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One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

Page 23

by Smith, Douglas V.


  Essex’s design dated to 1939 when the Navy still operated under the terms of the treaty imitations (20,000 tons gross displacement). From a practical standpoint, she appeared much like an improved Yorktown class. But, with the outbreak of war and the subsequent renunciation of treaty tonnage limits, the United States removed all restrictions, resulting in the eventual, more robust Essex design. An increase in armor and flight deck area gave improved survivability and space for aircraft deck parking. For air defense, the 5-inch guns, mounted in singles on the Yorktowns, became twin mounts—two turrets forward and two aft of the island superstructure. Engineering space improvements with an alternating boiler room/machinery room design gave better damage control capability. At 872 feet and with a 33,000-ton displacement, the new Essex far outstripped the older Yorktown-class design. Changes in 1942 included a deck-edge elevator, air and surface search radar, and an increase in anti-aircraft defenses built around the Swedish Bofers model 20-mm and 40-mm rapid-fire guns mounted primarily in rows (20 mm) and quad configurations (40 mm) on platforms and catwalks just below the flight deck. As a result of the decision to proceed with the larger, more capable design, shipyards constructed twenty-four Essex-class fleet carriers by war’s end with the bulk of the hulls in service by late 1943 to mid-1944, a truly remarkable achievement. From the June 1940 legislation, ten Essex-class carriers resulted, all of which saw significant action in the Pacific. Arguably, the single most important American warship of the war, Essex slid down the ways on 31 July 1942.46

  Additionally, smaller ship types such as the Independence-class (CVL-22) light carrier (launched 22 August 1942) and escort carrier (CVE) emerged from the early war experience. Admiral Stark advised BuShips that a Cleveland-class light cruiser originally authorized in the 1934 bill and ordered in 1940 (USS Amsterdam, CL-59) would be converted to the new Independence-class light carrier as funded by the Two-Ocean legislation. Convoy protection in the Atlantic proved to be a critical mission for naval aviation as German submarines, commerce raiders, and Luftwaffe aircraft threatened the logistical supply line to Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Nine CVLs saw war service as well as over eighty escort carriers, starting with the USS Long Island (CVE-1) launched 2 June 1941.47 In October 1940, Roosevelt directed that the Navy obtain a merchant hull for conversion to an escort carrier, resulting in the first of a long line of highly capable warships used primarily in the anti-submarine warfare and convoy escort roles. USS Long Island (CVE-1), converted from the merchantman Mormacmail and completed in June 1941, did service in the Pacific in delivering Marine fighter and bomber squadrons to Guadalcanal before returning to San Diego for duty as a training vessel. Roosevelt’s plan to convert merchant ships to small 6,000- to 8,000-ton carriers capable of carrying ten to twelve fighters for convoy escort proved a valid concept with the success of the British escort carrier HMS Audacity in the Atlantic. With speeds of eighteen knots and better, the CVEs could travel faster than any convoy and almost as fast as the best German submarines on the surface. Primarily carrying Wildcat fighters of twenty or more per ship, the CVEs provided substantial air cover for the Atlantic convoys. In the Pacific, they provided close air support (CAS) to the land forces once an amphibious landing had secured the beachhead. In the Leyte Gulf engagement, USS St Lo (CVE-63) and USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73) sank under the pounding of Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo’s battleship-cruiser force. Many CVEs transferred to the British Royal Navy. The Navy designated thirty-five CVEs, constructed or converted under the Two-Ocean legislation, for assignment to the Royal Navy, including eight of the original hulls from 1942.48 Of the Casablanca-class (CVE-55 through CVE-104), the first purpose-built CVEs from the keel up and constructed in the Kaiser Company’s Vancouver, Washington, shipyard, all but two served in the Pacific Theater. The late-war Commencement Bay–class ships (CVE-105 through CVE-124), built in the Todd-Pacific and Allis-Chalmers yards in Tacoma, Washington, rounded out the CVEs but only three ships saw combat action. Previous classes had been conversions primarily from merchantmen and oilers. War realities drove the eventual development of designs and capabilities of ships and aircraft, but the funding emanating from the 1940 legislation provided the ability to literally invent new ship types as war exigencies dictated.

  These and later ships carried aircraft such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter, Vought F4U Corsair fighter-bomber, TBF Avenger torpedo bomber, and SB2C Helldiver dive-bomber that replaced the prewar design F4F Wildcat, SBD Dauntless, and TBD Devastator types. Funds for the thousands of aircraft of the new types resulted from the Two-Ocean legislation and by 1943–1944, largely replaced the early war models. The legislation increased the number of Navy aircraft to 15,000 as well as the expansion of shore facilities to accommodate the expanded Navy air assets. Forty-two existing naval air stations required substantial upgrades. Many Naval Reserve aviation bases needed modification; seven new reserve bases required establishment.49 Additionally, the increase in pilot numbers first stimulated by the 1935 appropriation continued as 1940–1942 appropriations dramatically increased the need for aviators. Some characteristics of these new aircraft illustrate the tremendous advances in naval aviation technology—capability and design made possible by the various naval appropriation bills between 1935 and early in the war.

  The Vought F4U-4 Corsair first flew on 1 May 1940. With its distinctive gull wing shape and powerful Pratt and Whitney R-2800-18W radial engine that produced 2,100 hp, first production models arrived by September 1942. With a top speed of 446 mph and a 26,200-foot ceiling, the Corsair proved a versatile and deadly fighter and fighter bomber able to engage in air combat and carry both bombs and rocket ordnance. The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver replaced the Dauntless. Designed in 1939, production contracts went out in November 1940, just after the contracts for the Essex-class ships. The first combat employment of the airplane occurred in strikes against the Japanese air and naval base at Rabaul on New Britain. The TBF/TBM Avenger first entered combat in 1942 at the Battle of Midway. Designed to replace the unsuccessful Devastator, the large three-man aircraft carried torpedoes, bombs, or depth charges depending on the mission. Despite its durability and survivability, the F4F Wildcat suffered technologically compared to the A6M Zero fighter, and a replacement finally arrived in August 1943. The F6F Hellcat, with a maximum speed of 380 mph at 14,000 feet and a service ceiling of 37,300 feet outclassed and outperformed the Zero in many critical performance characteristics. With a range of close to a thousand miles, the Hellcat gave the carriers an extraordinary combat radius and became the primary naval fighter for the remainder of the war. Aircraft, however, were expensive. A Corsair ranged from $61,000 to almost $70,000 per airplane depending on the acquisition date. A Hellcat fighter ran $54,000. By contrast, the older Dauntless dive-bomber came in at $32,800, while the Wildcat cost $42,000.50 In the rapid expansion period following the fall of France, the 1940 appropriations provided the funding for the new 15,000-aircraft Navy.

  To support the aviation expansion, new bases needed construction and older facilities upgraded. Funding for such public works projects came from the various appropriations. Illustrative of the cost is the estimate provided by Chief of BuAer, Rear Admiral John S. McCain, in May 1943 requesting approval for additional public works projects at naval air stations totaling $16,598,636. For the period from 1 September 1943 to 30 June 1944, the new chief, Rear Admiral D. C. Ramsey, proposed $93,834,500, a stunning figure by contemporary standards.51 Increased pilot training followed aircraft acquisition, a dynamic also funded in the various appropriations. Illustrating this dynamic, then-Captain Arthur W. Radford reported the status of flight training as of 30 June 1942 showing 6,901students in the training pipeline, including a number of British officers.52 Fortunately for the Navy, Vinson and Congress accounted for the massive overhead cost of fielding and supporting a robust fleet and air expansion, without which the new force could not be sustained.

  Naval expansion and, in particular, the growth of naval aviation, intensified after the Pearl Harb
or attack of 7 December 1941; authorization and appropriation bills became common throughout the first three years of the U.S. war effort. Representative Vinson remained the centerpiece of naval legislation until his eventual retirement in 1964. Nonetheless, the single most important legislative and ultimately far-sighted action for America’s ability to win the maritime struggle with Japan and sustain the beleaguered British and Soviet allies was the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940.53 The Act provided the forces with which Admiral Nimitz executed the Central Pacific campaign to the Japanese home islands as envisioned in the Navy’s War Plan Orange and supported the SOPAC/SOWPAC campaigns with overwhelming carrier-based air power. By the time of Japan’s September 1945 surrender, sixteen of the seventeen Pacific Fleet carriers resulted from Vinson-sponsored legislation.54 And, it allowed the U.S. Navy to fight a two-ocean struggle against the German Kriegsmarine in the vital Atlantic Theater. Finally, the Two-Ocean legislation, when combined with the various other appropriation and authorization bills in the late 1930s and early 1940s, vaulted the United States Navy into the world’s pre-eminent maritime force based on command of the sea through command of the air, a continuing dynamic guaranteed by the flourishing of naval aviation since 1940.

  NOTES

  1.Proceedings of the Special Board and Records of Evidence (Eberle Board), United States National Archives (hereafter NA), Record Group (hereafter RG) 80. Rear Admiral Fullam observed over two hundred aircraft based at Rockwell Field near San Diego as they performed fly-bys for over three hours to celebrate the end of World War I.

  2.Lord Chatfield, First Sea Lord, Inskip Inquiry, 13 July 1936, London: National Archives of the United Kingdom, CAB 16/151.

  3.Admiral Sims made these comments in an address to the Naval War College class of 1921 at the college on 19 November 1921.

  4.Clark G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy (Huntington, NY: Robert E. Kreiger, 1978), p. 1; NA, General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1798–1947, Secretary of the Navy General Correspondence (hereafter SECNAV): 1940–42, RG 80, 370/19/27/17, Box 20, Morrow Board Report Summary dated 12 July 1944 and Resume of Report of Morrow Board, Vol. 3, dated 30 November 1925.

  5.NA, Department of the Navy, Records of the General Board Transcripts of Hearings, 1917–1950, Vol. 2, 1919, RG 80, Box 4, Vol. i–iii.

  6.Letter to SECNAV dated 23 June 1919, Bureau of Aeronautics, General Correspondence (hereafter BuAer), NA, RG 72, Entry #15.

  7.Reynolds, The Fast Carriers, p. 15. The Morrow Board Report was printed in the USNI Proceedings 52 (1926), pp. 196–225. In addition to the personnel requirements, the Board called for the acquisition of a thousand aircraft in the 1926–31 time frame.

  8.SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/27/17, Box 20, Morrow Board Report Summary dated 12 July 1944, and Resume of Report of Morrow Board dated 30 November 1925.

  9.New York Times (hereafter NYT), 3 December 1931, p. 12 and 5 December 1931, p. 2.

  10.USS Ranger (CV-4), the first purpose-built carrier from the keel up proved inadequate for fleet operations due to size and stability limitations. However, follow-on designs using the lessons pioneered aboard Langley and perfected by Saratoga and Lexington, came forward beginning with the Yorktown class.

  11.Washington Post (hereafter TWP), 9 January 1934, p. 9.

  12.Congressional Record, 72nd Congress, 2nd Session, in Congressional Record, 63rd Congress—88th Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914–1965) (hereafter CR), 22 February 1933, 4720–23.

  13.Vinson’s OPEDs in NYT, 23 January 1934, p. 2; NYT, 29 January 1934, p. 4; and The Atlanta Constitution, 28 January 1934, p. 7A.

  14.CR, 74th Congress, 1638.

  15.Admiral Jonas Ingram, “15 Years of Naval Development,” Scientific American (November 1935), p. 234.

  16.NYT, 5 January 1938, p. 11; TWP, 26 January 1938, pp. 1, 7.

  17.Many of these Naval Reserve aviators went on to form the core of experienced pilots upon which the huge personnel expansion of 1940 was based. But other capital ships were not overlooked in the 1935 legislation. For example, the North Carolina–class battleships North Carolina (BB-55) and Washington (BB-56), the first U.S. battleships built since World War II, resulted from the naval expansion legislation of 1935.

  18.TWP, 29 January 1938, pp. 1, 5; NYT, 29 January 1938, pp. 1, 4, 5.

  19.Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, originally published in 1890 and based on Mahan’s Naval War College lectures, profoundly altered naval strategic thinking in not only the United States, but in Europe and Asia as well. Previously non-naval states such as Imperial Germany, Japan, China, Austria-Hungary, and Italy raced to build larger and more capable capital ships in search of the decisive great battleship clash far out to sea.

  20.USS Massachusetts (BB-59) and USS Alabama (BB-60). The original two BBs were USS South Dakota (BB-57) and USS Indiana (BB-58).

  21.The early 1943 aircraft configuration of the Essex class consisted of four squadrons—36 fighters, 36 dive-bombers, and 10 torpedo bombers or 91 total aircraft with 9 planes stored and broken down in reserve. By the war’s end, the typical air group complement stood at 36 Hellcat fighters, 36 Corsair fighter-bombers, 15 Helldiver dive-bombers, and 15 Avenger torpedo planes or 102 total aircraft.

  22.Many of these new naval air facilities played prominent roles in World War II and beyond. Naval Air Station Pensacola is the basic training activity for naval aviation. Quonset Point became one of the original Naval Construction Battalion (SEABEE) training and headquarters sites and is now a Rhode Island Air National Guard facility. Naval Air Station Norfolk still supports Hampton Roads naval activities.

  23.CR, 76th Congress, 3rd session, 2731–33, 2750, 2752; TWP, 13 March 1940, pp. 5, 6.

  24.For the pivotal role played by Rear Admiral Towers in the events of spring 1940 that resulted in the Two-Ocean legislation, see Clark G. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991), pp. 315–31.

  25.TWP, 19 May 1940, p. 1.

  26.War Department, SECRET MEMORANDUM: Subject: National Strategic Decisions, WPD MBR dated 22 May 1940 (declassified 24 October 1973), NA, Records of the War Department Special and General Staffs, War Plans Division, General Correspondence, RG 165, 270/4175–77.

  27.TWP, 22 May 1940, p. 4. The 11 percent bill included funding authorization for 21 warships, 22 auxiliaries, and 1,011 aircraft.

  28.CR, 76th Congress, 3rd session, 2750.

  29.The bill authorized the increase in air frames from 3,000 to 10,000, billets for 16,000 pilots and funding for the construction of twenty new naval air stations, both in the continental U.S. (CONUS) and at various outside of continental U.S. (OUTCONUS) locations, particularly in the Pacific.

  30.The Atlanta Journal, 18 June 1940, p. 1.

  31.The Atlanta Constitution, 11 July 1940, p. 1; NYT, 23 June 1940, p. 1, 14; CR, 76th Congress, 3rd session, 9064–65, 9078, 9570. The bill provided for 385,000-tonnage battleships, 200,000-tonnage carriers, 420,000-tonnage cruisers, 250,000-tonnage destroyers, 70,000-tonnage submarines. Within two hours of the signing of the bill, contracts began going out from the Navy Department.

  32.MEMORANDUM from Captain E.G. Allen dated 20 July 1940, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, A1-3/A18 (340213-17), 11W3/25/32/2, Box 2.

  33.Letter from Chief of Naval Operations to Secretary of the Navy dated 30 JUL 1940, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/14/1-2, Box 20 (Declassified IAW NNDD813002 by NARA on 17 September 2009).

  34.NA, SECNAV, Aircraft Carrier Awarded, RG 80/11W3/25/32/2, Box 2; CVA Contracts List, RG 80/11W3/25/32/2, Box 2; NYT, 2 July 1940.

  35.NA, SECNAV, RG80, CV-12/L4-3 Aircraft Carrier, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 324. USS Franklin (CV-13), USS Ticonderoga (CV-14), USS Randolph (CV-15), USS Lexington (CV-16), USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), USS Wasp (CV-18), and USS Hancock (CV-19).

  36.CR, 76th Congress, 3rd session, Appendix, 5721–22.

  37.Ibid., 6130ff.

  38.SECRET MEMORANDUM from Admiral E.
J. King, U.S. Navy to Chairman, General Board dated 30 July 1941, NA, General Board Subject File, 1900–1947, RG 80, GB 420–2, 1941–42, Box 63 (declassified 11 February 1972).

  39.For example of a contract award for CV-16/17/18 (Lexington, Bunker Hill, Wasp), see NA, SECNAV, CV16/L4-3 Bethlehem Steel, RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1 Box 325.

  40.CR, 76th Congress, 3rd Session; Letter from Chief of the Bureau of Ships to Judge Advocate General of the Navy dated 24 October 1940, para. 2, NA, SECNAV, CV12/L4-3 Aircraft Carrier, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 324, For example, the Vinson-Trammell Act required that at least 10 percent of all naval aircraft and engines be manufactured at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia and restricted the profit margin of shipbuilders and aircraft manufacturers to no more than 10 percent.

  41.NA, SECNAV, CV16/L4-3 Bethlehem Steel, RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1 Box 325.

  42.Reynolds, Towers, p. 330.

  43.Letter from Lewis Compton, Acting SECNAV to Bethlehem Steed dated 9 September 1940 and Letter from Lewis Compton, Acting SECNAV to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, NA, SECNAV, CV16/L4-3 Bethlehem Steel, RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 325.

  44.USS ESSEX Naval Message dated 1 January 43, NA, BuAer, RG 72, 470/63/18/05, Box 72 (declassified NND730026 by NARA dated 17 September 2009).

 

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