Talk:Comparison of armoured to unarmoured flight deck designs

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[edit] Table

The article states that the Essex class carriers had 2.5" of flight deck armor, and that armour strakes on the Illustrious class aircraft carriers were main deck armour. Are these facts correct? Kablammo 15:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• More specifically, weren't the Essex carriers unarmored on the flight deck (aside from a few inches of Douglas fir)?

Fixed. Source for Essex armor: [1] Kablammo 22:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• The figures given for Illustrious look OK, but horizontal deck armour is not a strake, is it? (E.H.H. Archibald in The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy, 1860-1970, gives the RN carriers' armour at 3" flight deck, 2.5" main deck, and 4.5" sides and hanger sides.)

Fixed per source.

• How much of the low freeboard of the Midway class was due to later modifications?

Source for low freeboard: [2] 21:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• I believe that the fuel purging system came about after the experience of the Lexington lost at Coral Sea. Whether the wooden flight decks in fact were a serious risk may be questionable-- the carriers which were lost or seriously damaged suffered explosions below the level of the flight deck. There is footage of planes which crashed on landing spilling burning fuel; it was easily extinguished and flight operations resumed.
• The article would benefit from more citation to authorities, especially for comparisions, such as between US and UK, and other judgments or conclusory assertions. I'm not saying they are wrong, just that they should have citations.

Kablammo 20:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I should probably explain that I created this article as a spin off of Flight deck. While it was there, it took up quite a bit of space. I've actually asked some of your questions myself, and believe much about the info presented could use cleaning up. Personally the only info I'm confident about is the difference in size between British and American carrier air wings as a direct result of where the armored deck is placed.

Though I do plan to fix this article in the future you are of course welcome to as well :) (I've gotten distracted working on the Attack on Pearl Harbor.) Anynobody 21:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "American damage control took days or even months"

I'm a bit skeptical of this - it seems to be confusing full repairs with damage control; in almost every case the immediate damage control was finished within hours. The difference seems to be that in most cases, American carriers finished the day's operations if they were able to, then pulled back for repairs. Most documentation seems to indicate that kamikaze damage that completely ruined a carrier's ability to operate aircraft was rare (cases like Enterprise where a kamikaze hit the ship's elevator, something that a British carrier would not have quickly recovered from either), most of them say that normal flight operations were restored within hours. Iceberg3k (talk) 14:59, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

That said, Formidable's survival of her 4 May 1945 kamikaze hit is a tribute to the toughness of her construction, I doubt there are many ships of any type that could have survived damage like that and still continued their mission. Iceberg3k (talk) 15:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Link to other discussion

This article has been a subject of brief discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships#Carrier_armor.2Farmour. Project members and participants there have been invited to continue the discussion here. As stated there by TomTheHand, these essays may be useful in improving the article. (They likely are the uncited sources for parts of it). Kablammo 15:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)