Frequently, when watching a WW2 video, the narrator will mention that the USA carrier decks were not made of steel. Is that right...for the entire war.? If so, what was the impetus for decking the carriers with...I assume it was wood.? Thank You
Hear is something to look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_deck#Armored_decks The other thing to take into account is the Washington Naval treaty which restricted the tonnage of warships. Wood weighs less than steel. Another bonus is the ability to repair wood vs steel.
It was very easy to just tear out a bad section and relay it, plus if there was an explosion below decks it would go upward. British carriers were nade from steel and could suffer damage that was not easily fixed.
Wood: cheaper, absorbs shrapnel, lighter, easier to repair, higher aircaft capacity, Steel: better protection, less maintenance, Steel The British Indomitable displaced 24,680 tons and carried 46 aircraft. Wood The American Yorktown displaced 19,800 tons and carried 81 aircraft. The Japanese Hiryu displaced 17,300 tons and carried 73 aircraft. In the end there were pro's and con's for each system and aircraft carriers in general were an experimental breed of ships prior to WW2. It would take a few years of real war data to decide which was the better method.
Per usual...you guys make some great points. It is always easy to forget...you need to judge WW2 by the times of 1940-1945. Maybe they used several sheets of grain rotated 3/4 ply.? A few layers of that stuff, over steel beams, would hold all the weight you could throw at it. Supply and demand is always paramount as well. Anytime you could free up Steel/Aluminum for projects that could not use anything else...you were ahead of the game. I am always floored by the numbers of ships the USA built in basically 3 years 1942-1945. 1940's technology was faster to build than 2012 technology...but still.! 3 shifts going 8 days a week. We won the war with factory workers, and the Russians did the same, with several Million soldiers tossed in for good measure. Can you imagine blowing up 4 aircraft carriers...and 9 months later, the enemy has 11 new ones.? THAT in itself must have been real deflating to the German and Japan soldiers. best
If I understand American practice correctly it was a single layer of douglas fir planking on top of steel. You can see a picture of Yorktown's flight deck peeled back at Coral Sea on the Naval History and Heritage Command website. I've attached the photograph in question below. I'm sure there was some variation in the structure of the flight deck in different locations. I've generally heard that the steel was quarter inch HT plate, which while not armor grade nonetheless affords some protection. However, the deformation in the photograph above looks more like heavy gage sheet steel to me. To be precise, it appears to be two layers of steel sheet sandwiching a layer of insulation (presumably for sound deadening purposes) with a layer of planking above that. The displacement of the structural beam is quite impressive, especially if you remember that the bomb in question exploded a several decks below the photograph. After holing the flight deck it still had enough kinetic energy to penetrate the armored main deck and a few decks below that. My understanding is that the wood was not intended to be structural in any way, but rather as an anti-slip measure. Further, steel decks get hot enough to be troublesome on hot summer days. A wood coating above the deck would do much to mitigate that. (Wood being a poor thermal conductor.) I don't really think it had anything to do with weight savings. Further, the advertised aircraft capacity of a ship has much to do with the size of the aircraft and where and how you park them, so it shouldn't be taken as a particularly accurate measure of hangar capacity. There was a thread on here somewhere a few years back that discussed hangar capacities and several of the British ships did much better than you would have guessed.
Wow...OK...Not the way I had imagined it at all.! But yeah...I can imagine how F'ing Hot a Carrier Deck would get in the tropical sun. I wonder how they are constructed in the modern day.?
Modern carriers, and amphibious assault ships like the LHD or the French Mistral, resemble the British WWII design in having enclosed hangars, with the hull sides extending all the way to the flight deck, or to put it another way, the flight deck is integral to the hull. This contrasts with the American WWII design, in which the hangar and flight deck were basically a superstructure built on top of the hull. One advantage of this design was that it allowed portions of the hangar side to be opened to the air, using roll-up doors similar to garage doors, so that aircraft engines could be warmed up on the hangar deck. The transition from piston engines to jets made this irrelevant. Most ships today do not carry much armor, so while the flight deck may be built of steel and integral to the hull structure, it may not be literally armored. I understand our Nimitz class carriers, largest in the world, have armored flight decks approximately 1.5" thick. Although the armored flight deck is most commonly associated with British-type carriers, it can be done on open-hangar ships like the US Midway class.
Carrier design has always been more complicated than quick studies make it out to be. And all the major navies tried all the tricks at one time or another. The Brits had several carriers where the hangar was above the strength deck (everything before Ark Royal, I believe), and their late war designs (never built) featured open hangars. The Japanese tried armored decks . . . only to lose the ship to a single torpedo thanks to some abysmal damage control and a nasty fuel-air explosion in the hangar. The Lexington's had armored flight decks (albeit lightly armored) and enclosed hangars and some of the same limitations as the Illustrious class. (Specifically only two elevators, one of which was rather small, leading to slower and more complicated aircraft handling.) They were enormous ships, yet the Yorktowns consistently handled comparable airwings noticeably faster. Even now carrier design is hardly a settled matter. Just look at how closely French, Russian, American, and British aircraft carriers resemble one another . . . plenty of room for growth and development to this day.
