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I don't think that was ever done. But I bet a Shagbat could land on a short platform on the host cruiser, in the right conditions. Into wind, airspeed just above stall, cruiser at full clip, closing speed shouldn't be more than a few knots.
Fair point. I imagine Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would fled if a Revenge class had accompanied Glorious.
I would guess that trying to pick up a light aircraft in the wake of a much larger ship could be quite sporty, geometrically more complex as the ship speed goes up.
If Glorious was running as she should have been, yes. But Glorious was running at 17 knots with only half her boilers lit. Yes, since 17 knots was near flat out, any Revenge class would have burned a lot of fuel.
and risked break down.
The Wasp wandered into a Japanese sub line and the Japanese sub I-19 launched six Type 95 torpedoes, which turned out to be probably the most devastating single launch by a submarine in the war. Three torpedoes struck the Wasp causing such damage she had to be later sank, one torpedo struck the destroyer O'Brien causing such damage that six months and 3000 nautical miles later her hull split open and she sank, then a torpedo struck the Battleship North Carolina, knocking out its forward turret, but otherwise didn't prevent the ship from maintaining speed and station. The Japanese had fabulous torpedoes. Here's an amazing picture of the O'Brien being struck by the torpedo. in the background is the stricken Wasp. Note how far the Wasp is from the O'Brien, both hit by the same salvo.
The entire Revenge class should have been updated, akin to the Italian Doria and Cavour classes. New machinery, increased main gun elevation and lengthen the hull for better hydrodynamics. Yes, that costs money and takes limited yard capacity, but they would have been much more usable units. Of course we'd want Hood updated first.
Problem with that idea is the lack of internal space, that's why the earlier QE ships were upgraded.
True. The Cavours and Doria benefited by having the midship turret to remove, freeing up a lot of space. If we could cut a Revenge in half and add a 100ft plug, that would free up the space for machinery, etc.
And given the poor relative health and thus suitability of Britain's poorer people, more of those 700,000 dead would have come from the educated and middle class, the very people you need to run the country in the 1930s and beyond.
By needlessly I mean that Ark Royal's captain could have immediately begun damage control, as opposed to mustering everyone on deck and waiting over half and hour before beginning to save his ship. The captain seemed to forget mission, men, self. He went straight to men and forgot the mission. Courageous was bad luck, but using a fleet carrier for ASW with a light escort is a recipe for disaster. But I'm not erasing their fates, entirely. In this scenarios the torpedoes still strike Courageous and Ark, but they live to see another day.
