The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth (6 page)

T
he destroyer building program for this year was quite high, but current plans had only one flotilla of the J/K class building over the next two years. It was therefore decided to build 2 additional flotillas, one each year, then take a closer look at the problem. By now, the naval designers were heavily loaded; they were looking at a new generation of capital ships and cruisers, and there was not much effort available to design new destroyers. A compromise of a modified Tribal class destroyer was designed. One of the twin 4.7" guns was removed to save weight for a heavier close in AA suite (it was assumed a destroyer acting as a carriers guard would draw unwelcome attention from enemy planes). Four twin 4" guns was considered to give a better AA performance, but this was rejected due to concerns as to the suitability for low elevation fire, and the ability to protect the carrier from enemy light units was considered more important. Removing two 4.7's allowed the ships to carry an octuple pom-pom in its place, and two quad pompoms forward, making them very heavily protected. This was also to allow them to engage dive bombers (and, if rather suicidally, torpedo bombers) attacking the carrier. The navy was quite confident that the seamanship of its destroyer captains was up to the close manoeuvring required, even if some of the carrier captains were a little nervous at the idea. They would also, of course, be able to act as close in AA escorts for other ships, depending on the circumstances. While the general policy was to carry defensive armament on the ships under attack, there were bound to be times when this ability to reinforce defences would be useful. The ships beam was widened, and the internal fuel tanks made somewhat larger (as a result of losing the 4.7" magazine); in addition the machinery was slightly modified to give better economy at the expense of a small loss of speed. The net result was a ship with 50% more range than a Tribal, at the expense of a couple of knots of speed. Given the high speed of the Tribal class, and the fact that the main purpose was escort, this was deemed acceptable, although it was noted that later ships should have more powerful machinery.

In June the situation in Europe took another turn for the worse, one which again involved the navy. The Spanish Civil War broke out, and the Navy was tasked to undertake neutrality protection patrols. Both Hitler and Mussolini sent aid to Franco, and both the RAF and the FAA watched the introduction of modern types of German and Italian planes with interest and considerable concern.

In September, negotiations on licensing the Hispano cannon designs began. With prompting from the Navy (and an allocation of some funding to help), the Air Ministry gave funding to some British arms companies to test and evaluate the design in detail, and to start looking at what would be needed to change the specifications to Imperial measurements

After seeing the way in which Italy and Germany were cooperating in Spain, it came as no surprise that in late October an official Rome-Berlin Axis was announced. It did however worry the navy; up until now Italy had been seen, if not as an ally, then at least as a neutral. Now Italy moved to the status of a potential opponent, which meant more ships and resources had to be allocated to the Mediterranean. Despite the recent increases in spending on the navy, due to the time taken to build ships these resources would not be available for some years

At the beginning of the year the FAA were looking forward to the first results of the new aircraft development program. As had been half expected, there had been some small delay in getting a flight-certified version of the Hercules in the middle of 1935, and in fact the first one received its certification in November of that year. As intended, Gloster had flown the first of their two prototypes with the Bristol Perseus engine, and even with the considerably lower power available, the Admiralty was most impressed with the reports on the plane. When the Hercules version flew in March 36, they fully expected to get a plane as good as any current land based fighter. The Bristol plane was expected to fly in April, as they were waiting for a Hercules engine.

The progress of the dive bomber prototypes was causing a little more concern. Hawker were very busy with the development of the Hurricane fighter, and as a result the Henly development had been slowed. As this had been rather a fall-back design, they weren't too concerned, but the Blackburn aircraft was only coming along slowly - indeed, the Martin-Baker machine, which has been started later, had almost caught up and was expected to finish its trials earlier. At the moment both aircraft were expected to begin trials in May-June.

A requirement had been sent out late in 1935 for the Swordfish replacement. While the FAA was happier than they originally expected with the general performance of the Swordfish, its slow speed and lack of any protection was worrying. Accordingly (and bearing in mind the flights of the American Douglas Devastator) a monoplane TBR aircraft using the Hercules was specified,. With this engine, it was hoped to get a speed of around 200kt, while carrying either an 18" torpedo or 2,000lb of bombs. Fairy, Bolton-Paul and Vickers had put in proposals, and a decision to fund the two most promising would be made before February.

While they had been waiting for the new single-crew fighter, the FAA had 'borrowed' a few modified Gladiator fighters for trials. The big problem, of course, was how to get a plane back to a carrier with a single pilot. In fact they had two problems; first the retrieval of a CAP patrol, and second the recovery of strike escort fighters. The Americans had showed that this was possible, if difficult, using a better design of beacon and radio, aided by better navigational training, but it was still very worrying - the current beacon and radio system was only really usable by one man up to 10 miles away.

The Admiralty had originally approached the Pye corporation with a view to them developing the US system under license. After examining it and its performance, they came back and announced that they could make one, better and cheaper, and it wouldn't need any license fee. The FAA thought about this, and decided to let them try. The need wouldn't be urgent until the new planes were operational, and they could always buy American if needed. In fact, Pye were as good as their word; they delivered a prototype early in the year that was indeed lighter and had better performance (in fact, a more developed version was later licensed back to the USN!). This still hadn't really solved the problem, but a range of 15 miles was a start. In peacetime, they could pull in planes using direction finding, but this wasn't thought practical in wartime
as it was, well, rather obvious. At the moment, the FAA were carrying on training while keeping a close and increasingly interested eye on radar, which on paper looked like solving the problem for them.

At the London Naval conference, the Admiralty had set out its minimum requirements for the talks; a displacement limit of 25,000t per carrier (although if really pressed they would go to 24,000t, any lower didn't give the capacity and protection they thought acceptable), and either a high total displacement or (as in the Washington treaty), no limit on numbers on smaller carriers -10,000t as a bare minimum, 12,000t if at all possible.

Discussions with the USN showed that the Americans wanted to press for 20,000t as the carrier maximum, as this was the size they thought suitable for their new carriers. It was pointed out by DNC that the USN only had to design the ships for one area of use and one opponent, and that they were prepared to accept carriers relatively unprotected to get the number of planes they wanted on a 20,000t ship. The extra 4,000 - 5,000t of the British carriers was mainly protective, as these ships would have to operate in the North Sea and the Med, and also that the poor weather in the Atlantic made it desirable to house the normal complement of aircraft under cover in the hangers rather than on deck; if Ark Royal was to use a deck park, DNC was confident she c
ould operate 100 planes, even more than the US carriers.

It came as a surprise to the Admiralty when they were given the final agreement for the new naval treaty, in that they got everything they wanted and more. It was rumoured that some members of the FAA staff took a day to sober
up after reading the proposal. There would no longer be any limitations on the total displacement of aircraft carriers, and the maximum for a carrier would be 24,000t (while this was slightly less than the Formidable, it was expected to be no huge issue getting a few hundred tons off her weight (in the event, by the time she completed, going over the weight limits was being ignored).

As a result of the ending of overall displacement limits, the RN and the FAA undertook a complete reappraisal of their options. It would now be possible to fill their needs without being bound by treaty, although there would still be the treasuries financial constraints.

After considerable deliberations, the future needs committee came up with the following requirements.

First, fleet carriers would be needed to work with and cover the most likely deployments. These were Home Fleet (covering Germany), the Med
iterranean (covering the Italians), and in the Far East (covering Japan)

The German threat was seen mainly as heavy shi
ps attacking convoys. They had three pocket battleships and some heavy cruisers, which could be engaged by RN cruisers and heavy ships, and two (with two more building) fast battleships, which could only be stopped by the RN battleline. The expected counter to these ships was twofold; first, hunting groups to be deployed early in the war to hunt existing raiders (it was assumed that the longer range units would have been sent out in advance of a declaration of war), and a strong Home Fleet to bottle up the ships in German ports. While the navy was confident they could destroy the German battleships if they could catch them, they needed some way of both finding them and slowing them down - the new ships were expected to be considerably faster than the Royal Navies older battleships. It was considered that a force of three carriers with the Home fleet would be needed (as one might be undergoing repairs or refit , and the Germans could come out at any time). While these would ideally be fleet carriers, it would be practical to have one be a light carrier, as in this situation they were unlikely to be encountering the Luftwaffe. The number of carriers needed by the hunting groups was, again ideally, around six, to have one with each group. This was felt unlikely to be achieved (in the short term), so this was set at three, which would be deployed in the areas most difficult for land-based air support.

In the Med
iterranean, it was considered that the western end was reasonably secure due to probable French support from land-based air, although a carrier would be based at Gibraltar as part of a hunting group. The eastern Mediterranean had more area to cover, and would be working in range of the Italian air force, so a fleet carrier was considered essential.

The Far East was a more difficult area to evaluate. It was felt that the land-based air threat would normally be minimal due to the ranges involved, and for operations close to land our own air cover would be
close to hand. The problem was evaluating how many carriers of the IJN would be needed to be neutralised. In the end the ideal cover was thought to be two fleet carriers and two light carriers, the light carriers allowing air support for lighter striking forces than the main fleet.

This made a total of five fleet carriers and five
light carriers, plus another fleet and light carrier to allow for refits. This of course made no allowance for reserves, losses and the need to reinforce a high threat situation - it was thought that in the event of war in the Far East, five fleet carriers would be needed, plus three at home, which implied 10 fleet carriers alone (allowing for those temporarily out of service). After considerable discussion as to the operational uses of a protected fleet carrier against a lighter, smaller carrier, the total needed was set at 8 fleet carriers and 8 light carriers.

There was also the issue of convoy protection. The RN had been steadily working out how to run and protect convoys. Ai
r cover was seen as useful for three main purposes; locating a surface raider so the convoy could evade, or protection could be reinforced, covering the convoy against air attack and driving off search aircraft looking for the convoy, and conducting A/S sweeps in front of and around the convoy.

The direct air threat was seen as minimal in the Atlantic, as current planes simply didn't have the range to get there from Germany (although in a WW1 type situation
(with Luftwaffe bases further west), and with the constant improvement of aircraft, this might change, at least in the eastern Atlantic), and coastal convoys would be covered by the RAF where necessary. The Mediterranean was more complex, but unlike the Atlantic convoys would be minimal and directly escorted, so the fleet units would probably be sufficient. In the Far East it was felt the air threat was small due to the distances involved, at least as far as convoys were concerned - they could be routed to avoid enemy air bases.

Surface raiders were seen as a threat in all oceans except the Med
iterranean, but because of the sheer number of convoys at sea support would only be practical for high value convoys

The submarine threat was again likely anywhere (although most likely in the Atlantic and the Med
iterranean), but this wasn't currently seen as the main threat (they were more worried by the surface raider threat), although it was acknowledged that air cover would significantly reduce the threat of submarine attack.

The problem was availability; the existing analysis already required far more carriers than were available (and more than the treasury was likely to fund), and the demand could be quite high. What was needed was a very cheap ship that could carry the minimum number of planes needed. The current CVL's were costing about £1.8M (as opposed to about £4 for a fleet carrier), and they would like if possible to get the pr
ice down to around £1M. DNC was asked to provide some layouts and costings for a ship with the following capabilities; it would be in the 10-12kt size (it was felt anything smaller wouldn't be suitable for use in the Atlantic), no armour, minimal self defence, carrying a squadron of 12 TBR + 4 fighters, with space for an addition 4TBR and 2 fighters to cover damage. Maintenance support would be minimal (damaged planes would be offloaded and replacements put on). Speed would be ideally 24kt (which would actually allow them to support the older battleships), and also be useful when being used as a plane transport, but 20-21kt was seen as adequate, especially if this reduced the cost. Manpower requirements should be kept to a minimum.