Drachinifel: WWII case studies analyzed: AKA does one necessarily agree with Drachinifel's conclusio

The HMS Illustrious is damaged by Fliegerkorps X, the German Luftwaffe specialist anti-ship strike unit. Operation Excess was part of the early war club runs. British combat air patrol (CAP or the British "umbrella") was to prove ineffective. The Germans and Italians built a mockup of a British flattop and practice bombed it. Cujnningham, not having aircraft carrier operations experience screws up badly parking the HMS Illustrious in a flock of ships, fouling up the aircraft carrier's flight traffic control pattern. There is no cruiser radar picket, as the Americans start to practice for an air raid warning ship, and there is no wagon wheel defense formation. And, of course British AAA is not too good. Add that RN maintenance and logistics for the FAA aircraft was under wartime conditions, as a result of the BoB destruction of the ONE FAA depot; not able to support fleet air operations.

The Italo-Germans planned an Italian decoy torpedo attack to draw down the FAA CAP fighters down to sea level, to coordinate and clear the skies for the Stukas. Cunningham, aboard Valiant, screwed up CAP reinforcement, as raid warning comes in and here come the Stukas. The account above shows that the RN has not learned a thing from Norway. Five bombs. This would have been a de-deck event.

Now the Germans had not brought along a torpedo plane element to deal the killing blow. This was a huge mistake. One bomb hits the aft elevator and it penetrates the hanger. That was an armored box. So the explosion is channeled fore and aft. No blow-out vents and panels. She burns.

British damage control and construction is atrocious. Spall from the fire curtains shredding into fragments scythes the hanger. The post damage report lists the damage bill. The German bomb was rated at 1000 kilograms, not 447 kg as the ship captain speculated. There was the one bomb. The other bombs appeared to have been GP contact fused antipersonnel weapons.

A German Stuka staffel was 15 - 19 aircraft. The German aircraft present overhead could not have exceeded in number about 35-40.

Cunningham still screws up the tactical plot and it takes hours to sort things out and send the aircraft carrier to Malta. The Germans put the Illustrious steer control out of service. Illustrious is out of service via de-decking. Next stop, any port is a good port. Air group aloft diverts to Malta. The hanger crew is annihilated, so the air division is wiped out. The damage control is automated (as is also in Japanese practice.) but the British system works. Further German attacks concentrate on steer control. The Germans prove that they are incompetent at anti-ship work, they piecemeal their business. Illustrious is ruined as far as operational use when she reaches Malta. She is a powered brick. Patch-up work is rushed to get her out of Malta to get her to a place where she can be rebuilt.

More Stukas are sent and HMS Illustrious gets two more stern hits. German ordnance fails to function.

In the speed run to Alexandria as she flees, she fouls her fuel, and she arrives on vapors. She gets to the United States. Now the Americans get her. This is not a refit. It is a rebuild. Six months to rebuild her flight deck and to put a new aft end.

The importance of the HMS Illustrious is frankly that the Americans gain the experience to repair their own flattops. British fire suppression systems worked. The Americans learn. Fuel storage and ammunition stowage practice worked. These lessons were not useable on the Lexingtons or Yorktowns, but the Essexes were modified.

HMS Illustrious' hull was ruined and nothing could be done about it. The ship warriored on because she had too. This is about the sum of it.

Note that USS Wasp made two club runs to Malta and was not hit at all. The Germans also screwed up by not bringing the Italians along to provide the hard kill via torpedoes. It is the lack of a below the water-line punch that saved Illustrious.

Six months turnaround, by the way, is remarkable. It would not have been acceptable in the early Pacific war.



As in the discussion above this Drachinifel compare and contrast, this is the disagreement in thesis;

a. The Royal Navy (at least its admirals), did NOT expect bombs above 447 kgs in drop weight and torpedo effects above 150 kgs for air-dropped torpedoes.
b. The Royal Navy armored carriers did not have the ability to keep armor piercing bombs of greater mass delivered by dive bombers out of their hangers or resist de-decking. They were suicidally vulnerable to 200 kg TNT equivalent warheaded torpedoes.
c. The armored carriers in the specific example of shallow diving suicide aircraft were superior to the open superstructure flightdeck over hanger deck American aircraft carriers in the extremely limited circumstance of limited attacks the BPF experienced off Okinawa. Nevertheless, under circumstances where USS Franklin was wrecked, it is kind of interesting to compare an example, HMS Illustrious, where the British RN suffered similar attack conditions. Functionally no difference in outcome.
d. British automated firefighting systems throughout the war, were superior to American or Japanese ones. The Americans made second best choice with their existent equipment and aircraft carriers by using portable firefighting equipment and intensive damage control training from lessons acquired in battle. The Japanese did not have many survivors to pass on lessons they learned since their damage control parties tended to die in their aircraft carriers which burned fiercely from what would be considered "light" damage to a Yorktown or an Essex, or an Illustrious.

One may remark that the FAA had degraded severely in pilot quality by 1944. In the Palambang oil storage tank raids of 24-29 January 1945, the Illustrious air-group set two oil tanks on fire and lost 5 Corsairs and 3 Avengers to NO enemy aircraft destroyed in the raids which the Japanese army aviation fiercely contested. During this same fiasco, the Japanese launched an antiship strike of a single Shotai of seven Betty bombers. Those blew right through the mishandled British fighter CAP and successfully dropped torpedoes. Nimble ship handling saved the ships present from Type 95s, which sort of indicates how much Japanese naval aviation had also degraded by 1944. The key takeaway was that the BPF ships engaged in wild AAA fire and "maybe" shot down four attackers. HMS Illustrious in this incident was raked by AAA from the HMS King George the Fifth and the HMS Indomitable. Cost? Two light AAA mounts wrecked and twenty-five flight deck crew killed. Brown does not give the number of wounded or flight deck damage or parked planes wrecked, but I tend to think this incident was not "minor".

HMS Illustrious: Aircraft Carrier 1939–1956: Operational History. Warship Profile. 11. Windsor, UK: Profile Publications. p240.