Fleet Air Arm in the Pacific

"Four aircraft-carriers plus a supporting fleet of battleships, cruisers, destroyers and a Fleet Train moved into the Indian Ocean during 1944, carrying out air strikes against Japanese installations in Malaysia en route to Australia where they would be based. In 1945 they joined the US Navy in operations against Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The British carriers were tasked with interrupting the flow of Japanese aircraft replacements through minor islands, freeing the larger US carriers to support the landings and resist kamikaze attacks.

British carriers could accommodate fewer aircraft than their US counterparts because of their heavily-armored decks, which weighed far more than the wooden decks of US carriers and took up much more internal space. On the other hand, during kamikaze attacks the British armored decks withstood the impact of enemy aircraft and bombs far better than their US counterparts. In one famous incident a kamikaze crashed abreast the island on a British carrier, making a large dent in the armored deck. It was promptly filled with quick-drying cement, and within ninety minutes the carrier was in full operation once more. US Navy officers observing the incident were amazed, saying that any US carrier suffering such an impact would be out of operation for months and require major shipyard repairs.

The FAA and Royal Navy Carriers also operated with the US Navy carrier task forces against mainland Japan. The Seafires still had the same limited range of their Spitfire forebears and couldn't carry as much ordnance as the larger, more powerful US aircraft, so they were usually assigned to Combat Air Patrol over the carriers to protect the ships. They performed very well in this role."

Bayou Renaissance Man: Weekend Wings #13: The Spitfire - The Legend Lives On

 

You don't really hear anything about the Seafire being used in the Pacific. Usually the Hellcat or Corsair.

"The last Seafire squadrons to see action were Nos 801 and 880. Carrying American auxiliary fuel tanks which improved their range by 50%, their Mk IIIs shot down eight Zeros without loss while escorting Avengers on 15 August. On VJ-Day, there were 12 FAA Seafires squadrons, all but four flying the Seafire MkIII. The Griffon-engined Seafires were too late to see war service but then quickly replaced the Mk IIIs, the first of these being the Mk XV."

The Spitfire - An Operational History - 8. Victory

 

"On 15th August, 1945, 3 Seafire IIIs of 887 Squadron, flying from HMS Indefatigable, were providing top cover for Avengers and Fireflies flying at 1000ft, and set on making attacks in the Tokyo area.
Four Seafires from 894 Squadron, flying 1000ft above the attack aircraft, provided close escort, and the three Seafires from 887 Squadron gave top cover 3000ft above the close support Seafires.
A dozen A6M5c Zeroes from the 302nd Kokutai, based at Atsugi, attacked, and, in the ensuing battle, which took place over Tokyo Bay, the leader of the top cover trio, Sub Lt Victor Lowden, hit five, destroying two, and was credited with a third, shared with Sub Lt W J Williams.

The third Seafire F III pilot, Sub Lt Gerry Murphy, shot down two Zeroes in turning combat, which, to quote David Brown's fine book, 'The Seafire', "should have favoured the enemy", but "ended with them both being shot down by some fine deflection shooting."
Jiro Horikoshi's immortal Zero was noted for its manoeuvrability, but, in this encounter at least, was out-turned by Gerry Murphy's Seafire III, the carrier-borne version of Reginal J Mitchell's Spitfire.
Although take-off, and, especially, landing on a heaving deck, was tricky, to say the least, once in its element, the Seafire was a formidable interceptor.
Indeed, I have in front of me a photocopy from an aircraft publication (I'm afraid it has no identification apparent), with the page heading "Far and away the best interceptor", in which an Admiral wrote a scathing report comparing a proposed new model Seafire with contemporaryAmerican naval fighters. The article then says "The DAW&FT (sorry, I don't know what this stands for..RJK) swiftly replied saying "Neither the Corsair nor Hellcat can look at the Spitfire MkIX or XII. It has been decided to produce a naval version of the XII and when we get this, or a modified MkIX, we shall have far and away the best interceptor in the world, greatly in advance of anything the Americans have now, or, as far as we can see, even projected.""
The skill required by Seafire pilots will well be appreciated by anyone who has watched films showing various Grumman fighters, with their long stroke undercarriages, making the familiar 'controlled crash' onto their carriers.
Not only did the Seafire pilot have to contend with the relatively fragile narrow-track short-stroke undercarriage of the Seafire, but they were denied the relatively good view from the Grumman fighters' cockpits, having to make do with a forward view consisting entirely of the cowling of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine!
When this painting project commenced, I spoke to Victor Lowden, who passed me on to Gerry Murphy, who, to quote Victor Lowden, "lives a bit closer to you than I do!" (Surrey vs Dundee), and it was hoped that both Victor Lowden and Gerry Murphy would be able to countersign the prints.
Sadly Victor Lowden died before the painting was finished, but I remember with fondness the conversation I had with him, and especially remember his enthusiasm for the project. He sounded as bright as a button, and I was shocked to learn that he had died, when I 'phoned only a few months later to check on some details of the encounter.
Gerry Murphy, with patience and good humour, painstakingly went through his memories of the battle, and I have tried, with the help of colleagues at Duxford, Jerry Shore at Yeovilton, the restoration team at Earl's Colne (at that time restoring a Seafire III), and all manner of contacts, including input from a Japanese Naval pilot, to make this painting as accurate as possible.
Especial thanks are due to Mark Huggins, who suggested likely markings for the Zero in the picture, and subsequently wrote an article for Aeroplane Monthly (published in the June 2001 issue).
Most thanks are, of course, due to Gerry Murphy, who is a remarkably lively, likeable and modest man.
When I remarked that, downing Zeroes in turning combat was pretty impressive, his modest response was that the Japanese pilots were "probably young and inexperienced". Only later, with Mark Huggins' help, did we learn that he was up against the 302nd Kokutai, one of Japan's crack naval squadrons, charged with the defence of Tokyo! Although trials of earlier marks of Seafire against earlier marks of Zero had confirmed the Zero's manoeuvrability advantage, later marks of Zero had put on a bit of weight, to help counter the threat from US Navy aircraft, and the Seafire had added rather more power in the meantime, so the balance of manoeuvrability had perhaps swung the other way.
We may never know for sure, but it is nice to know that the Royal Navy was in the thick of the battle right up to the end."

Final Combat, Picture and words

 

At least they had sense enough to use the Seafire and not send out Fairey Fireflys with Fairey Barracuda's. That company never made decent aircraft !

So many crews died in the Fairey Battle for nothing.

 

Not sure what ya mean. Fireflies were used for Flak supression and as a supplementary fighter in 1945. They seemed to be able to do what they needed to do.

"In July 1945 1772 Naval Air Squadron[Fireflies] boarded HMS Indefatigable and joined the British Task Force 37 which then joined the US Task Force 38 in the northern Pacific for the final assault on the Japanese Mainland."

"From January 1-7, 1945, 1770 Squadron's Fireflies flew rocket strikes against the Pangkalan Brandon refinery on Sumatra, during which Lieutenant D. Levitt shot down a Ki.43 Hayabusa while Sub Lieutenants Redding and Stot shared another in air combat on January 4. 1770 scored two more Ki.43s on January 24, during strikes on the Palembang refineries at Pladjoe and Songei Gerong that required the aircraft to attack through balloon barrages and heavy AAA fire. On January 29, the Fireflies added three more Ki-43s to their score before departing Southeast Asia for service with Task Force 57, the British Pacific Fleet, during the coming invasion of Okinawa.
Five days before D-Day, TF 57 launched strikes on Miyako-jima, southwest of Okinawa, following up during the next 25 days with 13 days of strikes against Japanese forces on Okinawa and Taiwan, with the Fireflies participating in all these actions.
When the BPF retired to Sydney for replenishment in late May, they were joined by HMS "Implacable" and the Fireflies of 1771 Squadron. After strikes against Truk, 1771's Fireflies gained the distinction of being the first British aircraft to fly over Japan on July 10, 1945; on July 24, Fireflies from 1771 and 1772 Squadrons - the latter having relieved 1770 aboard "Indefatigable" - became the first British aircraft over Tokyo. By VJ-Day, another Firefly squadron - 1790 - was operating with the BPF in the night fighter role. A year of successful combat had only begun to show what the airplane was capable of."

Grand Phoenix 1/48 Fireflly I

 

If you are going into hostile areas would you take a Seafire or a Corsair or would you rather take a large Firefly ? I would go with the single seaters. The Firefly successes were more likely due to the Japanese pilots not being experinced in air to air combat.

I think a veteren Japanese pilot would have a great scoring day shooting down Fireflys.

 

Depends on the mission. It seems that the FAA thought the Firefly was "decent" enough for Flak suppresion and ground attack and if need be a fighter. If I had my choice I would have chosen the Corsair to do all three.

 

From things that I have read, the main reason the British kept their own fleet formations, instead of joining TF58/38 was that their tanking method was different than the USN method, and the fleet commands decided keeping the two navies in their own formations would be simpler.

Any comments on this?

 

It also helped to keep the big egos apart.

 

There is an article at this link

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-030.htm

which concludes that the British armored deck carriers were actually failures in the sense that the design feature of having the flight deck as the strength deck led to irreparable hull damage which essentially ended the carrier's career.

 

That would make sense as the armor would cause more stress to the hull and other areas as opposed to the wooden decks.

 

Is their any record of the 4 fleet carriers having been sunk, rendered irreparable by kamikazi...as for planes carried
HMS Illustrious...1945: 36 Corsair and 21 Avenger While in the Pacific, she was hit by two kamikaze aircraft. Her armoured flight deck absorbed the brunt of some hits, but the hull was progressively warped by damage that would have been confined to the superstructure in her American counterparts.
HMS Formidable ...1945: 54 Corsair and AvengerDuring 1945, she saw service against Japanese forces with the British Pacific Fleet, and survived several kamikaze attacks while supporting the landings on Okinawa. On May 4th, Just after 11.30 a.m. a Japanese plane made a steep dive from "a great height" at Formidable and was engaged by AA guns. The kamikaze was hit at close range, but crashed into the flight deck, making a massive dent about 10 feet (3 m) long, two feet (0.6 m) wide and two feet deep in the armoured flight deck. A large steel splinter speared down through the hangar deck and the centre boiler-room, where it ruptured a steam line, and came to rest in a fuel tank, starting a major fire in the aircraft park. Eight crew members were killed and forty-seven were wounded. However, the steel flight deck of Formidable, (and many other British carriers) prevented further damage by Kamikaze attacks. (American carriers had wood-surfaced flight decks, while British carriers had steel ones)
HMS Victorious... 54 Corsair/AvengerVictorious was hit by two kamikazes, though she suffered only minor damage due to her armoured flight deck, which was more resilient to such attacks than the wooden decks of American carriers.
HMS Indomitable1943: 55 Seafire and Albacore
1945: 45 Hellcat and Avenger....On 4 May 1945 she was hit by a Kamikaze, but her armoured flight deck saved her from serious damage.

 

There is no record of any British or American fleet carrier being sunk by kamikaze attack, nor any record of an American fleet carrier being irreparably damaged by such an attack. There were at least two British fleet carriers which sustained irreparable damage (not from kamikaze attack) which would have been extremely minor if sustained by an Essex class carrier. The two (illustrious and Formidable) were complete write-offs by the end of the war. The Illustrious was so badly damaged (apparently by being hit by two AA rounds from one of her escorts) prior to actual deployment with the US Fleet in the Pacific that her center shaft was removed reducing her speed to 24 knots. By April, 1945, her speed was down to 19 knots, and her own TROM notes that she was, by that time, an "increasing liability".

HMS Illustrious, British fleet carrier, WW2


As for kamikaze attacks, the British armored carriers did shrug them off, but so did the wooden-decked American fleet carriers on occasion, notably the Hancock on 25 November, 1944, and again on 7 April, 1944, the Lexington on 5 November, 1944, the Franklin on 9 October, 1944, and the Intrepid on three different occasions; 30 October, 1944, 18 March, 1945, and 16 April, 1945. In all these cases, the US carriers were hit by kamikaze planes, but resumed flight operations within three hours of the attack.

Kamikaze Damage to US and British Carriers


In addition, when damaged badly enough to require yard time, the American wooden-decked carriers were consistently repaired much more quickly and returned to the fleet within weeks, whereas British armored deck carriers required many months yard time. It should be further noted that the USN operated four times as many fleet carriers in a much more intensive combat environment than that in which the British carriers operated;

"The British received relatively tame treatment from the kamikazes, as noted in David Hamer’s overview of the Okinawa campaign: “The Americans were operating four times as many fast carriers as the British, and the weight of Kamikaze attacks against them was many times greater again: ten Kikusui (massed suicide attacks) being flung against them whereas there were no such attacks on the British carriers.”15 A tally of Japanese aircraft lost during this time illustrates the disproportionate burden; the American TF 58 (including fifteen fast carriers) destroyed 1,908 Japanese planes, while the British TF 57 with its four fast carriers managed only 75 kills.16 Despite this glaring disparity, kamikazes damaged four carriers in each task force - every British carrier suffered at least one hit. The only armored carrier to reach war’s end without kamikaze damage was Implacable, which arrived on station at the end of the Okinawa campaign. What would have become of the British carrier fleet if it had faced the same intensity of attack as the Americans? The prospects are sobering."

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-30.htm


It's true that the armored steel decks of the British carriers were more resistant to kamikaze attack, but this was a minor advantage, more than offset by the facts that it was more difficult to repair an armored flight deck, that armored flight decks limited air group size, and that the design of the British armored flight deck carriers made them much more vulnerable to catastrophic damage from relatively minor hits or operational accidents.

 

Thanks for the additional info DA.

 

Delicious.

 

How many USN fleet carrier ended from a bomb piercing their flight deck, which an armoured deck would have prevented...Hornet,yorktown,wasp,and Lexington...how many had their decks penetrated by bombs which dealt them doomed???

1943 saw the loss of the Light Carrier (CVE) Liscome Bay.
In 1944 the Gambier Bay (CVE), the Saint Lo (CVE), and the Princeton (CVL) were lost.
In 1945 the Bismarck Sea (CVE) was lost.
what of these 6 carriers sunk where a result of flight decks being penetrated, and munition below destroying them?? albeit on 3 from Kamikazi, whether a plane or bomb....but if wood decks where so much the superior make...why are todays carrier decks armoured if wood is superior??

 

The answer to your question is, none.

The Hornet went down only after absorbing immense damage, including two bombs, a plane crash, 300 rounds of 5" shell fire, and at least nine torpedoes (including 4 Long Lances). No WW II carrier, including the British armored flight deck carriers, came anywhere near taking this kind of punishment before sinking. It's clear that the bombs which penetrated her flight deck were not the cause of Hornet's sinking and, in fact, caused only minimal damage.

The Yorktown took an aerial bomb in her uptakes which extinguished her boilers, but her engineers managed to relight the boilers within a very short time and she was able to make 25 knots within an hour. It was submarine torpedoes which sank the Yorktown, not weapons penetrating her flight deck.

Wasp was likewise sunk by submarine torpedoes, and was not hit by any bombs.

Lexington was hit by aircraft bombs, but again suffered only minimal damage from this agency. The induced explosion of gasoline vapor that was responsible for Lexington's fatal damage was the result of a torpedo hit which damaged the av-gas storage and caused leaks of that volatile fuel.

No navy built escort or light carriers with armored flight decks, so comparing these vessels to British armored-deck fleet carriers is comparing apples and oranges.

However, the Liscome Bay was lost to submarine torpedoes which struck in the vicinity of an air ordnance magazine; her flight deck was not penetrated, and an armored flight deck would have done her no good.

The Gambier Bay was lost to short range 8"', and possibly 14", shell fire which penetrated her sides and flooded her engine room. Again, an armored flight deck would have had absolutely no effect and would not have prevented her loss.

The Saint Lo was crashed by a kamikaze which dropped two bombs immediately before crashing onto the flight deck and sliding off the bow. The two bombs both penetrated the flight deck and exploded on the hangar deck causing a catastrophic fire which could not be controlled. The fire caused induced explosions which destroyed the ship's propulsion machinery. There is no guarantee that an armored flight deck, had it been present could have stopped the bombs and thus no guarantee that the Saint Lo, had she been a larger carrier with an armored flight deck, could have survived the hit.

The Bismarck Sea was struck by two kamikazes, the first one passing through her side and striking a compartment next to an air ordnance magazine. This hit caused a fire which was nearly under control when the second kamikaze penetrated through her aft elevator shaft and destroyed the fire fighting water distribution system. The fire flared up again and, with no means of fighting it, the order to abandon ship was passed. Even the British armored flight deck carriers were vulnerable to kamikaze hits in the way of their elevators, so there is no reason to believe that an armored flight deck would have saved the Bismarck Sea, even had she been large enough to have had one.

Today's carriers are so large that the weight of an armored flight deck is no longer a consideration, that is why carriers are no longer built with wooden decks. However, on carriers of the size feasible in WW II, wooden decks were definitely superior if the carrier was seen, as the in USN, as a power projection asset, rather than a fleet protection vessel, as was the rationale for British carriers. There were other, perhaps more important, design considerations that were missing in the British armored flight deck carriers. If you had bothered to actually read the references I supplied in my earlier posts, you would not have to ask why post war carriers had armored flight decks if wooden decks were superior in WW II.

BTW, armored flight decks sometimes shrugged off kamikaze aircraft, but not aerial bombs;

As things turned out, the Mediterranean Campaign failed to fulfill its billing as the quintessential narrow-sea setting complete with a high incidence of bomb hits. During the entire war, only fifteen bombs scored hits on Allied carriers in the Mediterranean, a number surpassed in the first year of the fight against Japan. Of the fifteen hits, the Illustrious class flight deck armor defeated only one - Victorious shrugged off an anti-personnel bomb dropped at low altitude by an Re.2001 fighter. Indomitable took two 500-kg hits, but both of them avoided her armor which thus did nothing to preserve her flight deck; the ship was non-operational for the remainder of the action. Of the two 500-kg bombs dropped on Formidable, one struck her deck armor and sent pieces of it shooting all the way down into the ship’s machinery spaces. In the most famous Mediterranean incident, Illustrious survived numerous hits, but only one 500-kg bomb found her deck armor.

See:http://http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-030.htm

 

Bravo DA!

 

either/or...one side or other...would the lexington laid crippled if hiryu's bombs had not penetrated her deck as i think the Lex had already buttoned up for the Hiryu planes, removed craft from it's deck, filled it's fuel hoses with CO2, so any bomb which and if detonated on her flight deck would have been nothing more then a pin-prick

i'm not one to bicker or say my stuff, or take sides, but in this instance, a wooden deck would have been doomed, and instead an armoured deck, if indeed inferior, did save this carrier to fight a few hours later...