Army & Navy And Civilian Defense – NAVY: The Carriers Have Come

The same bill which last week promised the U.S. a navy to dominate the world (see p. 13) promised a new kind of navy.

Only two years ago the two-ocean navy bill authorized 385,000 tons of capital ships (battleships), 200,000 tons of aircraft carriers, big tonnages of cruisers, destroyers, submarines. Then U.S. citizens proudly learned that the Navy would some day have have of the biggest ships afloat—fast, 60,000-ton super-dreadnoughts.

Last week the bill (passed 316-to-0 by the House and certain to sweep through the Senate), promising the U.S. the world’s dominant navy by 1946, called for not one new battleship. In fact, the five 60,000-tonners, still in the blueprint stage, are going to stay thereat least for a long time. Their steel is to go for carriers, 500,000 tons of them. Also provided for are 500,000 tons of cruisers, 900.000 tons of smaller ships. Total cost of the five-ocean addition: $8,550,000,000.

How Many? When Pearl Harbor knocked the U.S. into the war, there were seven U.S. carriers in service, eleven on the ways. Since then, work has begun on two others of unannounced tonnage. Last week House Naval Affairs Committee Chairman Vinson revealed that about 35 cruisers and merchant ships are being converted to carriers. Some cruisers and merchant ships, almost completed, have been made over into flattops. Some of these carriers will probably be Lend-Leased to Britain, but that most must be kept by the U.S. is obvious to anyone who can do long division: an average carrier has 80 planes, 120 pilots, with 100% replacements on shore. Divide the 30,000 pilots the Navy wants in 1942 by 240 and, even allowing for land-based planes and planes on other fighting ships it looks as if someone must dig up a lot of carriers from somewhere.

If the new carriers are about the size of U.S.S. Wasp (14,700 tons), 500,000 tons will provide about 34 brand-new carriers. Keel-layings will follow hard on bill-signing, and Chairman Vinson waxes choleric at any hint that shipyards cannot handle the business. This would give the U.S. a total of about 85 good-sized carriers. (A few guessers think that the new carriers will include some of very small tonnage, for fighters only. They would act as scouts and defenders, to protect the big carriers bearing the dive— and torpedo—bombers. If such small carriers are built, the total number of carriers will be greater.)

Passage of the bill in the House was greeted with hosannas from London, where a nation of sailors is fast becoming a nation of airmen. The sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales looked like a terrible loss at first. In the light of the Coral Sea and Midway Island battles, Britons now begin to see them as no great losses after all. For them as well as the U.S., the carrier is king. Hosannas from the U.S. press were even more vociferous.

Meantime the battleship may possibly have an Indian summer. Since apparently at least half of the Jap carrier strength was destroyed in the Coral Sea and near Midway, the big U.S. battlewagons may get a chance to go in and slug the Jap surface fleet. But battleships will have a chance to fight only until the navies of the world get adequate carrier forces—or after an adequate naval defense against aircraft has been devised.