough planes broke through the enemy defences to strike at the Combined Fleet and the Kido Butai in two separate attacks over the next 32 minutes.

The newest Japanese super battleships put up extremely heavy defensive fire and avoided decisive damage, with Musashi hit by two torpedoes and two 1000lb bombs, Shinano struck by four bombs and a torpedo, Kai taking two torpedoes and three bombs, Mikawa and Settsu hit by two bombs apiece, Hitachi struck by one torpedo and two bombs and Iwami taking the worst damage from five bombs and two torpedoes. The three Kii class ships fortuitously avoided the attentions of the deadly Swordfish and only sustained minor bomb strikes from the enemy dive bombers, but at the cost of the smaller and slowest 18" super dreadnoughts being hammered - Nagato was struck by four torpedoes and six bombs, Hizen's steering was destroyed by a hail of bombs and Mutsu being hit by no fewer than three torpedoes and seven bombs, with its fires attracting attacks of opportunity by the diving Buccaneers. Nagumo's twelve operational fleet carriers were attacked by the larger Fleet Air Arm strike, but their rapid maneuvering and the presence of reinforcing Zeroes from the 7th and 8th Carrier Divisions prevented the scale of devastation from spiraling out of control. The converted liners Shoho and Kairyu were hit by four bombs each and set ablaze and Hiyo blew up after being struck by five bombs and four torpedoes, whilst Akagi, Zuikaku, Ryujo and Soryu all sustained moderate damage from bomb and torpedo hits. Their close escort battlecruisers bore some of the brunt of the Royal Navy attacks, with Asahi and Takao being left dead in the water after being struck by multiple bombs and torpedoes and Kongo and Hiei sustaining substantial damage to their upperworks, whilst the lighter vessels of the Japanese fleet were not spared, with 7 cruisers and 18 destroyers sunk and 11 cruisers and 27 destroyers suffering some degree of damage. The bulk of the Japanese carrier force remained operational and completed launching their retaliatory air strike at 0829, although its strength was noticeably depleted by the fighter losses and the damage caused by the Fleet Air Arm.

Admiral Cunningham, upon receiving initial reports of the air strike on the Japanese fleet, made the fateful decision to hold his battleline with his carriers to maximise his anti-aircraft defences rather than to immediately push for a daylight surface engagement, preferring to meet the Combined Fleet at night, where the Royal Navy's superior training would give him a stronger edge. He would also pull back towards Borneo and Malaya, aiming to draw the Japanese upon his land based airpower. The first wave of the IJN air strike hit the fighter defences of the Grand Fleet at 1002 and their 196 Aichi D3A Val dive bombers, 178 Nakajima B5N Kate torpedo bombers and 244 Zeroes met heavy opposition from 232 Supermarine Eagles, resulting in 45 Vals, 49 Kates and 73 Zeroes being shot down for the loss of 62 Eagles. The survivors were then intercepted by 60 Hawker Hurricanes flying out of Brunei, which further disrupted the raid, albeit at a severe cost, as the highly agile Zeroes proved to be superior to their RAF opponents, shooting down 29 Hurricanes for the loss of a further 10 Vals, 15 Kates and 11 Zeroes. The massed barrage of RDF guided anti-aircraft fire from the battleships, battlecruisers, carriers, cruisers and destroyers of the Grand Fleet inflicted devastating losses on the Japanese aircraft, with several of the newer battleships equipped with VT proximity fused shells to considerable effect, 38 Kates, 32 Vals and 20 Zeroes being shot down. The remaining IJN aircraft managed to inflict significant damage on the British ships, focusing on the largest carriers that stood at the front of the Royal Navy formation. Incomparable was hit by five bombs and four torpedoes and Inflexible by three torpedoes and six bombs, with their escorting battlecruisers St. David and Redoubtable struck by multiple heavyweight torpedoes and armour-piercing bombs and set on fire. Formidable and Indomitable also suffered significant damage, with both carriers struck by four bombs, whilst the battleships Temeraire, Duke of York and Black Prince were hit with two torpedoes and multiple bombs and 5 cruisers and 12 destroyers were sunk, with 6 cruisers and 21 destroyers damaged. Incomparable, Redoubtable and Inflexible had to be abandoned and sunk with torpedoes after being engulfed with flames, whilst St. David began to try and limp back to Singapore at 5 knots before being sunk by a Japanese submarine just 28 miles short of safety some four days later.

Both Yamamoto and Cunningham elected to withdraw their damaged fleets out of range of the other as the scale of the battle became clear in the late afternoon, both forces having spent much of the morning desperately trying to fight fires and recover their battered air arms. The Second Battle of the South China Sea had been an extremely bloody affair and a tactical stalemate, with both sides preferring to preserve their damaged carrier forces rather than pursue a surface action, but the Royal Navy had denied the Imperial Japanese Navy of its strategic objective of opening the Gulf of Siam and eliminating the Allied naval presence from South East Asia and inflicted greater losses in ships and aircraft. The Japanese held no clear advantage in numbers of fully operational capital ships, fielding 7 carriers to the 6 of the Royal Navy and 12 battleships to 11, whilst their losses of 370 aircraft to 286 constituted a sharper blow and the British could factor in further reinforcements soon to be dispatched from Europe and the additional strength of the French Marine Royale. By January 16th, both fleets were now able to plan their next moves; the Imperial Japanese Navy had fought its first Kantai Kessen, or decisive fleet battle, but it had not been as decisive as envisaged. After initial misgivings from Prime Minister Churchill in London when the results of the battle were still unclear, Admiral Cunningham's caution in acting to preserve his primary striking arm was seen as a wise step - this would not be a short or easy war.

Following on from the bloody draw in the South China Sea, both fleets adopted something of a circumspect approach over the next few weeks, with both having suffered enough losses to make decisive offensive action impossible to support. The Grand Fleet was further weakened by the necessity to dispatch a squadron of Invincible, Lion and Princess Royal to the Andaman Sea to support the increasingly beleaguered Twelfth Army in its retreat from Siam in the face of the strong Japanese and Siamese advance. Admiral Cunningham was limited to the rotational forward deployment of a single carrier task force in the Natuna Sea whilst he held the main body of his fleet in Singapore, where he had now been joined by the French Escadron d'Extrême-Orient. Control of this barrier sea, lying between Malaya and Borneo, was seen as vital in maintaining the crumbling Malay Barrier, which was being increasingly outflanked by the Japanese push southwards. The fall of North Borneo and Celebes in late January opened the next phase of the Japanese offensive into the Makassar Strait, Brunei and Sarawak. The strategically vital oil wells of Tarakan were captured by Japanese parachutists by coup de main on January 26th and their advance continued along the coastline under cover of land-based aircraft; the petroleum deposits of Borneo, equivalent to a yearly production level of over 12.8 million tons, were the lowest hanging fruit open to easy conquest after the initial advance through the Philippines. More significantly, Borneo offered the potential to break the Allied defences of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya asunder and neutralise the utility of the so-called Gibraltar of the East through the implementation of the 'circles around Singapore' strategy.

The exception to this circumspect course of action was the Battle of Brunei, where an IJN task force consisting of the light carriers Zuiho and Kaiyo, the battlecruisers Amagi and Atago, 4 cruisers and 18 destroyers would cover a fast invasion convoy as it fell upon the fabulously wealthy sultanate. Their secondary objective would be to subsequently outflank the outnumbered British defenders with a landing at Bintulu, which Field Marshal Prince Maeda saw as a key target in the conquest of Sarawak. Brunei itself fell after a short battle on February 9th, as the garrison of one battalion of the British Indian Army was overwhelmed by two IJA brigades, leading the Japanese force to push on through the night to Bintulu. They succeeded in landing their divisional sized force by the afternoon of February 11th, the carriers maintaining strong fighter cover over the beachhead. The presence of the Japanese naval force was detected by RAF reconnaissance flights out of Kuching and Singapore, but British land based airpower was too hard pressed against the numerically superior and newer IJAF aircraft in the air battle over Borneo to respond. Rear Admiral Sir Richard Osborne, commanding Force R aboard Hermes in the patrol bastion off the Riau Islands, ordered his squadron to head at full speed towards the Japanese force, intending to launch a strike against the enemy carriers before he could be located by land based bombers from Indochina. At a distance of 280nm, Hermes launched a total of 22 Swordfish, 18 Buccaneers, 12 Fireflies and 8 Eagles in two waves at 1026, holding back under cover of its remaining fighters and 12 Reapers out of Singapore, in addition to the protection offered by King George V, Retribution, Thunderchild, Belfast, Sheffield and 10 destroyers. They made contact with the IJN fighter CAP only 18 miles away from the Japanese ships, but the resultant aerial melee was decidedly one sided, 13 British fighters and 22 strike aircraft being shot down in exchange for only 6 Zeroes; the much reduced size of the Fleet Air Arm striking force highlighted the comparative edge in maneuverability possessed by the Japanese Zeroes and negated the British advantage in speed and firepower. The shattered strike did break through to the Japanese ships, hitting two transports and putting three torpedoes and two bombs into the aging Zuiho, putting her in a sinking condition at a cost of a further 6 planes before the survivors returned to Hermes. Rear-Admiral Osborne, having lost the majority of his offensive airpower, pulled back to Singapore in swift fashion under heavy RAF and RNAS air cover. The chief lesson of the Battle of Brunei was clear: the Fleet Air Arm could not operate in single carrier task forces and expect any kind of success at an acceptable cost, but rather, needed to refine its tactics and operational methodology in the face of an experienced, capable opposition with comparable aircraft.

By late February, the Japanese advance into the Dutch East Indies through the Makassar Strait and Celebes Sea had penetrated into the heart of the Allied defences and the Battles of the Java Sea and Sunda Strait had seen devastating losses inflicting on the ABDAF Striking Force by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The latter engagement effectively sealed off Singapore and Malaya from the mainstay of Allied resistance on Java and severed the Malay Barrier upon so much strategic concentration had been placed before the war. This had a significant impact on the orders issued to Admiral Cunningham by the Admiralty, with his priorities being the preservation of his own fleet, particularly the carriers, and the continuing attrition of Japanese forces. His latitude for seeking battle was severely constrained by the rapidly changing strategic situation, with his primary directive being to hold the Malay coast and Gulf of Siam against any enemy incursions or amphibious thrusts until such time as he was properly reinforced. Japanese land-based bombers remained a serious threat and fleet operations were increasingly constrained by the range of fighter air cover from Malaya and Singapore. The stark difference between the decisive victories in the North Sea and Mediterranean and the challenge provided by the Japanese had curbed the natural aggressive instincts displayed by Cunningham and his commanders, with the Admiralty in London highly conscious of the strategic disaster that would unfold should the Grand Fleet be decisively defeated. The adoption of an attritional strategy in January 1942 strained against the deteriorating Allied position in South East Asia, but was built on the emerging science of operations research, arcane divinations and more conventional economic and industrial intelligence analysis; several top secret analytical engines had determined that British and Commonwealth aircraft production, shipbuilding and munitions production would enable a successful offensive to be mounted in the last quarter of 1942 should the Japanese advance be held in Malaya and Burma. This drove the decisions of the Imperial War Cabinet to prioritise the defence of Malaya above that of Java and Sumatra, which lead to substantial disagreements with the Dutch government-in-exile.

In the face of this strategic caution, Yamamoto attempted to draw the Grand Fleet out into the South China Sea through a sortie of elements of the Combined Fleet from Luzon and Cam Ranh Bay on February 26th, forcing Cunningham to respond to the direct threat rather than divert substantial forces to the south; only Illustrious, Ethalion and Theseus could be spared on an ultimately fruitless sweep to the Karimata Strait to attack IJN surface forces. Admiral Cunningham sortied from Singapore with a large part of his available force - Ark Royal, Eagle, Indefatigable and Victorious, the light carriers Hercules and Achilles, 6 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 28 cruisers and 72 destroyers. The two fleets engaged in a series of maneuvers and feints over the next three days without making direct contact, with 17 FAA aircraft being shot down in exchange for 10 IJN planes in the aerial skirmishes between the seven Japanese and six British carriers. On the morning of March 1st, the Japanese finally located the RN main body and launched a strike of 93 Vals, 84 Kates and 80 Zeroes, which was intercepted by 154 FAA fighters guided by RDF at a distance of 32 miles out from the fleet at 1124. 32 Vals, 30 Kates and 24 Zeroes were shot down in exchange for 25 Eagles and 21 Fireflies in this initial engagement before striking the dedicated interception force of 60 Eagles launched from the two light carriers, which were now being employed solely as fighter carriers for fleet air defence. This succeeded in largely breaking up the Japanese strike, shooting down a further 16 Vals, 15 Kates and 10 Zeroes for the loss of 19 RN planes, before the surviving aircraft were engaged by the concentrated AA gunfire of the Grand Fleet. Hermes was hit by two torpedoes and slowed to 18 knots, Victorious was struck by one 500lb bomb, King George V hit by three bombs, Iron Duke by two bombs and one torpedo and Vanguard by one torpedo; two cruisers and six destroyers were also damaged, with Castle and Demon later sinking. Having weathered the Japanese strike, Cunningham followed his own orders in response, withdrawing back towards Singapore and the security of friendly RAF and RN air cover, rather than launch his own counterstrike.

The naval balance shifted with the arrival of a large Royal Navy squadron from the Mediterranean and Home Fleets on March 5th, which escorted the crucial Cardinal reinforcement convoys of 4 divisions, 600 aircraft, 450 tanks, 1200 guns and over 1.2 million tons of supplies. The fast troop liners of Cardinal 1 had unloaded hastily at George Town under heavy aerial protection on March 4th-6th, with Cardinal 2 and Cardinal 3 made the increasingly dangerous journey to Singapore along with Force R, which consisted of the battleships Conqueror, Monarch, Majestic and Triumph, the battlecruisers Orion, Neptune, Jupiter and Ajax, the aircraft carriers Argus, Unicorn, Pegasus and Implacable, 16 cruisers and 48 destroyers. Their arrival and the gradual repair of ships that had suffered minor or moderate damage in the battles of December, January and February swelled the Grand Fleet. although there was no alteration of the general standing orders regarding its deployment. The much-trumpeted arrival of Cardinal and the growing threat presented by the raids conducted by the United States Navy on the Marshall Islands and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands pushed Admiral Yamamoto, having recently returned to the Combined Fleet from a heated meeting of the Supreme War Council in Tokyo and having consulted with Grand Admiral Togo, to make a further attempt to bring the Grand Fleet to a decisive battle.

The confined nature of the South China Sea provided for complications for both fleets, with the Japanese land based air fleets being treated cautiously by the Royal Navy and the increasing number of RN submarines in the region presented an increasing threat for IJN operations. Admiral Cunningham had three key weapons that gave him an advantage in the battle to come. First and foremost, Allied codebreaking gave the Grand Fleet a useful degree of operational warning of any Japanese fleet movements and general intentions. Secondly, the Royal Air Force’s strategic heavy bomber force in the Far East, Bomber Command’s No. 25 Group, had now been reinforced with additional Wellingtons and Handley Page Halifaxes, giving a potent long range punch to Far East Command. Finally, the Royal Naval Air Service strike force in Malaya had been substantially increased in firepower with the arrival of two wings of de Havilland Mosquito torpedo bombers with the Cardinal convoys. He aimed to use these to counteract the numerical edge of the Combined Fleet and, upon receiving indications that a Japanese sortie was imminent in March 23rd, he requested a maximum effort bomber attack on IJNAF airfields. Two major raids of over 300 bombers struck five airfields in Southern Indochina, inflicting considerable damage at the cost of 27 RAF aircraft being shot down.

Yamamoto ordered the Combined Fleet to sea on March 26th, aiming to draw out the Grand Fleet within range of Indochina by threatening the Gulf of Siam. This time, he elected to take a course to the west of the Spratly Islands and then head towards the Poulo-Condore Islands, bringing the Grand Fleet upon his land-based air and his own carriers. Cunningham took the Grand Fleet out from Singapore on March 27th in response, heading out to the east before breaking back towards the Malay coast, where he would remain, just out of sight of the shore of Kelantan, partially concealed by experimental cloaking magics. His plan was to keep his carriers within the cover of over 400 land based RAF and RNAS fighters, whilst augmenting its striking power through his amassed shore based bombers. Off to the south, halfway between Natuna and Singapore, a decoy force of surface vessels, dirigibles and skyships was to act as the Grand Fleet, utilising a variety of illusory and electronic means. This approach, should it fully succeed, would draw off the Japanese aircraft and leave their fleet open to British attacks. Ironically, the Japanese would also attempt their own use of subterfuge through the employment of a disguised diversionary force that aimed to lure the Grand Fleet to its doom. Yamamoto had kept the main body of his battlefleet between the vanguard and the Kido Butai further back off Saigon, whilst trying to draw out the British with the bait of own slower light carriers and striking them with the twin weapons of his fast carriers and remaining land-based bombers. The light carriers were disguised as their larger equivalents through ensorcelled markings and deception spells, which, whilst less sophisticated than the RN measures, were designed for a far more limited purpose. This tactical approach, whilst not fully splitting his forces per se, still presented a considerable difference to that used in previous battles. It consisted of the converted liner Shinyo, the light carriers Zuiho, Kaiyo and Taiyo and the seaplane carrier Nisshin, along with their escorts. Their defences would be swelled by 54 A6M Zeroes flying out of airfields in Central Vietnam which had been spared the attentions of the RAF bomber forces to date.

The Third Battle of the South China Sea began on March 30th, as the Japanese vanguard force was located by RN scouting aircraft off the southern tip of French Indochina whilst its own reconnaissance efforts continued to scour the seas for the Grand Fleet. The RN southern decoy force almost succeeded in drawing off Japanese attention with their electronic trickery, but the subterfuge was uncovered by a fortuitously located IJN submarine, which identified the true nature of the British ships and aircraft through direct observation; the submarine’s commander made the courageous decision to transmit his findings immediately, which resulted in the destruction of his vessel some nine hours later. His report did not include mention of the RN skyship HMSS Prometheus, which now moved northward, extending the range of its powerful new airborne RDF system. Faced with this, Cunningham ordered an air strike on the IJN vanguard, even though it would reveal his location; crucially, he chose to dispatch the air groups of only three of his carriers in addition to his land based strike bombers, keeping the other six carrier groups back in reserve. This was the northernmost group in the Grand Fleet, with the others moving away to the south, a factor that would be crucial in the development of the battle. 68 Swordfish and 76 Buccaneers escorted by 58 Eagles and 60 Fireflies and accompanied by 56 Beauforts were launched at 1042 on March 31st against the Japanese group south of the Poulo-Condore Islands. They were met by 98 Zeroes, which inflicted substantial losses on the FAA aircraft, shooting down 14 Eagles, 16 Fireflies, 13 Buccaneers, 15 Swordfish and 10 Beauforts in exchange for 25 Zeroes. The sheer weight of the RN airstrike blasted its way through the Japanese fighter defences, however, and hit Shinyo, still appearing for all intents and purposes to be Shokaku, with five torpedoes, whilst Taiyo and Nisshin were hit with six and eight bombs and three torpedoes apiece.

The initial reports reaching Admiral Cunningham were ecstatic, claiming the destruction of three Japanese fleet carriers, but this was swiftly cooled by the news transmitted from Prometheus - a force of hundreds of new aircraft was emerging off the coast of Southern Indochina, along with the surviving elements of the two bomber groups forming up inland. A vexsome choice was now presented to Cunningham - leave his northern task group of Implacable, Indefatigable and Unicorn to take the full force of Yamamoto’s eight fleet carriers and bombers whilst striking from the south with his remaining carriers; or pull his three task groups together and mass his defensive firepower under the cover of his land based fighters to preserve his fleet. If he chose the second course of action, he ran the risk of losing the opportunity to deal a decisive blow to the Japanese; if he chose the first, he ran the risk of losing a large part of the fleet, with all that entailed. Many naval historians from the United States in particular have subsequently criticised Cunningham for once again electing to take the more cautious approach, but even with the potential gains, his decision was plain: he would stick to the attritional approach and absorb the Japanese strike. Cunningham’s orders were enacted swiftly, pulling his carrier groups back into mutual supporting range of each other and allowing their reinforcement with his heavy surface ships, whilst swelling his defences with the RAF and RNAS fighters from Malaya. 579 IJN carrier aircraft (245 Zeroes, 164 Vals and 170 Kates) and the land-based force of 80 Zeroes and 125 G4M bombers were intercepted by a maximum effort fighter CAP of several layers - firstly the outermost group of 256 Supermarine Eagles and 70 Reapers, then the middle layer of 184 Spitfires and 78 RNAS Eagles and then the inner defence of 144 Hurricanes and 176 Fireflies. These coordinated waves of fighters split their attacks, with the Eagles and Spitfires focusing on the Zeroes and Reapers, and the Fireflies and Hurricanes going for the strike aircraft and bombers. The defence inflicted a high rate of attrition on the IJN attack planes, but the Japanese Zeroes maintained their impressive record of performance, despite the heavier armament of the British fighters taking a heavy toll; a total of 126 Zeroes, 61 G4Ms, 69 Vals and 73 Kates being shot down in the furious aerial melee in exchange for 91 Eagles, 54 Spitfires, 72 Fireflies, 39 Hurricanes and 23 Reapers. After breaking through what seemed to be the final layer of defence, the Japanese strike was then confronted by the Grand Fleet's ace in the hole in the form of the fighter groups of Invincible, Saint Louis and Henri IV flying in from the Andaman Sea; their 120 fighters shooting down a further 38 Japanese planes for the loss of 18 of their own number. It is a testament to the sheer numbers and skill of the Japanese pilots that the survivors were able to press home their attack on the Grand Fleet, flying through the most devastating AAA barrage they had yet faced from radar-guided guns of the hundreds of warships below, 36 bombers and 42 carrier attack planes being shot down in the process. The remaining Japanese planes concentrated their attacks on the Royal Navy carriers and battleships, resulting in extensive damage. Indefatigable was hit by four bombs and one torpedo, Illustrious by three bombs, Argus by two torpedoes and two bombs, Implacable by four bombs and two torpedoes, Monarch was struck by three bombs, Iron Duke and Triumph by two bombs and Conqueror by two torpedoes and two bombs, in addition to the sinking of 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers and various damage to 9 cruisers and 20 destroyers.

Cunningham ordered an immediate retirement of the Grand Fleet upon Singapore as dusk approached, given that half of his available carrier decks were now unusable and the prospect that launching a coordinated airstrike against the Japanese fleet would keep his remaining fleet within range of further air attacks. He had succeeded in preventing the Japanese from achieving a decisive victory and the sinking of the two light carriers could give some substance to characterisations of victory, but did not press forward to seek a night surface action against the Combined Fleet due to the threat of enemy submarines; in any event, the Japanese battlefleet had been untouched from the day's action, whilst he had several ships suffering from various degrees of damage. The final stage of the battle came as night fell and one of the RNAS Mosquito torpedo bomber wings took off from its Malay aerodromes. Guided by aerial RDF direction from Prometheus, they subjected the Combined Fleet to a surprise low-level attack, severely damaging the battleship Oshima and sinking the old light cruisers Yakumo and Nankan, which skillfully intercepted torpedoes aimed for Kaga and Mikawa respectively. The impact of the strike on the Japanese at sea was far more significant in its longer term consequences than any tactical losses, as it demonstrated that the Royal Navy too could threaten enemy surface forces at an unprecendented range and dissuaded the IJN from attempting further fleet advances into the Gulf of Siam.

Like the battles that were to come in the South and Central Pacific as 1942 wore on, those bloody frays that took place in early 1942 in the South China Sea increasingly demonstrated that threats from the air and below the waves were substantive limiting factors on the freedom of operation of the traditional battlefleet. The most significant consequence in April was Admiral Cunningham's decision to pull the remaining carrier task forces of the Grand Fleet back into the Andaman Sea from Singapore, interposing the Malay Peninsula between the Japanese and the Royal Navy. This was driven by the advance of the Japanese in Sumatra and the final collapse of Allied resistance in Java, which outflanked the stubborn defenders from the south. Singapore was now a fortress city under distant yet still very much effective siege, with the subsequent Singapore Blitz presenting significant problems for the full operational employment of the Grand Fleet from its long-time intended bases. To avoid any suggestion of panic or abandonment, considerable emphasis was placed upon the maintenance of the battlefleet, cruisers and destroyers at Singapore, in addition to the increasingly effective commerce-raiding campaign waged from its Brobdingnagian submarine pens. The deployment of the Grand Fleet's carriers would also prove decisive in breaking the Japanese line in Northern Malaya and the Kra Isthmus, even as land-based airpower was increasingly constrained by the imminent monsoon.

Yamamoto's failure to achieve a decisive victory in South East Asia was the first setback in the successful tide of conquest, but now, his attention was drawn away to a different front.

For, on April 4th 1942, USAF bombers attacked Tokyo.

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:55 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 5b: British Carriers 1942

With the exception of Malaya and Burma, Japan had achieved the main initial objectives by early 1942 and had neutralised the Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy as a decisive offensive force. However, it was unable to eliminate the last positions and forces of the British Empire in the Far East through direct assault and was also facing the increasing pressure of the recovering United States Navy across the Pacific. Intense discussions took place over the course of March amongst the members of the Imperial General Headquarters on the strategic priority for Japan in 1942, fixing upon the establishment of a firm defensive perimeter in the east and a build up of forces to push the Commonwealth forces back to India in the west. The movement of the Royal Navy's carrier forces to the Bay of Bengal served as a final trigger for this action, as it placed these vital assets beyond the immediate reach of the Combined Fleet. It was considered that the optimum means of achieving these aims in the short term would be through an oblique approach: the isolation and possible invasion of Australia. This would be carried out over the course of six months, after which time the IJN could prepare to execute its decades-old plan for the defeat of the advancing United States Navy through a process of gradual attritional battles through the Central Pacific utilising aircraft carriers, land-based bombers and submarines before a final decisive fleet battle at a time, place and circumstances of Japanese advantage.

The IJN South Seas Fleet had already taken New Britain during its initial sweeping offensive into the South Pacific in January 1942 and had landed substantial Imperial Japanese Army forces along the northern coast of New Guinea. This put Japanese forces in an optimum position to push down at take the remainder of New Guinea and occupy the key island chains that stood astride Australia and New Zealand's lifelines to the United States - the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Fiji and Samoa. Once this supply line was severed, Britain would be forced to redirect supplies, troops and ships away from its build-up in India and Malaya to the aid of its Commonwealth kith and kin, presenting an opportunity to eliminate its remaining naval power east of Suez. The IJN had presented an expansive plan for this concept to encompass the seizure of seizure of Northern Australia as a preventative measure. The Imperial Japanese Army was reticent to prepare full plans for an invasion of Australia, considering the troop and shipping requirements (some 20 divisions and 4.5 million tons at a minimum) being well beyond their actual capabilities, but supported a proposal by the Imperial Japanese Air Force for the neutralisation of Australian defences through a concentrated aerial campaign provided that its planned offensives in South East Asia and China received greater tactical air support.

The primary objective of the Japanese offensive would be the capital city of New Guinea, Port Moresby. With it and is surrounding airfields in Japanese control, large parts of Queensland and Northern Australia would be brought within range of IJAF bombers and the Allies would be effectively forced out of the Coral Sea. The secondary target would be Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, where a forward airbase would be built as part of the expanding defences around the South Pacific hub of Rabaul. Admiral Shiyegoshi Inoue had been taken aback by the intervention of US aircraft carriers in his early landing operations in the Lae-Salamaua area and had been reinforced by the arrival of two light carriers and four cruisers at Rabaul and the fast battleships Amagi and Atago at Truk in early April. He still regarded his force as lacking in naval airpower and urged Yamamoto to deploy heavier forces to cover the invasion force. The Combined Fleet had taken significant losses in the South China Sea campaign and the IJN lacked the infrastructure and oilers to support a full deployment to the South Pacific; additionally, a substantial battleship force was still required to be kept at Manila to cover the Grand Fleet at Singapore. Yamamoto compromised by agreeing on the deployment of two carrier divisions and supporting heavy surface elements as a covering force in mid April, enabled by the gradual repair of damaged ships and the availability of new vessels.

The Australian and New Zealand governments had been calling for reinforcements of their increasing parlous position since the outbreak of war and, by early April, these calls could no longer be ignored, particularly in the face of signals intercepts indicating a gradual move of Japanese ships from Manila to Truk and Rabaul and Japanese intentions for the invasion of New Guinea. The Australia and New Zealand Stations had been unified as the ANZAC Squadron in January under the command of Admiral Sir John Crace and reinforced by USN cruisers and certain surviving units of the ABDAF Strike Force, but its sole capital ship was the new Australian battleship HMAS Commonwealth and the elderly carrier HMAS Albatross was not considered as a frontline unit. The Imperial War Cabinet concluded that there was a clear need for reinforcement of Commonwealth naval forces in the South Pacific. This lead to the dispatch of a squadron of the Grand Fleet from Singapore to Australia based around the aircraft carriers Ark Royal and Victorious and the battleships Australia, New Zealand, Hood, St. George and Prince of Wales under the command of Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings, considered an acceptable reduction of forces given that Formidable and Indomitable would be available for service by early May and Leviathan's imminent arrival from the Mediterranean alongside the Dutch battleships De Zeven Provincien and Willem van Oranje. Additionally, two infantry divisions and a Royal Marine Division and two Spitfire wings would be redirected from India to Australia in a convoy escorted by the East Indies Squadron. Upon their arrival at Sydney on April 24th, they were designated the British Commonwealth Pacific Squadron.

However, this major force for the defence of Allied position in the South Pacific would come from the United States Navy. The three carriers of Task Force 12, Enterprise, Wasp and Essex, escorted by Connecticut, Washington and Constellation, 6 cruisers and 18 destroyers had been engaged in the Doolittle Raid and were now returning to San Diego. Task Force 11 (Saratoga, North Carolina, 4 cruisers and 12 destroyers) was en route from Fiji to the new USN base in New Caledonia, Task Force 15 (Bonhomme Richard, Alabama, 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers) was covering a crucial convoy to New Zealand 400nm northeast of Samoa and Task Force 16 (Intrepid, Kearsarge, Michigan, Indiana, 10 cruisers and 36 destroyers) was operating from the still damaged base at Pearl Harbor in defence of the American position in the Central Pacific. In the South Pacific, Task Force 17 (a total force of Yorktown, Hornet, South Dakota, Massachusetts, 6 cruisers and 25 destroyers) was on station in the Coral Sea, having recently conducted air raids against Japanese landings on the northern coast of New Guinea. The utilisation of super battleships in fast carrier task forces had already proven successful in the USN raids on the Gilberts and Marshall Islands earlier in 1942, ironically being driven by a lack of sufficient large fleet oilers to support the operation of separate battlesquadrons; the same logistical limitations and the question of the location of the main IJN battlefleet and carrier force kept the 9 older battleships of the US Pacific Fleet to San Diego for the time being as a defensive measure.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, the new commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, had reviewed intercepted Japanese signals traffic between Yamamoto and Inoue and further intelligence regarding the movement of fleet oilers to Truk and Rabaul and began to form a picture of the scope and threat of Operation MO. A further intercept by British naval intelligence regarding the movement of the Fifth and Sixth Carrier Divisions to Rabaul lead to the conclusion that a major Japanese offensive would take place in the South Pacific in May with the probable objective of taking Port Moresby. On April 25th, Nimitz ordered the concentration of all his available carriers in the Coral Sea to counter the Japanese push in coordination with Commonwealth naval units in the area, providing a local tactical superiority over the planned IJN forces. The Allies planned to catch the Japanese forces in a pincer movement in the Coral Sea, utilising all three USN task forces from the east and the RN from the west. Japanese radio intercepts had placed six US carriers in the Central Pacific and their seaplane and submarine reconnaissance of the area around the Solomon Islands had failed to indicate the presence of any additional Allied forces in the area. It was agreed that, in line with previous staff talks and commitments, the Commonwealth Pacific Squadron would come under the operational command of the US commander in the area and the overall strategic command of Admiral Nimitz.

On April 27th, USS Gato detected the departure of a large Japanese force of four carriers and three battleships from Truk, followed by aerial reconnaissance reports of the sortie of the slower invasion fleets from Rabaul on May 1st. The Port Moresby Invasion Force consisted of 29 transports carrying 18600 troops, 2 light cruisers and 6 destroyers, covered by the light carriers Chitose and Chiyoda, the old battleships Echizen, Tajima, Shimose and Kazusa, 2 heavy cruisers and 5 destroyers, whilst the Tulagi Invasion Force consisted of 8 transports carrying 6800 troops, the light carriers Taiyo and Kaiyo, 2 light cruisers, 4 destroyers, 6 minesweepers and 4 gunboats. The overall heavy covering forces under Admiral Kondo consisted of the Vanguard Force commanded by Admiral Shirō Takasu (Kongo, Kirishima, Hiei and Haruna and 8 destroyers) the Carrier Striking Force commanded by Admiral Chūichi Hara of (Shokaku, Zuikaku, Junyo and Ryujo, the fast battleships Amagi and Atago, 3 light cruisers and 16 destroyers) and the Main Body Support Force commanded by Admiral Hiroaki Abe (4 battleships, 4 superheavy cruisers and 12 destroyers). Six Japanese submarines would form a picket line 500nm to the southwest of Guadalcanal to provide warning of the approach of Allied ships on May 4th, but the three USN task forces under Admiral Frank J. Fletcher had already entered the Coral Sea on May 3rd and the Commonwealth task group was moving up from its position off Brisbane. They would aim to draw the Japanese into a cleverly set trap.

The IJN South Seas Fleet began landing Imperial Marines and Special Naval Landing Force troops on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on the early morning of May 4th. Fletcher moved up Task Force 17 to strike at the landings early on the next day, attacking the Japanese ships and construction troops with a raid of 54 aircraft from his position some 210nm to the south, shooting down 13 Japanese planes and sinking five transports, three minesweepers and the old cruiser Kaimon for the loss of 5 US aircraft. As he had intended, this now drew the attention of the Japanese carrier force, which moved quickly towards San Cristobal to come around into the Coral Sea in pursuit. Fletcher now withdrew back to the southeast, joining up with the other two US carrier task groups. On May 6th, both the Japanese and American forces would endeavour to locate their enemy carrier groups, with fighter patrols from both sides shooting down a number of search aircraft. A USN strike from Saratoga succeeding in sinking Kaiyo and her two escorting destroyers off Malaita, whilst a large Japanese raid was launched against a suspected American carrier group which turned out to be the oilers Neosho and Rapidan, both of which were sunk by IJN dive bombers. The main Japanese carrier force was located late on the afternoon of May 6th, but Fletcher elected not to launch a strike that could not be recovered before darkness and kept his force intact under cover of sorcerously augmented overcast weather. As he did so, the next stage of the battle began with three IJNAF reconnaissance bombers out of Rabaul locating the vanguard of the Commonwealth squadron 119nm southwest of Tagula. Only a partial report could be made before they were shot down by fighters from HMS Victorious, but the garbled information came as a surprise to Kondo, who suspected that this new force could be the flanking elements of the elusive US carrier group rather than a new force. Rawlings pulled his scouting cruisers and his main fleet back southwards before resuming his advance northwards after dark, aiming to put his force in position to strike the invasion convoy once it reached the Jomard Passage through the Louisiades. Crucially for the events of the morrow, the Japanese main body linked up with the carrier striking force to add the firepower of their anti-aircraft guns to its defences, following on from the operational lessons of the South China Sea campaign.

May 7th would see the decisive phase of the battle. The Japanese had moved to the north overnight to a position 300nm southwest of Guadalcanal, whilst Fletcher's force had moved up to 260nm south of the Japanese and Rawling's Commonwealth Squadron was 150nm south of Samarai. Both the USN and IJN task groups launched search planes throughout the early morning, with the Japanese aircraft locating Task Force 17 some 239nm away at 0752, with an airstrike of 66 Zeroes, 87 Kates and 90 Vals being launched at 0832. At 0801, a USN SBD from Yorktown located the main Japanese carrier force and a strike of 54 F4F Wildcats, 85 TBM Avengers and 100 SBD Dauntlesses is launched at 0849. The Japanese strike was intercepted by the USN combat air patrol of 84 Wildcats at 0954, with 25 Vals, 19 Kates and 20 Zeroes shot down for the loss of 36 Wildcats and a further 17 torpedo planes and 21 dive bombers being shot down by the extremely heavy anti-aircraft fire of the escorting US battleships, cruisers and destroyers. Hornet was hit by three torpedoes and six bombs, lost power and set afire, Saratoga was hit by two torpedoes and four bombs and is slowed to 24 knots, Yorktown was struck by one torpedo and three bombs and has two 5” twin mounts destroyed and Bonhomme Richard was hit by two bombs. Alabama was struck by one torpedo and two bombs, North Carolina by one torpedo and three bombs, South Dakota by three bombs and Massachusetts by one torpedo, while the light cruiser Newark was hit by two torpedoes and three bombs and slowly sunk, the heavy cruiser Lansing blew up after being hit by five bombs and the destroyers Anderson and Wainwright were sunk by multiple bomb hits. The American aircraft hit the IJN carrier strike force at 1013, after fighting their way through the Japanese CAP of 72 Zeroes at a cost of 27 Dauntlesses, 22 Avengers and 31 Wildcats shot down in exchange for the loss of 20 Zeroes, with a further 16 Avengers and 19 Dauntlesses shot down by IJN anti-aircraft fire, which was particularly heavy from the escorting battleships. Shokaku was hit by one torpedo and three bombs, Zuikaku was hit by one torpedo and two bombs, Junyo evaded all but two bombs and Ryujo was smashed by five bombs and one torpedo, causing massive fires and leading to Commander Robert E. Dixon's famous radio transmission "Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier: Scratch one flattop!" The Japanese battleships drew considerable fire from the attacking USN strike planes, with Settsu and Mikawa being the worst hit with three bombs apiece, but none were significantly damaged, whilst the superheavy cruisers Shari and Warusawa were both struck by one torpedo and two bombs and three destroyers set afire or sunk. Both fleets proceeded to recover their aircraft and pull back away, leaving the US task groups with 233 operational aircraft compared to 248 Japanese planes and both forces having lost one fleet carrier, but with the US ships having taken greater damage and being effectively reduced to two operational flight decks.

As the major carrier battle unfolded, RN seaplanes spotted the Port Moresby invasion convoy west of the Louisiade Archipelago at a distance of 128nm from the Pacific Fleet . Admiral Rawlings ordered his 4 battleships to close at top speed whilst he launched an airstrike from Ark Royal and Victorious. 36 Swordfish, 32 Buccaneers, 30 Fireflies and 29 Eagles were launched at 1134 and RN strike arrived over the Japanese fleet at 1209, being were met by an IJN combat air patrol of 27 Zeroes. 10 Swordfish, 8 Buccaneers, 6 Fireflies and 10 Eagles are shot down for the loss of 12 Zeroes. The Japanese light carriers Chitose and Chiyoda are hit by two torpedoes and four bombs and two torpedoes and two bombs respectively and are left adrift and the heavy cruiser Furutaka capsizing after being hit by two torpedoes and five bombs. 4 destroyers are badly damaged, but the most grievous damage is done to the invasion fleet, with six transports sunk and four damaged. Admiral Kondo, upon hearing of the RN strike, ordered that his fast battleships move to the west at full speed to cover the invasion force and launched an airstrike at the Commonwealth ships, whilst the escorting Japanese cruisers formed a rearguard to defend the withdrawing convoy. At 1359 in the afternoon, Hood, Prince of Wales, Australia and New Zealand opened fire on the withdrawing Japanese invasion force at a distance of 52,376 yards. At 1410, Hood hit the Japanese armoured cruiser Izumo at a range of 42,589 yards with her eighteenth salvo. Prince of Wales scores her first hit at 1417 on Iwate. By 1445, the two old cruisers had been battered into smoking ruins and were slowly sinking, along with their two escorting destroyers, but their sacrifice had won crucial time for the withdrawal of the surviving troopships. The IJN airstrike of 56 aircraft launched by the Kido Butai attacked the Commonwealth battleships at 1502, with 7 Vals and 10 Kates shot down. Hood and Prince of Wales were hit by one torpedo and two bombs apiece, Australia by three bombs and New Zealand by one bomb, with the destroyer HMAS Voyager sunk by three bombs.

The Commonwealth battleships withdrew back towards their aircraft carriers south of New Guinea, with the Japanese forces headied north for Rabaul at 18 knots, with the two stricken light carriers being towed by cruisers. Fletcher, some 196nm to the southwest, ordered Washington and South Dakota, 2 cruisers and 10 destroyers to pursue the withdrawing Japanese and attempt to bring them to action overnight. The Japanese rearguard, consisting of the old battleships Shimosa and Tajima, 3 cruisers and 9 destroyers, was caught by the US battleship force at 0211. Washington hit Tajima with her third salvo, with the Japanese ship blowing up at 0234 with the loss of 897 lives, while South Dakota scored 13 hits on Shimosa, leaving her a fiery, battered hulk which sunk the next day. 3 Japanese and 2 American destroyers were sunk in the nighttime melee.The final acts of the battle the next morning on May 8th were brief but brutal. At 0726, the crippled light carrier Chitose was sunk by scouting USN Dauntless dive bombers from Bonhomme Richard. At 0845, five Japanese land based G4M torpedo bombers hit HMAS Albatross with three torpedoes; she sunk six hours later.

The Battle of the Coral Sea was a strategic Allied victory, with the IJN losing 1 fleet and 1 light carrier, 2 old battleships, 4 cruisers, 7 destroyers and 139 aircraft and the Allies losing 1 fleet and 1 light carrier, 2 cruisers, 5 destroyers and 185 aircraft and, most significantly, the invasion of Port Moresby being decisively defeated. The loss of the older Japanese battleships in the one-sided surface night action did somewhat obscure the true margin of victory, as they were certainly not frontline surface units by any meaning or interpretation, but they did provide an extremely valuable moral boost to the American public; as a result of the Coral Sea, the remaining IJN 15" superdreadnoughts were withdrawn from the South Pacific for duty with the China Area Fleet for the next 18 months and they would not see frontline combat again for some time. The cooperation between the Allied naval forces had been generally effective, although issues of signals, command and logistics would further hamper such efforts as 1942 proceeded. For the Japanese, the lesson of the battle was clear - the carriers of the United States Navy represented the greatest threat to the security of their newly conquered empire in the Pacific and only their elimination would pave the way for ultimate victory. Once they were removed from the equation, then the modern carriers and battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy could crush the surface ships of their American and British foes without mercy and the Rising Sun would prevail across the world's largest ocean.

Following on from the decisive United States victory at the Battle of Midway in June, where three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk for the loss of Yorktown, the strategic balance in the Pacific shifted dramatically towards the Allies. The defeat shattered any remaining illusions or victory disease among the IJN and Yamamoto's secondary contingency plan for the attrition and destruction of the USN in the South Pacific whilst preparing defences to counter their inevitable offensive were put into place. Even limited as they were post-Pearl Harbor, Japanese intelligence assets within the United States painted a stark picture of the scale of American naval construction. After Midway, Japan could deploy 7 fleet carriers, the elderly Hosho and 4 light carriers, with two Taiho class and three auxiliary conversions due to enter service in the second half of 1942, representing a not insubstantial force; however, the USN fielded 7 fleet carriers in Pacific alone with 4 Essex class ships and 4 Independence class light carriers entering service in the second half of the year and a further 24 fleet carriers laid down or ordered. The decision reached by Imperial General Headquarters was to defer planned offensives against Fiji, the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, where US forces were now established in strength, in favour of a concentrated defence of the Solomon Islands and a renewed land offensive in New Guinea. The main strength of the Combined Fleet, nominally numbering 24 battleships once repairs from Midway were completed, would remain together and thus capable of successfully engaging either a British or American battlefleet, whilst fast coordinated task forces would rotate through Truk and the South Pacific front to counter the Allied threat from that direction.

.........................

As of the beginning of 1942, the RAF deploys 15,296 combat aircraft (+ 5642 RNAS/FAA), the USAF 12,652 (+ 8364 USN), the Luftwaffe 11,249 (+ 827 Kriegsmarine), the Soviet Union 10,494, the IJAF 5404 (+ 3990 IJN), Italy 4397 and Austria-Hungary 3848

1/1/1942 World's Largest Air Forces

1.) USA: 29353
2.) Britain: 22601
3.) Soviet Union: 17359
4.) Germany: 16304
5.) Japan: 6849
6.) Italy: 6009
7.) Austria-Hungary: 5206
8.) Free France: 2967
9.) Canada: 2564
10.) Sweden: 1582

1/1/1942 World's Largest Armies

1.) Soviet Union: 10,692,000/489 divisions
2.) Germany: 6,756,254/312 divisions
3.) China: 5,029,000/456 divisions
4.) USA: 4,682,000/124 divisions
5) Britain: 4,254,876/89 divisions
6.) Japan: 3,960,000/154 divisions
7.) British India: 3,873,000/63 divisions
8.) Italy: 3,418,345/108 divisions
9.) Austria-Hungary: 2,678,249/124 divisions
10.) Canada: 2,357,995/29 divisions

The World’s Largest Merchant Navies

1.) Britain: 49,087,111t
2.) USA: 32,245,875t
3.) Japan: 10,294,568t
4.) Norway: 4,417,249t
5.) Netherlands: 2,477,305t

Battle of the Atlantic

U-Boat Production
1939: 50
1940: 143
1941: 267

Ships/Tonnage Sunk by U-Boats
1939: 228 ships/775,000t
1940: 1121 ships/5,963,000t
1941: 853 ships/4,544,000t

British Shipbuilding
1939: 467,258t (Sep-Dec)
1940: 3,289,425t
1941: 4,578,536t

Canadian Shipbuilding
1939: 123,956t (Sep-Dec)
1940: 694,231t
1941: 1,362,830t

US Shipbuilding
1939: 392,108t (Sep-Dec)
1940: 2,546,330t
1941: 5,247,886t

As of the beginning of 1942, the US Army has 2 divisions in Hawaii, 2 in Alaska, 1 in Panama and 1 in the Philippines. At home, they have ~36 divisions deployable in under 6 months, 24 more nominally ready at 6+ months and 64 more still in the mobilisation and training stage.

3 divisions are being readied for a landing operation in Portugal.

Over the course of the first half of 1942: 4 available/planned for deployment to Australia and the South Pacific, 3 planned for deployment to Britain, 6 planned for deployment to French North Africa (as part of a build up to invade Sicily).

Formal M-Day was December 8th 1941, after President Roosevelt had begun the Protective Mobilization Plan in September 1939 and further steps followed on in 1940 and 1941.

jemhouston · Post by **jemhouston** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:04 pm

Interesting times, thank for posting.

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:09 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 5c: British Carriers 1942

In any case, before any Japanese action could take place in the form of a planned carrier raid on the New Hebrides, the long planned Allied offensive in the South Pacific began in early August 1942 with Operation Watchtower, the invasion of the Solomon Islands. It was the first part of a general push by land and naval forces against the Japanese in both New Guinea and the Solomons that aimed to take the key fortress at Rabaul. The Japanese airfields on Tulagi, Guadalcanal and San Cristobal were the primary objectives, to be occupied by the 1st U.S. Marine Division and the Marine Raiders. Supporting landings would be carried out on Rennell Island by a combined Anglo-Australian brigade to cover the southern flank of the Allied position. Watchtower was primarily supported by a large United States Navy fleet, which departed Fiji along with the 107 ships of the invasion convoy on July 23rd, whilst the Commonwealth Pacific Squadron, consisting of Ark Royal, Victorious, Australia, Princess Royal and Hood, 5 cruisers and 15 destroyers, escorted the Rennell Island force of 20 transports from Sydney; a task force of Prince of Wales, New Zealand and Commonwealth, 4 cruisers and 10 destroyers had earlier departed to escort a reinforcement convoy to New Guinea and subsequently conduct a diversionary attack at Milne Bay. On August 4th, 15,000 US Marines of the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal between Koti Point and Lunga Point, supported by a fleet of the carriers Enterprise, Intrepid, Wasp and Bonhomme Richard, the battleships Washington, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Massachusetts, the battlecruisers Congress and Constellation, 26 cruisers and 72 destroyers. 4000 Raiders and Paramarines took Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo in six hours of bloody fighting, whilst 5000 Marines were largely unopposed on San Cristobal.

A Japanese surface force of six heavy, four light cruisers and 10 destroyers attacked US naval forces off Guadalcanal at 0129 on August 5th in a surprise night attack after moving down from Rabaul in four separate groups. The Japanese ships struck from the south, having come around Santa Isabel Island, catching the 9 US cruisers and 20 destroyers momentarily unaware and opening fire from a range of 15000 yards. The light cruisers Jackson and Pasadena and 6 destroyers returned fire immediately and closed for a torpedo attack, but came under heavy 240mm fire from the Japanese heavy cruiser force, which has extensive training in night fighting. In a short, brutal engagement, Jackson was hit by 19 rounds and Pasadena by 25 rounds, with two US destroyers sunk; the Japanese cruiser Ashigara was lightly damaged and one IJN destroyer exploding after being hit by 3 torpedoes. Pasadena sunk an hour later, with 142 of her crew going down with the ship. The US heavy cruiser force of Vincennes, Quincy, Tuscaloosa, Houston, Chicago, Louisville and New Orleans and 14 destroyers move to support the southern force, but are struck by a devastating 24“ Long Lance torpedo attack by the Japanese cruisers and destroyers. Quincy was hit by three torpedoes and begins sinking, with Chicago and New Orleans struck by one apiece. Japanese gunfire focused upon Vincennes and Tuscaloosa, hitting each ship upwards of thirty times and reducing them to burning wrecks. Houston and Louisville succeed in engaging the cruiser Mogami, penetrating her belt at close range with extremely rapid fire and blowing up her X magazine. The destroyer forces engaged in a confused melee amid the smoke and fire, with 5 Japanese and 3 US vessels being sunk. The Japanese cruisers did not press their advantage by attacking the vulnerable US amphibious shipping, after coming under long range fire from South Dakota and Massachusetts, which were the closest US battleships. Admiral Mikawa was under explicit orders from Yamamoto to preserve his force and instead withdraw up 'The Slot' towards Bougainville at high speed to avoid the coming dawn and the retribution of US aircraft carriers and battleships. The damaged Abe founders along the way, being sunk the next day off New Georgia by Helldivers off Enterprise. The battle was a bloody Japanese tactical victory, with four US cruisers and five destroyers lost in exchange for two Japanese cruisers and 6 destroyers lost and 3 cruisers and four destroyers damaged.

The aftermath of the Battle of Savo Island saw the establishment of a regular pattern, where supplies would be delivered under heavy USN escort during the daylight hours and the fleet would withdraw out to sea at nighttime to prevent the reoccurence of the bloody Japanese surface strike. The Commonwealth Pacific Squadron had withdrawn back to Brisbane to refuel and resupply after the initial landings in order to cover the invasion convoy from Port Moresby to Milne Bay, where Australian troops would establish the first major airbase and bridgehead aimed at halting the inexorable Japanese advance in New Guinea and the South Pacific. This would be accomplished by a brigade of the 5th Australian Division, directly supported by the cruisers Canberra and Melbourne and four RAN destroyers. The initial landings on August 23rd proceeded without event and were followed directly by the next stage - the construction of an airfield on Goodenough Island as the first in a ring of supporting bases around Milne Bay. An Australian infantry battalion and engineers landed on September 1st and initial establishment operations proceeded successfully until the afternoon of September 3rd, when an IJNAS bomber force struck at the supporting naval group of Melbourne and two destroyers with devastating effect. They were detected on radar at a distance of 90nm by the RAN cruiser and fighter cover from the carriers of the Pacific Squadron, operating 125nm southwest of Milne Bay, was summoned with utmost urgency; the Eagles providing coverage over the main Australian bridgehead, however, were running low on fuel and the only available fighters, 832 Naval Air Squadron were still halfway out from Victorious. The race between the British and Japanese aircraft was a close one, but it was won by the 43 Mitsubishi G4Ms, which sunk HMAS Waterhen and HMAS Vendetta with a pair of torpedoes each and crippled Melbourne with three torpedoes, forcing it to be run aground. The arriving Fleet Air Arm fighters were met with the unpleasant surprise of a separate escort group of A6M Zeroes, which shot down 11 of the 22 Supermarine Eagles in exchange for just 5 Japanese planes in the brief but bloody melee. The Battle of the D'Entrecasteaux Islands indicated the clear primacy of naval aircraft over light surface warships and lead to a period of marked caution from Rawlings as he marshalled his strength, chiefly through the arrival of the newly commissioned Australian carrier, HMAS Adelaide, which joined the Commonwealth Pacific Squadron as it returned to Sydney on September 15th and it continued to work up with the fleet in a series of training exercises in the Coral Sea through early October, the battleship HMNAS New Avalon and the light carriers HMAS Theseus and Hercules. They were further scheduled to be joined by HMSAS Natal and HMCS Acadia by Christmas, allowing Ark Royal and Victorious to receive badly needed refits in Sydney and Melbourne after their protracted periods of frontline service.

Admiral Rawlings bought his fleet up towards Port Moresby on October 23rd and began a series of large scale raids on Japanese positions along the Kokada Track and around Buna and Gona on the northern coast of New Guinea, using his fighters and strike aircraft to inflict apparently heavy damage; the rugged conditions and thick jungle terrain did make accurate bomb damage assessment a decidedly difficult proposition. Just 17 aircraft were lost in Operation Banner out of over 250 committed to the seven days of air strikes, the majority being lost in the difficult operational environment of the Owen-Stanley Mountains. Following on from Banner, the fleet was held off the coast of New Guinea for almost a week as contingency measure to cover any Japanese retaliation to the chemical strikes on Gona before proceeding back to Espiritu Santo and the Solomons, where the USN had achieved a series of hard-fought and valuable triumphs over the IJN even as the US Marines won a famous victory on Guadalcanal. The combined American and Commonwealth naval task forces proceeded to conduct a series of rolling air strikes on Japanese positions on New Georgia and Bougainville in the first preparatory stages of the planned 1943 drive on Rabaul. These were coordinated with high altitude USN and USAF skyship operations over the Admiralty Islands, although the devices employed by Commander R.A. Heinlein's Special Experimental Projects Force did not have the same success as they would in the subsequent years of the war.

The impact upon the Royal Navy's general carrier doctrine was influenced in no small degree by the experiences of the Pacific Fleet in 1942, drawing from the USN's refinement of the task force concept and their own operational lessons. By placing the aircraft carriers at the centre of the task force, the defensive firepower of the group was focused most effectively on its longest range striking assets and coordinated their fighter groups with the superior RDF carried by capital ships. The anti-aircraft cruisers and Tribal class destroyers provided the most efficient close escorts, acting in a 'goalkeeper' role in the immediate proximity of the carriers, but super battleships and battlecruisers both provided sheer volume of light and heavy AA guns and ample direction capacity, permitting other cruisers to be stationed as the next outward layer of defence and destroyers to provide the outer screen. By the use of a common tactical concept, British and American carrier task forces could operate more effectively in combined Allied operations; the barriers of language and issues of command made a similar implementation by British and French squadrons a more difficult task.

Admiral Cunningham's decision to take the operational carrier task forces of the Grand Fleet, along with a substantial portion of his battlefleet, into the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in April 1942 was not without controversy, with it being seen by several influential personages, including Prime Minister Churchill, as a strategic concession to the Japanese. The eventually successful argument presented by Cunningham and the Admiralty was that the movement of the fleet was simply a tactical maneuver rather than a retreat, bringing the flank of the Japanese forces in Southern Siam under mobile air attack. In the earliest stages of the Andaman Sea Campaign, the Japanese advance in Southern Burma was worn to a halt by Royal Navy air strikes and gunfire support before the onset of the monsoon ended their hopes for an early slashing victory. The Grand Fleet, even now gradually recovering its previous strength, then carried out Operations Alphabet, Boomerang, Capital and Dervish in late May and June, striking the Japanese frontline in Central Sumatra and their newly established fighter aerodromes around Palembang. It is estimated that petroleum output from the refinery complexes of Palembang were reduced by over ten percent in 1942 as a result of the Fleet Air Arm operations, which came at a cost of 117 aircraft.

The main effort of the Grand Fleet, though, would come in Malaya. General Yamashita's big push, supported by 10 reinforcing divisions, had pushed back Slim's Twelfth Army from the Ironside Line to the secondary Telak Line and bought Kelantan under long range artillery fire in early June before Field Marshal Wavell deployed his reserves and held the enemy unsteadily by June 15th. The combination of the Japanese advance through the jungle and the monsoon had curtailed the air support than could be supplied by the RAF and the resultant positional warfare was more akin to the combat of the Great War in many sections along the front. Naval intervention from the Grand Fleet therefore came as decisive in breaking the deadlock, particularly along the west coast of the peninsula. The most devastating raid on July 26th came in the build up to the coordinated counter-offensive by the Eleventh and Twelfth Armies, Operation Cavalier, when 586 carrier aircraft struck at two Japanese frontline divisions and one corps headquarters over the course of a day, flying over 2100 sorties and smashing the IJA positions with bombs, rockets, wildfire and skyblaze; the latter two arcanely enhanced incendiaries having been successfully introduced in Norway and the Western Desert the previous year. It played a notable role in the early success of Cavalier, allowing the considerable advance of 8 miles on the first day on August 1st. As Slim's forces continued their advance back up towards the Kra Isthmus, Admiral Cunningham launched a series of strikes on the road and railway networks of southern Siam. His success here would ironically prove to be the cause of considerable delay to the subsequent Allied land offensive, but had the effect of slowing the flow of supplies to the frontline Japanese forces quite substantially.

As the tide of the Battle of Malaya shifted, the swelling Allied naval forces maintained three separate mobile carrier task forces in support of operations in Burma, Malaya and Sumatra, whilst their other vessels were hastily refitted and repaired for the expected increased pace of operations that would come with the return of the Grand Fleet to Singapore. The plans for the new year would see at least 12 Royal Navy carriers lead the advance back into the Gulf of Siam, dependent on the continuing success in the Mediterranean and the potential re-emergence of the Kriegsmarine surface fleet. Yet this was far from a British fleet alone: Dutch and French squadrons sailed alongside the White Ensign, just as Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, Indian and South African vessels swelled the ranks of Cunningham's armada. The grand strategy of the Royal Navy in the Far East was to be gradual, rather than sweeping: Malaya would be made safe, then the Gulf of Siam sealed off, then the South China Sea closed. In Fremantle and Sydney, in Mombasa and Cape Town, in Alexandria and Aden, in Madras, Trincomalee, Bombay and Calcutta, the Grand Fleet mustered for what was to come.

In their first year of full combat, the light fleet carriers had proved versatile and effective in manners beyond the role they had been designed for. Whilst they were still employed as battlefleet fighter carriers in operations with the Home Fleet due to the particular tactical environment of the Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, their integration into carrier task forces in South East Asia and the Pacific had demonstrated their greatest utility in allowing the fleet carrier air groups to cover the strike role. Their anti-submarine and trade protection role was increasingly taken over by the cheaper, smaller and more expendable escort carriers, seeing a concentration on the air defence mission. Theseus even saw some employment as a night-fighter carrier in the Solomons Campaign in the final months of 1942, but the main threat was seen as Japanese strikes during daylight hours. The successful employment of Essex and Independence class fleet and light carriers operated by the USN in the South Pacific similarly reinforced the operational flexibility provided by multiple carrier task forces, although the vastly greater resources and scale of the American construction programme would soon see their replacement with a different solution. One facet of the light carrier design that elicited concern was their substantially lighter armament, given the intense aerial combat environment in the South East Asian theatre.

The longest battle of the war and most perilous for the Allied cause was the Battle of the Atlantic and 1942 saw the heart of deep war on this most crucial of fronts. In the aftermath of the the Axis air attacks on the American Eastern Seaboard and the subsequent declaration of war, German U-Boats enjoyed decided success in Operation Paukenschlag, which hurled over fifty long range submarines at the masses of shipping off the coast of the United States. Sinkings in January and February rose sharply as the USN convoy escort system struggled to meet the tactical challenges of the U-Boat offensive despite having substantial numbers of destroyers; escort vessels better suited to the convoy role than the fast fleet destroyers were starting to enter service, but even the industrial might of the United States faced unavoidable bottlenecks. Naval air cover began to constrict the operational environment available to the German and Axis submarine forces and the implementation of a strict blackout of coastal cities went some distance towards reducing the early losses which topped 450,000 tons in each of the first two months, but Grand Admiral Donitz's Ubootwaffe proved flexible, shifting its attacks to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea in the spring. The combination of US escort production, shore based air cover of convoys and the provision of British and Canadian escort vessels in Reverse Lend Lease would gradually stem the tide of losses, but for the U-Boats, this seemed indeed a 'Second Happy Time', particularly in light of what was to come.

In the mid-Atlantic, the battle was taking on a different complexion. The entry into service of further escort carriers added to the mobile air cover provided by the previous auxiliary conversions, allowing consistent air cover for the whole trans-Atlantic journey for key convoys, firstly on the fast HX routes. This initial defensive employment, in conjunction with increasing numbers of USN SB-24 Liberators and RNAS Short Sterling patrol bombers, would hamper the ability of U-Boats to operate effectively against convoys on the surface throughout the summer months. However, it would be the shift to offensive use of escort carriers in the second half of 1942 that would be most decisive in the turning of the tide in the North Atlantic, with the Escort Groups of surface vessels now being joined by task forces made up of destroyers and fast frigates and destroyer escorts based around escort carriers and dedicated anti-submarine airships. The new formations, known as Hunter-Killer Groups in the United States Navy and Support Groups in Royal Navy parlance, were aggressively directed against known U-Boat operational areas and pursued their quarries with the significant aid of signals intelligence intercepts. This increased tempo of offensive operations did result in a costly price, with Audacity, Asperity, Avenger and Cormorant being sunk by U-Boats, but by the end of 1942, Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy escort carriers attached to Support Groups alone had been responsible for the sinking of 32 U-Boats out of 184 total losses in the Atlantic Ocean; the United States Navy's corresponding vessels accounting for 24 enemy submarines. As the year wore on, the Allies were firmly getting the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic, but 1943 would bring with it a dramatic new tactical and strategic challenge.

As the anti-submarine campaign in the North Atlantic proceeded to twist and turn, the most innovative British response began to gather pace. The construction of a 5000 ton small-scale model of the iceberg carrier concept was completed in Alberta in February and the particular merits of pykrete were demonstrated to a number of Allied officers and officials in a quite innovative experiment where blocks of both ice and pykrete were subjected to gunfire and combat spells. Production of a larger 60,000t test model on Hudson Bay followed in the summer of 1942 and testing successfully demonstrated the nominal utility of the vessel as at least seaworthy; carrier trials and experiments were to prove more difficult until the development of an innovative alchemical solution that solved the issue of deck operations. After lengthy and at times contentious debate and in the looming light of growing German success, the Chiefs of Staff Committee recommended that the Imperial War Cabinet approve the design and construction of two full scale vessels in Canada at a cost of £36.5 million apiece, or the price of four modern super battleships. This considerable cost was to swell as the requirements of the bergship were expanded, with the final specifications calling for aircraft hangars to be protected against bombs of up to 2000lb, a defensive armament of 50 twin 4.5" anti-aircraft gun turrets and over 300 smaller guns and an air group of up to 20 twin-engine combat aircraft; final displacement was to be over 2.5 million tons. To provide some measure of concealment of the nature and purpose of the project, it was given the codename Habakkuk and ostensibly intended as a measure to provide for the mass storage of aviation and naval fuel for the expanding escort carrier forces operated by the United States and British Empire. The exact circumstances of the decision to approve Habakkuk are still subject to the restrictions of official secrecy, but there has been some speculation amongst historians that a clandestine agreement was reached between the Admiralty and Air Staff regarding support of Bomber Command's contentious '5000 Plan' in light of strong representations against the same by the British Army. In any case, the project would continue, even as the war at sea began to shift and evolve.

The major carrier operations in the European theatre of operations in 1942 took place in support of two great amphibious invasions, firstly in the Atlantic and then in the Mediterranean. Allied fortunes on the Iberian peninsula had taken a decided turn for the worse since the German invasion of August 1941, being driven back to the Andalusian Pocket by November and barely managing to establish a strong front over the wintertide. Thereafter in early 1942, the German, Italian and Fascist Spanish forces controlled over nine tenths of Spain and Portugal and the British lead Fifth Army was effectively pinned down by a numerically inferior foe in a manner similar to the Salonika Front in the Great War, with the Axis forces benefiting from the advantage of interior lines of supply and communication. Gibraltar had been neutralised as a fleet base for all but light combatants, with the bulk of the Royal Navy Atlantic Fleet operating out of Casablanca and Madeira. Turning the enemy's flank through an amphibious landing had begun before the entry of the United States of America into the war and a definitive decision was reached at the ARCADIA Conference in Washington D.C. in January 1942. A landing in Portugal was decided upon, utilising US forces deployed directly from East Coast ports and troops from the British Isles.

After substantial build-up and planning, Operation Torch was launched on July 10th 1942, with two major naval task forces landing six U.S. and two Commonwealth divisions at Lisbon, Sines and Lagos. The Southern Task Force from the USN Atlantic Fleet of 7 battleships, 14 cruisers, the aircraft carriers Ranger, Hornet, and Independence and the escort carriers Long Island, Nantucket, Belle Isle, Sangamon, Bogue and Santee and 68 destroyers performed successfully off the Algarve in the role of direct air support and the provision of long range naval gunfire. Its aircraft in particular demonstrated the strong performance of the TBF Avenger and SB2C Helldiver, whilst the F4F Wildcat fighter acquitted itself effectively against older German Bf-109s. The Northern Task Force, drawn from the RN Home and Atlantic Fleets, supported the landings around Lisbon with their 5 battleships, 11 cruisers, 37 destroyers, the carriers Ocean, Albion, Perseus and Hector and the escort carriers Bold, Dasher, Vindex and Citadel, providing considerable reach inland with their new Firefly Mk IVs and Eagle Mk VIIIs. The latter aircraft in particular demonstrated considerably improved low-altitude maneuverability and performance and its improved 25mm cannon proved particularly effective, albeit against older model German fighters. However, it was the operation of US-produced Lend Lease Wildcats from the escort carriers that provided the most significant jump in performance compared to the older British fighters previously employed and this was to lead to greatly increased orders.

In the Mediterranean, the Regia Marina had taken virtually the whole of the remainder of 1941 to recover from the devastating blow of the Battle of Cape Matapan. The impact of the RN submarine campaign against Italian shipping and the vital maritime link to the Axis armies under Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa began to show decisive results in early 1942, as the fuel supplies available to the Italian battlefleet were increasingly constrained. Now a combined British, American and French fleet mustered in Gibraltar, Oran and Alexandria that vastly outnumbered the Regia Marina and, even as fighting continued in the Western Desert, the grand design for the invasion of Italy was underway, building on planning that had begun back in the dark days of 1940. In the first half of 1942, the capital ships of the Regia Marina were mainly kept back in the relative safety of La Spezia and Livorno, with only lighter forces based at Naples and Taranto, and attempts to draw them out into the range of Allied carriers and battleships were unsuccessful. The grand Allied triumph at the Battle of El Alamein in June 1942 and the subsequent fall of Tripoli on August 4th was the harbinger of the next stage in the Battle of the Mediterranean, the invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky. The speed of the Axis collapse in North Africa brought forward the invasion to November 5th 1942, coordinating it with the planned Soviet counteroffensive around Stalingrad.

All Allied naval forces in the Mediterranean theatre came under the overall command of Admiral Somerville at Malta. To prevent the Regia Marina from interfering with the landing, a huge covering fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser that dwarfed that assigned to Torch would deploy between Malta and Pantalleria, capable of reacting to sorties from either Taranto or La Spezia and supporting the landing forces. It would consist of 24 battleships (Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Delaware, Dragon, Trafalgar, Superb, Magnificent, Nelson, Rodney, HMSAS South Africa, HMSAS Good Hope, HMCS America, HMNS Newfoundland, Gloire, Soleil Royale, Victoire, Majesteux, Orient, Superbe, Chile, Brasil, La Argentina and México), 8 battlecruisers, 13 carriers (Albion, Bulwark, Courageous, Glorious, Ranger, Océan, Suffren, Charles Martel, Brennus, Perseus, Belleau Wood and San Jacinto), 35 cruisers and 84 destroyers, operating alongside the Red Navy's Mediterranean Squadron. The landings themselves on would be supported by three task forces under the overall command of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey deploying 16 older battleships, 12 monitors, 29 cruisers, 20 escort carriers and 67 destroyers, in addition to smaller gunboats and rocket-equipped landing craft. In the face of the overwhelming force deployed off Sicily, the major units of the Regia Marina stayed in their ports, secure for the moment. Husky would see the most concentrated use of aircraft carriers to date and was the largest Allied fleet deployed to that point of the war. The end of the threat of the Regia Marina and broader Axis surface menace in the Mediterranean would come in 1943, not with a last defiant roar, but with a whimper.

The operational lessons drawn by the Royal Navy from the European campaigns in the first half of the war were mixed. Firstly, the prewar design philosophy of the fleet carriers of both the Ark Royal and Illustrious class had been successful, with the combination of armoured decks, substantive air groups and efficient anti-aircraft gun defences allowing the fleet to operate within range of land-based opposition. Secondly, carrier based airpower had been successful in opposing land-based opposition, particularly when it could best use its advantages of mobility and flexibility. Thirdly, the greatest successes had come from a narrow range of operations that had been the result of considerable prewar planning and training and this night strike capacity could not be easily applied to broader circumstances. Fourthly, the general capability and quality of carrier fighters had begun to dip in comparison with their land-based opponents, but the developments of the latter half of 1942 had begun to ameliorate this. Finally and perhaps most significantly, the aircraft carrier had proved to be the absolutely essential component of any major fleet operations.

The Fleet Air Arm had been well-served by its four main aircraft in the first three years of the war, but by the end of 1942, all were beginning to show their prewar vintage. The Supermarine Eagle was considered to have the most growth potential within its sizeable airframe and capacity to take the new developments of the Rolls Royce Merlin, but the development of a multi-role high performance fighter powered by the new Rolls Royce Eagle was initiated in February 1942 as its putative replacement. In the interim, the Mark VIII Eagle entered service in March, bringing considerable agility to the formidable platform, increased range, greater hitting power with its advanced 25mm cannons and a higher top speed of 425 mph. All of these characteristics combined to give it a number of advantages in clashes with the Japanese A6M Zero in the second half of the year, although the latter aircraft remained the most nimble fighter in the world; information from captured Zeroes would be incorporated into the Mark X in 1943. The Hawker Firefly Mk IV constituted an improvement, but as a naval fighter, it lacked the true performance edge to be fully competitive with the IJN and as a strike aircraft, it could not quite compete with its dedicated counterparts. Replacement of the Firefly with a derivation of the Hawker Light Fighter under development since mid 1941 was seen as the best option, but this would take some time to bear fruit. The Swordfish torpedo bomber and Buccaneer dive bomber had soldiered on manfully through the battles of 1942 and their replacements were well on their way in the form of the Fairey Spearfish and Blackburn Firedrake, both of which represented a substantial increase in performance. Testing of a carrier-based variant of the de Havilland Mosquito began in November 1942, promising a range of capabilities currently not matched by any aircraft in service.

Along with new aircraft, the Fleet Air Arm would also field new weapons throughout the course of 1942 as the development efforts of the first years of war came to fruition. The most radical of these would be the 60lb Rocket Projectile, which gave attacking aircraft significant striking power, albeit at a certain cost in accuracy. These entered service from May 1942 onwards in the fighting off the coast of Malaya and Burma and were used to great effect in the Sicily campaign at the end of the year. The 2500lb heavy armour piercing bomb arrived with the Grand Fleet too late to see service in the Battles of the South China Sea, but provided a devastating capacity capable of penetrating the largest enemy vessels, proving its mettle in the Guadalcanal campaign. The Royal Navy had generally employed 18" aerial torpedoes for its strikes against enemy fleets up to 1942, but prewar efforts to develop a heavy counterpart capable of sinking enemy capital ships had finally resulted in the operational availability of the 24.5" Mk V in December 1942. Finally, parallel to Barnes Wallis' project for a large bouncing bomb for employment against German hydroelectric dams, development of an innovative spherical weapon suitable for deployment on carrier aircraft continued at considerable pace.

By the end of 1942, the tide of the war had begun to shift towards Allied victory, after the year had begun with such portent of disaster. The Royal Navy had begun the year as the most powerful navy in the world, yet by Christmas, the changing of the guard had definitely occurred and now the United States Navy was unquestionably the mightiest force on the seven seas. The Grand Fleet now gathered its strength once again at Singapore and in India for a new offensive against the Empire of Japan in conjunction with the United States Pacific Fleet what was to be the greatest pincer movement of the war. In the fighting of this hardest year of deep war, the aircraft carrier had been the indispensable weapon of the Royal Navy.

..................

1942 Japanese Naval Construction

4 Battleships
Aki: 144,000t, 9 x 610mm, 26 x 127mm, 20 x 75mm, 72 x 40mm, 140 x 25mm, 32kts (7/37-3/42)
Kawachi: 144,000t, 9 x 610mm, 26 x 127mm, 20 x 75mm, 72 x 40mm, 140 x 25mm, 32kts (9/37-6/42)
Fuji: 144,000t, 9 x 610mm, 26 x 127mm, 20 x 75mm, 72 x 40mm, 140 x 25mm, 32kts (10/37-8/42)
Tamba: 144,000t, 9 x 610mm, 26 x 127mm, 20 x 75mm, 72 x 40mm, 140 x 25mm, 32kts (12/37-10/42)

4 Aircraft Carriers
Taiho: 75,000t, 120 aircraft, 24 x 127mm, 64 x 40mm, 96 x 25mm, 35kts (2/39-11/42)
Kirin: 75,000t, 120 aircraft, 24 x 127mm, 64 x 40mm, 96 x 25mm, 35kts (4/39-12/42)
Unryū: 36,000t, 100 aircraft, 20 x 127mm, 48 x 40mm, 64 x 25mm, 35kts (2/40-4/42)
Kenryū: 36,000t, 100 aircraft, 20 x 127mm, 48 x 40mm, 64 x 25mm, 35kts (4/40-6/42)

3 Light Aircraft Carriers
Taiyo: 20,000t, 45 aircraft, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 32.5kts (10/39-4/42)
Kaiyo: 20,000t, 45 aircraft, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 32.5kts (12/39-8-42)
Unyo: 20,000t, 45 aircraft, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 32.5kts (1/40-9/42)

4 Heavy Cruisers
Sukai: 25,000t, 8 x 240mm, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24” TT, 35kts (8/38/10/42)
Echigo: 25,000t, 8 x 240mm, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24” TT, 35kts(5/38-5/42)
Tekari: 25,000t, 8 x 240mm, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24” TT, 35kts (4/38-1/42)
Hotaka: 25,000t, 8 x 240mm, 12 x 127mm, 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24” TT, 35kts (6/38-4/42)

6 Light Cruisers
Omono: 15000t, 12 x 155mm, 12 x 127mm, 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Niyodo: 15000t, 12 x 155mm, 12 x 127mm, 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Tsugaru: 15000t, 12 x 155mm, 12 x 127mm, 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Hirado: 15000t, 12 x 155mm, 12 x 127mm, 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Mitsuishi: 15000t, 12 x 155mm, 12 x 127mm, 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Shizunai: 15000t, 15000t, 12 x 155mm, 12 x 127mm, 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts

28 Destroyers
Umigiri: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Yamagiri: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Tanigiri: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Kawagiri: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Taekaze: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Kiyokaze: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Satokaze: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Murakaze: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Yamasame: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Akisame: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Natsusame: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Hayasame: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Takashio: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Akishio: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Harushio: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Wakashio: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Akizuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Teruzuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Suzutsuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Hatsuzuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Niizuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Wakatsuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Shimotsuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts
Michitsuki: 3200t, 6 x 127mm, 4 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 37kts

Shimakaze: 4800t, 6 x 127mm, 6 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 15 x 24" TT, 42kts
Tsumujikaze: 4800t, 6 x 127mm, 6 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 15 x 24" TT, 42kts
Ōkaze: 4800t, 6 x 127mm, 6 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 15 x 24" TT, 42kts
Makaze: 4800t, 6 x 127mm, 6 x 40mm, 12 x 25mm, 15 x 24" TT, 42kts

32 Kaibokan

1942 British and Commonwealth Naval Construction

10 Battleships
Superb: 136,000t, 8 x 24”, 24 x 5.25”, 48 x 3.75”, 96 x 40mm, 128 x 25mm, 32.5kts (Commissioned 4/2/42)
Magnificent: 136,000t, 8 x 24”, 24 x 5.25”, 48 x 3.75”, 96 x 40mm, 128 x 25mm, 32.5kts (Commissioned 12/3/42)
Warrior: 136,000t, 8 x 24”, 24 x 5.25”, 48 x 3.75”, 96 x 40mm, 128 x 25mm, 32.5kts (Commissioned 25/4/42)
Centurion: 136,000t, 8 x 24”, 24 x 5.25”, 48 x 3.75”, 96 x 40mm, 128 x 25mm, 32.5kts (Commissioned 1/5/42)
Vengeance: 136,000t, 8 x 24”, 24 x 5.25”, 48 x 3.75”, 96 x 40mm, 128 x 25mm, 32.5kts (Commissioned 3/7/42)
Royal Sovereign: 136,000t, 8 x 24”, 24 x 5.25”, 48 x 3.75”, 96 x 40mm, 128 x 25mm, 32.5kts (Commissioned 4/8/42)

HMCS Victoria (Commissioned 10/8/42)
HMCS America (Commissioned 12/9/42)
HMIS India (Commissioned 25/9/42)
HMNAS New Avalon (Commissioned 15/10/42)

6 Aircraft Carriers
Albion (Ordered 19/4/38, Laid Down 24/8/38, Launched 30/11/40, Commissioned 3/5/42)
Bulwark (Ordered 27/3/38, Laid Down 31/9/38, Launched 29/12/40, Commissioned 6/6/42)
Remarkable (Ordered 18/6/38, Laid Down 20/10/38, Launched 20/12/40, Commissioned 30/9/42)
Spectacular (Ordered 17/4/38, Laid Down 26/11/38, Launched 15/1/41, Commissioned 24/12/42)

HMAS Adelaide (Commissioned 16/7/42)
HMSAS Natal (Commissioned 7/9/42)

3 Light Aircraft Carriers
Agamemnon (Ordered 2/2/39, Laid Down 6/3/39, Launched 17/6/41, Commissioned 2/3/42)
Perseus (Ordered 25/3/39, Laid Down 27/4/39, Launched 28/8/41, Commissioned 12/6/42)
Hector (Ordered 26/3/39, Laid Down 15/5/39, Launched 30/8/41, Commissioned 16/6/42)

23 Escort Carriers
Activity, Alacrity, Adversary, Asperity, Bold, Baltic, Citadel, Cormorant
Campania, Nairana, Vindex, Aurania
Avenger, Biter, Charger, Dasher
Attacker, Battler, Courser, Chaser, Fencer, Growler, Hunter

8 Heavy Cruisers
Tiger: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Splendid: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Royalist: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Lionheart: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Swiftsure: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Argonaut: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Excalibur: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts
Surprise: 25,460t, 8 x 9.2". 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 24 x 40mm, 40 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 32.5kts

16 Light Cruisers
Malaya: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Burma: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Samoa: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Zanzibar: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Gold Coast: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Bahamas: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Hong Kong: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts
Dominica: 14500t, 12 x 6", 12 x 4.5", 24 x 40mm, 32 x 25mm, 8 x 24", 34kts

Andromeda: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Ariadne: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Defiance: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Daedalus: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Icarus: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Sentinel: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Crown: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts
Gladiator: 9600t, 12 x 5.25", 12 x 3.75", 16 x 40mm, 24 x 25mm, 8 x 24" TT, 35kts

54 Destroyers
Osborne, Onyx, Obedient, Obdurate, Offa, Osiris, Orwell, Orcadia, Opal, Onslaught, Observer, Opportune, Ormonde, Owen Glendower, Orlando, Oryx, Onslow, Otway

Paladin, Panther, Pathfinder, Portia, Prince, Peregrine, Paragon, Patriot, Preston, Philomel, Prometheus, Porcupine, Penn, Persistent, Partridge, Petard, Pakenham, Pellew

Queenborough, Quality, Quiberon, Quail, Quickmatch, Quicksilver, Quentin, Quadrant, Quilliam
Racehorse, Rapid, Rocket, Rover, Ruby, Restless, Raider, Redoubt, Rotherham

36 Destroyer Escorts
88 Frigates
96 Corvettes
32 Submarines

1942 US Naval Construction

4 Battleships
Massachusetts
Alabama
Nebraska
Oklahoma

8 Aircraft Carriers
Macedonian CV-13
Ticonderoga CV-14
Randolph CV-15
Lexington CV-16
Bunker Hill CV-17
Brandywine CV-18
Hancock CV-19
Bennington CV-20

12 Light Aircraft Carriers
Independence CVL-25
Princeton CVL-26
Belleau Wood CVL-27
Cowpens CVL-28
Cabot CVL-29
San Jacinto CVL-30
Wake Island CVL-31
Manila Bay CVL-32
Monterey CVL-33
Wright CVL-34
Langley CVL-35
Bataan CVL-36

18 Escort Carriers
18 Bogue class

10 Heavy Cruisers
8 Baltimore class
2 Wichita class

13 Light Cruisers
4 Atlanta class
9 Cleveland class

84 Destroyers
28 Gleaves class
56 Fletcher class

130 Destroyer Escorts
98 Frigates
103 Sub Chasers
62 Submarines

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:12 pm

History of the Aircraft Carrier Part 6a: British Carriers 1943

1943 marked the end of the period of deep war and saw the tide shift decisively in favour of the Allies, particularly as the awesome strength and productive capacity of the United States of America began to be felt across the world. The effective victory in the Battle of the Atlantic had allowed the flow of troops and supplies to Britain from the New World to be considerably increased, although new challenges would arise. Italy stood on the brink of defeat in the Mediterranean, seemingly opening up the vulnerable underbelly of Hitler's Fortress Europe and allowing the use of what Mussolini had once proudly declared to be Mare Nostrum for Allied convoys. Only the rump of the Kriegsmarine remained as a naval threat west of Suez, albeit one that had gradually grown with two years of gradual construction. The role of the aircraft carrier in the European war would now be primarily a weapon in support of operations on land rather than decisive action at sea. On the other side of the planet, the age of Japanese expansion had essentially drawn to a close, worn down by the battles of attrition in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Malaya and Burma, but the IJN remained a capable and powerful force, despite being increasingly dwarfed by the vengeful United States Navy. Now the high tide of Japanese conquest would be repulsed and rolled back by two major assaults thousands of miles apart - the USN coming in from the east with mighty twin offensive drives in the Central and South Pacific and the Royal Navy pushing towards Indochina in the west.

This strategy was served by the sheer scale of Allied production and shipbuilding. The herculean achievements of American industry were only just yielding fruit, whereas British shipyards were now turning out the last major vessels of their earlier great armament. Eight light and six escort aircraft carriers, eight cruisers, seventy-four destroyers and over two hundred and fifty escorts were commissioned by the Royal Navy over the course of 1943, along with considerable production from the Commonwealth and invaluable Lend Lease ships from the United States, which included 19 escort carriers. The attritional losses of the battles of 1942 had bit deeply into the capacity of Britain to support the Grand Fleet and her other widely dispersed squadrons and the immense logistical burden of supporting a huge fleet in the Far East sorely taxed even the considerable resources of the British Empire. One of the particular ways this manifested itself in 1943 was the draw down of Commonwealth naval forces in the South Pacific as Japan was pushed back to the north.

The new year would see the arrival of new Fleet Air Arm aircraft that would provides substantial leap forward in capability. The Supermarine Eagle Mark X combined an increased rate of climb with improved protection and its already strong armament. These would all yield greater combat effectiveness when combined with new aerial combat tactics that emphasised superior speed and climb over dogfighting with the agile Japanese Zeroes. Its replacement was projected as coming in the form of the high performance Supermarine Type 396, which had been under development since April 1942, but that fighter would not see service until 1944. This would represent a distinct jump in capability from the Eagle in speed, range and general performance, although there was significant interest in potential acquisition of the Boeing long range naval fighter under development. However, just as in the United States, there was significant interest by the Admiralty in the employment of the new jet powered fighters, which offered a significant jump in speed, climb rate and altitude. Whilst the Mark X offered a noticeable improvement over previous marks of the Supermarine Eagle, the same could not be said about the Hawker Firefly Mark V. Indeed, the development limits of the basic airframe had been reached well prior to 1943 and its employment as a strike fighter and fighter-bomber was increasingly proving to be the weak point in the Fleet Air Arm's arsenal. Extensive consideration had been given to the acquisition of the new American Vought Corsair fighter-bomber and over 500 were ordered through Lend Lease, but this was seen as a temporary measure whilst a long awaited British fighter-bomber could be completed. The navalised adaption of the Hawker Fury light fighter had been selected the putative replacement for the Firefly, flying for the time on May 29th 1942, paving the way for further testing and development through to its introduction in November 1943. The Sea Fury was an exceptionally manoeuvrable fighter-bomber with a very high rate of climb and a top speed of more than 470 mph, both of which allowed it to duel the Zero on equal terms.

Development of a replacement torpedo bomber for the redoubtable Fairey Swordfish had been underway since 1940, based around a design for an enlarged aircraft powered by the powerful Bristol Centaurus engine. It took its first flight in March 1941, but subsequent development was troubled by technical issues and gremlins. Initial production of the new engine was problematic, delaying entry into service throughout the whole of 1942, but full scale production began by the end of that year, allowing the first Spearfish to reach the support facilities of Grand Fleet in January. Extensive testing and training by operational conversion units over the first half of the year saw the gradual replacement of the Swordfish in frontline FAA squadrons as Admiral Cunningham prepared for Operation Provident, the invasion of Indochina. Accompanying the Spearfish into service was the Blackburn Firedrake, a multi-purpose attack plane that would fill the role of the dive bomber; the advent of air-to-ground rockets and rocket bombs meant that precision attack no longer required the tactics of a steep dive. The Firedrake had a slightly less troublesome development process than the Spearfish, although its maneuverability would remain a problem throughout much of its service life. Production had begun in October 1942, allowing initial entry into operational squadrons by the second quarter of 1943. Like the Spearfish, it was armed with four wing-mounted 25mm guns, but its primary weapons would be the 3" rocket, the 1000lb semi armour-piercing bomb and the new 2500lb armour piercing bomb. Meanwhile, development and testing of the de Havilland Sea Mosquito continued in Britain and Canada with great urgency; this type was seen as providing an unparalleled strike capacity once the large Malta class carriers entered service in 1944 and 1945.

The year had begun with the Allies holding a firm upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic as escort vessels, aircraft and the sheer scale and power of American production overwhelmed the Kriegsmarine's UBootwaffe. The North American coast and the immediate vicinity of the Western Approaches were increasingly safe from the predations of the submarine threat due to the weight of land-based airpower, shifting the primary battle zone to Mid Atlantic and northern waters. Even in these areas, the U-Boats faced concentrated opposition from Allied navies that deployed ever-deadlier weapons systems. 1942 had seen the United States gird its loins and build up the means of production and now the great weight of their industrial might and manpower came to bear. America's shipyards would turn out over 2500 merchant ships of all types during the year of a total of over 18 million tons; this replaced all the tonnage lost in the war thus far to German U-Boats, making the calculus of victory stark and clear. Nevertheless, the menace beneath the waves remained a dangerous dagger across the lifeline of the Allied cause.

As such, the Battle of the Atlantic continued to rank among the very foremost of Allied priorities of production, technology and strategic focus and one major aspect of this was its first call on increasing numbers of escort carriers fielded by the United States and Royal Navies. The Allied Atlantic Convoy Conference of December 1942 had reached agreement on a goal of sixteen mobile Support Groups, or Hunter-Killer Groups in American parlance, based around an escort carrier for operations in the North Atlantic, half supplied by the RN and RCN and half supplied by the USN. These were to strike out in aggressive operations against German U-Boats rather than simply confine themselves to defensive convoy escort and were equipped with newer, faster escort carriers, allowing the older construction and converted vessels to provide close escort to the merchant convoys transiting the North Atlantic. The force goal was reached by the end of the year, but for the crucial first months, the USN provided the majority of the hunter-killer force.

In the convoy battles of HX-254 and SC-179 in March, four German wolfpacks attacked relentlessly over several days, barely being repelled by the strong escort and aircraft operating from two British escort carriers with the convoys. The attackers soon turned into prey for the Allied trap, as three USN hunter-killer groups struck from the south and two RN support groups hammered in from the north, along with American Boeing Sea Rangers out of Greenland providing a constant aerial umbrella. The loss of 11 U-Boats bloodied the nose of the U-Bootwaffe, but did not break their threat entirely. That would seemingly come in April, when the cumulative attrition inflicted by the Allies cost the Kriegsmarine 56 U-Boats, 8 of which were sunk by RN escort carriers. Each major convoy was now covered by at least a pair of escort carriers in their voyage across the North Atlantic, along with a stronger surface escort than ever before. In conjunction with the constant coverage provided by the airships and maritime patrol bombers above, these measures reduced losses to some of the lowest levels since the Fall of France.

At the very moment when victory over the submarine menace seemed within the grasp of the Allies, a new and terrible threat entered the equation - the Type XXI ‘Electroboot’. These were boats optimised for submerged operations, carrying large amounts of batteries and recharging whilst beneath the surface through their ‘schnorkels’. Their debut had been anticipated by Allied intelligence for some time, but the Battle of Convoy HX-267 on June 7th nevertheless came as a shock. The loss of 21 merchant ships of 196,247 tons and 6 escorts to an attack by five German submarines in a single night in exchange for only one confirmed U-Boat sinking begat a tremendous response by Allied surface, aerial and carrier forces. A hunt which involved 49 surface ships, over 300 aircraft, 4 airships and 5 escort carriers resulted in a successful counterstroke over the next week, as three of the surviving Type XXIs were sunk; the presence of such forces in the operational vicinity of the convoy battle has been ascribed to both sheer good fortune and the growing tidal wave of mass Allied shipbuilding. The Type XXIs would smash several more convoys over the summer of 1943, but their ability to reach the crucial waters of decision in the Mid Atlantic was increasingly hampered by the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign, the massive mining efforts and growing patrols of Royal Navy submarines around the U-Boat bases in France and the deployment of RN escort carriers on the blockade line in the Bay of Biscay.

The final turn of the tide in the war's longest and bloodiest battle came in August, when the largest 'ship' in the world entered the fray. Through the efforts of Canadian industry and workers, nothing short of a modern miracle of production had occurred, as HMS Habakkuk was commissioned in Saint John's on August 4th. Construction had begun in November 1942 and, through the application of new industrial design spells and ice magic, the massive pykrete ship was completed and fitted out by the end of June. Even as it prepared for deployment in top secret in an sealed Newfoundland naval base, there were many voices on both sides of the Atlantic who derided the ship as ludicrous, a colossal waste of resources and entirely unworkable. After it put to sea for the first time, it was to prove them both right and wrong. To keep the bergship cold enough to remain solid for a protracted period of time, an entirely new freezing solution had been developed by Canadian alchemists and four wizards assigned to the sole duty of casting ice magics over different portions of the hull, which all raised the expense of the vessel to over £50 million, whilst Habbakuk's engines could only propel her forward at 2.5 knots, rather than her design speed of 8 knots. Forward she crept into the middle of the North Atlantic until she reached her destination on September 15th and halted, creating a floating airfield and shipping base some 1500 miles out in the ocean. Habakkuk was to prove valuable in this role of an artificial island, allowing not only her intended deployment of twin and four engine patrol bombers, but the support and refueling of both dragons and flying boats on the high seas. Furthermore, her presence allowed the growth of a floating armada around her, extending the range and operational efficiency of anti-submarine vessels and escorts. Aircraft operating from Habakkuk were responsible for the sinking of 38 German U-Boats by the end of the war, yet she was never quite considered to be a true aircraft carrier.

Victory in the Battle of the Atlantic was one of the foremost triumphs of the Allies in the entirety of the Second World War, coming through a combination of courage, daring, ingenuity, technological supremacy, overwhelming industrial might and successful strategy. By November 1943, the wolfpacks of the U-Boatwaffe had been withdrawn from the North Atlantic, as Grand Admiral Donitz's gambit failed in the face of the Allied navies. He had begun the battle aiming to overwhelm Britain in a tonnage war, yet in the end, it was his submarines which were overwhelmed by tonnage - the tonnage of Allied merchant shipbuilding and the tonnage of escorts churned out by the naval shipyards of Britain and the New World. German U-Boats would continue to strike out into the Atlantic in 1944 and 1945, but their efforts were far less coordinated and greatly constrained, not least of which by the Allied invasion of France. The escort carrier had made significant contributions to the defence of the convoys in 1941 and 1942 and in 1943, they formed part of a formidable team that took the battle to the U-Boats and won. No single weapon nor no single effort was responsible for winning the Battle of the Atlantic, but each played a valuable and significant part in their own right.

The role of the Home Fleet in 1943 was primarily one of training in support of the combat fleets in the Mediterranean and Far East and covering the remnant threat of the Kriegsmarine fleet in being. The requirements of protracted operations necessitated a consistent flow of replacement aircraft and more significantly trained pilots and aircrew to the Fleet Air Arm in other theatres. By the end of 1942, 600 pilots a month were being qualified in carrier operations, but this barely managed to supply the needs of the expanding fleet in a global war and would rise considerably in 1943. After basic training in Canada and the United States, the prospective naval pilots, drawn not just from Britain but also throughout the Empire, would undergo carrier qualifications and training in the Irish Sea and the sea lochs of Scotland onboard the escort carriers Pretoria Castle, Capetown Castle and Durban Castle. These were newly commissioned vessels converted from large fast ocean liners which had brief careers as armed merchant cruisers in 1940, all displacing over 25,000 tons and able to operate up to three dozen aircraft. Even with each of the Castles conducting an average of upwards of two hundred landings per day, it was still considered necessary to supplement them with arcanely augmented mobile floating platforms on Lough Neagh and Strangford Lough for training in night landings and illusorily simulated rough North Atlantic conditions.

This process was followed by operational combat training aboard the Training Squadron in the Irish Sea, a collection of the older carriers in RN service (Furious, Arion, Hawkins and Raleigh) considered no longer fit for frontline sea service save in the most pressing of circumstances. This allowed for novice FAA pilots to gain continuous and extensive flying experience in the Royal Navy’s main frontline carrier aircraft, a process made even more valuable through direct training from combat veterans and aces rotated back home from the Far East and Mediterranean. Once pilots had fully passed through the extensive training process, they would then been given combat experience in the regular strikes on Norway and France that made up the Home Fleet’s other primary mission. This key element in the successful training system resulted in FAA pilots getting at least 500 hours in the air before seeing combat, considerably outclassing their Japanese opponents in Asia.

The frontline strength of the Home Fleet was based on a squadron of four fleet carriers (two RN, Remarkable and Spectacular and two RCN, Aurora and Arcadia) ,at least one escort carrier squadron and between four and six light fleet carriers, the fruits of the large 1939 and 1940 construction programmes beginning to be felt in force this year. This total embarked force of over 800 aircraft was larger than that deployed by the Grand Fleet in the 1940 campaign and demonstrated the ever expanding scale of the war. The shifting tides of war finally meant that the threat to the British Isles had abated and the possibility of a full sortie by the rump German fleet was considered extremely unlikely as they remained decisively outnumbered by RN and Allied ships. Without a significant carrier force, Kriegsmarine forces would be nakedly exposed to airpower throughout their putative deathride across the North Sea and this combination of distance and vulnerability militated against the prospect of such a threat. The return of Courageous and Glorious from the Mediterranean at the end of the year drove the strategic imbalance further against Germany.

Rather than simply remain on watch at Scapa Flow, the Home Fleet was used increasingly aggressively in 1943 against those parts of Nazi-occupied Europe within their range, the first of these being in Southern Norway. The hitherto static front in the centre of Norway began to slowly shift over the year, but the primary targets selected for Royal Naval attention in 1943, apart from the Battle of Andalsnes, were further south than the mountainous narrows of Trondheim - the airfield complexes and U-Boat pens around Bergen, Stavanger and Egersund. There were nine separate major strikes against the German bases between March and August, inflicting substantive damage against the more open airfields and their defences but making comparatively little impact against the gargantuan concrete edifices housing the deadly submersible threats to the lifeblood of the Allied war effort; their elimination would come at the hands of RAF Bomber Command’s heavy Halifaxes and Lancasters with their new Tallboy bombs, as well as the advancing Allied armies of liberation. The relative proximity of the Norwegian coast to the safety of the Shetland Islands allowed a swift flight by carrier strikes under cover of darkness or at low level and the sheer numbers of a full scale multi-carrier strike were able to overwhelm local Luftwaffe defences in a manner not dissimilar to the ‘bomber stream’ over Germany. Whilst the naval operations against Norway, collectively codenamed Operation Scullery, were not intended to be strategically decisive and nor were they. However, they did see the destruction of over 300 German aircraft on the ground and in the air against the cumulative loss of 58 FAA planes, draw Hitler’s attention away from the Mediterranean and blood hundreds of new pilots. Scullery was not without its critics in the Royal Navy, who contended that the nature of the target areas negated to some extent the inherent advantage possessed by carriers at sea - their unpredictable locations and axes of approach.

The second major Home Fleet campaign of 1943 made much more use of this advantage due to its particular geography: the strikes against the Atlantic ports of France, or Operation Termagant. Here, the carrier fleet would be able to slip out of their staging areas on the west coast of Lyonesse and speedily strike at the ports of Britanny in coordination with RAF, RNAS and USAF bomber raids. 10 separate carrier attacks, ranging in size from 250 to 600 aircraft, were launched against Brest, Saint-Nazaire and Lorient from September 4 through November 27, overwhelming their Luftwaffe fighter defences, laying mines, striking Kriegsmarine light surface vessels and attacking the submarine pens with 2500lb rocket bombs and flying torpedoes. Whilst the latter weapons failed to prove the nemesis of the U-Boat lairs, the principles of their design would result in far more substantive results elsewhere. The chief operational lesson from the Termagant strikes was the force multiplication provided by proper coordination of all forces engaged in the broader campaign against the U-Boat bases. The RN carrier strikes successfully wore down the Luftwaffe day fighter defences, allowing better results for the American B-17s and B-24s striking on the same day who in turn permitted the RNAS Stirlings and RAF Lancasters to do greater damage at night with their acoustic mines, blockbusters and Grand Slams. The final two Termagant strikes saw the participation of two USN aircraft carriers and attached to the Home Fleet and the additional firepower provided by their formidable Hellcats, Avengers, Helldivers, Corsairs and Skyraiders would prove the tipping point in the joint campaign. Thus, whilst the de Havilland Mosquitoes of 633 and 642 Squadrons are rightly famous for their destruction of the Keroman Base at Lorient with the new Disney guided bombs on December 24 1943, like many famous Allied successes, it would not have occurred without the hard fought victories won through inter-service and international cooperative effort.

The final role of the Home Fleet’s carrier force was one where there would be much preparation, but in light of its secrecy, there would naturally be no scope for preliminary operations. Their task in the forthcoming and long-awaited invasion of Europe, Operation Overlord would be a key one on the road to victory.

In the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, the assembled carrier forces mustered for the invasion of Sicily did not get the opportunity for a climactic battle against the heavy surface ships of the Regia Marina, which remained firmly and sensibly ensconced in La Spezia, Taranto and Venice. Instead, they found themselves rotated in support of the Allied ground forces alongside the dedicated escort carriers throughout the four week long Battle of Sicily; their combined forces, even setting aside the reserve covering task group, deployed over 1000 American and British naval aircraft over the Island battlefield, alongside the 5000 land based planes. Their relative position closer to Sicily allowed for more optimal provision of close air support, with the relatively aging Swordfish and Fireflies proving perfectly adequate enough for strafing, bombing and rocket attacks on German and Italian resistance in concert with the American Corsairs and Avengers. The rapid response of carrier based airpower in concert with the 'cab ranks' of RAF and USAF fighter-bombers operating from Malta and Pantalleria proved quite significant in the first weeks of the campaign before tactical airfields could be established on Sicily. Carrier based fighters saw more employment in ground attack roles, as the efforts of land based fighters were more than sufficient to engage the relatively small forces of Axis fighters that attempted to contest Allied control of the Sicilian skies; in the main, the most noteworthy feature above the fleets and fighters were the huge armadas of heavy and medium bombers cruising north to strike at Naples, Bologna, Leghorn and Rome. The Battle for Sicily was notable for the sheer extent and power of Allied material superiority, which, in addition to their technological and tactical advantages, proved to be overwhelming, with a key example of this being the armoured clash at the Battle of Acireale. Here, the British 7th Armoured Division engaged and defeated the German 20th Panzer Division in a brutal day-long struggle, supported by over 200 guns of the Royal Artillery, offshore fire from destroyers, cruisers and the 18" guns of HMS Warspite and the repeated rocket, napalm and wildfire attacks by FAA Buccaneers operating from Courageous and Albion; the relentless air and artillery attacks delivered in support of the Desert Rats severely contrained the German capacity to effectively tactically withdraw or maneuver and the destruction of the divisional command post at 1432 by a dozen 1000lb rocket bombs was the final straw that precipitated their rout. Victory in Sicily heralded the opportunity for the main body of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet carriers to be dispersed to other fronts, but there were a number of matters in Italy to be wrapped up prior to this redeployment.
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As of the beginning of 1943, the USAF deploys 25,684 combat aircraft (+ 15,972 USN), the RAF 18,432 (+ 7486 RN), the Soviet Union 16,562, the Luftwaffe 15,948 (+ 1117 Kriegsmarine), the IJAF 7627 (+ 5246 IJN), Italy 4925 and Austria-Hungary 3629.

1/1/1943 World's Largest Air Forces

1.) USA: 56742
2.) Britain: 25964
3.) Soviet Union: 20034
4.) Germany: 19623
5.) Japan: 8922
6.) Italy: 6870
7.) Austria-Hungary: 5327
8.) Canada: 4192
9.) Free France: 3636
10.) Australia: 2459

1/1/1943 World's Largest Armies

1.) Soviet Union: 12,547,000/564 divisions
2.) Germany: 7,835,362/356 divisions
3.) USA: 7,798,593/183 divisions
4.) China: 5,688,000/525 divisions
5.) British India: 4,892,000/72 divisions
6.) Britain: 4,629,783/93 divisions
7.) Japan: 4,257,000/162 divisions
8.) Austria-Hungary: 2,896,255/110 divisions
9.) Canada: 2,689,523/32 divisions
10.) Italy: 2,558,752/86 divisions

Battle of the Atlantic

U-Boat Production
1939: 50
1940: 143
1941: 267
1942: 329

Ships/Tonnage Sunk by U-Boats
1939: 228 ships/775,000t
1940: 1121 ships/5,963,000t
1941: 853 ships/4,544,000t
1942: 1092 ships/5,827,000t

U-Boat Losses
1939: 22
1940: 98
1941: 105
1942: 173

British Shipbuilding
1939: 467,258t (Sep-Dec)
1940: 3,289,425t
1941: 4,578,536t
1942: 5,236,897t

Canadian Shipbuilding
1939: 123,956t (Sep-Dec)
1940: 694,231t
1941: 1,362,830t
1942: 2,248,435t

US Shipbuilding
1939: 392,108t (Sep-Dec)
1940: 2,546,330t
1941: 5,247,886t
1942: 12,855,379t

Simon Darkshade · Post by **Simon Darkshade** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:14 pm

jemhouston wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:04 pm Interesting times, thank for posting.

You are very welcome as always. I thought that putting up WW1, Interwar and 3.5 years of WW2 would provide a bit of meat to chew upon. There is a lot of background material I want to add and can use to answer any specific queries.

History, Politics And Current Affairs

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