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24 Fw 190's, any and all of which can be quickly converted to fly any task. All single-seaters. Different armament/ equipment packs available for different tasks. This means you only have to have one type of engine, one type of airframe, and simply have spare parts redundancy and total mission flexability. If US, then they would all be F6F or maybe F4U if it was safe for that type to fly off such a small carrier. British-- I'd rework the landing gear for Seafire to fold inward, and use those exclusively. Japanese didn't have the type of naval fighter bomber I'm talking about, although the N1K series might have been awesome adapted to carriers in 1944! Russian-- La-5 or La-7 derivative. Italian: Re 2002, but need more power. French: Bloch 155 derivative with larger wing.
There is one thing to think about though - no capital ship was ever sunk by bombs IIRC, {other than Aircraft carriers} The Price of Wales, Yamato, Scharhorst, Warspite, Repulse, Nagato, Musashi, and many others were repeatedly bombed, but it was only the torpedoes that could sink them. Consider Nagato - at Leyte 24/25 October hit by 4 bombs, on the 26th hit by 4 more, then in July '45 attacked repeatedly by Helldivers and suffered 3 more hits - yet survived the war.
For the german perspective:
critical limitations:
A) landing deck on a CVL likely no longer than ca. 150m usable.
--->No Fw-190, No Bf-109, No Stuka.
B) CVL hangar spaces limited in height (ca. 4.2-4.5m each)
--->No Fi-TB
Displacement:
9.430 t light; 9.740 t standard; 11.030 t normal; 12.061 t full load
Dimensions: Length (overall / waterline) x beam x draught (normal/deep)
(644,83 ft / 628,94 ft) x 60,20 ft x (18,54 / 19,87 ft)
(196,54 m / 191,70 m) x 18,35 m x (5,65 / 6,06 m)
There is one thing to think about though - no capital ship was ever sunk by bombs IIRC, {other than Aircraft carriers}
AFAIK, Billy Mitchell's famous demonstration of air power, the sinking of USS Ostfriesland in 1921 was done entirely by bombs.
From memory I can recall the following ships sunk by bombs alone:
- USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, 1941
- Japanese battleship Ise (not sure about Haruna), 1945
- Tirpitz ( took 3 "Tallboys" though), 1944
- German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, 1945
- Russian battleship Marat (by Rudel himself), 1941
What about those two British capital ships (maybe Repulse, Prince of Wales) sunk by Japanese level bombers?
I'd keep the aircraft mixed as they did on the Independence Class of CVL's...24 fighters (would be F4U's)
9 torpedo/bomber planes (would be Avenger's)
Come to think about it fellas....how vulnerable would a raiding carrier be, without her protective screen of other ships? How and where would we operate, how and where would we refitt with new aircraft when needed, would we operate during day or night (or early and late hours), if doing most of our damage during "night time", where do we hide during the day, a carrier is not a small ship and we're bound to be hunted for....
Why could they not operate Ju 87, Me109?
The CVL converted from a CA {~630' - 640' OA} is about the same size as the HMS "Unicorn" {640' OA} which operated SeaHurri, SeaFire Barracuda, and Firefly.
Would your Ju-87's not be able to operate if launche by Catapult?
Both, the Ju-87 and the Me-109 could be operated only in case major modifications would be done to the planes. The Me-109T carrier fighter received not only structural improvements and an arrestor hook but the entire wing had to be redesigned. A new wing filet (inner section) was added to increase the wing area in order to keep landing speeds in within torlerances for >240m usable deck landing area (CVA GRAF ZEPPELIN) and under 135 Km/h.
The landing deck of my CVL is 90m short of this, which would add to landing problems. HMS UNICORN suffered from comparable problems operating Seafires off Sicily but had actually 40m more landing deck length than my CVL. Nevertheless, it was to short to operate them safely. That was in calm sea under best conditions, not in the stormy North Atlantic.
Launching is one part of the problem and catapults helped (altough not on a Ju-87 with bombload) but the more serious problems are landing accidents.
Finally, the Ju-87 is bigger, has a lower range, less payload and higher stall speeds= no significant advantage over the Ar-195 other than speed.
It wouldn´t be wise to operate fighters or bombers on a CVL, not designed to have exceptional foregiving low speed handling.
best regards,
The landing deck of my CVL is 90m short of this,
It wouldn´t be wise to operate fighters or bombers on a CVL, not designed to have exceptional foregiving low speed handling.
For the KM, I wouldn´t compose any task forces at all. It does make tactically and strategically more senses to send one CVL and two other raiders independently on lone missions in the South Atlantic, the western approaches, the mid atlantic narrows or the indic ocean instead.
Supporting this line, it does not make sense to include any fighters at all. The main purpose of the CVL is to sink merchants, not to provide CAP. The Ar-195 is perfectly capable to fullfill all roles from recon over bombing to torpedo attacks. On top of this, the Ar-195 has a radial engine, very foregiving landing charackteristics, an unrestricted view and an stall speed of only 90 Km/h. The Ar-195 airwing cannot be ignored in the Atlantic and if this leads to more interceptors on RN hunting CV´s, fine. It would relief pressure from the other raiders in the ocean.