One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  22.As aircraft became heavier, Ranger’s low speed became a real handicap. She could make about 29.4 knots at 16,000 tons, but by April 1939 her displacement was closer to 18,000 and her speed was about 28.7 knots. During a live bombing practice on 29 March 1939, with the surface wind running 4 knots, she was reduced to 24.2 knots and had to resort to long-run (on deck) takeoffs—which dramatically reduced the size of her deck spot, hence the power she could project (GB 420-7, reproduction of 7 April 1939 letter from Commander Aircraft, Battle Force). The point was raised because Wasp, 75 percent completed, would also be relatively slow. In 1938–1939 there was some interest in modifying both ships for increased speed, but that proved too expensive, and not worthwhile. Wasp actually produced more than her designed power, but nothing like enough to give her the desired carrier speed.

  23.In June 1933 the General Board rejected a suggestion that the ships not carry any torpedoes, in line with the earlier feeling that torpedo bombers were far too heavy and too slow to be useful on board carriers. Presumably the board was aware that new engines could substantially improve performance. The new torpedo bomber was the Douglas TBD Devastator, which in the mid-1930s did indeed seem to have spectacular performance. Aviation technology moved so fast that by 1942 (six years after entering service) the TBD was considered a low-performance death-trap at Midway. During the board’s discussion, Rear Admiral E. J. King, then Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics; Commander E. R. McClung of the BuOrd Aviation Ordnance Section; and Lieutenant Smith of the BuOrd Torpedo Section all opposed eliminating carrier torpedoes. The ninety-four-plane loadout is from a 1934 letter from the Supervisor of Shipbuilding at Newport News, mentioning a clause in the detailed specifications for the ship (GB 420-7 file for 1925–1939).

  24.BuAer, C&R, and the Bureau of Ordnance jointly suggested installing a small island at the forward corner of No. 2 elevator in a 22 November 1932 memo. Soon a larger island was being proposed; the General Board quickly approved this change. Memo for the record in GB 420-7, dated 23 December 1932, complaining that BuAer had first ruined the ship by making her a flush-decker and then had demanded that the island be restored. BuAer pointed out that the Ranger design was based on experience with the flush-deck Langley, which operated only twenty airplanes. The air officer on a deck-edge platform could see far enough aft to see all of them land, controlling them. Once the complement had increased to thirty-two aircraft (i.e., once Reeves’ full program had taken effect), it became difficult or almost impossible for the air officer to see aircraft landing after the twelfth or fifteenth. Ranger was intended to operate seventy-two aircraft. Once the ex–battle cruisers were in commission it became clear that the island was no problem; as of late 1932 no airplane had ever run into the ship’s island, though one did hit an 8-inch turret. BuAer particularly wanted a larger island for Ranger to accommodate the air plot through which the carrier’s strike aircraft were controlled (the islands of the big ex–battle cruisers accommodated such facilities). In this memo BuAer also admitted that even the low-powered Langley had suffered smoke problems.

  25.The Second Vinson-Trammell Act (17 May 1938) increased total carrier tonnage by 40,000 tons (29.6 percent, compared to an initial figure of 135,000 tons, left from the 1921 Washington Treaty). By way of comparison, total battleship tonnage increased by 135,000 tons (the whole 1921 carrier allowance) to 660,000 tons (25.7 percent) and cruisers by 20 percent. GB 420-2 contains a two-ocean paper dated 2 May 1939, giving necessary levels of superiority. With 5:3 superiority it would be possible to undertake an offensive in the Western Pacific “under favorable conditions” and the security of U.S. possessions as far west as Guam (but not the Philippines) could be ensured; with 4:3 Wake and the Aleutians would be safe and Guam would probably be safe. This paper strongly advocated fortifying Guam, on the grounds that with 4:3 superiority a fortified Guam would offer the equivalent of 5:3 (and with 5:3, the equivalent of 6:3, which in turn might equate to 380,000 tons of warships). On the other hand, with 4:3 inferiority, the Japanese would be able to attack into the eastern Pacific and perhaps capture the Aleutians. With 4:3 superiority in the Atlantic, U.S. forces should be able to guarantee the Western Hemisphere against German and Italian aggression. Parity would make it dangerous for the Germans and Italians to try to attack South America. The recommendations were based on 4:3 superiority in both oceans. The result was determined mainly by the strengths of the opposing fleets; Germany had ordered two carriers (neither ever completed) and Italy none. Both had, however, considerable battleship forces. Thus analysis based on opposing navies gave a battleship-heavy U.S. fleet (whose desired strength, as calculated in May 1939, was twenty-six battleships and sixteen carriers). A tonnage table included in the paper showed that the United States needed nearly twice the carrier tonnage made available by the 1938 Act (324, 841 versus 175,000 tons); the situation for battleships was only slightly less dire (1,043,169 tons needed versus 660,000 available)—and by no means had all the available 1938 tonnage been built.

  26.Thus a 24 November 1939 list of suggested priorities in new ship design (GB 420) produced by C&R (responsible for the designs) shows carriers as priority 5, after light cruisers, submarines, heavy cruisers, and destroyers (but ahead of new battleships, the new Alaska-class super-heavy cruisers, destroyer leaders, and a flight-deck cruiser then being discussed). The list was intended as a guide to the General Board for the order in which it should produce characteristics for new designs. They had been developed for light cruisers and submarines (and the flight-deck cruiser was marked “the consensus seems to be against this type”).

  27.When Essex was first inserted into the FY41 program she was envisaged as a repeat Yorktown with better machinery (to reach thirty-five-knot speed) and more 5-inch guns (twelve rather than eight), but her maximum displacement was given as the same 20,400 tons as her predecessor Hornet (GB 420-2 of 30 June 1939). Hornet herself was designated mobilization prototype. By November, CV-9 displacement was being given as 24,000 tons.

  28.Copy in GB 420 files, NARA, dated (in pencil) 30 September 1941. The study looked forward to completion of the “two ocean navy” program in 1946. It was intended to help the Navy resist undue political pressure, presumably in favor of aviation at the expense of conventional warships. An interesting feature of the study was the suggestion that, since fighter protection would always be at a premium, an attacker might use robot aircraft to decoy fighters away from the main attack. The report envisaged a global naval war in which the United States would fight in every theater. Thus it took into account conditions in places like the extreme North Atlantic (i.e., the Russian convoy run), in which heavy gun ships could still be quite effective. A point raised by the report was that carriers and their aircraft did not match the naval presence of gun-armed ships; the latter could force maneuver and withdrawal whether or not they actually sank enemy ships, whereas aircraft had little effect at sea unless they were lethal. Hence the issue was whether carrier aircraft could actually sink modern battleships maneuvering at sea, something they had not done as of September 1941. The Japanese aircraft that sank the British Repulse and Prince of Wales in December 1941 were land based (hence numbers were larger than those a carrier could have supported), and Taranto (November 1940) and Pearl Harbor involved static targets. The Italian Roma was sunk at sea in September 1943, but by a guided bomb not envisaged in 1943, of which the U.S. Navy had no wartime equivalent. Thus it was not until October 1944 (Musashi) that a modern battleship was sunk at sea by the sort of air attack that could have been envisaged in September 1941. Even then it took aircraft from a whole task group to do the job.

  29.Most CVEs had the H2 catapult installed on board Ranger and Wasp. A version of the H4 used by the Essex class (H4C) was installed on board the Commencement Bay class, and also on some C3 conversions (CVE-25 and CVE 31–54, most of which went to the Royal Navy).

  30.Reviewing the building program in June 1941, the General Board observed that there was an urgent need for aircraft to work wit
h convoys, but once Hornet was completed about 16 December 1941 no further carriers would be completed until January 1944. The board asked whether it would be advisable to fill the gap with merchant-type carriers, despite their limited aircraft capacity. What should their characteristics be? At a 27 June 1941 hearing, the Chief of BuAer testified that the converted freighters would be useful both to work with convoys (against air attack, surface raiders, and U-boats) and to augment fleet carriers. Six ships were already being converted in the United Kingdom, and C-3 freighters would be useful for this purpose in the United States. The ships could accommodate up to thirty-six fighters, or equivalent numbers of fighters, scouts (cruiser type, with wheels rather than floats), or scout bombers (torpedo bombers were not mentioned). BuAer proposed converting liners to fill the gap between the completion of Hornet and Essex; preliminary studies of seven liners had been made. Unfortunately all were relatively slow (20.5 to 22 knots) and all had limited capacity (typically eighteen fighters, eighteen dive-bombers, and eighteen torpedo bombers). It might be more useful to convert two fast liners that had been caught in U.S. waters by the war, the French Normandie and the Italian Conte Biancamano. Four hull numbers were reserved for liner conversions, including one of SS America, but none was carried out.

  31.Hull numbers 2 through 5 were reserved for planned conversions of liners but never carried out, so the fifty C3 conversions carried numbers through 54 (the ex-tankers were CVE 26–29). CVE 55–104 were the Casablancas. The specially built Commencement Bay class were CVE 105–127, of which CVE 124–127 were cancelled at the end of the war. The projected CVE 128–139 were never ordered.

  32.General Board letter 18 October 1941, following a BuAer letter dated 9 September 1941 and a BuShips letter, describing the proposed conversion, dated 29 August 1941. All of these letters referred to a relatively sophisticated conversion, which would take considerable time. The subject was revived in April 1942, but this time a much simpler CVE-like design was envisaged. The General Board still heartily disliked the idea; the U.S. fleet badly needed cruisers, and it did not need mediocre carriers.

  CHAPTER 10

  Foundation for Victory: U.S. Navy Aircraft Development, 1922–1945

  Hill Goodspeed

  The sun shone brightly in the Panama sky as the fighter planes from the aircraft carrier Saratoga (CV-3) roared aloft as part of fleet exercises off the coast of the Central American nation. A few days earlier these same planes had launched a surprise “attack” against the Panama Canal that foreshadowed the independent operations of carrier task forces during World War II. On this day, they were part of a mock fleet engagement, with fighter planes escorting bombing and torpedo aircraft. “Climbed so high we near froze to death [and] cruised over to the enemy [battle] line where we discovered all the Lexington planes below us,” wrote Lieutenant Austin K. Doyle of Fighting Squadron (VF) 2B. With the benefits of altitude and surprise, ideal for fighter pilots ready to do battle, Doyle and his division dove into the “enemy” planes, twisting and turning in dogfights. “When we broke off we rendezvoused . . . [and] strafed every ship in the fleet. . . . No other plane came near us.”1

  The events of a February day in 1929 described above occurred in the midst of a watershed era in naval aviation, the interwar years bringing a host of momentous advancements on multiple levels. From a technological and operational standpoint, none were as important as the aircraft carrier and the tactical and strategic implications of this new weapon of war. Arguably, the key element of the carrier’s success was its main battery in the form of the aircraft that launched from its decks, the unparalleled progress made in the design and operation of carrier aircraft providing the foundation for the flattop’s success during World War II. Similar progress marked other areas of naval aviation as well. Such was the lasting influence of interwar aircraft development that Lieutenant Doyle, who as a Naval Academy plebe during 1916–1917 served in a Navy with just fifty-eight aircraft of assorted types, could in 1929 write of a carrier strike against the Panama Canal and, later in his career as a carrier skipper, order planes designed on drawing boards of the 1930s to attack Japanese-held beachheads and strike enemy ships over the horizon.2

  On the day World War I ended, the U.S. Navy’s inventory totaled 2,337 aircraft, including heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air types.3 While this is an impressive total, given the aforementioned aircraft total of fifty-eight when America entered World War I, the number is deceiving. It is true that flying boats built by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company operated extensively from overseas coastal bases in the antisubmarine role. Yet, when it came to combat types flown at the front, the majority of naval aviators who deployed overseas trained and logged their operational missions in the cockpits of foreign-built airplanes. As the U.S. Navy developed its plan for aircraft production, the realization of the superiority of foreign designs was apparent to, among others, Commander John H. Towers, the Navy’s third aviator, who before U.S. entry into the war had observed firsthand operations of British aircraft during a stint in England as assistant naval attaché.4 Even after the signing of the Armistice, foreign types retained their importance to the U.S. Navy’s operations. With overseas observers having witnessed the launching of wheeled aircraft from flight decks built on board British ships, aircraft like Sopwith Camels, Hanriot HD-1s, and Nieuport 29s were procured for use in Navy experiments flying landplanes from temporary wooden platforms erected atop the turrets of fleet battleships. Ironically, the performance of these aircraft, built in the factories of England and France, proved a key factor in the shaping of the interwar aircraft building program.5

  Indeed, if there was one driving force behind the development of aircraft for the U.S. Navy during the 1920s and 1930s, it was the realization of the importance of shipboard aircraft to naval aviation operations. While this had been on the minds of naval aviation personnel from the beginning—among the earliest experiments conducted were the testing of catapults for launching aircraft from ships—most naval aviators were initially wedded to seaplanes. Upon arriving in Pensacola, Florida, to establish the Navy’s first aeronautical station there in January 1914, Lieutenant Commander Henry Mustin wrote to his wife of the difficulties of finding a suitable site for an airfield from which to operated landplanes and dirigibles: “Personally, I don’t approve of the Naval flying corps going in for those two branches because I think they both belong to the Army.”6 This philosophy would guide aircraft operations during naval aviation’s first decade and beyond, with naval aviator training and operations centered on seaplane operations.7

  British experience in World War I, namely the operation of wheeled-aircraft from ships, coupled with the aforementioned experiments on U.S. Navy battleships carried out during winter maneuvers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 1919, prompted a shift in thinking. Weighed down by pontoons, floatplanes simply could not compare with landplanes when it came to speed and maneuverability. Also, ships operating floatplanes, while they could launch them relatively quickly, had to disrupt operations to come alongside a returning aircraft and crane it back aboard. The aircraft carrier, with a deck devoted to the launching and recovery of aircraft, offered the most promise of maximizing the potential of aircraft in fleet operations.8

  By 1927, three aircraft carriers—Langley (CV-1), Lexington (CV-2), and Saratoga (CV-3)—had been placed in commission, their presence giving naval aviation heretofore unrealized capabilities in fleet operations and a potential as offensive weapons at sea or against land targets. “The value of aircraft acting on the defensive as a protective group against enemy aircraft is doubtful unless it is in connection with an offensive move,” wrote naval aviator Commander Patrick N. L. Bellinger in his Naval War College thesis in 1925.

  The most effective defensive against air attack is offensive action against the source, that is enemy vessels carrying aircraft and therefore, enemy aircraft carriers, or their bases and hangars on shore as well as the factories in which they are built. The air force that first strikes its
enemy a serious blow will reap a tremendous initial advantage. The opposing force cannot hope to surely prevent such a blow by the mere placing of aircraft in certain protective screens or by patrolling certain areas. There is no certainty, even with preponderance in numbers, of making contact with enemy aircraft, before they have reached the proper area and delivered their attack, and there is no certainty even if contact is made, of being able to stop them.9

  Nine years later, the Navy’s war instructions for 1934 emphasized the importance of seizing the offensive during a fleet engagement. “If the enemy aircraft carriers have not been located, our fleet is in danger of an air attack. In this situation, enemy carriers should be located and destroyed,” the document read. It further stated that if enemy carriers had been located, either with their aircraft on board or their strike groups having been launched, U.S. carrier planes would “vigorously” attack them, “destroy[ing] their flying decks.”10