Re: Shinano: what if she hadn't been sunk?

Andre Lieven wrote:

On Dec 31, 4:28 pm, Ken Chaddock <chadd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Andre Lieven wrote:

On Dec 29, 11:37 pm, "Matt Wiser" <MattWiser...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To get away from the political trash, here's a good old-fashioned naval topic: this was over on
the J-aircraft.org's board for the IJN, and it was about what if the Shinano had not been sunk
in November 1944, but had made Kure despite having four torpedo holes and some nasty
flooding. Would she have been on the Yamato's final sortie, sunk in the Kure raids that sank
the IJN's remaining capital ships (though immobilized for lack of fuel) in July 1945, or taken
as a prize at the end of the war and used as a clay pigeon at Bikini during Operation
CROSSROADS in 1946? Anyone hazard a guess as to which of the three is likely?

Sunk in port, or at Bikini. There was no fuel for a ship as big and
relatively useless in
1945 as Shinano would have been, without aircraft, and with only a
capacity of 50 planes.

Shinano had a substantially higher capacity than 50 aircraft. The 55
planes were her local defence force. Her concept of operations was that
she would be a very large floating maintenance and refuel/rearming
station supporting other conventional carriers, allowing them all to
carry larger airgroups than they could effectively service and maintain
during a battle. She also was intended to carry 125 "unassigned"
aircraft, in addition to her own 55 as replacements for losses by other
carriers.
That makes 180 aircarft...whether she could have operated than number
of aircraft as a CV is highly doubtful...probably more like
150...somewhere around a Midway class capacity...but her enormous hanger
was capable of carrying a lot more than 50 airplanes.


A cite for that would be nice. As pretty much every reference source
that I have, or have seen, gives her a capacity of around 50 planes,
usually listed as 47 aircraft.

I'll try to find chapter and verse for you. I've seen a comparison between Shinano, the proposed British Malta Class and the US Midway class...possibly in Friedman's "British Carrier Aviation".
If I recall correctly, Shinano had hanger space for up to 125 "unassigned" aircraft...though I suppose that would depend on what aircraft...though the newer fighters and bombers actually folder up into smaller packages, for example the A6M only folded it's wing tips whereas the A7M folded the last 13 ft of each wing. In a similar manner the new B7As were about 8 feet "narrower" when folded than the B6 Tenzans.
This was in addition to her own self defence air group of 50 to 55 aircraft that was supposed to consist entirely of fighters.

<snip>

The point being that if Shinano could carry over a hunderd planes, why
could she not then operate them ? While the building history of the IJN in the late 30s/early 40s shows several cases of disfunction (Ise, Hyuga and Mogami conversions, and CL Oyodo.), the notion that a navy who was then reeling from having lost so many carriers would not use their biggest ship as a full carrier is rather... insane.

I pretty much agree, I can only think that the Japanese may have been having issues with turning their aircraft around quickly and wanted another (very large) flight deck to refuel and rearm strike aircraft between sorties.
Also, the ability to re-equip and re-inforce diminished air groups shouldn't be sneered at. This would give the IJN the ability to press any advantage they might have achieved. For example, if they had engaged and severely depleted the air groups of a US carrier task group, they would have been able to quickly come back up to strength and continue their attacks while the US group would have had to fight on with their diminished air groups...likely being overwhelmed in the process.

....Ken
.

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