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    Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War
    Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War
    Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War
    Ebook360 pages1 hour

    Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War

    By Steve Backer

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    About this ebook

    A stern-to-bow look at the most powerful aircraft carrier design of World War Two from the author of Bismarck and Tirpitz in the ShipCraft series.
     
    The latest volume covers the hugely important American carrier of the Second World War. Built in larger numbers than any fleet carrier before or since, the Essex class can claim to be the US Navy’s most significant weapon in the defeat of Japan. Carrying up to 100 aircraft and capable of absorbing enormous punishment (not one was sunk), they spearheaded the Fast Carrier Task Forces for most of the Pacific War.
     
    The heavily illustrated work contains everything a modeller needs to know about this prolific class.
     
    “This book is well written and the text is supported by good sharp photos and illustrations. If your interest is World War II warships or ship modelling, this book should be in your library.”—PowerShips
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 19, 2009
    ISBN9781473831650
    Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War

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      Essex Class Aircraft Carriers of the Second World War - Steve Backer

      Design

      ‘The larger the carrier, the more vulnerable she is to gunfire, torpedoes, or bombs, and it is certain that with improved designs smaller carriers can be built which will carry and operate as many aircraft as the huge vessels which exist to-day. In all Navies, existing carriers are a compromise; hardly a single one was specifically designed as carrier from its inception, and it seems probable that the big carrier is doomed, and that the carrier of the future will be a vessel certainly not exceeding 20,000 tons.’

      The Navy in My Time,

      by Admiral Mark Kerr RN (London 1933).

      Admiral Kerr was a visionary in many ways. He was an early proponent of submarines and aircraft carriers, and was to be proved right about the former by the World War One German U-Boat campaign, and about the latter in the second world conflict. But he was wrong about the size of carriers: a decade after he wrote, 1943 would see the introduction of the most powerful aircraft carrier design of World War Two. Large in terms of size and in numbers produced, the Essex class carriers swept the Pacific of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In the course of the greatest naval war in history, this class probably made the most significant contribution of any weapon system to the victory of the USN over the IJN, even including the hugely successful US submarine campaign. The backbone of the US offensive, the Essex class carried the allies to the shores of Japan. With 26 ships laid down and 24 completed, no other fleet carrier design has been built in such large numbers.

      The development of the aircraft carrier for the United States Navy was largely guided by the terms of the 1921 Washington Treaty. The Royal Navy, which had truly pioneered the concept, had already constructed or was constructing a number of smaller carriers. The position of the USN and IJN was different, however, as neither power had invested any significant tonnage in aircraft carriers at the time of the signing of the Treaty. The IJN had the Hosho and the USN had the Langley (CV-1), which were both used basically for experiments and developing doctrine, rather than as operational carriers, although Langley briefly saw service as a fleet carrier in the early 1930s. Both Pacific powers likewise wished to save capital ship hulls from scrapping, so each was granted two carriers over the established displacement in the Treaty, Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3) for the USN, and Kaga and Akagi for the IJN. The small ‘training’ carriers and the oversized conversions of capital ships formed the training and operational base of the fleets of both powers throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

      A starboard quarter view of the newly completed Essex (CV-9), 31 December 1942. In terms of electronics and AA armament, by later standards the ship looks austere, although the deck-edge galleries with their arrays of canvas-covered 20mm Oerlikons pointing skyward catch the eye.

      Both the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy believed in maximising the offensive qualities of the aircraft carrier, even if it meant sacrificing defensive characteristics. For the USN the Ranger (CV-4) was its first attempt to build a carrier from the keel up. To obtain as many ships as possible from the allowable tonnage of the Washington and London Treaties, the USN pared the ship’s displacement to a bare minimum. It was determined that five carriers of this size could be provided from the tonnage left. In this design, speed was sacrificed and protection was minimal in order to magnify the dominating characteristic of Ranger: the largest possible air wing. This became the characteristic that USN aircraft carriers have emphasised to the present day. Nonetheless, the Ranger was a failure, as too much was attempted on too small a displacement. The next USN design was different. The Yorktown class of 20,000 tons was a beautiful blend of speed with some protection, coupled with a large air wing. However, even with their near-perfect blend of characteristics, the Yorktown design still did not have all of the characteristics that the USN wanted in a carrier. Overall tonnage constraints continued to apply, so after the Yorktown (CV-5) and Enterprise (CV-6) there was only enough treaty tonnage left over for one much smaller carrier, which almost seemed to mix Ranger and Yorktown characteristics. This became Wasp (CV-7).

      Yorktown (CV-10), 27 April 1943. A very clear view of the main features of the port side of early members of the class as completed. The deck-edge elevator is in the folded position, and the extension support for the athwartship catapult can be seen (also folded) just abaft the forward 40mm quad mount. Note how restricted the firing arcs were for the bow 40mm in short-hull ships.

      Intrepid (CV-11), on 25 November 1943. Although it is only a few months after commissioning, the ship has already undergone changes to her electronics: the SK aerial has been moved to the starboard side of the stack and replaced by SM on the foretop, in turn displacing the SC-2, which is now mounted atop a separate pole mast. Note that this ship was completed with only four lattice masts to support the radio aerials.

      Following Japanese refusal to enter into the 1935 London Treaty, agreements on naval limitations collapsed, and Congress approved the construction of a further 40,000 tons for aircraft carriers. The first carrier was a slightly modified Yorktown design, which became Hornet (CV-8), but for CV-9 it was decided to rework the previous design to see if more could be squeezed out of it. However, even though there were no longer tonnage constraints, the development of the new design was severely limited by time pressure. With the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and then China and militant Germany stirring in Europe, war clouds were gathering and the USN needed to expand its capabilities quickly. Events overtook the design process. After war broke out in Europe in September 1939 and the situation in the Pacific deteriorated, Congress finally woke up and greatly expanded naval construction in 1940. CV-9 was a beneficiary of the loosened purse strings.

      For reasons of speed, the existing 20,000-ton Yorktown design was used as a baseline, but substantially modified, work beginning in 1939. She was given a larger hull and flight deck to operate even more aircraft. A deck side elevator was added to the two centreline elevators to increase the operational tempo of flight operations. This was first tried with Wasp (CV-7) and had proved that, with two deck elevators and the side elevator, aircraft could be cycled through the operational pattern much faster, making possible the concentration of larger strike packages. The success of the side elevator led the designers to dispense with a centreline elevator amidships, which had weakened the lightly armoured hangar deck. When the preceding Yorktown was designed the navy was still operating biplanes, but the newer monoplane designs were generally larger, which threatened to reduce the total number of aircraft that could be

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