OT: WWII carriers, was:FTFB- After Action Report/Newbie questions

On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> Recent thread on the Starfire mailing list :-/ They quoted Jane's as
well
> (or claimed to), but the figures were a wee bit higher than 6". Can't
> vouch for their validity since I don't have either Jane's or Conway's,
> unfortunately :-(

The roots of this may be in the pre-war naval treaties. In those times,
they chose to limit the number of capital ships. Carriers, however, were
given no tonnage limit and all this resulted in Lexington, Saratoga,
Akagi
and Kaga being built on converted incomplete battleship and -cruiser
hulls. 

Which, in turn, resulted in idiocies like 8" guns on the ships
mentioned,
and the 10"-ish armour belts on Akagi and Kaga. The Saratoga class 6"
belt may have been thicker in places, I'm unable to confirm right now.

Heavy, ofcourse, is relative. 2"-6" armour is on par with CA armour of
the
era.

Later war experiences clearly proved that carriers had no use for the
heavy guns, and the armour they really needed was deck and torpedo
protection, not conventional armour belt (which is above waterline).

Getting caught in range of enemy surface ships was result of incredibly
bad luck, and happened only on a couple of occasion during the war
(Leyte
and Scharnhorst & Gneisenau plugging the oddly planeless Glorious off
the coast of Norway).

Things in FT are a bit different, as the ships are actually faster than
the fighters...

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