Weather limitations in carrier aviation in the interwar and WWII eras (1 Viewer)

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Why do you believe that?

All part of the initial plan to build her as a flush decked carrier. 6 boilers, 3 each side of the centreline and, unusually, placed aft of the turbines. 6 uptakes, one for each boiler. The arrangement still allowed them to emit smoke when horizontal. Note the 'S' bend in the uptake between the exit from the boiler room and the folding upper part. Not so much a "fold" as a rotation around a "collar".



And with them folded down. Note how low the "fold" was.

 

Amusing that variable winds only seem to affect the RN in your view.

Typically, US carriers used only the aft half of their flight deck to range a strike. That meant the SBD at the front of the range would only carry 500lb bombs. In that respect Ranger doesn't seem to have been different from other USN carriers. During Operation Leader in Oct 1943, the first 6 were restricted to 500lb-ers.

For Leader Ranger launched

Strike 1 - 20 SBD + 8 Wildcat
Strike 2 (launched 30 mins later) - 10 TBF & 6 Wildcats.

AIUI, her aircraft complement was 27 SBD-5, 18 TBF-1 & 27 F4F-4. The low natural wind speed during that operation is commented on by various authors.

The RN simply accepted their deck limitations in the early part of the war. For Taranto, with the Swordfish needing overload tanks, the range had to be limited to 12 in the first launch and would have been 12 in the second, but for losing 3 Swordfish en route.

As the war went on, the aft round downs on the armoured carriers was flattened out, so increasing the useable deck space and allowing more aircraft to be ranged for each strike.


The first production Albacore rolled off the production line in Sept 1939 with series production starting in Jan 1940. The first Albacore squadron formed on 15 March 1940 and the next on 15 June 1940. Both went aboard Formidable in Nov 1940, shortly after she completed. By that time other squadrons were also receiving Albacores.

Douglas produced 57 SBD-1 from June 1940 that went to the USMC. That was followed by 87 SBD-2 for USN squadrons. Production of the SBD-3 didn't begin until March1941 and it didn't fully succeed earlier types (earlier SBD variants and other dive bomber types - biplane SBC-4 & SB2A Vindicators) until mid 1942.
 

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