Dark Earth: The History of the Aircraft Carrier

Here is a little preview of the history of British aircraft carriers in the Second World War. This is the first ~10% to give a little taste:

At the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1st 1939, the Royal Navy was the largest and most powerful fleet in the world, deploying over 700 vessels and possessed of a vast global network of fortified bases to support its operations. It's major warships consisted of 32 battleships, 10 battlecruisers, 12 fleet and 4 light aircraft carriers, 102 cruisers, 280 destroyers, 121 escorts, 66 sloops and corvettes and 86 submarines, with its most substantial forces concentrated in the British Isles and the Mediterranean. It faced a complex threat in the form of the growing German Kriegsmarine and its Austro-Hungarian allies, spread between the North Sea and the Adriatic. The expectation that Fascist Italy would join Hitler in his war for global domination at some point required the maintenance of strong British and French forces in the Mediterranean, where they also kept a wary eye on the Spanish Armada and Imperial Ottoman Navy. The growing threat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Far East required a strong force to be maintained at Singapore and Hong Kong as a deterrent and, in the event of war with Japan, the only means that the Admiralty considered capable of defeating their enemy was the deployment of the main fleet of the Royal Navy to Singapore.

Against Germany, the Royal Navy had a several key objectives. First and foremost, it had to defend the trade routes between Britain, the Empire and the rest of the world through the organisation of convoys and escorts to counter the anticipated threat of German U-Boats and surface raiders. Secondly, it had to maintain a distant blockade of Germany and its allies, interdict its trade with mines and submarines and starve the enemy of the necessary resources required for a modern industrial world war. Thirdly, it had to defend the coasts and approaches to the British Isles through minefields and aircraft and surface ship patrols. Fourthly, it would need to transport and protect the British Army, Commonwealth and Imperial forces as they deployed to France and the Middle East. Finally, the Royal Navy would have to take the fight directly to the enemy, attacking its ships, ports and dockyards, destroying its merchant shipping and harrying it in every way possible. This last approach was considered as an aggressive, necessary step, given the preponderance of seapower possessed by the British Empire and the lessons of the Great War regarding the efficacy of blockade. The reduced size of Hitler's Kriegsmarine compared to the High Seas Fleet of Kaiser Wilhelm gave the Admiralty a great deal of faith in their ability to defeat it in detail when it could be brought to battle at sea.

Upon the immediate outbreak of war, the Admiralty requisitioned 72 merchant liners for conversion to cruisers and auxiliary carriers based on peacetime. Whilst the majority of such ships were in the former category, eight large fast ships had been selected for conversion to trade protection carriers; the necessary balance between the protection of maritime trade and maximising the number of vessels dedicated to carrying said trade and supply erred more on the side of the Merchant Navy than the RN, given the relative paucity of suitable fast cargo liners. Windsor Castle, Edinburgh Castle, Campania, Cuba, Atlantic, Strathnaver, Lancastria and Gothic were converted in the National Shipyards and the ports of Haven, Cork and Pembroke Dock between November 1939 and September 1940. Their role, with their speeds of between 20 and 25 knots, would be to be attached as convoy protection ships to important routes on the Atlantic, where the U-Boat and surface raider threat was considered the most perilous. They would be equipped with the venerable yet still effective Fairey Shark torpedo bomber and Gloster Gauntlet fighter, with the biplanes proving more suitable for operations on slower ships designed for ocean escort. The conversions followed a generally similar format based on a relatively swift yet efficient conversion, carrying a total of between 20 and 30 aircraft, usually consisting of more Sharks due to their longer range and offensive capacity against submarines.

In September 1939, though, the prospects of a decisive fleet engagement in the immediate future were considered slim. The immediate tasks that confronted the Royal Navy at the start of the war were, the establishment of convoys and the blockade and the establishment of the Grand Fleet, the wartime formation combining the concentrated squadrons present in home waters. The escaped ships of the Polish Navy and the newly arrived units of the Royal Canadian Navy swelled the strength present at Scapa Flow to a decisive level in mid-September, allowing the deployment of four flying squadrons formed around aircraft carriers, battlecruisers and cruisers to sweep the German merchant navy from the seas and hunt down their elusive surface raiders. These initial operations did not meet with any great success in terms of finding and defeating any German warships, but did result in the capture of several German liners on the high seas. SS Potsdam was captured near the Faroes by Force D on September 25th, lead by HMS Renown and HMS Courageous, and SS Columbus was taken by HMS Hood in the West Indies on October 3rd, but the greatest prize was taken by Force A, lead by HMS Hero and HMS Fearless, which was the capture of the 68,000t SS Bremen in the Norwegian Sea on December 10th, 1939. All three would be converted into auxiliary aircraft carriers, named Hibernia, Caledonia and Rhodesia respectively. They would carry decidedly more aircraft than the British merchant aircraft carrier conversions, deploying 32, 46 and 84 aircraft respectively. Their conversion and refitting for active service was not completed until late August 1940, upon which time they were employed on the North Atlantic convoys in the case of Hibernia and Caledonia, whilst Rhodesia was mainly deployed in the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, until such time as it was assigned to duty as a support and maintenance carrier for the Grand Fleet when it moved east to Singapore.

The pursuit of German surface raiders and anti-submarine patrols had rather less initial success in September and October, as the three Kriegsmarine pocket battleships and the two auxiliary cruisers Ruprecht and Albrecht caused considerable consternation amongst the Allied and neutral shipping in the North Atlantic. These five ships, along with the limited numbers of long range U-Boats that could reach the trade routes, drew the attentions of over one hundred and fifty British and French men of war, either escorting convoys or engaging in long patrols of the vast oceans. The role of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers in this process was quite invaluable, as three of the Hawkins class light carriers, Fearless, Furious and Arion were assigned to the various hunting squadrons spread out across the Atlantic, extending their patrol range and vision considerably. Hawkins operated in the West Indies out of Port Royal, Raleigh from Bermuda and Effingham from Freetown, whilst Furious and Fearless were assigned to North Atlantic Command at Gibraltar and Arion to South Atlantic Command at Caerleon in Prydain. The first major success came just two days after the capture of SS Bremen at the Battle of the River Plate, where the German pocket battlehip Admiral Graf Spee was caught and badly damaged by HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles, before being sunk the next day by the combined gunfire of the Royal Navy cruisers and the aircraft of the newly arrived Arion, which delivered the coup de grace with a strike by her Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. The victory at the River Plate was followed by the sinking of the Deutschland by HMS Hood northwest of the Azure Islands on December 23rd. It was a testament to the growing importance of the aircraft carrier that the Mighty Hood was able to catch the elusive German raider thanks to the wide-ranging aerial reconnaissance supplied by Raleigh and Hawkins; Hitler's reaction to the Christmas news was said to be particularly expressive, even by his own standards.

The USN will be bigger than them, yes, but the Royal Navy is quite large. There are a few little developments detailed in the 1939 section that will give some hints.

I do hoop its a RN carrier attack against, Wilhelmshaven.

Nice.

Well i was thinking about Kiel before picking Wilhelmshaven, as attacking Kiel means British aircraft have to fly over German territory which makes them targets for German fighters and Flak, also i assume Kiel is the main German submarine base.

Lordroel,

The idea of striking Wilhelmshaven is to minimise the warning time and flight over land as you rightly point out.

Steve
On destroyers:
A.) The Royal Navy has 280 destroyers (160 Standards, 24 Tribals and 96 V/Ws)
B.) Plus the 42 in service with the various Commonwealth navies (16 RCN, 8 RAN, 6 RSAN, 4 RNZN, 4 RNAN, 4 RIN)
C.) There are also 72 ships under construction (8 Tribals, 64 Standards) and a further 8 Commonwealth destroyers
D.) 84 R/S class destroyers of the Great War are being returned to service from reserve


1930s British Naval Construction

1930: 8 Leander class CL; 16 C class DD; 8 Oberon class SS
1931: 4 Town class CL; 16 D class DD; 4 Nautilus class SS, 8 S class SS
1932: 6 Town class CL; 16 E class DD; 12 S class SS
1933: 2 Ark Royal class CV, 6 Town class CL; 16 F class DD; 12 S class SS
1934: 2 Ark Royal class CV, 6 KGV class BB; 6 Town class CL; 8 Tribals; 16 G class DD; 16 Grimsby SL; 16 S class SS
1935: 4 Illustrious class CV, 6 Lion class BB; 6 Town class CL; 8 Tribals, 16 H class DD; 16 Kingfisher SL; 9 River class FF; 12 Skylark class DE; 16 S class SS
1936: 4 Illustrious class CV, 6 Vanguard class BB; 4 Hero class CA; 4 Crown Colony class CL; 4 Dido class CLAA; 8 Tribals; 16 I class DD; 12 Dance class DE; 9 River class FF; 12 Black Swan SL; 16 T class SS
1937: 4 Illustrious class CV, 6 Superb class BB; 2 Leopard class PBB; 4 Hero class CA; 6 Crown Colony class CL; 6 Dido class CLAA; 8 Tribals; 16 J class DD; 12 Hunt class DE; 12 River class FF; 12 Black Swan SL; 24 T class SS
1938: 4 Illustrious class CV; 2 Leopard class PBB; 4 Orion class BC; 4 Theseus class CVL; 6 Crown Colony class CL; 6 Dido class CLAA; 32 K/L class DD; 12 Hunt class DE; 12 River class FF; 18 Black Swan SL; 16 Flower class CR; 24 T class SS
1939: 4 Theseus class CVL, 4 Roberts class MN; 8 Tiger class CA; 4 Crown Colony class CL; 8 Defiance CLAA; 32 M/N class DD, 24 Hunt class DE; 24 River class FF; 24 Black Swan SL; 32 Flower class CR; 24 U class SS



On the Turks:

They survive the Great War as a rump Anatolian state with a great deal of revanchism.

General Points:
- 2 PBB down and 2 to go, but the Germans also have some handy battlecruisers which present a threat until a certain point.
- The U-Boat battle in the Atlantic will be utterly vital.
- In the Far East, war clouds are clearly gathering and have been since 1938/1939. The Admiralty knows that it will have to send the fleet east at some stage, which drives its construction and strategy. Knocking out the low hanging fruit is their first, aggressive objective. Austria can be contained by geography, but the Turks and Spanish present threats to the key flanks of the Mediterranean. They need to be dealt with first and then the Italian threat either contained or eliminated. The role of the French is key to this calculation.
- Some strategists suggest that the British Empire would only have a maximum of two years/24 months to deal with their European naval threats before having to go east.
- The Turkish threat to Soviet oil isn't seen as an entirely bad thing while the Soviets are still potential enemies, but to those observers who see that Britain and France will need to get the involvement of the Soviet Union and United States in any potential war, it is a problem.

Simon