Food for thought - A more powerful carrier fleet earlier

Kevin J · Jul 12, 2020

Instead of turning most of Germany's cities into rubble what if we complete and deploy Unicorn late 1941, the 2 Implacable class armoured carriers in 1942 and the two maintenance and eight Colossus class light fleets 1943 onwards along with some decent FAA aircraft? I'm assuming that each 1000 four engine bombers will give us enough spare cash for 4 carriers. So that costs us 3000+ heavy bombers. What aircraft do we need for this fleet? Where do we use them?
David Rendahl's answer to Removing the benefit of hindsight, was there anything the Allies could have done that could have won World War 2 sooner? - Quora

Kevin J · Jul 12, 2020

I've just been looking up the Colossus and Majestic class on Wikipedia. Most were launched in 1943. Only 4 operational at wars end. We build 16000 4 engine bombers needing 112000 crew. 16 Colossus class need a total of 160800 crew. Anyone know if our problem is a lack of manpower or just war priorities?

Nick Sumner · Jul 16, 2020

Of course money isn't the only issue, there's manpower, availability of raw materials, allocation of resources blah blah blah, but an Implacable class carrier cost around £5.4 million while the cost of all the Lancaster, Halifax, Wellington, Mosquito and Stirling aircraft which carried out 88.9 percent of all Bomber Command sorties was £613 million. Make of that what you will.

MikeMeech · Jul 16, 2020

Kevin J said:
I've just been looking up the Colossus and Majestic class on Wikipedia. Most were launched in 1943. Only 4 operational at wars end. We build 16000 4 engine bombers needing 112000 crew. 16 Colossus class need a total of 160800 crew. Anyone know if our problem is a lack of manpower or just war priorities?

Hi

16 Colossus with a total crew of 160,800!? They had a complement of 1,300 each which would make 20,800 crew, another 140,000 would be problematic, where do you put the aircraft? Plus the carrier force does not have much utility against the Germans, if you had that much manpower available they would have gone to the infantry after D-Day.

Mike

Kevin J · Jul 16, 2020

MikeMeech said:
Hi

16 Colossus with a total crew of 160,800!? They had a complement of 1,300 each which would make 20,800 crew, another 140,000 would be problematic, where do you put the aircraft? Plus the carrier force does not have much utility against the Germans, if you had that much manpower available they would have gone to the infantry after D-Day.

Mike

What I'm suggesting here is they could have been used to liberate the DEI.

TheMadPenguin · Jul 31, 2020

In this case, please adjust the math on the 16 carriers to include the cost of the air wings, both pounds and people.
Also, an attack group of 16 carriers will require destroyers and cruisers for screening, and fuel/ammo resupply ships.
On this note, the bombers cost lots more than you've shown: They needed air fields and the personnel thereof, and parts, bombs, and fuel.

Then shoot me for being a nit-picking detail-nazi.

Food for thought - A more powerful carrier fleet earlier

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