On December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II,
and it was on that day the numerous critics of aircraft carrier tactics
within US Navy command realized the degree of their error.
Together with the line warships of the Pacific fleet,
the flames of Pearl Harbor burnt down the very doctrine
of absolute domination of heavy artillery ships in naval war.
In an instant, all books on the art of naval warfare became obsolete,
and there was no time to write new ones.
The enemy had to be repelled, and they had to be struck with their own weapon.
Naval Legends History of the US Carrier-borne Aviation
On December 7th, the Navy had three carriers in the Pacific Ocean,
we only had three carriers there, we only had a total of seven carriers.
Japan had fourteen carriers.
So, the first thing we needed was more carriers,
but the problem with that is that it takes two years to build a carrier.
The second problem was that the main fighter aircraft of the US Navy,
the F4F Wildcat, was inferior to the Japanese Zero in all respects.
The Mitsubishi A6M "Zeke", commonly known as a "Zero".
This was arguably the premier fighter in the Pacific Theater until about 1943.
It had a number of advantages.
Firstly, its light weight—it had an aluminum magnesium alloy frame,
and this meant it was highly maneuverable.
Had excellent firepower—it had both cannon and machine gun.
Had excellent vision from its high-mounted canopy.
The only drawback was it was a tad fragile. But first, you had to hit it.
Zero was much faster; it could out- climb, out-dive, and out-turn a Wildcat.
So how did we use this old airplane and manage to make it work so well?
The first thing I already mentioned,
it was very-very rugged, very difficult to shoot down.
The fuel tank had a self-sealing bladder in it, so when a bullet went through it,
it sealed itself up, you didn't lose your gas,
which was important when you're 100 miles, 150 kilometers from your carrier.
The pilot sat in an armored tub, basically, like a bathtub,
he had steel plate all around him, so the plane was very survivable.
The other thing you had to do if you're a Wildcat pilot,
you had to do formation flying,
you had to be with another Wildcat to protect each other.
So, if one Wildcat got jumped,
he could maneuver and try to pull the Zero in front of the other Wildcat.
Three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
American carrier aviation achieved its first victory.
The author of this victory flew the SBD Dauntless.
Dauntless was responsible
for the first kill by US naval aviation on an enemy combatant.
The Dauntless was flown by Lieutenant Dickinson,
who was assigned to the Enterprise Air Group,
and he had survived being jumped at Pearl Harbor
with the loss of his rear-seater.
On December the 10th,
it sighted this Japanese submarine I-70 and attacked and sank her.
Features of the aircraft related to the wing
include the very large and visible dive-brakes required for its role.
Less visible is the fact that the wing has no internal spars.
Now, this makes it lighter, but a significant drawback
is the fact that you cannot fold this aircraft's wing.
Despite this, Dauntless entered service with the US Navy's fleet.
Aircraft specifications for the SBD Dauntless.
Length: 10 m. Wingspan: 12.6 m.
Maximum take-off weight: 4,587 kg.
Engine: Wright R-1820-32; power: 950 hp.
Maximum speed: 405 kph. Service ceiling: 7,680 m.
Armament: two 12.7-mm Browning M2 machine guns
and two 7.62-mm machine guns in rear.
Bomb payload: 725 kg.
Crew: 2 persons.
So, the Dauntless was designed expressly for one thing and one thing only,
and that was sinking ships. And it was very good at what it did.
The Battle of Midway was probably the definitive battle where everyone knew
that airpower was going to be the only way you were going to win the Pacific.
So, at the Battle of Midway, which we're probably all familiar with,
three US Navy carriers—the Enterprise, the Yorktown, and the Hornet—
up against four Japanese carriers.
The Japanese had a huge force with them, including several large battleships
and had over a hundred fighting ships, and then they had an invasion force.
The Navy had three carriers and about 20 other ships, not one battleship,
because they'd all been damaged or sunk at Pearl Harbor.
Early in the morning of June 4,
about 45 Dauntlesses attacked the Japanese task force.
The lightning-fast strike of the American dive bombers
ended in a sweeping victory. In just a few hours,
the Dauntlesses destroyed almost half the carriers of the Japanese Imperial Navy,
thus turning the tide of the Pacific War.
This battle was also notable
because it was here that the Avenger torpedo bomber made its debut.
The Grumman Avenger was the largest aircraft
that we operated off carriers in World War II.
It replaced the Douglas Devastator torpedo bomber, which was obsolete in 1941.
Aircraft specifications for the TBM Avenger.
Length: 12.5 m. Wingspan: 16.5 m.
Take-off weight: 7,876 kg.
Engine: Wright R-2600-8; power: 1,700 hp.
Maximum speed: 415 kph. Service ceiling: 7,193 m.
Armament: three 12.7-mm machine guns
and one 7.62-mm machine guns under the fuselage.
Eight 127-mm HVAR rockets.
The aircraft could carry up to 907 kg of bombs or one Mark 13 torpedo.
Crew: 3 persons.
Early on they could do torpedo runs or they could be used as a dive bomber.
So, if you were attacking an airfield,
the Avengers could be dive bombers, they could come back to the carrier,
and if somebody saw Japanese ships were sighted,
they can load them with torpedoes and go out on a torpedo run.
By the end of 1942, the Avengers had distinguished themselves
by sinking Japanese carrier Ryujo during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons
and battleship Hiei in the first battles for Guadalcanal.
However, the finest hour of these torpedo bombers was yet to come,
when in 1942, the Avengers joined the Dauntlesses and Wildcats,
which had borne the weight of the initial phase of the air war against Japan.
Meanwhile, US industry prepared replacements
for the battle-battered aircraft fleet.
The F6F Hellcat, known as the Ace Maker,
arguably the most significant carrier-borne aircraft of World War II,
and was responsible for some 75% of the navy's kills.
12,274 were built by Grumman—
one an hour, every hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It was simple, it was reliable, it was rugged.
It acclaimed 5,157 enemy kills for a loss of only 270.
Another nickname it earned was "the aluminum tank",
and it earned for the manufacturer the moniker "Grumman ironworks".
Indeed some pilots spoke of returning home with battle damage so significant,
that more air was passing through the aircraft, than around it.
Aircraft specifications for F6F Hellcat.
Length: more than 10 m. Wingspan: 13 m.
Take-off weight: 6,754 kg.
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10W Double Wasp; power: 2,135 hp.
Maximum speed: 629 kph. Service ceiling: 11,278 m.
Armament: six 12.7-mm Colt-Browning M2 machine guns.
Six 127-mm HVAR rockets. Bomb payload: up to 907 kg.
Crew: 1 person.
When it was all said and done at the end of the war,
the Hellcat had a 19 to 1 kill ratio,
which meant for every Hellcat shot down air-to-air,
Hellcat shot down 19 Japanese aircraft,
which at that point in the war, many of them were fighters.
In 1943, the US Pacific fleet began to put
heavy strike aircraft carriers from the Essex class into service,
each of which could carry up to one hundred planes on board.
The war had reached a stage where the success of combat operations
was defined by the economic power of the warring parties.
So, it was a huge, huge advantage that we had, that the Japanese did not have,
they did not have anywhere near the capability to match us in production.
So, by mid-'44, pretty much everywhere we went,
we had a huge carrier force to back up whatever was happening.
In 1943, Grumman—the main manufacturer of fighters for the US Navy—
had to make room for another company.
New aircraft carriers boasted F4U Corsairs, produced by Vaught,
on their flight decks.
However, this machine did not become a competitor for Grumman's Hellcats—
the Corsair had other purposes.
Corsair’s introduction into service hit some snags for carrier qualifications.
It exhibited some really nasty low-speed stall characteristics,
the landing gear wasn't suitable, and it also had such a powerful engine
that the torque caused roll as well as yaw due to P-factor.
Finally, the long nose meant that on final approach
you couldn't actually see the carrier you were trying to land on.
Although the solution for that was a long curve,
which kept your eyes on the target.
As a result, Corsair entered service
as a land-based aircraft with the Marines in early '43.
Aircraft specifications for the F4U Corsair.
Length: more than 10 m. Wingspan: 12.5 m.
Take-off weight: 6,654 kg.
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R-2800-18W; power: 2,380 hp.
Maximum speed: 718 kph. Service ceiling: 12,802 m.
Armament: six 12.7-mm Colt-Browning M2 machine guns.
Eight 127-mm HVAR rockets. Bomb payload: up to 907 kg.
Crew: 1 person.
The Marines used it heavily, it was more of a Marine aircraft in World War II,
the Navy primarily flew the Hellcat.
Corsair first flew in 1940, it was extremely advanced for its day,
it was the first US Navy fighter that could go 400 mph straight and level.
It has a very odd wing arrangement, it's got a gull wing,
and the reason for that is because of the size of the propeller.
If you had a regular wing, the landing gear would be so long
that you'd have to have a huge wing for the landing gear to fold up into.
So, the Vought engineers came up with that very unusual design.
In 1943, on the basis that the war was going to continue a while longer,
work was started on the development of a successor to the F6F Hellcat.
The result was known as the engine with a saddle on it.
It's the F8F Bearcat.
An interesting design feature at the time was the addition of exploding wingtips.
The idea was that if the maneuvers were so hard
that there was risk of a complete structural failure with the wing,
the outer meter or so of each wing would detach.
Never really worked in practice though—
either one tip would detach and not the other, or just simply at different times.
The solution was to add explosive charges.
However, it never worked according to plan
and indeed an accident with an explosion killed a Navy technician.
So, production aircraft soon had that idea removed.
Aircraft specifications for the F8F Bearcat.
Length: almost 8.5 m. Wingspan: almost 11 m.
Take-off weight: 6,105 kg.
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R-2800-30W Double Wasp; power: 2,250 hp.
Maximum speed: 737 kph. Service ceiling: 11,247 m.
Armament: four 20-mm cannons.
Four 127-mm HVAR rockets. Bomb payload: up to 1,700 kg.
Crew: 1 person.
By the time the F8F Bearcat was mass-produced, the Hellcats and Corsairs
were already dominating the skies over the Pacific Ocean
while the Helldivers and Avengers
were finishing off the remnants of the Japanese Navy.
In October 1944, the Americans sank 27 Japanese ships in the Leyte Gulf,
including 4 aircraft carriers and 3 battleships.
The following year, in April, 227 planes from 9 American carriers
destroyed the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the mighty Yamato.
When US troops began landing at Okinawa,
aircraft carrier USS Midway was launched back home in the USA.
She would become a symbol of the American Navy's power for many years to come.
In the early 1940s, Bureau of Aeronautics
learned about the developments of jet engine technology in England and Germany
and asked Westinghouse and Allis- Chalmers to make American versions.
The initial responses though were not positive.
These early jets had low power at low speed,
they were unreliable, and had high fuel consumption.
Add to that the requirements for swept wings,
which seemed necessary for maneuverability—
and it became unsuitable for carrier use.
After the war though,
with the development of the threat from the Soviet Union and their jet program,
it became obvious that the Navy could no longer avoid the technology.
In 1947, the FH-1 Phantom entered fleet service,
and with that, the age of naval aviation jets began.
Special thanks to the US Department of Defense