Concerning the carriers, will the Royal Navy be as obsessed with armored flight decks as they were historically? What is the plan with the air wings? How will Churchill's push for modern airframes change the Fleet Air Arm's capabilities? Any chance for Force Z to fail so spectacularly?
Some of this will be discussed in the next update. I don't think it's a big spoiler to say there will be no Force Z type situation occurring though. If nothing else now there is a regular deployment of capital ships and aircraft out there then many of the specific problems (equipment not working in the humidity, no lines of communication, etc) will get noticed and sorted during peacetime exercises.
Depends on the aircraft I suppose, and what the navy and airforce argue should be launched from carriers, and how to defend carriers. If the British think Japan is going to be a threat in the air, they're going to need to use bigger carriers with longer runways to launch more aircraft of their own. If that's the case then armouring the whole deck is going to be expensive. Would be funny when Japan tries suicide bombing planes though. Suspect Pip might keep them in Butrerfly purely so he can have someone say "Sweep the deck" or somesuch.
These are all valid points that must, and will, be discussed shortly. "Sweepers man your brooms" was the US quote about how the British carriers just shrugged off the damage, so it requires a lot of stars to align to get uttered.
Well, as I recall, the British are already in the midst of a "Pivot to the Pacific" which makes the Japanese a logical opponent. Of course, we haven't heard about the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War yet, but in terms of Great Power competition, certainly the British are looking towards Japan.
More precisely Britain never pivoted away from the Pacific, Japan was the big threat in the early 1930s (Italy was never rated and no-one took the German surface navy that seriously till quite late in the day). Here the strategic focus has stayed looking to the Far East.
Further, experience with the armored flight deck does show that, at least in the near term, a ship will be back at flight ops rapidly, at the cost of a degredation of long-term ship life. An unarmored flight deck might result in higher casualties and long repair times, but the repaired ship can serve for years going forward.
Not sure I agree on that. You can repair an armoured deck carrier, it's just a bit more costly. You are taking apart the strength deck and not just superstructure, so it's nearer a rebuild than repair, but it is doable. The problem of course was that the Royal Navy had no money to run it's fleet post-war, let alone repair it, so ships that could have continued to serve were scrapped.
A related example would be USS Franklin, which basically was a Total Constructive Loss after her kamikazae attack and (from a cost/resource viewpoint) should have been scrapped. The US had the money to do the rebuild for strategic / morale / propaganda reasons, despite it costing more than just building a new ship.
The armoured flight deck argument is fascinating, but I wonder if it is not a bit of a cul de sac; there are advantages and disadvantages (although I favour armoured; just look at the BPF's resilience to kamikazes compared to their US cousins). For me, the big issue is the "short legged" nature of RN ships - they are just not designed with range in mind. For a 'pivot' to be successful, the RN needs to grip operational task group logistics.
Definitely not a cul de sac, the OTL historic answer is/was a design with an armoured flight deck big enough to carry a large air group. That was the US solution in their post-WW2 class carriers (Midways and Forrestals).
For the second point;
Once upon a time I asked a question about improvements to RN fleet train (though that is not the same as longer range), I believe the answer was that in comparison to OTL fleet train is a little bit better (due to necessity to blockade Lybia during the Abbysinian war), but not much - RN still has a globe spanning bases ITTL. However, since I think this is an interesting subject, can I nominate it for a future update theme (joined with bits about fleet bases and logistics, port and fortress Singapore, etc)?
The Fleet Train is being improved, but with an eye to modernising the Royal Fleet Auxiliaries that are supplying Singapore. As some may remember this has not gone well, Beaverbrooks idea to look at introducing welding and modern shipbuilding practice on these new ships has provoked a national welding strike. Whoops.
More broadly at sea refuelling and long range is still not really in the Admiralties consciousness. The ships detailed for trade protection have decent range, but fleet units aren't thought to need it. This is probably a mistake, depends what happens when the big war breaks out, but I am trying to have the British make mistakes so this is one of them.
Regarding the carriers, I believe change to OTL has so far been ordering two improved Ark Royals (Ark Royal and Bulwark)? Since Ark was a "Pacific" and unarmoured carrier, will RN continue on this path? I hope we also get a new fighter in this update, I think only change for FAA was improved Skua?
Correct on the two new carriers and there is a bit more momentum behind the design. There is also a lot of war experience from Abyssinia to digest so this will also have an input.
Not planning on including aircraft in this one, got plenty to cover as it is. FAA changes are Sea Gladiator into service much earlier than OTL, improved Skua and the FAA actually looking at getting a single seat fighter.
Well hopefully they figure out that it's far better to have long legged carriers that do the job really well and might sink but also can be repaired easier than super invincible ships that can only move around in the sea they are based in and be outdated within a decade.
The comparable ships to the Illustrious armoured carriers are not the Essex class, but the similarly Treaty constrained Yorktowns. Give 2 out of 3 of them were sunk (3 out of 4 if you count the Wasp) and all the armoured deck carriers survived to be scrapped, you can see why the Admiralty thought the design was justified. The Yorktowns didn't survive long enough to be outdated.
IMO, it only makes sense to go to unarmored carriers IF the FAA actually has sufficient planes and pilots to make use of the increased capacity for planes.
In our timeline, it was a struggle to have sufficient planes and pilots to properly equip even the smaller hangar capacity carriers.
Will we get to see a properly equipped FAA this time around?
This is very true. My reading of the sources is that the RN was happy to pay for extra pilot training and aircraft, just couldn't get the Air Ministry to co-operate. Famous example the Blackburn Roc, a plane the FAA made very clear they didn't want but were forced to accept because the Air Ministry didn't want to disrupt their production plans. Similar story on pilot training, the RAF limited the FAA to 35 (!) pilots being deck qualified a year and only sent them on secondment to the Fleet Air Arm. Interestingly the Admiralty was also pushing for NCO pilots from very early on as a way to increase numbers, something the RAF refused to even contemplate pre-war.
I'm fairly happy that with earlier control over the FAA pilots and planes can and will be procured at a far faster rate.
Yes. Another update. A refreshing diatribe on currency backing, and the UK's China policy, with some aeroplane talk thrown in for good measure. I'm still loving this. universe.
Delighted to hear it.
With the SCW still ongoing, what currency systems are the Spanish factions using in TTL, and OTL for that matter?
OTL - Nationalists went for just stamping over old banknotes for the first year or so, from 1937 onwards they issued their own new notes. They had enough professional advice (and solid enough control) so they didn't print endless notes and kept a lid on inflation.
As for the Republicans.. Ohh the republicans. Like all their efforts doomed by factionalism, a shortage of professionals (or at least professionals who were listened to) and general shooting in the foot. The central government printed Pesatas like crazy (5.4 million in circulation in 1936, 12.8 billion Republican pesatas had been printed by the end of the war), all the regional factions either printed their own local currency or just abolished money. The soliders didn't like being paid in 'paper money', which was fair enough as inflation meant it rapidly lost value and wasn't widely accepted. Ironically Nationalist notes were more widely accepted in the Republican zone than Republican notes.
TTL. Probably pretty similar to be honest. Maybe with French assistance the Republican central government faction is printing less, but they still lack control to stop all the factions printing random notes.
On the Monarchist side the 'Spanish' faction has all the banker who will be against printing, the British would also advise against and the Germans (for all their financial tricks) remain scarred by inflation. New notes may not have been agreed yet, if only because they obviously should have the King on one side but no-one will agree what to put on the other.
I know, dodged a bullet there.
Certainly, about the failure of the RN to adequately prepare for underway replenishment because of the sheer number of their bases has to be considered as well... perhaps UNREP is where the RN is going!
The RN could do UNREP, just fairly slowly as they did it stern to bow normally not side to side. Not researched enough to find out why they did that, but it's something they can do if they see the need, they just don't see the need.
Well if the british are testing and building more planes than otl and Churchills pushing jet engines and loads of other high tech projects, it leaves loads of designs to be claimed and repurposed by the navy for the carriers. One of them has to be at least ok, right???
Already happened, the next FAA fighter is going to be an RAF cast off from F.5/34 spec. Just not clear which one at this point.
With the FAA split from the RAF so soon we can hope for something at least. Though perhaps such a thing may take a few years (say around the start of WWII) to come to fruition.
The delay on aircraft development is indeed significant, but there were many interesting things in the pipeline even in OTL that I plan to bring out as this story develops.
I have never been able to take a side in the armoured vs unarmoured debate. Certainly the performance of the armoured Carriers was spectacular. On the other hand, I tend to default in favor of increased range. Both Operational and Sortie.
There are pros and cons on both, as shall be discussed in the next chapter.
It's always somewhat annoying. I check this thing daily, then finally miss a few days because there's been no activity whatsoever. And then there's a flurry of excitement all at once. Oh well.
The forum notification system is fairly reliable these days. If you are that keen I believe you can even get email notifications when someone posts, which seems excessive but is an option available to you.
I suppose they could make them super big and super tough, but they'd have to be powered by reactors to make them move. Still, that will come in time. After all, why would the royal navy ever be given a non-nuclear powered aircraft carrier?
I suspect that unless something drastic is changed, they'll go for the armoured carriers. The royal navy never wanted a ship literally designed to be defended by another service, so the souped up ttl version refresh off sinking the Reg Marina sure as hell aren't going to sink that low if they can instead build super tough and massive ships instead. Especially as they have the money have the money for it, and another big navy to sink in the Pacific!
Nuclear carriers, definitely the dream. We shall have to see if we can arrange them when the time comes. Maybe in the 2030s realtime?
The play is multiple ships, not larger ships...
Both is always good.
Yeah but because of the war, they have most of the navy avaible for the Pacific. They'll have the numbers, now they're figuring out what to build to make it better, or so I read it. Given we're in 1937, they might get the ships finished and ready to go to war in time, but it depends.
Mostly it depends on when the war starts. And with who.
I'm fairly certain I've already said there will be a European War and it won't kick off in the same old way on the same old dates. As for the Far East, well once again I believe I've said there will be conflict there, but again not the one we always see.
How is South America doing?
Broadly similar to OTL. The map war update is penciled in, but not for a while to be honest. There is a limit as to how much I can bring it forward. Odd bits of South America will pop up in places, but nothing major at present.
