parsifal
Colonel
QUOTE=tomo pauk;466731]
What about the daylight operations, where FAA planes were involved, like Channel Dash, or many convoy escorts? What about Norway in 1940 and Dunkuerque? The results of FAA crews were second to none in the 1st half of WWII, despite (not because) of the sucky equipment..[/QUOTE]
What about them? In Norway the battle was lost befor it was even begun. And the carriers were used in exactly the way they should have at the time....that is they covered the landings, and the subsequent withdrawals from outside German fighter ranges. There simply was not the strength n numbers for the british carrier groups to go slugging it out with the german airforce. if they had tried there were two possible disasters looming. The first was the potential to lose more carriers than they did lose. These were at the time so precious as to be considered irreplaceable. And at this stage of the war all britain could hope to do was to hang in there and keep her grip on the oceanic approaches to Europe. This in fact was a slow but certain war winning strategy for britain, and to achieve this she needed to keep her carriers afloat.
The second issue about avoiding open conflict with land based German fighters was the pitifully slow rate of replacement in pilots that the British were receiving at this time. In 1939 they "produced" the grand total of 16 carrier trained pilots, for the entire year By 1940, the oputput was about 80 pilots per year. The British methods for pilot training were similar to the Japanese at that time, in that they went for quality over quantity, or perhaps it is better to describe the briit pilots as super specialists rather than elite. It takes time to learn how to land and takeoff in a force 5 gale, it takes time to learn how to hit a pinpoint target that is underway, in conditions of poor visibilityor night.
So with perhaps one or two pilots joining the fleet every month in April 1940, the last thing you want is to open up a doctrine where you have these massive, heroic, and pointless, battles with the Luftwaffe, for whom the loss of 10 or 20 pilots is nothing. For the FAA it was nothing short of a major disaster to lose even 5 pilots....
As far as I know, Brit Carriers were not needed, or used over Dunkerque
The battles for the convoy escorts were all undertaken outside the range of German fighters. The exception to this was malta, where the standard tactic of the Brits was to place their carriers at "point X" (in the case of the western approach route this was a point southwest of Sardinia, which until 1942 had no major airfields, and no germans), and fly cover CAP over the relief convoy. Placing the Carriers with the convoy would have been suicidal, even if they had been equipped with Me 262s, because the numbers of aircraft that the Axis could bring to bear, versus the numbers that could be put up by the Brits (until 1942) was so one sided as to make such a strategy of close escort sheer madness
And your final point about Brit FAA aircrews being second to none in spite of the equipment, misses the reasons about why they were so good?? Because the FAA procurement was managed by the RAF until 1938, and because it was absolutely starved of resources so badly both in terms of the equipment, and in terms of the extremely limited manpower thrown at the FAA, the RN had to develop methods to extract the very best out of the limited resources available to it....enter the stringbag. A supremely docile and forgiving aircraft, able to undertake operations in weather other aircraft could not hope to consider flying oiperations in, the first tactical aircraft in the world to be fitted with ASV radar on an operational scale, she was perfect for the job, not "sucky equipment" as you put it. IMO, no other aircraft in the world could have brought down the Bismarck at that time, and the attacks at matapan and Taranto are worthy of mention for similar reasons.
Your comment about putting Hurricanes to sea, misses the poiints made above and earlier, namely, that in 1940, the hurricane was one of the topline fighters for the RAF, and putting even a few on the carriers is going to cost a lot more in numbers in land based units, because of the development costs, and diversion of funds, to the naval effort. In any event, the conversion of the hurricane could not have begun until after April 1940, because up to that time, the RN did not believe that high performance aircraft in the soupy conditions of the far north atalntic were able to be operated effectively, and were not needed anyway, because pre-war British carrier doctrine emphasised the need to stay out of enemy fighter range. If that was the doctrine (and that was the correct one to adopt, given al the constraints the Brits were labouring under at the time) why put top line fighters on the carriers at a huge expense in land based capability when you dont actually need them????
What about the daylight operations, where FAA planes were involved, like Channel Dash, or many convoy escorts? What about Norway in 1940 and Dunkuerque? The results of FAA crews were second to none in the 1st half of WWII, despite (not because) of the sucky equipment..[/QUOTE]
What about them? In Norway the battle was lost befor it was even begun. And the carriers were used in exactly the way they should have at the time....that is they covered the landings, and the subsequent withdrawals from outside German fighter ranges. There simply was not the strength n numbers for the british carrier groups to go slugging it out with the german airforce. if they had tried there were two possible disasters looming. The first was the potential to lose more carriers than they did lose. These were at the time so precious as to be considered irreplaceable. And at this stage of the war all britain could hope to do was to hang in there and keep her grip on the oceanic approaches to Europe. This in fact was a slow but certain war winning strategy for britain, and to achieve this she needed to keep her carriers afloat.
The second issue about avoiding open conflict with land based German fighters was the pitifully slow rate of replacement in pilots that the British were receiving at this time. In 1939 they "produced" the grand total of 16 carrier trained pilots, for the entire year By 1940, the oputput was about 80 pilots per year. The British methods for pilot training were similar to the Japanese at that time, in that they went for quality over quantity, or perhaps it is better to describe the briit pilots as super specialists rather than elite. It takes time to learn how to land and takeoff in a force 5 gale, it takes time to learn how to hit a pinpoint target that is underway, in conditions of poor visibilityor night.
So with perhaps one or two pilots joining the fleet every month in April 1940, the last thing you want is to open up a doctrine where you have these massive, heroic, and pointless, battles with the Luftwaffe, for whom the loss of 10 or 20 pilots is nothing. For the FAA it was nothing short of a major disaster to lose even 5 pilots....
As far as I know, Brit Carriers were not needed, or used over Dunkerque
The battles for the convoy escorts were all undertaken outside the range of German fighters. The exception to this was malta, where the standard tactic of the Brits was to place their carriers at "point X" (in the case of the western approach route this was a point southwest of Sardinia, which until 1942 had no major airfields, and no germans), and fly cover CAP over the relief convoy. Placing the Carriers with the convoy would have been suicidal, even if they had been equipped with Me 262s, because the numbers of aircraft that the Axis could bring to bear, versus the numbers that could be put up by the Brits (until 1942) was so one sided as to make such a strategy of close escort sheer madness
And your final point about Brit FAA aircrews being second to none in spite of the equipment, misses the reasons about why they were so good?? Because the FAA procurement was managed by the RAF until 1938, and because it was absolutely starved of resources so badly both in terms of the equipment, and in terms of the extremely limited manpower thrown at the FAA, the RN had to develop methods to extract the very best out of the limited resources available to it....enter the stringbag. A supremely docile and forgiving aircraft, able to undertake operations in weather other aircraft could not hope to consider flying oiperations in, the first tactical aircraft in the world to be fitted with ASV radar on an operational scale, she was perfect for the job, not "sucky equipment" as you put it. IMO, no other aircraft in the world could have brought down the Bismarck at that time, and the attacks at matapan and Taranto are worthy of mention for similar reasons.
Your comment about putting Hurricanes to sea, misses the poiints made above and earlier, namely, that in 1940, the hurricane was one of the topline fighters for the RAF, and putting even a few on the carriers is going to cost a lot more in numbers in land based units, because of the development costs, and diversion of funds, to the naval effort. In any event, the conversion of the hurricane could not have begun until after April 1940, because up to that time, the RN did not believe that high performance aircraft in the soupy conditions of the far north atalntic were able to be operated effectively, and were not needed anyway, because pre-war British carrier doctrine emphasised the need to stay out of enemy fighter range. If that was the doctrine (and that was the correct one to adopt, given al the constraints the Brits were labouring under at the time) why put top line fighters on the carriers at a huge expense in land based capability when you dont actually need them????