Came upon this site looking up information on the HMS Illustrious. Very interesting if your into RN history, Naval aviation history or just WWII Naval history in general.



http://www.armouredcarriers.com

Thanks for posting Michael, very interesting.

Si

Thanks for posting Michael, I've book marked to read later. For those interested in these ships I'll also recommend the book by Neil McCart 'The Illustrious & Implacable Classes of Aircraft Carrier 1940 - 1969' ISBN 1901225046

What a fantastic site you've found Michael!

Thank you for sharing!

If you're into your RN flat tops, check out this new publication as well. A thoroughly informative and enjoyable read



Russ

It's an interesting article, but is biased from an English point of view. The author compared experiences from the last six months of the war when the Japanese were on the ropes with the US experience of fighting the Japanese when they were at the height of their abilitiies. The BPF would have been quickly destroyed at either Coral Sea or Midway. Very probably without inflicting any damage to the IJN at all. It lacked any aircraft with the range or speed to engage the Japanese. Can you imagine how long Fulmars and Swordfish would have lasted against Zeros? Plus the small size of the British airgroups wouldn't have allowed any escorts for strike groups at all.

When the author compared damages, he picked situations where the Brit carriers had empty flight decks and were prepared to repel strikes with US carriers caught with flight decks loaded with armed and fueled aircraft. A better comparison would have been Midway where Yorktown took multiple hits, was dead in the water burning with a out of service flight deck, and was back up to full operational conditions a couple of hours later and the Japanese thought they attacked a different carrier. Even then they couldn't sink her, but left her damaged being repaired. If not for bad luck, by late the next day she would have been back under way and reasonable operational. And that was with multiple bomb hits as well as torpedo hits. I can't remember any Brit carriers surviving multiple torpedo hits, even from the anemic German torpedos. A Brit carrier with flight deck damage had to return to dock for repairs.