Capt Spanky
Airman
- 17
- Jul 19, 2011
i was reading a lot of old postings on carriers and their usage. one thing that keeps coming up is a prevailing notion that the american carriers were not fitted with catapults untill late in the war.
while the Langley and ranger were built without catapults. the Lexington class had a seaplane pneumatic one which was removed in 1934. all other carriers were built with 2 deck catapults until the super carriers. the Independence class had one catapult and refitted with a second in 44. the escorts were fitted with one or two catapults.
what i did find funny in all my reading was us carrier captains shunned the use of catapults. this is evidenced by the forming up of the launches at midway. amazing they were started to be used once the escorts and light carriers started to be used. another factor was the increased availability of aircraft. the shortened flight desk on the smaller carriers meant that there often was not enough deck space to fly off planes. on a carrier that was designed to carry 100 planes has excess capacity or deck space when it has say 72 planes. now increase that air compliment to 100 and you can see that's 10 more rows of planes taking up deck space. once the ships captains, air boss, and admirals realized you can save gas, extend range and more time over the target, catapult launches became the norm. i believe this was late 1943 or so.
while the Langley and ranger were built without catapults. the Lexington class had a seaplane pneumatic one which was removed in 1934. all other carriers were built with 2 deck catapults until the super carriers. the Independence class had one catapult and refitted with a second in 44. the escorts were fitted with one or two catapults.
what i did find funny in all my reading was us carrier captains shunned the use of catapults. this is evidenced by the forming up of the launches at midway. amazing they were started to be used once the escorts and light carriers started to be used. another factor was the increased availability of aircraft. the shortened flight desk on the smaller carriers meant that there often was not enough deck space to fly off planes. on a carrier that was designed to carry 100 planes has excess capacity or deck space when it has say 72 planes. now increase that air compliment to 100 and you can see that's 10 more rows of planes taking up deck space. once the ships captains, air boss, and admirals realized you can save gas, extend range and more time over the target, catapult launches became the norm. i believe this was late 1943 or so.
