US Supercarrier vs IJN

Interesting!

I wonder what WWII aircraft could launch from the larger deck of the Ford.

Could the B-25s on the Doolittle raid launch and be recovered on the Ford?

Could the electro-magnetic catapults be used to launch WW2 aircraft, or would it be too powerful?

Aside from their extreme power, EM cats are incompatible with WW II aircraft. Like totally. So are Nimitz-class cats. Both use the nose-tow method versus the previous bridle attachments.
Snark alert:
The Ford remains an absolute mess but there's zero accountability at any level. Billions over budget, years later, delivered-accepted incomplete and still (optimistically) four years from deploying because the program office keeps hitting The Reset Button to say "on schedule." (A trick successfully employed by the F-35 office.)

By comparison, I knew two Enterprise CVN-65 COs and a chief engineer. The Big E Two was by far the most innovative, generational-leaping carrier ever up to that time. IIRC she began her shakedown cruise less than 2 months after commissioning and deployed on her first cruise about 8 months after that.

You don't need cats to launch WW2 aircraft off a Nimitz or Ford class. With a takeoff roll of 1,000 feet on a ship running at close to 35 knots likely running into 20-40 knot winds, I bet a moderately laden B-17 could take off.

Now, with no GPS or satellite navigation, can the systems operate?

Cats can be adapted by taking the nose-wheel gadget and attaching a main strut bridle. Adding a bridle-catcher to the bow is simple: a catwalk will do. This is assuming the Supercarrier doesn't have its normal complement of super planes.
Radar on the Nimitz (Big E is gone and Ford won't be here for a few years) can spot the targets and launch (and recover) medium bombers (B-25 and A-26).
Biggest problem is finding 300 or so very tiny steel IJN bobbers scattered across a huge ocean.
Cruising the known anchorages would work eventually.

Admiral Beez said:

Now, with no GPS or satellite navigation, can the systems operate?

Click to expand...

I think the answer to that is "yes." I cannot, of course, be 100% sure because I'm not a naval person and I don't know any current naval persons, but one should note that neither SSN nor SSBN can use GPS, as the reception under a few hundred feet of sea water doesn't exist. Also, the Navy is, reportedly, working on procedures for when GPS is taken off-line or rendered untrustworthy, including the teaching of celestial navigation.

Of course, a lot of systems, like all those smart weapons using GPS guidance, won't, and many that do will have degraded accuracy (I suspect that Tomohawk is one of those that may not work.)