One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (35 page)

  
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).

  
45
.
  
MEMORANDUM from Bureau of Construction and Repair and Bureau of Engineering (n.d.), received Navy Department 17 July 1940, NA, SECNAV, CV/L8-3(11), RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 322.

  
46
.
  
Paul H. Silverstone,
U.S. Warships of World War II
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1965), pp. 36–48.
Yorktown
is a memorial/museum ship in Charleston, South Carolina, while
Intrepid
is berthed in New York as a floating naval air museum, a testament to the enduring
legacy of these ships.
Lexington
served many decades as a training ship in Pensacola, Florida, for thousands of naval aviators for decades following the war.

  
47
.
  
Ibid., pp. 46–64.

  
48
.
  
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM FOR MR. GATES dated 10 February 1944, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/26, Box 1 (declassified IAW DoD DIR 5200.30 of 23 March 1983 by NARA on 17 September 2009).

  
49
.
  
Letter from Chief of Naval Operations to Various Officials dated 22 July 1940, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/14/1-2, Box 20 (declassified IAW NND813002 by NARA on 17 September 2009).

  
50
.
  
Cost Trend of Principal Naval Aircraft dated 10 February 1944, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/7/15, Box 9.

  
51
.
  
Letter from Chief BuAer to Secretary of the Navy dated 6 May 1943, BuAer, RG 72, 370/19/27/3, Box 34 (declassified IAW DoD Directive 5200.30 of 23 March 1983 by NARA 17 September 2009).

  
52
.
  
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM from Captain A.W. Radford to Chief, BuAer dated 30 June 1942, NA, BuAer, RG 72, 370/19/27/3, Box 36 (declassified IAW DoD DIR 5200.30 of 23 March 1983 by NARA on 17 September 2009).

  
53
.
  
The 1940 legislation eventually resulted in the following numbers:

         
1,325,000 tons new construction

         
New warships

         
2
Iowa
-class battleships

         
2
Alaska
-class battle cruisers

         
18
Essex
-class carriers

         
27
Baltimore-, Atlanta-, Cleveland
-class cruisers

         
115
Bristol-, Fletcher
-class destroyers

         
43
Gato
-class fleet submarines

         
15,000 aircraft

         
Numerous repair/tender/support ships

  
54
.
  
Silverstone,
U.S. Warships
, pp. 36–48. Only USS
Saratoga
(CV-3), which had been laid down as a battle cruiser during World War I and launched in 1925 could be characterized as a non-Vinson carrier. USS
Enterprise
(CV-6) resulted from the 1933 National Recovery Act, but Vinson had been a major influence in that appropriation effort. Thus, sixteen of the seventeen Pacific Fleet carriers at the time of Japan's surrender could be said to have been part of the “Vinson Navy.”

CHAPTER 9

U.S. Aircraft Carrier Evolution, 1911–1945

Norman Friedman

U
.S. carrier aviation began almost a century ago in November 1910, when, under naval auspices, an intrepid aviator named Eugene Ely landed on the cruiser USS
Birmingham
, whose fantail had been partly covered by a temporary deck equipped with what we would now call arresting gear ropes.
¹
In January 1911 Ely landed on and then flew off a similar deck rigged over the bow of the cruiser
Pennsylvania
in San Francisco harbor. The next month Glenn Curtiss landed his “hydroplane” alongside
Pennsylvania
, was hoisted aboard, then hoisted out and flew off, demonstrating a form of fleet aviation that could operate with minimum impact on a surface warship. Senior U.S. officers were impressed; they understood that aircraft could change naval warfare by giving fleet commanders much wider vision. The formal characteristics (staff requirements) for the 1910 battleship (
Texas
class) were amended to include provision for aircraft (although nothing was done in the end). Landing-on and flying-off decks at both ends of a ship would block too much of a ship's main battery; instead work proceeded on a catapult (designed at the Naval Gun Factory [Washington Navy Yard] in 1912) whose fixed track would cover the after guns of a large cruiser. The third catapult built was installed in 1915 on board the armored cruiser
North Carolina
, making the first catapult shot from a moving ship (the pilot was Captain Henry C. Mustin).
²
In 1916 several other armored cruisers were so modified, carrying large seaplanes that could land alongside when they returned. They represented a much greater diversion of frontline warships to aviation than other navies then contemplated.

About 1911 other navies were experimenting with launching aircraft from ships and also with operating aircraft from the shore. The Germans in particular became
interested in reconnaissance by Zeppelins; the British were so impressed that they used an aircraft-carrying cruiser, HMS
Hermes
, to simulate enemy airships during their 1913 maneuvers. At the outbreak of war the British converted three Channel steamers to carry floatplanes, and in December 1914 these ships launched the first naval air attack in history, specifically to destroy the German Zeppelin force. Although the attack succeeded, the German force was never completely destroyed, and during the war the Royal Navy began placing fighters on board its battleships and cruisers (they landed either ashore or in the water), specifically to deal with Zeppelin scouts. They had good reason to do so: in August 1916 the British Grand Fleet failed to catch the Germans at sea because a Zeppelin spotted them shortly before the two fleets would have come into contact. The British also became interested in aircraft to scout for their own fleet; a British floatplane (piloted by “Rutland of Jutland”) was peripherally involved in the Battle of Jutland, but the main British carrier, HMS
Campania
, did not go to sea with the fleet due to a signaling failure.

The Royal Navy also became interested in torpedo attack, an idea first popularized by U.S. Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske. Conversion of the three Channel steamers was initially motivated by a plan to attack the German fleet in harbor (the aircraft were hardly up to it, however), and in 1915 a British naval floatplane made the first aerial torpedo attack in history, on a Turkish steamer. The British became particularly interested in torpedo strikes after 1916, when it became clear that the German fleet would remain in harbor, tying down the British, preventing them from using their sea power offensively. Airplanes offered a unique way to get at the Germans despite their unwillingness to go to sea. In 1918 the British had enough carrier decks, either ready or in prospect, to plan a recognizably modern carrier raid on the German fleet in harbor. They revived the idea in the 1930s when they faced war against Italy, and they executed just such a raid against the Italian fleet base at Taranto in November 1940. It in turn may have helped inspire the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which had much the same aim. By 1918 the British also saw aerial spotting as a key to future gun battles, particularly when fog limited visibility on the sea. It was not so much that aircraft had been decisive during World War I, but that what they had done pointed to a large future role. In 1924 it was estimated that 150,000 aircraft had been built by various combatants during the war.
³

All of this mattered to the U.S. Navy because U.S. naval officers joined the British fleet after the United States entered World War I in April 1917. A U.S. battle squadron joined the Grand Fleet, which operated most British carrier aircraft; a U.S. naval staff (under Admiral William S. Sims, who was later President of the Naval War College) was set up in London, with close contact with the Admiralty; and U.S. officers and U.S.-built aircraft became involved in the huge British air anti-submarine warfare (ASW) effort (unlike land planes, in which the British and French had an
enormous edge, U.S. flying boats were considered quite modern and were used by the Royal Navy).

The U.S. officers watched the British create the world's first carrier force, and they reported back, both during and after the war, how it worked and what it could do. The U.S. staff in London so absorbed current Admiralty thinking that in 1918 it proposed a U.S. naval building program modeled closely on contemporary British warships. The Royal Navy sent a senior naval constructor, Stanley V. Goodall (later Director of Naval Construction, equivalent to the Chief of the U.S. Bureau of Ships), to work with U.S. warship designers at the Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R, later part of the Bureau of Ships). Goodall brought with him plans of current British warships, including some of the new carriers
Argus, Furious
, and
Hermes
(as they were when he left England in 1917, for example, when
Furious
had only her forward flying-off deck, with a hangar below it; Goodall stated that she had been further modified with a flying-on deck aft, but he had no details). Further plans, which survive in U.S. archives, were supplied as late as 1919–1920, as for a time postwar the British hoped that the United States would become an ally (this idea died when the Senate rejected the League of Nations).

The wartime Royal Navy considered carriers so important that it chose to complete the new battleship HMS
Eagle
as a carrier (her sister ship was the battleship HMS
Canada
). The “large light cruiser”
Furious
received first a flying-off deck forward (in place of one of her two 18-inch guns) and then a flying-on deck aft. She was the scene of the first British carrier landing, in 1917, but the air eddying around her superstructure caused serious problems, including the death of the first carrier-landing pilot. The British also laid down a cruiser-size carrier, HMS
Hermes
. She was the first ship to be designed as a carrier from the outset. The Royal Navy clearly considered her important enough to divert the resources that otherwise could have gone into a heavy cruiser. British capital ships and cruisers were fitted with flying-off platforms for fighters. Among lessons of early British carrier operations was the danger of air currents brushing aside the lightweight aircraft as they tried to land. The first British aviator to land on an operational carrier (
Furious
) was blown over the side and drowned on his second landing. Among the British responses was to lay wires lengthwise on the deck, providing airplanes with T-shaped hooks under their wheels, the idea being that a landing airplane would catch the wires and stay on the deck. The wires were often called arresting gear, but that was not their main function. The U.S. Navy adopted this idea, retaining such wires as late as about 1928. The Royal Navy found that, once airplanes were heavy enough not to be affected fatally by gusts of wind, the lengthwise wires tended to foul; they were abandoned. This experience was one reason the Royal Navy did not adopt arresting gear until the late 1930s. One consequence of not having arresting gear was that the Royal Navy was far more concerned than the U.S. Navy to maintain smooth air flow over its flight decks and around its
carriers' islands (which had airfoil-section funnels). Adopting arresting gear and the corresponding style of landings made it much easier for the U.S. Navy to design carriers and also to adopt high-powered aircraft with high approach speeds.

In June 1918 the Division of Naval Aviation (within OpNav) proposed characteristics for a carrier.
⁴
Goodall provided advice. By fall 1918 carriers figured in proposed U.S. postwar building programs (they were omitted from the 1919 program, prepared in 1918, because they could not possibly be ready in time to fight during World War I).
⁵
No such ship could enter service for some time, so in 1919 the large collier
Jupiter
was ordered converted into an experimental carrier, a flat deck being built above her hull. She was available because the fleet was being converted from coal to oil fuel. The converted ship was commissioned as USS
Langley
in 1922. She was always considered an interim experimental carrier, hence her low speed and limited hangar capacity were both acceptable.

The U.S. Navy was well aware that not only the British but also the Japanese—considered the next most likely enemy—were interested in carriers; a May 1920 OpNav memo on the subject (written by Aviation Director, Captain T. T. Craven) mentions an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report to that effect. The ship was
Hosho
, and ONI did not know that a British naval aviation mission would soon be providing the Japanese with the fruits of wartime British experience.
⁶
The memo argued that
Langley
could not by herself teach the necessary lessons. Her sister ship,
Neptune
, should also be converted, and one or more fast carriers obtained in order to learn the important tactical and strategic lessons of naval air power.