Cold, wet, nasty weather. My back is ‘talking to me’…
Went to bed early last night, but I’ll leave you with this, from a discussion in one of the Navy forums about how ‘successful’ carriers are, and whether or not they were worth the ‘price’…
Considering the prime directive, if you will, of the US Navy is protection of the Sea Lines Of Communication (SLOCs), which means the shipping lanes anywhere in the world that serve the USA. The secondary mission is power projection in support of our various treaty partners and our folks stationed overseas.
Nuff said…
Out of interest, why is HMS Queen Elizabeth not included in the list?
I wondered that also.
Is Queen Elizabeth fully operational yet?
She was ‘commissioned into the Fleet in December and is currently carrying out jet trials.’. Over to you naval types for clarification but as a landlubber I’d assume she’s not yet fully operational
Russia’s have to be towed. How the mighty have fallen.
The question of ‘how long with a carrier last’ during a war has been a present argument since they converted the USS Langley. Despite the nay sayers, and the expense, they remain key to the US national maritime strategy. The fact that something that big actually floats and works as advertised is a constant mystery to me.
I did a red cell on the Connie and the Shitty Kitty many years ago when I was in the business of doing those sorts of things. It showed security weaknesses and hopefully fixed them. Both of those flat-tops are now razor blades, but you take my point. They do what they were intended to do. Americans build them (and their air wings) and ride on them. But complacency (as the Japanese learned at Midway) has no place on an aircraft carrier.
Being a former Naval officer who served on carriers but not an expert on strategy or tactics, I can tell you this. We have been able to project our power around the world for the past eighty years with our aircraft carriers. It is entirely possible that in a major global conflict that we would quickly lose them all. However, we would have struck first by being in range of the enemy and meanwhile, for eighty years we have been able to be where we needed to be when we needed to be there. I can’t think of another method that would have allowed us to respond so quickly and effectively to issues around the world in that time period. Certainly not static bases which would be both dependent on other countries’ approval and would be just as vulnerable (if not more so) to attack and destruction in the event of major conflict.
Brazil, Italy, Spain, India, Thailand – who knew?
And it seems weird for the Royal Navy NOT to have a carrier named Ark Royal …
Bad/et al- She’s not operational, so she isn’t on the list.
LL- Yep, And the GW fire a couple of years ago re enforced that…
Herso- Thank you! My ‘one’ short tour, I was a PC on the deck, so I had even less view than you did.
BP- Agreed!
The graphic left off Japan’s ‘Helicopter Destroyers. Two Hyūga class, equivalent to Italy’s carrier, and two Izumo-class, which are about 50% larger than the Hyūga class.
Funny, but all 4 of Japan’s were commissioned as helicopter destroyers with the mission of sea control. The Izumo class began redesign to ‘allow’ them to fly F-35Bs in 2016, and authorization to do so came in 2018. It’s like, gosh, the carriers, oops, I mean destroyers were designed to launch and land VTOL jets as all that needed to be done was to fire/heat proof the deck… Tricky Japanese.
Though Communist China has some landing ships that effectively qualify as flattops, though the top is only to the rear of the bridge, mast and funnel. But then again, we have at least 8 ships that have only a large ‘helo’ pad with huge ‘helo’ storage, so add some anti-heat mats and we have even more deck space.
Carrier wars. Very interesting.
And we now find out that Communist China used shoddy construction techniques when making their spoil islands in the Spratleys, so their ‘fixed’ carriers are falling apart. Oh, bad, soooo… sad.
Here, let me get out the world’s tiniest violin…
As a committed landlubber, I can only heed the counsel of those who understand these things.
Beans- Yeah, if you want to go down that far, that is true.
TOS- LOL
WSF- 🙂