WWTBAM Bored

In keeping with the weird theme.

I am reading "Pacific Crucible"-First book in a planned trilogy on the Pacific War.

Major theme in the early going is the obvious-Battleships were made useless by carriers and so forth.

However, the author has a lot of info about the Japanese building 2 huge battleships prior to Pearl harbor-these really played no part in the war. IIRC-they were basically used as Kamikazes very late in the war.

However, nothing about the process of building their carriers-How and when did they build the 6 for Pearl and any others? It is just a black hole.

I find that odd.

They weren't as big as you think:

There were several things going on with naval aviation in the 1930's. For starters, it was a fairly new and untested idea. Most navies were still in the mindset of large battleships being the ultimate naval platform. But there was enough push towards aircraft at the time so that the idea was starting to catch on. The thought behind early aircraft carriers is that they would operate as support vessels to provide scouting services.

More important is that there were some naval treaties during the 30's that were accepted almost world-wide. These treaties limited the numbers of naval vessels that could be constructed - primarily large ships like battleships and heavy cruisers. Many of the early aircraft carriers actually started out as cruisers but were converted to aircraft carriers during construction to comply with these treaties. It was simply a mindset of "we already have this hull laid down for a heavy cruiser and will either stop construction completely or turn it into an aircraft carrier". An easy choice for most countries, especially a country like Japan that was moving rapidly towards war.

jaybee wrote:There were several things going on with naval aviation in the 1930's. For starters, it was a fairly new and untested idea. Most navies were still in the mindset of large battleships being the ultimate naval platform. But there was enough push towards aircraft at the time so that the idea was starting to catch on. The thought behind early aircraft carriers is that they would operate as support vessels to provide scouting services.

More important is that there were some naval treaties during the 30's that were accepted almost world-wide. These treaties limited the numbers of naval vessels that could be constructed - primarily large ships like battleships and heavy cruisers. Many of the early aircraft carriers actually started out as cruisers but were converted to aircraft carriers during construction to comply with these treaties. It was simply a mindset of "we already have this hull laid down for a heavy cruiser and will either stop construction completely or turn it into an aircraft carrier". An easy choice for most countries, especially a country like Japan that was moving rapidly towards war.

Of the six carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku, two were converted: the Akagi had been built as a cruiser and the Kaga as a battleship. None survived the war. The Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū were sunk at Midway, the Shōkaku at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and the Zuikaku at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

jaybee wrote:There were several things going on with naval aviation in the 1930's. For starters, it was a fairly new and untested idea. Most navies were still in the mindset of large battleships being the ultimate naval platform. But there was enough push towards aircraft at the time so that the idea was starting to catch on. The thought behind early aircraft carriers is that they would operate as support vessels to provide scouting services.

More important is that there were some naval treaties during the 30's that were accepted almost world-wide. These treaties limited the numbers of naval vessels that could be constructed - primarily large ships like battleships and heavy cruisers. Many of the early aircraft carriers actually started out as cruisers but were converted to aircraft carriers during construction to comply with these treaties. It was simply a mindset of "we already have this hull laid down for a heavy cruiser and will either stop construction completely or turn it into an aircraft carrier". An easy choice for most countries, especially a country like Japan that was moving rapidly towards war.

You just talked more about the building of the Japanese carriers than Ian Toll did in his magnum opus on the Pacific War.