Carrier operations

Warship design and construction, terminology, navigation, hydrodynamics, stability, armor schemes, damage control, etc.
Francis Marliere
Senior Member
Posts: 276
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2010 3:55 pm

Carrier operations

Post by Francis Marliere »

Gentlemen,

I have an interest in the detail of carrier operations, especially in the details of fuelling, arming and spotting planes. As far as I know, the subject is not widely researched and the information I could get come from books and articles written by Pr. D. Isom ("Why the Japane Lost" in NWCR 2000, Midway Inquest) and by J. Parshall & A. Tully ("Doctrine Matters" NWCR 2001, "Shattered Sword") about the Battlle of Midway.

Unfortunately these sources, while well written and researched, have from my point of view 3 shortcomings :
* they don't deal with US and British procedures ;
* they don't tell much about fuelling ;
* they disagree on some subjects.

Do you know :
* how many planes could be fuelled at once (how many hozes on deck / on hangars) ?
* how long it takes to fuel a plane ?
* how long it takes to arm a dive bomber ?
* how many dive bombers could be armed at once ?
(Parshall & Tully say that arming a DB took 6-7 mn and that there were enough bomb carts to arm 1/3 of a squadron. Isom says in his article that there were enough bomb carts to arm the whole dquadron at once but writes otherwise in his book : there were enough carts to arme half the unit at once and arming took 15 mn)
* how many torpedo carts were aboard US and British carriers ? (Isom, Tully & Parshall agree on the fact that aboard Japanese fleet carriers, there were enough charts to arm 1/3 of the torpedo bombers at once, ie 6 for Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu, 9 for the Kaga).

Thanks for any precision,

Francis Marliere
Steve Crandell
Senior Member
Posts: 954
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2014 7:05 pm

Re: Carrier operations

Post by Steve Crandell »

IDK, but you might want to try the carrier topic at the navweaps forums. There are sometimes people there who have done those things. Not so much torpedoes, but modern jets. I'm afraid that modern carriers have faster handling equipment than they had in WWII, though.
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