Tiornu wrote: You've demonstrated, once again, that you can't stand to be contradicted and that's about all.
As you know, what I can't stand is deliberate distortion. You cite a single anecdote and present it as a valid point. You've made no effort to examine the subject from any angle, even an obvious one, that does not dovetail into your baseless conclusion. You had the option of considering how many bombs did not hit American carriers due to their overwhelming pre-emptive air strength and their massive CAP capability--the very assets that have already been cited as the anti-thesis of the armored flight deck. Why you chose not to do so...is clear.
The RN AFD carriers were designed before effective GCI or even simple search radar was a reality. Take away Radar and the USN's carriers would have been lighting up the Pacific as did the IJN's. The argument that large air complements prevent attack is false. It is the combination of radar, combined with adequate numbers of aircraft and effective GCI doctrine that allowed the USN to use their numbers effectively. It is also a fact that IJN/IJAAF aircraft had vastly inferior performance to contemporary Luftwaffe aircraft, for example, again creating the illusion of an effective CAP due to the USN carrier's large complement, when it was really a case of meeting a vastly weaker opponent, whose poor performing aircraft allowed effective interception. The USN had the luxury of assessing the combat experience of RN carriers, RN design doctrine including AFD designs with unlimited access to RN files and decided to build their own AFD carriers that fully incorporated both RN and USN combat experience, a luxury that the RN did not have since all their designs were completed pre-war. The RN had to pioneer the development of carrier tactics the hard way. However, the RN did incorporate war experience into their designs to the extent possible, and the result was Implacable. Put Implacables into the 1941/42 Med or Atlantic, with late war RN carrier doctrine and the result would have been the total dominance of those oceans, in that time frame, and the probable destruction of the Kido Butai in April 1942.
However, again we have to come back to the fact that Implacable was a smaller CV than Essex, and a hypothetical USN Implacable would have had a larger air complement, with more fuel, avgas, and munitions stowage than Implacable and probably another elevator. Now, let's replace the Essex class with USN Implacables. Would an AFD CV with say 90-95 aircraft, 150000 gallons of avgas, and say 5000 tons of fuel, have been superior to the historical Essex? I would argue that it would have been and USN carriers could have then advanced farther and faster, in terms of island hopping , than was historically the case, but in any event the differences between the two designs would have been far less than is commonly imagined.
Additionally, the existing RN implacable class could have been improved upon even further, on the same tonnage, by replacing the 4.5" guns with 4" and by reducing the belt armour to say 2". This would probably have allowed one or both of the hanger decks to have been heightened to 16' or more, with no reduction in AA performance and no real reduction in damage resistance.
