Illustrious Class Fleet Carrier's

[sheep21]

Hallo all,,

 

i have noticed the scarcity of topics on aircraft carrier's on this board so i thought i might try and help remedy that.

 

The genesis design and concept

 

The design of the Illustrious class carriers stem directly from the revolutionary Royal Navy carrier Ark Royal. Ark Royal was the first new aircraft carrier built for the Royal Navy since HMS Eagle entered commission in 1924. All the basic features of the later carriers were to be found on the Ark, the main difference being that Ark Royal had a two level hanger whilst the latter classes had only one hanger deck (to lower the centre of gravity) and that the sides of its hangers were un-armoured.

 

The Ark Royal also had the new concept of having the strength deck of the Carrier being the flight deck itself instead of as on many previous carrier having it at main deck level with hangers et al built up afterwards, the hull, hanger and deck being one whole unified structure. The ship had a large (by british standards) air group which by the time of sinking consisted of roughly 35 torpedo bombers and 18 fighter aircraft.

The ship was also able to defend itself in the form of 16 4.5" DP guns along the flight deck edge that had good arcs of fire and could fire cross deck if need be as well as 4 (later six) 8 barrelled 2 pounder AA guns.

 

So, roll on, the Ark Royal designed in 1934, laid down in '35 launched '37 and commissioned 38, by the time Ark was launched the Admiralty realised that A. the Naval treaty system was falling apart B.we have alot of smaller older carriers of limited utility (Eagle, Argus & Hermes) C. this new carrier is rather good but takes quite a long time to build & D. that peace was not going to last forever no matter what a certain german promised.

 

So, the british have a good design with a large air complement but with a fairly long build time and a rather big price tag (a cool £3 million). We need more, sooner & cheaper, oh and also we would like to make this one more heavily armoured seeing as its going to be operating in range of land based aircraft alot (North Sea, Atlantic, & Med.). So first thing, add more armour, hangers now have 4" side armour with an armoured flight deck 3" thick (designed to withstand a 500lb bomb hit with 4" buk heads fore and aft. BUT doing this adds ALOT of weight and to keep this down only a single deck hanger was used, this reduced the air group to 28 torpedo bombers & 8 fighters, oh and whilst were at it lets order 4 of them.

 

Armament was much the same as the Ark however the 4.5" guns were now in fully enclosed turrets and whilst Ark was lot in '41 the Illustrious class benefited from advances in radar and fusing technology making her armament much more effective..

 

Stats

Displacement: 23,000 tons

Length: 743ft, 9in

Propulsion: 3 Parson turbines, six admiralty boilers producing 111,000 steam horspower

Speed: 30.5 knots

Armament: eight twin 4.5in DP Guns & six eight barrelled pom-poms

Armour: Flight Deck 3in, Hangers and belt 4.5in

Aircraft Capacity: 36 Aircraft (with modifications to the deck parking system increased to 52)

 

Service

Exhaustive histories of these ships are available freely online, needless to say from commissioning in 1940-1941 these ships fought a hard war, suffering damage that would have been fatal to other carriers (japan im looking at you here), the image is of the hole left in the deck by a 1,250lb german bomb.

 

Also as the war in europe wound down the British were finally able to devote resources to the Far East and by the close of the war these fine vessels were conducting combat missions off the coast of Japan, the armour saved HMS Victorious in the sequence below from suffering severe damage in the below strike.

Quote

...struck by two kamikazes.  The first was a Zero making a shallow dive which hit the flight deck at Frame 30 near the forward lift (elevator), slid across the deck and into "B" 4.5-in mount.  This hit created a 25 sq. ft. hole and depressed the deck over an area of 144 sq. ft.  In addition, a bulkhead was buckled, "B" 4.5-in mount was put out of action, an accelerator [a type of aircraft catapult] broken and small fires were started.  The second kamikaze hit a glancing blow against the port side aft, destroying four Corsairs and a 40 mm gun director.  This hit also put an arrestor unit out of action.  The two attacks killed three and wounded nineteen.  Victorious was able to fly off planes one hour later and could land planes twelve hours later.  Fully back in action after two days.  Repairs took one month.

 

anyhow, that's it folks, maybe i might add some more information at a later time.

 

thanks for reading and hope you enjoy.

[_Jeremiah_Gottwald]

We have one topic. That I know of anyways, and that was mine about the Graf Zeppelin.

[Krieg]

Nice post. I am gonna love those armored flight decks....

[Super_Dreadnought]

I have heard in posts from other forum members that carriers will be restricted to having 15 planes in the air at any one time. If hypothetically this is true (I've not confirmed it for myself) it would actually mitigate the British carrier's greatest weakness of having a small air group.

 

A large air group is nice and helps absorb combat losses, but it counts for little else if you cannot get them into the air for a mass attack by artificial restrictions. If combined with heavier armour and AA armament, British mid-high tier carriers could prove to be very trollish to their counterparts.

[sheep21]

thanks for the info dread, that will make things very interesting.

[Wunderwaffen1945]

15 planes is nice, better than 12 in battlestations

[Snakehead1234]

How well do these British Carriers hold against 11inch shells or submarine torpedoes. :Smile_trollface:

[Super_Dreadnought]

There are no submarine torpedoes. And your 11" firing warship is going to have to get past the rest of the enemy fleet first while under aerial bombardment.

[sheep21]

Snakehead1234, on 16 February 2013 - 01:54 PM, said:

How well do these British Carriers hold against 11inch shells or submarine torpedoes. :Smile_trollface:

no worse than any other nations CV's i would imagine if engaged by a battleship. I take it you refer to the fate of HMS Glorious, sunk with the bast majority of her crew by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau?

[sharlin648]

The RN carriers will be tough but that should be countered by them having (for lower teirs or not fully upgraded how ever WG want to do it) rather poor aircraft.  Skuas, Roc's, Swordfish, Sea Gladiators, Albacores and Fulmars were not the best aircraft in the world in their roles and you'd need to upgrade/get better aircraft to make them more of a threat.  I'd say that balances the heavy armament and heavy protection of the RN's armoured carriers.

[ArmouredCarriers]

There are a few serious misconceptions about the Illustrious class out there...

 

It did not have an "armoured flight deck".

 

It had an armoured hangar. This included about 60pc of the flight deck.

 

Britain essentially regarded the hangar to be in the same category as an ammunition magazine. As such:

 

- Illustrious had the hangar's flight deck, deck, hangar sides and fore-and-aft ends armoured to be "proof" against 4.7in shellfire at all ranges, and 6in shellfire within operational ranges.

- The armoured flight-deck component was intended to "resist" 250kg (500lb) bombs dropped from effective operational heights.

- The hangar was "airlocked", with access only via double-blast doored foyers.

- No point of the ship's side was also the side of the hangar.

- Fuel was stored beneath the hangar in water-filled coffer-dams and were separated from the main structure to avoid "whiplash" damage.

- Ammunition was stored outside the hangar in their own armoured magazines.

- A high-pressure sea water spray system was fitted to the hangar ceiling.

- Armoured steel "shutters" could be used to divide the hanger in thirds to reduce blast/fire damage.

 

The Illustrious class "armoured" section of the flight-deck was only hit twice by free-fall bombs in the Mediterranean.

It was hit several times by low-velocity kamikaze 550lb bombs in the Pacific.

 

- Illustrious took a 500kg (1100lb) on the flight deck in January 1941: This penetrated the flight deck and burst above the armoured hangar deck, but still punched a hole into it to the wardroom flat below. Interestingly, United States Naval Engineers who examined the ship while being repaired in Norfolk wrote a report insisting that the bomb had to be a 1000kg (2200lb) bomb to have penetrated and done the damage that it had done. This is possible as Illustrious was operating within Stuka 1000kg bomb range, but it is most likely to have been dropped by a He111 or Ju88.

 

- A bomb on controversial type (some say light anti-personnel bomb, some say heavy prototype low-altitude armour piercing bomb) it Victorious on the armoured deck in August 1942. This bomb broke apart and only partially detonated.

 

All other hits in the Mediterranean were in the unarmoured 40pc of the flight deck, or on the lifts.

 

All of the 550lb hits by Japanese kamikazes were defeated by the armoured flight decks, leaving large "dents" that were filled with fast-set concrete.

[sharlin648]

The UK carriers will be an interesting tree IF they do them right (Not saying anything about WG's 'experience' with the UK tank tree's here....) they should be tough, hard to sink and generally be well armed this would be balanced by having less 'ammunition' in the form of aircraft and of course the fact that until late teir their aircraft will be generally inferior to USN/IJN equivalents.

[ArmouredCarriers]

To be fair, one needs to look at the Fleet Air Arm aircraft in the context of their timeframes.

 

 

Too many critics compare the FAA of 1940 with the USN of 1945... Yet neither types were flying at the same time as each other...

 

 

- Yes, the Albacore was outdated from the outset.

 

- Yes, the Swordfish was an older biplane, but it remained a useful anti-sub escort through the whole war (1939 to 1945).

 

- The Skua and Roc were recognised as failures before the war and pretty much vanished by the end of 1940.

 

- The Sea Gladiator was an emergency stop-gap aircraft in 1940 as the Fulmar was running late.

 

- When the Fulmar fleet fighter went into service in September 1940 the US Navy fleet fighter was the F3F 'flying barrel'.

 

- The first Wildcat squadron didn't go to sea with the USN until December 1940 and did not fill all fleet fighter squadrons until September 1941.

 

- Japan introduced the first Zero squadrons to service in September 1940, though the allies did not realise this until December 1941

 

- Development of next-generation FAA aircraft was curtailed by emergency measures put in place to supply the RAF during the Battle of Britain. This effectively hobbled the FireFly, Barracuda and Firebrand development program's.

 

- In 1942 the FAA was flying Wildcats (Martlets) and Sea Hurricanes an the Fulmar started being withdrawn. While not folding, the Sea Hurricane was forced into service as Wildcat production had been (understandably) diverted to the USN.

 

- The Fulmar was pretty much withdrawn from fleet carriers by 1943.

 

- The Seafire was pressed into service as carriers operating close to land based aircraft needed an effective interceptor, not just a fighter. The Sea Hurricane by 1943 was also lagging against land-based opponents and would largely be gone by the end of the year.

 

- The FAA would fly the Corsair long before the USN considered it "safe" for deck landings.

 

- The Barracuda proved a failure and was withdrawn from the fleet carriers in early 1945 (though it would return for a time shortly after the war).

 

- The Firefly was a successful strike-fighter.

 

- Once they gave the Seafire III long range tanks it proved adequate as an interceptor/ CAP fighter in the Pacific.

 

- A mix of Seafires, Hellcats, Corsairs, Fireflys and Avengers were used in the Pacific during 1945 mostly due to the mixture of hangar heights in the British carriers.

 

 

So, in terms of bombers the FAA was usually behind (unless you needed to fly in a gale when he Swordfish came into its own).

 

Fighters were usually a mix and a compromise, but rarely obsolete. The Fulmar generated more FAA aces than any other type ... And the various Sea Hurricane and Seafire adaptions did the job asked of them, though not always with ease.

 

 

it is important to compare apples with apples... The Fulmar of 1940 was at war:  The F3F of 1940 was not and is therefore often conveniently forgotten...

[Crag_r]

DuPuy, on 22 March 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

- Yes, the Swordfish was an older biplane, but it remained a useful anti-sub escort through the whole war (1939 to 1945).

I would hardly say that was its primary role, the Taranto raid and Bismarck crippling. Anti-surface torpedo and low level bombing was done by the Swordfish...

[ArmouredCarriers]

In 1939, 1940 and 1941  - yes, the Swordfish was primarily a torpedo bomber alongside the Albacore.

 

From 1943 it was primarily anti-submarine, flying from escort carriers. The Albacore passed out of service.

[sharlin648]

The Stringbag was a good plane in the torpedo delivery role, combined with generally reliable torpedoes it could deliver fish accurately but in any situation where it faced fighter opposition it was a large, lumbering target, all be it a tough one.  Those poor brave souls who flew in broad daylight against Operation Cerberus (Channel Dash) must have known they were going to their deaths but still they pressed their attack home in the face of heavy AA fire and a massive number of German fighters.

[tunu]

The IJN Shokaku was the best aircraft carrier of WW2. There isn't even a comparison.

 

Here are the stats for the Shokaku

 

IJN Shokaku

Class overview

Operators:  Imperial Japanese Navy

Completed: 2

Lost: 2

General characteristics

Type: Aircraft carrier

Displacement: 25,675 long tons (26,087 t) (standard)

32,000 long tons (33,000 t) (full load)

Length: 257.5 m (844 ft 10 in)

Beam: 26 m (85 ft 4 in)

Draft: 8.9 m (29 ft 2 in)

Installed power: 160,000 shp (120,000 kW)

Propulsion: 4 × Kanpon geared steam turbines

8 × boilers

4 × shafts

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

Range: 7,581 nmi (14,040 km; 8,724 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)

Complement: 1,660

Armament: 16 × 127 mm (5 in) dual purpose guns

36-96 × 25 mm (1 in) Type 96 anti-aircraft guns

Aircraft carried: 72 (+12)

18 × Mitsubishi A6M Zeros

27 Aichi D3A1 "Val"s

27 Nakajima B5N1(2) "Kate"s

 

I'm sure the Illustrious class would make great tier 5-7 aircraft carriers, but the Shokaku would definitely be an excellent tier 10.

 

Thanks for your attention.

[Super_Dreadnought]

tunu, on 28 April 2013 - 01:51 AM, said:

The IJN Shokaku was the best aircraft carrier of WW2. There isn't even a comparison.

...blah blah blah...

This thread is about the Illustrious class aircraft carrier and NOT the Shokaku. Your post does not belong here, and in future I advise you to put relevant posts in the correct and appropiate topic.

Expect my negative rep once it resets.

[tunu]

Okay then.......