Fantasy Fleet Air Arm

Old Wombat · February 16, 2012, 06:44:44 PM

Not saying Brit carriers/carrier planes were distinctly bad, as such, but the amalgamation of the RNAS & RFC into the RAF put the RN on the back foot as far as developing their own requirements for aircraft & carriers went because (from what I can gather) they were at the mercy of the RAF approving/vetoing aircraft related projects; therefore their Lordships of the Admiralty were loath to push for significant budget expenditure on what they considered RAF equipment &, as a young service, the RAF was wary of modernising/prioritising Naval aviaton assets.

If, on the other hand, the RNAS had remained seperate to the RFC/RAF then I think that the RN hierachy may well have developed different ships, aircraft & tactics to those they had.... Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, just different.

PR19_Kit · February 16, 2012, 10:38:17 PM

I have no doubt that the amalgamation of the two services was daft, and set Naval avaition in the UK back quite a bit. Just as the similar move with the Invincible class carriers and the 'Joint Force Harrier' scheme did more recently. In both cases the move was driven by economic 'necessity', or at least what the Government of the day saw as a 'necessity'. As usual it's a matter of priorities.

It'd be interesting to speculate how a more separate FAA would have developed by the time of WWII if they'd been allowed to go their own way.

Caveman · February 17, 2012, 07:05:29 AM

As a starter for 10 there might still be a RNAS Cranwell...

Quick wiki search chucked this interesting snippet up

"Urgently required Sopwith 1½ Strutter two-seaters had to be transferred from the planned RNAS strategic bombing force to RFC squadrons on the Western Front because the Sopwith firm were contracted to supply the RNAS exclusively. In fact this situation continued - although most of Sopwith's post-1915 products were not designed specifically as naval aircraft. Thus RNAS fighter squadrons obtained Sopwith Pup fighters months before the RFC - and then replaced these first with Sopwith Triplanes and then Camels while the hard-pressed RFC squadrons soldiered on with their obsolescent Pups"

And of course there are the RNAS armoured car sections which provided some influence on the Landships committee!

PR19_Kit · February 17, 2012, 09:01:19 AM

That explains HAWKER Sea Harriers then........

Weaver · February 17, 2012, 10:00:11 AM

Hmmm - you can blame some of it on the RAF/RN merger, but some of the daft pre-war ideas were all the Navy's own. The idea that all fighters needed two seats was one of them, but IIRC, they also concocted a mandatory requirement that ALL naval aircraft, even those which were primarily intended to operate from carriers, had to have a slow-enough stalling speed to be launched from the low-powered cordite catapults on cruisers and the like, which lead to vast wing areas and slow maximum speeds.

Old Wombat · February 17, 2012, 04:37:24 PM

You've got to wonder if that wasn't a ploy to get these jumped-up RAF types to drop the whole "all 'planes are our 'planes" attitude though by making it so none of their pilots wanted to fly for the Navy.

Still, if the Navy had its own aircraft & had conducted exercises with the RAF as aggressors, would that attitude have continued when RAF bombers were running rings around their fighters?

royabulgaf · February 17, 2012, 05:11:21 PM

Okay, it seems the RN was uncomfortable with unprotected carriers that the USN favored. It makes sense for the North Atlantic and Med, sort of. What though, was their thinking for the Pacific? The RN was much more familiar with the IJN that the US was, and certainly would not underestimate their capabilities. Was there much of an idea of carrier task forces in the Pacific? This was where fleet carriers became the new capital ships, and at the beginning of the Pacific war the RN had only one, stationed in the Indian Ocean.

Weaver · February 18, 2012, 04:05:37 AM

Pre-war, all the Western powers greatly underestimated the Japanese, partly through poor intelligence and partly through sheer, condecending racism. They were regarded as very much a second-rate threat, so whatever worked against a European power "must" work against them....

In any case, it wasn't at all clear pre-war, even to the Americans and Japanese, that carriers were going to be "the new capital ships". Even the most rabid enthusiasts for them went no further than to suggest that they'd be useful and effective rather than totally dominant. The capability of shipboard aircraft to sink capital ships at all wasn't really proven until Taranto, and their capability to sink maneuvering ships that returned fire had to wait for Coral Sea for proof.

It was largely a matter of luck that the inter-war treaty system pushed the Japanese and the Americans into building a small number of large carriers to use up battlecruiser hulls that couldn't be completed, in a way that wasn't true for the Royal Navy. Those large carriers then gave them the ability, nay neccessity, to develop techniques for handling large air groups that would pay of so handsomely a few years later. The RN's choice of ships to convert and preference for armoured hangars on new-builds, meant that large air groups wern't an option, so tactical thinking developed along different lines.

pyro-manic · February 19, 2012, 06:41:09 AM

That's an interesting point - what if one or more of the G3 battlecruisers (or even Hood and/or her sisters) were were far enough along that the RN ended up with a big Akagi/Lexington type carrier?

royabulgaf · February 19, 2012, 02:57:35 PM

Thanks, Weaver. That explains a lot.

Joe C-P · February 22, 2012, 07:59:14 PM

Quote from: pyro-manic on February 19, 2012, 06:41:09 AM
That's an interesting point - what if one or more of the G3 battlecruisers (or even Hood and/or her sisters) were were far enough along that the RN ended up with a big Akagi/Lexington type carrier?

I have pieces from two different HMS Hood models that I will be turning into a CV or BB/CV.