Hybrid Aircraft Carriers
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HYBRID AIRCRAFT CARRIERS More Fanciful Than Practical… …But a Concept That Still Intrigues ~ BACKGROUND ~ In the early 19 th and 20 th centuries, battleships, which were often referred to as capital or ‘big gun’ ships, were a symbol of naval dominance and a source of national pride. For several decades they played an important role in the projection of sea power. No self-respecting world power’s navy was considered complete without having at least one battleship. Then along came naval aviation and eventually the cataclysmic events in naval history that transpired in 1941/942. Such as the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the sinking of two British capital ships a few days afterwards and the Battle of Midway; amongst other events in which air power reigned supreme. At first relegated to a support role…scouting for battle fleets…eventually the aircraft carrier replaced the battleship as the symbolic capital ship in numerous navies. But during a lengthy and often contested transition period, ‘battleship admirals’ resisted that shift and only grudgingly agreed to experiment with a curious combination of ship types that were dubbed hybrids. Several nations participated in what ultimately proved to be an ill-advised and largely unworkable way to wage war by incorporating aircraft carrying capabilities into the designs of traditional ‘big gun’ ships…and also submersibles. ~ EARLY EXPERIMENTS ~ In the early 20 th century, several world powers demonstrated that aircraft could take off and land at sea, using improvised platforms temporarily mounted on existing warships. One of the first, if not the first, was the United States Navy. The birth of naval aviation in America took place on November 14, 1910, when a civilian aviator flew his flimsy airframe from an anchored cruiser’s improvised flight deck. This noteworthy event was followed two months later when that same daring pilot landed on another anchored US Navy warship, temporarily modified for the purpose of demonstrating the feasibility of shipboard aircraft operations. Aircraft operations conducted from ships while underway commenced in 1912, when an aircraft flew off a temporary platform mounted on the bow of a British cruiser. The world’s first air raid conducted by naval forces was made in 1914 by four amphibian aircraft supported by a Japanese seaplane tender. Interestingly, Japan was a member of the allies in World War I, and that historic attack was made against an Austro-Hungarian cruiser and a German gunboat. However, neither vessel was hit. The first ‘true’ aircraft carrier was HMS ARGUS; commissioned in 1918. Originally slated to be an Italian ocean liner, World War I prevented her being completed in that configuration by her British shipbuilders. Instead, she became a Royal Navy flush-deck carrier. ARGUS was often derisively called a ‘covered wagon’ before she proved her worth in World War II. But such ships, capable of launching and recovering aircraft at sea were at first only considered as support ships for fleets of ‘big gun’ warships. Then, someone in the Royal Navy came up with the idea of combining the capabilities of ‘battlewagons’ with ‘covered wagons’. 2 ~ HMS FURIOUS…FIRST OF THE HYBRIDS ~ HMS FURIOUS and two ‘half-sister’ ships, as designed, were intended to be lightly protected, high speed battlecruisers. With a length of 786.75 feet and a beam of 88 feet, they were expected to displace a calculated 22,890 tons at full load. They were the first large British warships to have geared turbines, and were expected to attain a maximum speed of 31.5 knots. HMS GLORIOUS and COURAGEOUS (below), as completed, were fitted with a main armament of four, 15-inch naval rifles. FURIOUS, however, initially had installed two massive 18.1-inch guns mounted in two single turrets; one forward and one aft; hence the three ships’ designation as ‘half-sisters’. Shortly after completion, FURIOUS returned to her builder’s yard, when her forward gun turret was removed and replaced with an aircraft hanger and a 228 foot long flight deck that was 50 feet wide. The hangar was capable of storing ten aircraft. A crane was utilized to lift aircraft from the hangar to the flight deck. The ship was assigned several floatplanes, which utilized a wheeled trolly that ran on a track down the centerline of the vessel’s flight deck for take-off. Commissioned in June of 1917, FURIOUS…first of the hybrid aircraft carriers…initially used the crane to recover aircraft after they landed alongside her. But that practice proved to be unworkable in rough seas. On August 2, 1917, a never-before attempted maneuver was tried. The idea was to land on the vessel’s flight deck by flying alongside the ship and side-slipping around the ship’s superstructure and onto the flight deck. A Sopwith Camel fitted with conventional landing gear and being flown by Squadron Commander E. H. Dunning approached the ship, moving slowly forward along its starboard side. FURIOUS was steaming at 26 knots with a 21-knot headwind over its flight deck. 3 As a result, Commander Dunning’s aircraft could essentially hover alongside FURIOUS. When he adroitly maneuvered sideways and over the flight deck, members of the ship’s crew, served as an impromptu human arresting gear system; risking life and limb to grab the aircraft’s structure and help settle it into what was the world’s first ever landing on a moving ship. Tragically, five days later, when attempting to repeat his feat, the engine on Commander Dunning’s airplane stalled. He crashed into the sea and drowned. Soon thereafter the FURIOUS received another major modification. Near the end of 1917, her aft gun turret was removed and replaced by a 300 foot long landing deck; surmounted by a second hangar. Two aircraft elevators, called ‘lifts’ by the British, were installed, one for each hanger. Her superstructure and funnel were left intact, but were flanked on either side by narrow aircraft taxi strips that connected the landing deck, aft and the take-off deck, forward. 4 However, turbulance generated by the ship’s superstructure and single centerline funnel while underway at high speed made landing on FURIOUS’ aft flight deck hazardous. Another disarming factor was the relative shortness of the landing area. A contraption that consisted of suspended vertical wires had to be installed to prevent any aircraft missing the ship’s primative arresting gear from crashing into the large funnel. Nevertheless, Britian’s hybrid aircraft carrier and her embarked squadrons made history on July 19, 1918, when they made the world’s first carrier-based air strike. Their mission, to bomb a German Zeppelin base was a success; albeit only resulting in minor damage to the German installation. A few months later, at the end of World War I, FURIOUS was laid up. Economic considerations precluded the construction of a full-fledged carrier. Rather than scrapping her, the Royal Navy modifed not only her, but also converted her two half-sisters from their original configurations as battle cruisers to become true aircraft carriers, as depicted below. FURIOUS survived World War II, only to be scrapped in 1948. COURAGEOUS and GLORIOUS were both sunk during the early years of the war; in 1939 and 1940, respectively. ~ FLYING-DECK CRUISERS ~ The Washington Naval Treaty, which was a multi-nation agreement created after World War I to limit the size of the world’s navies, had a great deal to do with the US Navy toying with the concept of ‘Flying-Deck Cruiser’. So did the reluctance of America’s battleship admirals to accept aircraft carriers that could not defend themselves if engaged in combat with powerful enemy surface ships. Thus was conceived the idea of a hybrid vessel of approximately 10,000 tons displacement (to meet treaty limitations) that had the attributes of a cruiser and a carrier. Such a vessel would have been about 650 feet long. The forward half of the vessel was to be fitted with one or more large caliper gun turrets. The after half was to have a 350 foot long flight deck atop a hangar capable of handling twenty-four aircraft, plus a starboard side island that included uptakes from the ship’s boilers; see the c.1930s design drawing, top of the next page. 5 No flying-deck cruisers were ever built by the United States. Instead, two battle cruisers under construction were modified extensively to create the large carriers LEXINGTON (CV-2) and SARATOGA (CV-3). Although they were ‘pure’ aircraft carriers, the Navy brass was not convinced that their aircraft, alone could adequately protect them from a surface attack. So, initially they were fitted with four large gun turrets, resulting in a so-called ‘half-hybrid’ design. These turrets were each fitted with two, eight-inch naval rifles and placed along the starboard side of the ships’ flight decks; two forward and two aft of massive island structures. The eight-inch guns were intended to provide as a means of repelling surface ship attacks. They could not be sufficiently elevated to ward off dive bombers, plus their large caliber design would have made them ineffective against such targets. In addition, the positioning of the original gun turrets made firing to the port side difficult, especially when aiming at surface targets at close range. Plus, the muzzle blast from any such attempt would have easily damaged embarked aircraft and the flight decks’ wooden sheathing. During World War II, both carriers had these large-bore gun turrets replaced by dual-purpose, five inch weapons more suitable for antiaircraft purposes. 6 ~ STILL-BORN BATTLESHIP/CARRIER HYBRIDS ~ At least two other nations considered the idea of building or modifying battleships that incorporated aircraft carrier capabilities.