One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (45 page)

  
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 with 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

T
he 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

This realization of the threat of enemy air power in a fleet action stimulated tactical thought, which in turn influenced the design of the planes tasked with delivering the blows against enemy carriers. Initially, it was conventional wisdom that torpedoes would be the most effective method of attack against enemy ships, but whether an aerial torpedo or a bomb, the struggle facing aircraft designers was developing aircraft that could carry the weight of the ordnance without compromising too much in the way of speed, maneuverability, and range.
¹¹
The first successful torpedo plane design introduced into fleet service was Douglas Aircraft Company's DT, which was important in more than one respect. First, it was the maiden military plane produced by the company, symbolizing the emergence of a postwar aircraft manufacturing
base marked by the opening of such companies as Douglas and Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. These firms, founded after World War I, joined such wartime entities as the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, Boeing Company, Glenn L. Martin Company, and the Naval Aircraft Factory—the latter a Navy-owned center for manufacturing and testing of airplanes—in meeting the demands of the Navy's aircraft programs. Second, due to the weight of aerial torpedoes, while earlier torpedo plane designs were twin-engine ones that were unsuitable for carrier use, the single-engine DT was capable of shipboard operations and of carrying a payload of 1,835 pounds. In fact, on 2 May 1924, a DT-2 version of the design carrying a dummy torpedo successfully catapult launched from
Langley
anchored at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida. Finally, the DT pointed to the future in its composition, the traditional wood and fabric used in aircraft, while still present, accompanied by sections of welded steel.
¹²