Billy Mitchell's Floating Airbases

[The Rat]

Wow, that's one mother of a gun in the upper right! 

[scooter]

Wow, that's one mother of a gun in the upper right! 

Yeah, I'd call the main battery from a battleship a mother of a gun... 

[The Rat]

Wow, that's one mother of a gun in the upper right! 

Yeah, I'd call the main battery from a battleship a mother of a gun... 

Looks even bigger, take a look at it in comparison to the aircraft taking off, it dwarfs it!

[RussC]

Wow, that's one mother of a gun in the upper right!  

 We wouldn't want the Tirpitz pitting and dirtying the runways.... Note also next to the turret a sheltered slipway for ships so tankers and supply craft can dock and unload protected from attack and weather by the bulk of the facility.
 
  Thanks everyone.

[jcf]

Son of Ft. Drum. Excellent.

[KJ_Lesnick]

So Mitchell's floating airbases were not mobile?

[rickshaw]

So Mitchell's floating airbases were not mobile?

Perhaps they move, because of their mass and shape, very, very slowly and have to be towed?

[RussC]

So Mitchell's floating airbases were not mobile?

Fort Drum was a island in the Phillipines near Corregidor that was completely concreted over and armed with twin gun turrets, it was - and still is- firmly anchored to the planet. The Mitchell designs were mobile as is the one I painted, although not capable of speed records! Some designs are like drilling platforms and will use sea legs. There were coastal forts in England built this way, as well as Early warning radar sites off the USA.

[rickshaw]

So Mitchell's floating airbases were not mobile?

Fort Drum was a island in the Phillipines near Corregidor that was completely concreted over and armed with twin gun turrets, it was - and still is- firmly anchored to the planet. The Mitchell designs were mobile as is the one I painted, although not capable of speed records! Some designs are like drilling platforms and will use sea legs. There were coastal forts in England built this way, as well as Early warning radar sites off the USA.

I thought the US's radar platforms the "Texas Towers" were floaters, anchored to the sea bed?  Apparently they weren't terribly successful - the platform's movement made their radars inaccurate while they were abandoned because of storms (and in one case nearly boarded and taken as salvage by a Soviet "trawler" when the Russians realised they were empty!

[PR19_Kit]

There were coastal forts in England built this way.......

Some of them still exist to this day. In the Thames Estuary there are a number of leg supported forts a few miles north of Whitstable, I used to sail by them quite closely when the Olau Line ferries still operated from Sheerness to Vlissingen.



(Copyrite Chris West)

[KJ_Lesnick]

I wonder how this would have hurt carrier aviation if these were built...

[RussC]

It may not have changed carrier air too much, but may have increased the number of engagements because a carrier could be re-stocked with spares and planes from these bases instead of returning to ports to meet supply ships.
  Such a floating base would have been a lot less vulnerable to the divine wind.

[RussC]

Probably still would be separate services. 

[KJ_Lesnick]

Once long range bombers existed though the Navy would be doomed...

[Mossie]

The most recent incarnation of this concept is the Mobile Offshore Base (MOB):
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/mob.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/mob-gallery.htm