WI: on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turns USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexin

[salvare7097]

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.

 
General characteristics:


Displacement: 36,000 long tons (37,000 t) (standard)

Length: 888 ft (270.7 m) (oa)

Beam: 106 ft (32.3 m)

Draft: 30 ft 5 in (9.3 m) (deep load)

Installed power:16 water-tube boilers providing

180,000 shp (130,000 kW)

Propulsion:

4 shafts

4 sets turbo-electric transmission

Speed: 34.5 knots (63.9 km/h; 39.7 mph) (actual)

Range: 10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)

Complement: 2,791 (including aviation personnel), 1942

Armament: 12 × twin 5 in (127 mm) AA guns





Armor

Belt: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)

Deck: 0.75–2 in (19–51 mm)

Gun turrets: 0.75 in (19 mm)

Bulkheads: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)

Aircraft carried: 90

Aviation facilities:

1 × Aircraft catapult

2 × Elevators

[lordroel]

Dec 26, 2022 6:52:00 GMT salvare7097 said:

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.

View Attachment 
General characteristics:


Displacement: 36,000 long tons (37,000 t) (standard)

Length: 888 ft (270.7 m) (oa)

Beam: 106 ft (32.3 m)

Draft: 30 ft 5 in (9.3 m) (deep load)

Installed power:16 water-tube boilers providing

180,000 shp (130,000 kW)

Propulsion:

4 shafts

4 sets turbo-electric transmission

Speed: 34.5 knots (63.9 km/h; 39.7 mph) (actual)

Range: 10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)

Complement: 2,791 (including aviation personnel), 1942

Armament: 12 × twin 5 in (127 mm) AA guns





Armor

Belt: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)

Deck: 0.75–2 in (19–51 mm)

Gun turrets: 0.75 in (19 mm)

Bulkheads: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)

Aircraft carried: 90

Aviation facilities:

1 × Aircraft catapult

2 × Elevators

Interesting, two more fleet carriers give Nimitz some more room until the first Essex come online.

[miletus12]

Dec 26, 2022 8:42:40 GMT lordroel said:

Dec 26, 2022 6:52:00 GMT salvare7097 said:

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.

Interesting, two more fleet carriers give Nimitz some more room until the first Essex come online.

This variation on the theme would be more interesting if the Moffett proposed solution to the parity argument between the Americans and the British in 1922 would have been more of a "we will settle for battleship parity at 12/12 and let you keep your battlecruisers, too, but insist that for nixing our battlecruisers and accepting cruiser inferiority that we build all six of our Lexingtons as aircraft carriers to match the RN's own total of 6 existent or planned hulls instead of the 2 as proposed in the WNT." 

The reason for this variation is to give the Lexingtons the actual time to practice their tradecraft. One of the chief complaints about American aircraft carrier operations of the era, was that each aircraft carrier did its own thing and there was no "fleet way" or standard on how to do things. This meant that massing for effects was not possible before 1944 since no more than 2 flattops ever were available for a fleet problem in the 1930s. The aircraft carriers were usually 2 on 1 or 1 on 1 in these kriegspiels. It was not possible to work out how to air traffic control a multicarrier strike package aloft before 1944.

The British, who were incompetent aircraft carrier handlers before late 1942, were able to wargame multiple carriers before the USN could as they staged their own wartime exercises just before their famous Pedestal Convoy victory, based entirely on hard won American experience at Coral Sea and Midway. The British were not forced to throw unready units helter skelter into battle constantly (USS Hornet at Midway for example.) against the best aircraft carrier operators afloat.  

With six flattops in the fleet problems, working out things like how to stack a strike aloft quickly and how to assign combat air patrols would have been solved in peacetime, instead of waiting for the Japanese to teach it to us the hard way.  Mistakes, like operating out of mutual support, or using divided command; would have been avoided at Midway and Coral Sea, and idiots like Marc Mitscher, Stanhope Ring, Leigh Noyes and the expletive deleted Miles Browning and equally expletive deleted John Tower and incompetent Charles Parnell would have been dismissed or forcibly removed before they costed the USN 5 flattops and killed 1,000 pilots.

Just dropping in 3 aircraft carriers was not enough. The same 1930s lack of experience problems give the same USN 1942-1944 results. You need that 1930s training time massed aircraft carriers against massed aircraft carrierss in the fleet problems, or the IJN just racks up the same USN kill counts.                    


 

[salvare7097]

Dec 26, 2022 9:14:54 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 26, 2022 8:42:40 GMT lordroel said:

Interesting, two more fleet carriers give Nimitz some more room until the first Essex come online.

This variation on the theme would be more interesting if the Moffett proposed solution to the parity argument between the Americans and the British in 1922 would have been more of a "we will settle for battleship parity at 12/12 and let you keep your battlecruisers, too, but insist that for nixing our battlecruisers and accepting cruiser inferiority that we build all six of our Lexingtons as aircraft carriers to MATCH the RN's own total of 6 existent or planned hulls instead of the 2 as proposed. 

The reason for this variation is to give the Lexingtons the actual time to practice their trade. One of the chief complaints about American aircraft carrier operations of the era, was that each aircraft carrier did its own thing and there was no "fleet way" or standard on how to do things. This meant that massing for effects was not possible before 1944 since no more than 2 flattops ever were available for a fleet problem in the 1930s. The aircraft carriers were usually 2 on 1 or 1 on 1 in these kriegspiels. It was not possible to work out how to air traffic control a multicarrier strike package aloft before 1944.

The British, who were incompetent aircraft carrier handlers before late 1942, were able to wargame multiple carriers before the USN could as they staged their own wartime exercises just before their famous Pedestal Convoy victory, based entirely on hard won American experience at Coral Sea and Midway. The British were not forced to throw unready units helter skelter into battle constantly (USS Hornet at Midway for example.) against the best aircraft carrier operators afloat.  

With six flattops in the fleet problems, working out things like how to stack a strike aloft quickly and how to assign combat air patrols would have been solved in peacetime instead of waiting for the Japanese to teach it to us the hard way.  Mistakes like operating out of mutual support or using divided command would have been avoided at Midway and Coral Sea, and idiots like Marc Mitscher, Stanhope Ring, Leigh Noyes and expletive deleted Miles Browning and equally expletive deleted John Tower and incompetent Charles Parnell would have been dismissed or forcibly removed before they cost the USN 5 flattops and killed 1,000 pilots.

                 


 

part of what makes this so interesting for me, at least is the shock factor for the Japanese. Americas had hidden away three very large fleet carriers out of nowhere. What else are they hiding? It’s the uncertainty fact and I find personally fascinating, on both sides. Because the Navy is going to wonder where on earth did Wasp Ranger and Langley go? I wonder do they get worked up in time for coral sea? I think I could definitely make midway. if it even happens.

Your variation is also quite fascinating. Another POD I had personally toyed with is Moffett surviving, somehow managing to get strategic air from the army(possibly buy arguing that power projection is inherently part of the navy’s mission) and becoming CNO where he had then has king succeed him 38. He may have been a bastard and a hard ass, but incompetent he is not. I personally blame drumbeat, and everything wrong with the United States Navy from the mid thirties to six months after he was no longer chief of naval operations on Stark.

[miletus12]

Dec 26, 2022 9:27:28 GMT salvare7097 said:

part of what makes this so interesting for me, at least is the shock factor for the Japanese. Americas had hidden away three very large fleet carriers out of nowhere. What else are they hiding? It’s the uncertainty fact and I find personally fascinating, on both sides. Because the Navy is going to wonder where on earth did Wasp Ranger and Langley go? I wonder do they get worked up in time for coral sea? I think I could definitely make midway. if it even happens.

Part of the problem is that historically the Japanese kill the USS Langley as part of the ABDA debacle. That is February 27, 1942. She was a seaplane tender at the time and was in the wrong place because of a certain idiot by the name of Conrad Helfich.

USS Wasp in April 1942 was making club runs to Malta. She was needed there, though the British wasted both club runs by letting the Spitfires she delivered be slaughtered on the ground as they landed at Malta.

USS Ranger in April of 1942 was delivering P-40s to the British in Ghana for eventual transhipment and use in Egypt. Prior to that, she was fighting in the South Atlantic trying to keep the convoy routes to the British desert army open since the British were losing the U-boat war there. She was extremely busy as was the USS Wasp. The British wanted her for the Indian Ocean to fight alongside Somerville to stop Nagumo. Rossevelt politely told the British RN to go pound coconuts, since USS Ranger was too valuable where she was. If Somerville had lost her the way he lost HMS Hermes, then there would have been no TORCH or TORCH would have been delayed until enough CVEs could be built to replace her.

Turning USS Langley into a Lexington would have been interesting in light of where she was attacked. (See Map.)

USS Langley was sunk about 240 km south of Tjilatjap, Java. You can see the general area of operations in the above map.

The 16 Bettys that attacked her would have confronted a full US fighter squadron in a classic land planes vs USN fighter CAP. I do not know the outcome for certain but in those waters, I think USS Langley would have survived and none of those G4s would have seen home again.

It is also possible that Somerville would have had the USS Langley with him in April 1942. That would have been not too good as Somerville was reckless and incompetent in his interactions with Nagumo during the Easter Fiasco off Sri Lanka. Maybe the USS Langley would have survived the debacle by sheer luck as the HMS Indomitable and HMS Formidable did.  

Dec 26, 2022 9:27:28 GMT salvare7097 said:

Your variation is also quite fascinating. Another POD I had personally toyed with is Moffett surviving, somehow managing to get strategic air from the army(possibly buy arguing that power projection is inherently part of the navy’s mission) and becoming CNO where he had then has king succeed him 38. He may have been a bastard and a hard ass, but incompetent he is not. I personally blame drumbeat, and everything wrong with the United States Navy from the mid thirties to six months after he was no longer chief of naval operations on Stark.

You are not wrong about Stark. Sometimes I think FDR should have fired him immediately after he, Stark, mishandled the Two Ocean Navy Bill build program as CNO. But that was peacetime and it took until April 1942 and a bollixed war before FDR figured things out about that cretin. 

Moffett surviving would have its pluses and minuses. Maybe he could have wrested the air component away from the army, which would have saved the American armed forces considerable grief down to the present, but there was Billy Mitchell in that way. Admiral Billy Mitchell just does not seem possible. Plus Moffett had a dirigible fetish. It is what got him killed after all.  
 

[salvare7097]

Dec 26, 2022 10:00:26 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 26, 2022 9:27:28 GMT salvare7097 said:

part of what makes this so interesting for me, at least is the shock factor for the Japanese. Americas had hidden away three very large fleet carriers out of nowhere. What else are they hiding? It’s the uncertainty fact and I find personally fascinating, on both sides. Because the Navy is going to wonder where on earth did Wasp Ranger and Langley go? I wonder do they get worked up in time for coral sea? I think I could definitely make midway. if it even happens.

Part of the problem is that historically the Japanese kill the USS Langley as part of the ABDA debacle. That is February 27, 1942. She was a seaplane tender at the time and was in the wrong place because of a certain idiot by the name of Conrad Helfich.

USS Wasp in April 1942 was making club runs to Malta. She was needed there, though the British wasted both club runs by letting the Spitfires she delivered be slaughtered on the ground as they landed at Malta.

USS Ranger in April of 1942 was delivering P-40s to the British in Ghana for eventual transhipment and use in Egypt. Prior to that, she was fighting in the South Atlantic trying to keep the convoy routes to the British desert army open since the British were losing the U-boat war there. She was extremely busy as was the USS Wasp. The British wanted her for the Indian Ocean to fight alongside Somerville to stop Nagumo. Rossevelt politely told the British RN to go pound coconuts, since USS Ranger was too valuable where she was. If Somerville had lost her the way he lost HMS Hermes, then there would have been no TORCH or TORCH would have been delayed until enough CVEs could be built to replace her.

Turning USS Langley into a Lexington would have been interesting in light of where she was attacked. (See Map.)

USS Langley was sunk about 240 km south of Tjilatjap, Java. You can see the general area of operations in the above map.

The 16 Bettys that attacked her would have confronted a full US fighter squadron in a classic land planes vs USN fighter CAP. I do not know the outcome for certain but in those waters, I think USS Langley would have survived and none of those G4s would have seen home again.

It is also possible that Somerville would have had the USS Langley with him in April 1942. That would have been not too good as Somerville was reckless and incompetent in his interactions with Nagumo during the Easter Fiasco off Sri Lanka. Maybe the USS Langley would have survived the debacle by sheer luck as the HMS Indomitable and HMS Formidable did.  
 

She also doesn’t have a full crew remember. The British of all people will probably understand the need to work up the ships. They are also gonna need some time to work up. Yes, she has a cadre so the time will be reduced. they’re probably reentering the fleet late February early March. This happens on January 1. So Langley has either not yet or just arrived at Australia. The interesting parts start with coral sea with an additional Lexington’s worth of aircraft we’re probably not losing lax herself. She’s still probably damaged so back to the United States for her for repairs. Meanwhile, the Japanese are very confused. The Americans suddenly have five Lexington class carriers instead of two.

Dec 26, 2022 10:00:26 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 26, 2022 9:27:28 GMT salvare7097 said:

Your variation is also quite fascinating. Another POD I had personally toyed with is Moffett surviving, somehow managing to get strategic air from the army(possibly buy arguing that power projection is inherently part of the navy’s mission) and becoming CNO where he had then has king succeed him 38. He may have been a bastard and a hard ass, but incompetent he is not. I personally blame drumbeat, and everything wrong with the United States Navy from the mid thirties to six months after he was no longer chief of naval operations on Stark.

You are not wrong about Stark. Sometimes I think FDR should have fired him immediately after he, Stark, mishandled the Two Ocean Navy Bill build program as CNO. But that was peacetime and it took until April 1942 and a bollixed war before FDR figured things out about that cretin. 

Moffett surviving would have its pluses and minuses. Maybe he could have wrested the air component away from the army, which would have saved the American armed forces considerable grief down to the present, but there was Billy Mitchell in that way. Admiral Billy Mitchell just does not seem possible. Plus Moffett had a dirigible fetish. It is what got him killed after all.  

I think that the more political officers might be forced out(Mitchell, hap Arnold). There’s also a quite likely possibility that the Navy views strategic air differently than the army. I don’t think that the Navy would go with Douhet’s theories on terror bombing. Not for any moral reasons. I just don’t think the Navy would his arguments persuasive. They focus more on key points, industrial centers and waterways. they also look at you proposing to send a bomber out unescorted the same way they look at someone proposing to send a capital ship out unescorted. There’s also the thing that Moffett instilled in all navy’s aviators i.e. their navy first in the navy and an aviator second. Re: Moffett and dirigibles. him surviving might actually make him realize that dirigibles aren’t as useful as he thought they’re useful just not as much as he thought. This is starting to get off topic.

[stevep]

Dec 26, 2022 9:27:28 GMT salvare7097 said:

Dec 26, 2022 9:14:54 GMT miletus12 said:

This variation on the theme would be more interesting if the Moffett proposed solution to the parity argument between the Americans and the British in 1922 would have been more of a "we will settle for battleship parity at 12/12 and let you keep your battlecruisers, too, but insist that for nixing our battlecruisers and accepting cruiser inferiority that we build all six of our Lexingtons as aircraft carriers to MATCH the RN's own total of 6 existent or planned hulls instead of the 2 as proposed. 

The reason for this variation is to give the Lexingtons the actual time to practice their trade. One of the chief complaints about American aircraft carrier operations of the era, was that each aircraft carrier did its own thing and there was no "fleet way" or standard on how to do things. This meant that massing for effects was not possible before 1944 since no more than 2 flattops ever were available for a fleet problem in the 1930s. The aircraft carriers were usually 2 on 1 or 1 on 1 in these kriegspiels. It was not possible to work out how to air traffic control a multicarrier strike package aloft before 1944.

The British, who were incompetent aircraft carrier handlers before late 1942, were able to wargame multiple carriers before the USN could as they staged their own wartime exercises just before their famous Pedestal Convoy victory, based entirely on hard won American experience at Coral Sea and Midway. The British were not forced to throw unready units helter skelter into battle constantly (USS Hornet at Midway for example.) against the best aircraft carrier operators afloat.  

With six flattops in the fleet problems, working out things like how to stack a strike aloft quickly and how to assign combat air patrols would have been solved in peacetime instead of waiting for the Japanese to teach it to us the hard way.  Mistakes like operating out of mutual support or using divided command would have been avoided at Midway and Coral Sea, and idiots like Marc Mitscher, Stanhope Ring, Leigh Noyes and expletive deleted Miles Browning and equally expletive deleted John Tower and incompetent Charles Parnell would have been dismissed or forcibly removed before they cost the USN 5 flattops and killed 1,000 pilots.

                 


 

part of what makes this so interesting for me, at least is the shock factor for the Japanese. Americas had hidden away three very large fleet carriers out of nowhere. What else are they hiding? It’s the uncertainty fact and I find personally fascinating, on both sides. Because the Navy is going to wonder where on earth did Wasp Ranger and Langley go? I wonder do they get worked up in time for coral sea? I think I could definitely make midway. if it even happens.

Your variation is also quite fascinating. Another POD I had personally toyed with is Moffett surviving, somehow managing to get strategic air from the army(possibly buy arguing that power projection is inherently part of the navy’s mission) and becoming CNO where he had then has king succeed him 38. He may have been a bastard and a hard ass, but incompetent he is not. I personally blame drumbeat, and everything wrong with the United States Navy from the mid thirties to six months after he was no longer chief of naval operations on Stark.

  miletus12's scenario is basically ASB because its an agreement that is far more bias toward the US than the OTL result.  It would not be accepted by either the UK or Japan as it would be grossly unfavourable to both.  [Even assuming that the USG would agree to such a construction policy given their wish to cut naval spending pretty much regardless of whether there was an agreement or not].

  For your scenario OP

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.

  do you mean that the excess crew required for such ships are taken from elsewhere in the USN or something different?  One other point is what aircraft they are carrying as the USN had a mix of such at the time and varied widely in performance.

  Assuming that those are resolved then it considerably improves the strength of the USN air arm although the larger ships would probably impose an additional burden in terms of supplies, especially possibly oil for the operation of the forces.  While the US has a hell of a lot of oil oilers to carry the fuel to where its needed was another issue at the time.  Especially with the USN's opposition to protecting MS during what became known as the 2nd Happy Period for the U boats which saw a hell of a lot of tankers being sunk.  However the USN could probably either make up the slack or possibly risk leaving some escort units behind.

  If that is sorted out a lot depends on where the USN use those additional ships and how things go as in 42 things were rather hit and miss and a battle could have gone either way.  However the additional strength could make say Coral Sea a bigger victory for the USN.

[miletus12]

Dec 26, 2022 20:54:01 GMT stevep said:

  miletus12's scenario is basically ASB because its an agreement that is far more bias toward the US than the OTL result.  It would not be accepted by either the UK or Japan as it would be grossly unfavourable to both.  [Even assuming that the USG would agree to such a construction policy given their wish to cut naval spending pretty much regardless of whether there was an agreement or not].

1. It costs more to scrap on the weigh than to complete on the weigh.
2. The IJN and RN were gun club addled admiralties. Moffett was a hard charger and if Hughes had not been a nitwit, there was a chance Moffett's ideas would have sold to the three chief navies. The British and Japanese were battleship centric and would have bitten on the swapout. You are looking with OUR airpower hindsight, not with the p-revailing lessons of Jutland, Julian Corbett and the Beatty fixation whose lies and alibis blinded the British or the Tsushima decisive battle nonsense which plagued the Japanese.

Dec 26, 2022 20:54:01 GMT stevep said:

Assuming that those are resolved then it considerably improves the strength of the USN air arm although the larger ships would probably impose an additional burden in terms of supplies, especially possibly oil for the operation of the forces.  While the US has a hell of a lot of oil oilers to carry the fuel to where its needed was another issue at the time.  Especially with the USN's opposition to protecting MS during what became known as the 2nd Happy Period for the U boats which saw a hell of a lot of tankers being sunk.  However the USN could probably either make up the slack or possibly risk leaving some escort units behind.

3. This you did correctly assess. An aircraft carrier of the era was simpler to build but 4X the costs (aircraft, fuel and labor) to operate as an equivalent battleship. You are wrong about fleet tankers. The USN of 1940 required 60 fleet tankers minimum for peacetime operations and 2X that for war. One of the reasons Stark was fired was because he did not propose the 200 tankers needed for the 2 Ocean navy and he sent half of the 60 the USN did have to the RN to make up their shortfall.

4. The escorts the US expected to use off its coasts were sent to escort convoys around Africa to Iran and Egypt and to escort convoys to the UK and to northern RUSSIA. When King was brought in to unsnarl Stark's stupidity, there was a full blown war on with Japan, the RN, itself, had been badly beaten in the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans and something had to give somewhere as the USN struggled to fill in the gaps where the RN had thus been badly defeated. Namely King had to rush destroyers and escorts to those areas where they were needed most, the western Pacific and to the Arctic and Indian Oceans to keep the British and Russian armies supplied and fighting.

5. If the British complained that shipping in US waters suffered from DRUMBEAT then ask them at the time why our destroyers were in the Red Sea and off the Kola Peninsula instead of off Key Biscayne? Why were we the ones doing the fighting in the Coral Sea? 

6. If there is a reluctant RN answer, it is because the British admiralty was the actual admiralty that had wasted three years losing the U-boat war, had lost the first aircraft carrier battle in history in the Indian Ocean, had mismanaged the Singapore defense, had lost two sea air battles to the Japanese during the ABDA debacle that the British alone screwed up, etc. . In mid 1942, the Americans had ceased to listen to Sir Dudley Pound and his admirals and taken matters into their own hands. Part of that seizure of responsibility was to decide which sea frontier had to be shorted so that the American escort forces went where the need for them was most critical.

King made the calculation that the North Atlantic sea frontier had to be shorted a full year of destroyers and corvettes until enough escort forces were built to replace the redeployed assets sent forward. The lighted cities issue conjoint was a purely political one that had to be POTUS handled and that one involved Unreconstructed Confederates, so it took FDR himself a while to squash them. 

So when the British complain about DRUMBEAT in American waters in 1942, ask them why the U-boats got past them in the first place? Then ask them about March 1943 when the Americans finally bore down hard in the North Atlantic.

=====================================================

Here is how we actually see things from WWII onward ... with the British and other certain nations. 

[salvare7097]

Dec 26, 2022 20:54:01 GMT stevep said:

Dec 26, 2022 9:27:28 GMT salvare7097 said:

For your scenario OP

[/div]

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.

  do you mean that the excess crew required for such ships are taken from elsewhere in the USN or something different?  One other point is what aircraft they are carrying as the USN had a mix of such at the time and varied widely in performance.

  Assuming that those are resolved then it considerably improves the strength of the USN air arm although the larger ships would probably impose an additional burden in terms of supplies, especially possibly oil for the operation of the forces.  While the US has a hell of a lot of oil oilers to carry the fuel to where its needed was another issue at the time.  Especially with the USN's opposition to protecting MS during what became known as the 2nd Happy Period for the U boats which saw a hell of a lot of tankers being sunk.  However the USN could probably either make up the slack or possibly risk leaving some escort units behind.

  If that is sorted out a lot depends on where the USN use those additional ships and how things go as in 42 things were rather hit and miss and a battle could have gone either way.  However the additional strength could make say Coral Sea a bigger victory for the USN.

[/quote]
I’m saying that the ASB is not creating people out of nothing. It is pulling people from Pearl Harbor survivors that are not injured.

[miletus12]

Dec 27, 2022 0:29:39 GMT salvare7097 said:

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.

For point of clarification, I would need to know, "ship's complement",

To be specific:

---USS Langley, as a seaplane tender, had a complement of 500 with an air division of 100 plus the PBY air and maintenance crews she would support as a tender. Figure that as 300 men additional men for an 8 plane squadron. She is the problem child here. She would need about 1,000 additional personnel, especially ship's crew and a few months to bring the air division up to scratch.
---USS Wasp, as a light aircraft carrier, had a complement of 1900 peacetime with an air division of 700 to support the 80 aircraft she operated. She might be short of ship crew but her air division would ber able to handle a Lexington air wing with no trouble at all. It was the same size.
---USS Ranger, as a small aircraft carrier, had a complement of 2,500 with an air division of 600 men in 1941. Like USS Wasp she would have no trouble handling a Lexingtom drop-in. A Lexington had a complement of 2,700 with an air division of 700 personnel.

Dec 27, 2022 0:29:39 GMT salvare7097 said:

I’m saying that the ASB is not creating people out of nothing. It is pulling people from Pearl Harbor survivors that are not injured.

Plenty of those off the swimmers who made it off the USS Shaw, USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, and the USS West Virginia, since it happened for real to bring USS Hornet and about 6 CVEs into service at that time.

Emergency measures could have inserted fill-outs into every "new Lexington" from the Pearl Harbor disaster by the beginning of February in the ship's divisions. It is the AIR DIVISIONS where we have hiccups.

Pilot shortage. About 200 pilots and aircrew.. Sorry Army Air Force, but 200 of your better pilots and aircrewmen just became MARINES. Carrier quals takes 90 days, assuming the pilots know their basic land based aircraft skills. In the meantime the deadheaders on the other flattops are parceled and shared out to bring Langley up to strength and instead of 70 birds a chicken farm, it is 60.

Types of aircraft in service.

With USS WASP and USS RANGER, the problem is fighters, dive bombers and torpedo bombers.



and



and



There are not enough Devastators to go around for that line was foolishly shut down before the Avengers were developed.

The point is to keep the "New Lexingtons" away from the Japanese until the Wildcats and Dauntlesses can flesh out the air groups. The American flying garbage in service can handle the Luftwaffe incompetents and the Italians, but not the IJNAS of 1942. Nobody could, not even with Spitfires and Warhawks.

[stevep]

Dec 26, 2022 22:53:49 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 26, 2022 20:54:01 GMT stevep said:

  miletus12's scenario is basically ASB because its an agreement that is far more bias toward the US than the OTL result.  It would not be accepted by either the UK or Japan as it would be grossly unfavourable to both.  [Even assuming that the USG would agree to such a construction policy given their wish to cut naval spending pretty much regardless of whether there was an agreement or not].

1. It costs more to scrap on the weigh than to complete on the weigh.
2. The IJN and RN were gun club addled admiralties. Moffett was a hard charger and if Hughes had not been a nitwit, there was a chance Moffett's ideas would have sold to the three chief navies. The British and Japanese were battleship centric and would have bitten on the swapout. You are looking with OUR airpower hindsight, not with the p-revailing lessons of Jutland, Julian Corbett and the Beatty fixation whose lies and alibis blinded the British or the Tsushima decisive battle nonsense which plagued the Japanese.

Dec 26, 2022 20:54:01 GMT stevep said:

Assuming that those are resolved then it considerably improves the strength of the USN air arm although the larger ships would probably impose an additional burden in terms of supplies, especially possibly oil for the operation of the forces.  While the US has a hell of a lot of oil oilers to carry the fuel to where its needed was another issue at the time.  Especially with the USN's opposition to protecting MS during what became known as the 2nd Happy Period for the U boats which saw a hell of a lot of tankers being sunk.  However the USN could probably either make up the slack or possibly risk leaving some escort units behind.

3. This you did correctly assess. An aircraft carrier of the era was simpler to build but 4X the costs (aircraft, fuel and labor) to operate as an equivalent battleship. You are wrong about fleet tankers. The USN of 1940 required 60 fleet tankers minimum for peacetime operations and 2X that for war. One of the reasons Stark was fired was because he did not propose the 200 tankers needed for the 2 Ocean navy and he sent half of the 60 the USN did have to the RN to make up their shortfall.

4. The escorts the US expected to use off its coasts were sent to escort convoys around Africa to Iran and Egypt and to escort convoys to the UK and to northern RUSSIA. When King was brought in to unsnarl Stark's stupidity, there was a full blown war on with Japan, the RN, itself, had been badly beaten in the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans and something had to give somewhere as the USN struggled to fill in the gaps where the RN had thus been badly defeated. Namely King had to rush destroyers and escorts to those areas where they were needed most, the western Pacific and to the Arctic and Indian Oceans to keep the British and Russian armies supplied and fighting.

5. If the British complained that shipping in US waters suffered from DRUMBEAT then ask them at the time why our destroyers were in the Red Sea and off the Kola Peninsula instead of off Key Biscayne? Why were we the ones doing the fighting in the Coral Sea? 

6. If there is a reluctant RN answer, it is because the British admiralty was the actual admiralty that had wasted three years losing the U-boat war, had lost the first aircraft carrier battle in history in the Indian Ocean, had mismanaged the Singapore defense, had lost two sea air battles to the Japanese during the ABDA debacle that the British alone screwed up, etc. . In mid 1942, the Americans had ceased to listen to Sir Dudley Pound and his admirals and taken matters into their own hands. Part of that seizure of responsibility was to decide which sea frontier had to be shorted so that the American escort forces went where the need for them was most critical.

King made the calculation that the North Atlantic sea frontier had to be shorted a full year of destroyers and corvettes until enough escort forces were built to replace the redeployed assets sent forward. The lighted cities issue conjoint was a purely political one that had to be POTUS handled and that one involved Unreconstructed Confederates, so it took FDR himself a while to squash them. 

So when the British complain about DRUMBEAT in American waters in 1942, ask them why the U-boats got past them in the first place? Then ask them about March 1943 when the Americans finally bore down hard in the North Atlantic.

=====================================================

Here is how we actually see things from WWII onward ... with the British and other certain nations. 

  No I'm looking at the historical facts rather than your obsession with how can the US screw everybody else - especially your pet hatred of all things British.

[miletus12]

Dec 27, 2022 15:54:36 GMT stevep said:

No I'm looking at the historical facts rather than your obsession with how can the US screw everybody else - especially your pet hatred of all things British.

Your facts are incomplete. The USG, aside from Hughes, was trying to neutralize everyone else as a threat to us. We were reading your mail and cheating as hard as you imperialist folks were as a matter of self defense.

The three governments were each for their own reasons desirous to stop an arms race, but because of our own distrust of imperialists who had started WWI and dragged us into that fight under a pack of recently exposed lies, we decided that parity was our endgoal no matter what you folks wanted.

If there was hatred in that actual historical political objective and outcome, that is your interpretation of what we actually did.

Drachinifel, who toes the usual British-biased misinterpretation of actual naval history, makes that point quite clear in spite of his own factual errors.



a. The UKG could not pay what they owed us and build a navy at the same time, because we used that debt as a lever to get them to agree to our terms.
b. We were not building 16 BBs of the South Dakota class (1920). We were building 6.
c. Congress was still on board with a navy second to none.
d. The UKG never wanted to call a disarmament conference. We called it, ourselves and forced them to it. See a. .

Note that the US initial terms, with some minor tweaks were the FINAL terms.

We got what we really wanted which were:
a. We decoupled Britain from Japan.
b. We got parity by tonnage.
c. We squashed British efforts to make "Dominion navies" separate. The Dominions did want their own navies separate. 
d. The cruiser question was a bit of a sticker, but since we wanted Britain short of trade protection in case they double-crossed us, we made sure that they never had enough heavies to thwart us. (We were allowed more; since we could outbuild the UK in this category.). .
e. Submarines. Important to us because we knew that it was how we would throttle the British or the Japanese once we figured the boats out. Pick one. It turned out that we guessed right. France is wrongly blamed for this one.   
f. We read what you guys passed around to each other. Funny thing is that you tried to read our mail and we think you might have been successful, both governments still classify this bit of espionage, but we got what we wanted more than you did anyway.

The Nelsons were given the "standard displacement" tweak. It turned out that British designers used this to cheat on torpedo defense and that might have been useful if the British had not screwed the technology choices totally up. In point of fact HMS Nelson (Operation Halberd) demonstrated that her "shock absorbers" magnified the effect of the single Italian torpedo hit that kayoed her massively far more severely than the torpedoes that failed to significantly damage the USS Saratoga (twice) or any of the American Standards who had to eat many multiples of Japanese fish to kiss mud. Bow down and barely making it to port (Gibraltar) for a patchup, she limped back to Rosyth for a 9 month mission kill repair job. She never was "right" after that one hit, being reduced to a floating battery or "monitor" for the remainder of the war. 

Facts which Drachinifel failed to mention along with other British "cheating".    

g. Aircraft carriers were where the gun clubbers were at work. They derailed Moffett. Drachinifel gets this all wrong. The British did want 5 flattops of their own. They got 6 if you count Argus, but nothing "modern" resulted from it. .And they did not have the funds interwar to replace their "experimentals" as the Slump did them in.
h. The Lexingtons were built under the "3,000 ton defense clause", which the Americans wrote, into the treaty for that reason so it was not cheating. It was "our lawyers are better than your diplomats". Note that this clause was also used on the Standards? 
i. The claim that the British knew that 25,000 tonne aircraft carriers would be better than the Lexington battlecruiser conversions is a flat out lie. Drachinifel does mention the 22,500 ton Yorktowns were arguably the best pre-war flattops ever built although I would argue the Shokakus at 33,000 were their near match on a higher tonnage, as was the Lexingtons as modified. That modification in 1941, (counterbulging) was where the cheating happened. 
j. The cleanup articles were designed to prevent the British from gifting or seizing warships built for other parties. 
k. Article 19 was the big American mistake. We should have insisted on fortification rights in our "Guano islands" and the Philippine Islands. 
l. Bookkeeeping.

Effects... 

m. USG, France and Italy did not utilize the options to the maximum.

Winners and losers:
a. Italy and France? How did that turn out? France actually lost, and Italy turned in a performance that showed they did win as a result of the treaty provisions.  
b. USG won the most from the treaty breaking the RN, and decoupling the Dominions and Japanese from the British imperialists as potential assets. 
c. Drachinifel claims the Rodneys, Hood and possible Ark Royals and the 10,000 ton cruisers were British "wins". Theory not practice are these claims as he makes them. What was the practical outcome? 
--- practicals are that Rodney and Nelson were bodged up hulks with defective guns, incompetent torpedo defense and functionally IN BATTLE they proved worse than the Standards, which after the Pearl Harbor refits proved to be much more useful than "the angry oil tankers".
--- Hood, well we know that she was sunk through misuse, misunderstanding and overall British naval incompetence at the higher command levels. She was lost through Pound's strategic and Tovey's operational bungling and not through Holland's tactical fault because he, Holland, knew and tried to fight with her as is within her defects and limitations and in the position the fools at the Brirtish admiralty put him in.   
--- British aircraft carriers?  Hermes, Eagle, Courageous, Ark Royal, Glorious lost through the same exact sheer stupidity. There is no other word for it. Indomitable and Formidable were defeated in the Easter Week debacle off Sri Lanka by utter similar blind incompetence (D. W. Boyd was the Royal Navy's Marc Mitscher and Somerville was not too good either.  M.).
--- Arguably with her geographic position and the technical opposing means available, the UK RAF and RN could have shut the U-boats down in their ports or severely restricted U-boat presence in the North Atlantic.  The British, though, did not put the air coverage effort in and the U-boats ran wild for 3 years. It was left to CANADA and the United States to put in the air cover effort, close the mid Atlantic gap and shut down the U-boats and that happened when? March 1943. A full 16 months after the US entered the war; for it took that long to clean up the naval mess the British RN made of things globally.         
        
Do I hate the RN? 

No. I do not hate the RN or the British. 

I report the actual history and results and what it costed. The British really should have urged the Americans to build those six flattops.         
 

[1bigrich]

Dec 26, 2022 6:52:00 GMT salvare7097 said:

What if on January 1st 1942 Skippy the friendly ASB turned USS Langley USS Ranger and USS Wasp into Lexington class aircraft carriers. They are in the same configuration Saratoga was post Midway. The Only Exception being twin 5/38's instead of singles. For ease of operations Skippy also gives the crews (Including aircrew) onboard the skill needed to operate said carriers on par with the crews of the other two Lexington's. However, they are not given additional crew. the Interesting thing about this is it gives Nimitz two more large flea carriers. This could potentially provide some interesting possibilities for operations.           
     

Interesting idea.

Langley was arrived in Darwin on 1 Jan 1942, so she would be out of the danger zone. As a Lexington-class she would need an air group, but she would be in the right place to participate in Coral Sea if she could get planes. Perhaps some Marine SB2U, F2A and F4F-3 could be diverted to the South Pacific for her. VMF-111, -113 and -211 were all formed on July 1st of 1941, they could be diverted to her. Similarly, VMSB-131 and -132 were created on the same date, they could give her a dive bombing compliment. see

www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Organization/USMC_Squadrons_WW2.htm

I'm not sure where we could get torpedo planes for her, unless there were excess Devastators to be had from the aircraft of the various naval districts.

Wasp and Ranger of course have their own air groups, though slightly undersized for a Lexington-class. They could go directly to combat with the aircraft they carried.  Wasp was in an overhaul on 1 Jan 1942, Ranger was patrolling the South Atlantic with Admiral Arthur Cook (Commander, Aircraft Carriers, Atlantic Fleet) on board.  

Back to Langley:  If she participates in Coral Sea, she might cost the Japanese Shokaku.   Lexington might still be lost, especially since the torpedo hit that caused the fuel leak that did her in was in the first Japanese strike on the US carriers, but the presence of another carrier might preserve Yorktown, or lessen her damage, or perhaps take some of the damage Yorktown did.  In either case, both carriers might make it Midway, in which case there may never be a Japanese counter strike to cost the US Yorktown.    Plus if both carrier are present in TF 17, there would be additional CAP, which would help with defense.  

For Ranger's historic work in the Atlantic, mostly ferrying aircraft to Africa in 1942 until Operation Torch, the Atlantic Fleet will still need a carrier, which might be Ranger or Wasp.    After Torch, I don't think there would be hesitation to send a Lexington-class to the Pacific, though the carrier battles will be past by then.   But the USN will be in a better place, and I don't think the loan of Victorious will be necessary, though the RN did get some valuable experience operating her with Saratoga.    I think one of the new Essex-class or Independence-class could take Ranger's place in Operation Tungsten.  

The Pacific carrier battles will be past until Philippine Sea in 1944, but a Ranger's presence would mean more strikes on Rabaul and other Japanese bases in the Solomons/Pacific.  

A Lexington-class Wasp would still be lost with the historic three torpedo hits, but would likely participate in Santa Cruz, as a larger ship she wouldn't be in as urgent need of refueling as the historic carrier.    A third US carrier might save Hornet, though Kinkaid had made the green Enterprise crew (she lost a lot of sailors to new ships when repaired from Eastern Solomons) responsible for CAP instead of the veterans aboard Hornet.    But additional aircraft would be more dangerous to the Japanese as well as blunt their attacks.     If Hornet and Yorktown survive, there could be some very serious carrier strikes in 1943 on Japanese bases.   

All that said, while big and powerful, the Lexingtons were far from ideal carriers.   The secondary elevator was small, and both elevators were slow.    Saratoga finished her career with the secondary elevator locked into the deck position and operated as a single elevator carrier.   In addition, their power plants were prone to losing power when they took damage.    But having three more as opposed to the historic smaller carriers would be a trade I would make, and I think the USN would welcome as well.

My thoughts, 

[miletus12]

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

Langley was arrived in Darwin on 1 Jan 1942, so she would be out of the danger zone. As a Lexington-class she would need an air group, but she would be in the right place to participate in Coral Sea if she could get planes. Perhaps some Marine SB2U, F2A and F4F-3 could be diverted to the South Pacific for her. VMF-111, -113 and -211 were all formed on July 1st of 1941, they could be diverted to her. Similarly, VMSB-131 and -132 were created on the same date, they could give her a dive bombing compliment. see

www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Organization/USMC_Squadrons_WW2.htm

I would hate to go into battle with Brewster Buffaloes and Vought Vindicators. With only 130 Devastators built, and 5 historical aircraft carriers to equip, that was 80 aircraft operationally afloat, 32 for the teaching establishment ashore and 18 for the fleet reserve. No worse than a Swordfish, these birds were still pilot suicide to fly against the Japanese. Their accident rate was fairly low, but by 1941 the 30 or so actually lost in peacetime accidents meant that the fleet reserve was gone and the shore establishment teaching units were well short of their authorized machines as they were scavenged to keep the forces afloat at full complements.

John Tower at BuAir was the reason the Avenger program was delayed by over a year. He also scorched the Douglas VTB and managed to bolo the Consolidated TBY Sea Wolf as well: which is why the British were actually in a better torpedo bomber position at the beginning of 1942 with the Albacores than the USN was with its assorted delayed birds.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

I'm not sure where we could get torpedo planes for her, unless there were excess Devastators to be had from the aircraft of the various naval districts.

There were none to be had unless you strip the Atlantic fleet.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

Wasp and Ranger of course have their own air groups, though slightly undersized for a Lexington-class. They could go directly to combat with the aircraft they carried.  Wasp was in an overhaul on 1 Jan 1942, Ranger was patrolling the South Atlantic with Admiral Arthur Cook (Commander, Aircraft Carriers, Atlantic Fleet) on board. 

Hence my previous comments about USS Ranger.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

Back to Langley:  If she participates in Coral Sea, she might cost the Japanese Shokaku.   Lexington might still be lost, especially since the torpedo hit that caused the fuel leak that did her in was in the first Japanese strike on the US carriers, but the presence of another carrier might preserve Yorktown, or lessen her damage, or perhaps take some of the damage Yorktown did.  In either case, both carriers might make it Midway, in which case there may never be a Japanese counter strike to cost the US Yorktown.    Plus if both carrier are present in TF 17, there would be additional CAP, which would help with defense.  

It has been hotly argued that the USS Lexington should have survived that torpedo hit, and that a simple ventilation mistake such as what killed the HIJMS Taiho should have been avoided. The fact remains that USS Lexington was a burnout and not a flooding. She was a scuttle. I argue that another Lexington would have been useful to chop the Japanese up in the previous air actions before the air action that got her. Takagi, Takeo had rather stupidly launched a search and strike and bungled that evolution which found the USS Neosho. On the return leg from that fiasco to mother, the Japanese flew over Fletcher weaponless, and proceeded further on; then trapped aboard late in the day on his, Takagi's flattops. He tried to stage a night or dusk attack after a hasty turnaround due to another bungled contact report Takagi received from Inoue's air recon and the late reports of his own returned fliers. The Japanese, this time out on this specific sortie, ran afoul of Aubrey Fitch's CAP which shot them up. The 11 Wildcats committed were not enough to do the job properly. 20 CAP fighters would have been better, even if half of them were Buffalos. That would have doubled the IJNAS losses in Kates and that would have saved USS Lexington the next day. C'est la guerre.

At this point it is interesting to speculate what happens next. I think Shokaku still makes it back with her bow stoved in, or she might not. Either way Cardiv 6 is still dropped from Operation MI because in a 3 on 3 revised Coral Sea, I estimate the IJNAS lose 100+ aircraft instead of the 70 they actually did. All 3 American bird farms race back to Pearl for Round 2 to join the useless Bull after his Doolittle Raid dithering foolishness, and his failed first Bull's Run to reach Coral Sea late. Nagumo, thus, sails into an even bigger buzzsaw off Midway than what happened. Yamamoto, the worst admiral of WWII, was determined to lay Midway on despite what his own people told him after Coral Sea that the USN was no joke. He even cheated on the wargame used to validate his lunatic plan. People think Midway was a miracle? It was an unending series of American bad luckisms that allowed Nagumo to last as long as he did to kill USS Yorktown. Add the "USS Langley" into the mix and Yamashita does not survive to get her.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

For Ranger's historic work in the Atlantic, mostly ferrying aircraft to Africa in 1942 until Operation Torch, the Atlantic Fleet will still need a carrier, which might be Ranger or Wasp.    After Torch, I don't think there would be hesitation to send a Lexington-class to the Pacific, though the carrier battles will be past by then.   But the USN will be in a better place, and I don't think the loan of Victorious will be necessary, though the RN did get some valuable experience operating her with Saratoga.    I think one of the new Essex-class or Independence-class could take Ranger's place in Operation Tungsten.  

USS Wasp as a Lexington has a 5 cell torpedo defense. If you remember, USS Saratoga took an atom bomb surface burst 800 feet away in a test shot? She took days to sink. I think three torpedoes were survivable. A Yorktown typically survived 5 or more such Japanese heavyweight torpedoes.

The USS Ranger was wasted on Operation Tungsten. Properly sinking the Tirpitz was always a 4 engine heavy bomber mission. That was the only aircraft that could make the repeated attacks with large enough gravity bombs to do the job. The other option, using a BAT was not possible until about the same time as the Tall Boys came into their own.



A Lexington could operate an Avenger and an Avenger could launch a BAT.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

A Lexington-class Wasp would still be lost with the historic three torpedo hits, but would likely participate in Santa Cruz, as a larger ship she wouldn't be in as urgent need of refueling as the historic carrier.    A third US carrier might save Hornet, though Kinkaid had made the green Enterprise crew (she lost a lot of sailors to new ships when repaired from Eastern Solomons) responsible for CAP instead of the veterans aboard Hornet.    But additional aircraft would be more dangerous to the Japanese as well as blunt their attacks.     If Hornet and Yorktown survive, there could be some very serious carrier strikes in 1943 on Japanese bases.   

First of all, Kincaid should have run for it and lured Nagumo and Kondo into reach of the Cactus Air Force. "Stand and fight" might seem courageous and "Bull" Halsey and all that, but there are times when playing keepaway and jabbing until the other fellow shows you his chin, a favorite Frank Jack Fletcher move, is the smart play. Spruance did that at Philippine Sea and Marc Mitscher blew it when Spruance finally gave him permission to run Ozawa down in that op.

USS Enterprise had the expletive deleted Miles Browning running her air ops during Santa Cruz despite his failures at Midway. It was not Osbourne Hardison's fault that his CoAS was a drunken incompetent moralless pile of walking manure masquerading as a man, or that Kincaid, who was aboard USS Enterprise which was his flagship, had given him, Hardison, the CAP duty knowing full well that he had a new radar crew complement that was as useless to him as Miles the not teetotaler chief of air staff. Browning was found to be drunk before, during, and after the op and it proved out that Browning had neglected the radar / signals division basic ATC training before the op. The "green" USS Enterprise crew, despite this shortcomings list, was still doing better than the supposedly Mitscher-trained and actually equally incompetent USS Hornet air control crew during this same op.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

All that said, while big and powerful, the Lexingtons were far from ideal carriers.   The secondary elevator was small, and both elevators were slow.    Saratoga finished her career with the secondary elevator locked into the deck position and operated as a single elevator carrier.   In addition, their power plants were prone to losing power when they took damage.    But having three more as opposed to the historic smaller carriers would be a trade I would make, and I think the USN would welcome as well

1. The faults were known, but C and R kept putting off modernization due to "reasons" until the war came. Once war came it was every hull forward no matter what and the full year of yard work needed to rebuild the aft elevator and modernize the forward one, to rerig the fire mains and counterbulge to correct the permanent starboard list was not possible early war. The turbo-electrics were sloppy WWI leftover shipbuilding from the weighs forward. Get them wet and the generators (dynamos actually) packed it in. This was corrected after USS Lexington lost power at Coral Sea and was scuttled. The USS Saratoga was better waterproofed in her various refits and repairs between her war-ops.

2. More "New Lexingtons" would have an interesting effect on aircraft procurement. USS Ranger was originally not supposed to have torpedo bombers. The idea at the time, was that dedecking (around 1930) was more useful than flood out, so pack in dive bombers. Well, that was wrong at the time, and USS Ranger was expensively refitted in 1941 to carry torpedo bombers; but wrong decisions initially tend to have a stupid steps forward effect in that when the USN finally got around to fielding a modern air dropped torpedo from a modern torpedo plane, the torpedo was badly built, the drop method was incompetent, the torpedo plane was grossly underpowered and the numbers ordered of both were not enough to ensure any plausible mission success. Twice as many Devastators would barely have sufficed for the 5 actual flattops, much less the 8 hypotheticals we would have had (6 Lexes and 2 Yorkies) in 1941.

M.

[salvare7097]

Dec 27, 2022 20:58:59 GMT miletus12 said:

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

Langley was arrived in Darwin on 1 Jan 1942, so she would be out of the danger zone. As a Lexington-class she would need an air group, but she would be in the right place to participate in Coral Sea if she could get planes. Perhaps some Marine SB2U, F2A and F4F-3 could be diverted to the South Pacific for her. VMF-111, -113 and -211 were all formed on July 1st of 1941, they could be diverted to her. Similarly, VMSB-131 and -132 were created on the same date, they could give her a dive bombing compliment. see

www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Organization/USMC_Squadrons_WW2.htm

I would hate to go into battle with Brewster Buffaloes and Vought Vindicators. With only 130 Devastators built, and 5 historical aircraft carriers to equip, that was 80 aircraft operationally afloat, 32 for the teaching establishment ashore and 18 for the fleet reserve. No worse than a Swordfish, these birds were still pilot suicide to fly against the Japanese. Their accident rate was fairly low, but by 1941 the 30 or so actually lost in peacetime accidents meant that the fleet reserve was gone and the shore establishment teaching units were well short of their authorized machines as they were scavenged to keep the forces afloat at full complements.

John Tower at BuAir was the reason the Avenger program was delayed by over a year. He also scorched the Douglas VTB and managed to bolo the Consolidated TBY Sea Wolf as well: which is why the British were actually in a better torpedo bomber position at the beginning of 1942 with the Albacores than the USN was with its assorted delayed birds.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

I'm not sure where we could get torpedo planes for her, unless there were excess Devastators to be had from the aircraft of the various naval districts.

There were none to be had unless you strip the Atlantic fleet.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

Wasp and Ranger of course have their own air groups, though slightly undersized for a Lexington-class. They could go directly to combat with the aircraft they carried.  Wasp was in an overhaul on 1 Jan 1942, Ranger was patrolling the South Atlantic with Admiral Arthur Cook (Commander, Aircraft Carriers, Atlantic Fleet) on board. 

Hence my previous comments about USS Ranger.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

Back to Langley:  If she participates in Coral Sea, she might cost the Japanese Shokaku.   Lexington might still be lost, especially since the torpedo hit that caused the fuel leak that did her in was in the first Japanese strike on the US carriers, but the presence of another carrier might preserve Yorktown, or lessen her damage, or perhaps take some of the damage Yorktown did.  In either case, both carriers might make it Midway, in which case there may never be a Japanese counter strike to cost the US Yorktown.    Plus if both carrier are present in TF 17, there would be additional CAP, which would help with defense.  

It has been hotly argued that the USS Lexington should have survived that torpedo hit, and that a simple ventilation mistake such as what killed the HIJMS Taiho should have been avoided. The fact remains that USS Lexington was a burnout and not a flooding. She was a scuttle. I argue that another Lexington would have been useful to chop the Japanese up in the previous air actions before the air action that got her. Takagi, Takeo had rather stupidly launched a search and strike and bungled that evolution which found the USS Neosho. On the return leg from that fiasco to mother, the Japanese flew over Fletcher weaponsles, and proceeded further then trapped aboard late in the day on his, Takagi's flattops. He tried to stage a night or dusk attack after a hasty turnaround due to another bungled contact report from Inoue's air recon and the late reports of his own returned fliers. The Japanese this time out on this specific sortie ran afoul of Aubrey Fitch's CAP which shot them up. The 11 Wildcats committed were not enough to do the job properly. 20 CAP fighters would have been better, even if half of them were Buffalos. That would have doubled the IJNAS losses in Kates and that would have saved USS Lexington the next day. C'est la guerre.

At this point it is interesting to speculate what happens next. I think Shokaku still makes it back with her bow stoved in, or she might not. Either way Cardiv 6 is still dropped from Operation MI because in a 3 on 3 revised Coral Sea, I estimate the IJNAS lose 100+ aircraft instead of the 70 they actually did. All 3 American bird farms race back to Pearl for Round 2 to join the useless Bull after his Doolittle Raid dithering foolishness, and his failed first Bull's Run to reach Coral Sea late. Nagumo, thus, sails into an even bigger buzzsaw off Midway than what happened. Yamamoto, the worst admiral of WWII, was determined to lay Midway on despite what his own people told him after Coral Sea that the USN was no joke. He even cheated on the wargame used to validate his lunatic plan. People think Midway was a miracle? It was an unending series of American bad luckisms that allowed Nagumo to last as long as he did to kill USS Yorktown. Add the "USS Langley" into the mix and Yamashita does not survive to get her.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

For Ranger's historic work in the Atlantic, mostly ferrying aircraft to Africa in 1942 until Operation Torch, the Atlantic Fleet will still need a carrier, which might be Ranger or Wasp.    After Torch, I don't think there would be hesitation to send a Lexington-class to the Pacific, though the carrier battles will be past by then.   But the USN will be in a better place, and I don't think the loan of Victorious will be necessary, though the RN did get some valuable experience operating her with Saratoga.    I think one of the new Essex-class or Independence-class could take Ranger's place in Operation Tungsten.  

USS Wasp as a Lexington has a 5 cell torpedo defense. If you remember, USS Saratoga took an atom bomb surface burst 800 feet away in a test shot? She took days to sink. I think three torpedoes were survivable. A Yorktown typically survived 5 or more such Japanese heavyweight torpedoes.

The USS Ranger was wasted on Operation Tungsten. Properly sinking the Tirpitz was always a 4 engine heavy bomber mission. That was the only aircraft that could make the repeated attacks with large enough gravity bombs to do the job. The other option, using a BAT was not possible until about the same time as the Tall Boys came into their own.



A Lexington could operate an Avenger and an Avenger could launch a BAT.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

A Lexington-class Wasp would still be lost with the historic three torpedo hits, but would likely participate in Santa Cruz, as a larger ship she wouldn't be in as urgent need of refueling as the historic carrier.    A third US carrier might save Hornet, though Kinkaid had made the green Enterprise crew (she lost a lot of sailors to new ships when repaired from Eastern Solomons) responsible for CAP instead of the veterans aboard Hornet.    But additional aircraft would be more dangerous to the Japanese as well as blunt their attacks.     If Hornet and Yorktown survive, there could be some very serious carrier strikes in 1943 on Japanese bases.   

First of all, Kincaid should have run for it and lured Nagumo and Kondo into reach of the Cactus Air Force. "Stand and fight" might seem courageous and "Bull" Halsey and all that, but there are times when playing keepaway and jabbing until the other fellow shows you his chin, a favorite Frank Jack Fletcher move, is the smart play. Spruance did that at Philippine Sea and Marc Mitscher blew it when Spruance finally gave him permission to run Ozawa down in that op.

USS Enterprise had the expletive deleted Miles Browning running her air ops during Santa Cruz despite his failures at Midway. It was not Osbourne Hardison's fault that his CoAS was a drunken incompetent moralless pile of walking manure masquerading as a man, or that Kincaid, who was aboard USS Enterprise which was his flagship, had given him, Hardison, the CAP duty knowing full well that he had a new radar crew complement that was as useless to him as Miles the not teetotaler chief of air staff. Browning was found to be drunk before, during, and after the op and it proved out that Browning had neglected the radar / signals division basic ATC training before the op. The "green" USS Enterprise crew, despite this shortcomings list, was still doing better than the supposedly Mitscher-trained and actually equally incompetent USS Hornet air control crew during this same op.

Dec 27, 2022 17:28:49 GMT 1bigrich said:

All that said, while big and powerful, the Lexingtons were far from ideal carriers.   The secondary elevator was small, and both elevators were slow.    Saratoga finished her career with the secondary elevator locked into the deck position and operated as a single elevator carrier.   In addition, their power plants were prone to losing power when they took damage.    But having three more as opposed to the historic smaller carriers would be a trade I would make, and I think the USN would welcome as well

1. The faults were known, but C and R kept putting off modernization due to "reasons" until the war came. Once war came it was every hull forward no matter what and the full year of yard work needed to rebuild the aft elevator and modernize the forward one, to rerig the fire mains and counterbulge to correct the permanent starboard list was not possible early war. The turbo-electrics were sloppy WWI leftover shipbuilding from the weighs forward. Get them wet and the generators (dynamos actually) packed it in. This was corrected after USS Lexington lost power at Coral Sea and was scuttled. The USS Saratoga was better waterproofed in her various refits and repairs between her war-ops.

2. More "New Lexingtons" would have an interesting effect on aircraft procurement. USS Ranger was originally not supposed to have torpedo bombers. The idea at the time, was that dedecking (around 1930) was more useful than flood out, so pack in dive bombers. Well, that was wrong at the time, and USS Ranger was expensively refitted in 1941 to carry torpedo bombers; but wrong decisions initially tend to have a stupid steps forward effect in that when the USN finally got around to fielding a modern air dropped torpedo from a modern torpedo plane, the torpedo was badly built, the drop method was incompetent, the torpedo plane was grossly underpowered and the numbers ordered of both were not enough to ensure any plausible mission success. Twice as many Devastators would barely have sufficed for the 5 actual flattops, much less the 8 hypotheticals we would have had (6 Lexes and 2 Yorkies) in 1941.

M.

how many of them do you think survive the war? Are any of them preserved as museums? do any of them see service in the postwar era? The guns on this or not the 8 inch they’re a hypothetical 5 inch 38 triple.