Deck Parking on Aircraft Carriers

[Daelyn75]

(Clarified)

I've brought this up before in a comment. But going over the information on the latest Dev Diary for January 29th 2016, I feel that there is an aspect of carriers that PDS may leave out, and that is deck parking on the US aircraft carriers.

I saw a picture of the Lexington from some months back and it could hold less than half (30 planes) than what it historically should - 78 aircraft. Further - the USA had a practice of top decking which is:

"The Lexington-class ships were designed to carry 78 aircraft of various types, including 36 bombers, but these numbers increased once the Navy adopted the practice of tying up spare aircraft in the unused spaces at the top of the hangar. In 1936, her air group consisted of 18 Grumman F2F-1 and 18 Boeing F4B-4 fighters, plus an additional nine F2Fs in reserve. Offensive punch was provided by 20 Vought SBU Corsair dive bombers with 10 spare aircraft and 18 Great Lakes BG torpedo bombers with nine spares. Miscellaneous aircraft included two Grumman JF Duck amphibians, plus one in reserve, and three active and one spare Vought O2U Corsair observation aircraft. This amounted to 79 aircraft, plus 30 spares."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington-class_aircraft_carrier#Flight_deck_arrangements

I think that the USA should start with this ability to use more aircraft than what would normally be allowed because as far as I know all their aircraft carriers operated this way. Outside of the Ranger, or other light/escort carriers, it was typical for them to carry 90+ instead of what would normally be 70-80.

Yes, I know the USA is all powerful because of their industry and population in the time period, but this to me is a pretty significant issue for the Pacific war if they aren't going to allow this. I know that you can already put in more aircraft than what the carrier's compliment is, and you lose efficiency for it. But I am proposing that the USA doesn't lose efficiency for having a certain amount over the limit, say 30% more. An aircraft carrier that can hold 70 aircraft, would by this extension be able to top deck another 20 without penalty.

They already did this before the 1936 time-frame, but I would be happy if it was added to their focus, say for their aircraft carriers. it doesn't have to be it's own focus, just add it to the national focus of aircraft carriers as a bonus.

((After discussion and research, I think it should be a game wide benefit that comes from doctrine research, since the British, and Japanese begun deck parking from 1942-1943 on. Armor should reduce aircraft capacity, the more armor, the less aircraft that carrier can hold.))

 

[GsusNSV]

I think it was said in the carrier DD, that you can put more planes on a carrier, then the number states. But you will recieve a penalty for it.
Edit: Shame on me, you already wrote that down. I just missed that.


But still, why should the USA not recieve a penalty for it? Fact still stands, that you lose space, when all airplanes are on-board. So for a safe landing, there is almost no space left for a wave-off. (I believe. Don't have much knowledge about naval aviation.)

 

[Daelyn75]

I think it was said in the carrier DD, that you can put more planes on a carrier, then the number states. But you will recieve a penalty for it.
Edit: Shame on me, you already wrote that down. I just missed that.


But still, why should the USA not recieve a penalty for it? Fact still stands, that you lose space, when all airplanes are on-board. So for a safe landing, there is almost no space left for a wave-off. (I believe. Don't have much knowledge about naval aviation.)

No, the aircraft didn't get in the way of landing and taking off. This was a normal practice for the US aircraft carriers and the small change to allow it is minimal for the game.

 

[PiousWarrior]

You can chance engine armor plane space but it will cost you naval experiance and give penaltys

 

[GsusNSV]

No, the aircraft didn't get in the way of landing and taking off. This was a normal practice for the US aircraft carriers and the small change to allow it is minimal for the game.

okay then maybe instead of no penalty, just increase the max loading capacity of the CV. Easy solution and even for the unknowing to understand.

 

[Amur_Tiger]

There's a couple problems with this.

1. US wasn't the only country to use a deck park ( usual term for what you're talking about ) UK used it at times.

2. Deck parks are weather dependent, you can't really use a deck park in the North Sea or even worse an arctic convoy without huge attrition losses to aircraft.

If deck parks are implemented it should probably be a doctrinal choice that can be activated and deactivated outside of any doctrine tree so that if you're operating your carriers in harsher conditions you can cease using the deck park and opt out of the attrition on aircraft.

 

[Daelyn75]

There's a couple problems with this.

1. US wasn't the only country to use a deck park ( usual term for what you're talking about ) UK used it at times.

2. Deck parks are weather dependent, you can't really use a deck park in the North Sea or even worse an arctic convoy without huge attrition losses to aircraft.

If deck parks are implemented it should probably be a doctrinal choice that can be activated and deactivated outside of any doctrine tree so that if you're operating your carriers in harsher conditions you can cease using the deck park and opt out of the attrition on aircraft.

Top decking just means tying down extra aircraft to the top deck. This was practiced throughout the war and is even used today by their aircraft carriers. Storms could be problematic, but then any major storm is devastating to ships of any kind. There was a major storm in the late stages of the war that did more damage to that US fleet than anything Japan had done since the Pearl Harbor attack.

 

[Axe99]

@Daelyn75 - must be the time of year for it, I was thinking about deck parks in-game as well, nice thread . As Amur says, 'Deck park' is the way I've seen it referred to in most cases, but Top Decking may be an American way of talking about it?

If deck parks are implemented it should probably be a doctrinal choice that can be activated and deactivated outside of any doctrine tree so that if you're operating your carriers in harsher conditions you can cease using the deck park and opt out of the attrition on aircraft.

This is the way I was thinking about it - have it as a doctrine choice, and have it early on, on the 'Base Strike' tree, and later on in the 'Fleet in Being' (as the UK, as far as I can recall, didn't start using deck parks until later). As you say Amur, it should be something that's only feasible in certain situations (I'm guessing deck parks in a typhoon or tropical cyclone/storm wouldn't hold up terribly well either). How to implement this in-game will depend on what tools we have to work with. It's deffo something I'm keen to include in the naval mod I'm putting together.

I was also thinking about angled flight decks and catapults, as well as landing aids. Catapults and landing aids could be doctrinal (they could be retrofitted) but angled flight decks I think need to be built into the design (although I'm no expert - correct me if I'm wrong Amur ). Catapults reduce the deck size needed to launch large planes, and angled flight decks and landing aids should reduce attrition on landing (of which there should be some in game - or at the very least moddable).

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

"The Lexington-class ships were designed to carry 78 aircraft of various types, including 36 bombers, but these numbers increased once the Navy adopted the practice of tying up spare aircraft in the unused spaces at the top of the hangar. In 1936, her air group consisted of 18 Grumman F2F-1 and 18 Boeing F4B-4 fighters, plus an additional nine F2Fs in reserve. Offensive punch was provided by 20 Vought SBU Corsair dive bombers with 10 spare aircraft and 18 Great Lakes BG torpedo bombers with nine spares. Miscellaneous aircraft included two Grumman JF Duck amphibians, plus one in reserve, and three active and one spare Vought O2U Corsair observation aircraft. This amounted to 79 aircraft, plus 30 spares."

If I understand correctly that's a description of spare airplanes being attached to roof of the hangar (Lexingtons had ridiculously tall ones), sort of like crated spares on Japanese carriers. This has nothing to do with deck park, and I actually wonder if it would have been possible with larger aircraft.

Edit: To clarify, deck park means storing aircraft on the open flight deck. Not the hangar.

That being said, US did have some technical advantages in air ops due to, at least, the (typically) open hangars and side lifts on later carriers.

 

[Daelyn75]

okay then maybe instead of no penalty, just increase the max loading capacity of the CV. Easy solution and even for the unknowing to understand.

The problem with that is that Japan didn't top deck as far as I know. If their aircraft capacity was 60, then that is how many they carried. In the case of the Akagi, it's capactiy was listed as 60 aircraft, yet during the Pearl Harbor attack they carried 66- with 25 spares. The spares weren't on the upper deck:

"As completed, the ship had two main hangar decks and a third auxiliary hangar, giving a total capacity of 60 aircraft. The third and lowest hangar deck was only used for storing disassembled aircraft. The two main hangars opened onto the middle and lower flight decks to allow aircraft to take off directly from the hangars while landing operations were in progress on the main flight deck above.

As originally completed, Akagi carried an air group of 28 Mitsubishi B1M3 torpedo bombers, 16 Nakajima A1N fighters and 16 Mitsubishi 2MR reconnaissance aircraft."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Akagi

As you can see, it doesn't add the spares as the ships ready compliment like it did earlier with the Lexington.

The aircraft below were disassembled. So they weren't able to be used right away, unlike the US carriers. They could of course probably be put into use after putting them back together, but I have no idea how this could be implemented unless a new rule could be put into place to have them dissembled and then assembled after some time.

 

[Amur_Tiger]

Top decking just means tying down extra aircraft to the top deck. This was practiced throughout the war and is even used today by their aircraft carriers. Storms could be problematic, but then any major storm is devastating to ships of any kind. There was a major storm in the late stages of the war that did more damage to that US fleet than anything Japan had done since the Pearl Harbor attack.

In a serious storm you lose the deck park entirely, a battleship gets 'wet forward' which means their pumps have to do some work, very different actual consequences. Smaller ships could flounder if the storm was bad enough of course.

More generally though the North Sea/Arctic Convoys weren't a storm thing so much as a temperature thing. The low temperature meant that sea spray would remain in liquid form for longer and just do terrible things as sea water tends to do, with the arctic convoys this was pushed up a notch by it freezing to everything. Operating carriers at all in those conditions is challenging, trying to keep aircraft exposed to those elements working would have been impossible.

Also the Japanese did use deck parks but had a hard time filling them with aircraft due to Japanese industrial capacity. source

Finally flight deck angling could be retrofitted but it was a pretty hard task, I'd argue that that and catapults should probably be kept as tech that has to be available from the laying down of the aircraft carrier. Landing aids, deck parks, night takeoff&landing, radar guided air patrols would have all been doctrinal shifts that occurred during the war.

 

[Daelyn75]

If I understand correctly that's a description of spare airplanes being attached to roof of the hangar (Lexingtons had ridiculously tall ones), sort of like crated spares on Japanese carriers. This has nothing to do with deck park, and I actually wonder if it would have been possible with larger aircraft.

That being said, US did have some technical advantages in air ops due to, at least, the (typically) open hangars and side lifts on later carriers.

No, I have to disagree with you here. The top deck did hold the extra aircraft and it was also called deck park, or deck parking.

"When aircraft carriers supplanted battleships as the primary fleet capital ship, there were two schools of thought on the question of armor protection being included into the flight deck. The USN initially favored unarmored flight decks because they maximized aircraft carrier hangar and flight deck size, which in turn maximized aircraft capacity in the hangar, and on the flight deck, in the form of a permanent "deck park" for a large proportion of the aircraft carried. In 1936 the Royal Navy developed the armored flight deck aircraft carrier which also enclosed the hangar sides and ends with armor. The addition of armor to the flight deck offered aircraft below some protection against aerial bombs while the armored hangar sides and ends helped to minimize damage and casualties from explosions or fires within or outside the hangar. The addition of armor to the hangar forced a reduction in top-weight, so the hangar height was reduced, and this restricted the types of aircraft that these ships could carry, although the Royal Navy's armored carriers did carry spare aircraft in the hangar overheads. The armor also reduced the length of the flight deck, reducing the maximum aircraft capacity of the armored flight deck aircraft carrier. Additionally, Royal Navy aircraft carriers did not use a permanent deck park until approximately 1943; before then the aircraft capacity of RN aircraft carriers was limited to their hangar capacity. The 23,000 ton British Illustrious-class had a hangar capacity for 36 Swordfish sized aircraft and a single 458 ft x 62 ft x 16 ft ( 140m x 19m x 4.8m) hangar, but carried up to 57 aircraft with a permanent deck park while the 23,400 ton Implacable class featured increased hangar capacity with a 458 ft x 62 ft x 14 ft (140m x 19m x 4.3m) upper hangar and the addition of a 208 ft by 62 ft by 14 ft (63m x 19m x 4.3m) lower hangar, forward of the after elevator, which had a total capacity of 52 Swordfish sized aircraft or a mix of 48 late war aircraft in the hangar plus 24 aircraft in a permanent deck park, but carried up to 81 aircraft with a deck park. The 27,500 ton USN Essex class had a 654 ft x 70 ft x 17.5 ft (198m x 21m x 5.3m) hangar that was designed to handle a mix of 72 prewar USN aircraft. but carried up to 104 late war aircraft using both the hangar and a permanent deck park."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_deck#Armored_decks

The British began to use this until 1943. It seems to me that the Japanese didn't use this at all. It could be placed in a doctrine, just reduce the efficiency hit for carried aircraft. The Japanese could easily have done this as well, but I don't think they ever did. Part of it might have to do with the converted aircraft carriers like the Akagi, and Kaga that just didn't have the room to do so.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

In a serious storm you lose the deck park entirely, a battleship gets 'wet forward' which means their pumps have to do some work, very different actual consequences. Smaller ships could flounder if the storm was bad enough of course.

The big carriers did rather well in the Dec '44 Typhoon, IIRC. Airplane losses were on the smaller carriers mostly.

 

[Daelyn75]

In a serious storm you lose the deck park entirely, a battleship gets 'wet forward' which means their pumps have to do some work, very different actual consequences. Smaller ships could flounder if the storm was bad enough of course.

More generally though the North Sea/Arctic Convoys weren't a storm thing so much as a temperature thing. The low temperature meant that sea spray would remain in liquid form for longer and just do terrible things as sea water tends to do, with the arctic convoys this was pushed up a notch by it freezing to everything. Operating carriers at all in those conditions is challenging, trying to keep aircraft exposed to those elements working would have been impossible.

Also the Japanese did use deck parks but had a hard time filling them with aircraft due to Japanese industrial capacity. source

Finally flight deck angling could be retrofitted but it was a pretty hard task, I'd argue that that and catapults should probably be kept as tech that has to be available from the laying down of the aircraft carrier. Landing aids, deck parks, night takeoff&landing, radar guided air patrols would have all been doctrinal shifts that occurred during the war.

What are you arguing here? That they shouldn't use deck parking? Well they did, regardless of losing them in a storm or not, it seems all navies with carriers eventually got around to practicing it.

The paragraph briefly discussing deck parking is too vague to encompass the entire practice when in reference to the Japanese deck parking. When were they short of aircraft to fill the requests? In 1942-1944 before the battle of Saipan I cannot see them not having enough, but afterwards, yes. Especially when their industry began to be bombed. It just doesn't go into enough detail. What carriers did they practice deck parking with? Could the Japanese aircraft carriers carry enough on the top deck to park them, like the American carriers?

"The Shōkaku-class carriers were initially intended to have an air group of 96, including 24 aircraft in reserve. These were envisioned as 12 Mitsubishi A5M ("Claude") monoplane fighters, 24 Aichi D1A2 ("Susie") Type 96 dive bombers, 24 Mitsubishi B5M ("Mabel") Type 97 No. 2 torpedo bombers, and 12 Nakajima C3N Type 97 reconnaissance aircraft. All of these aircraft were either superseded by larger, more modern aircraft or cancelled while the ships were being built, so the air group was revised to consist of 18 Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, 27 Aichi D3A ("Val") dive bombers, and 27 Nakajima B5N ("Kate") torpedo bombers. In addition, the ship carried 2 Zeros, 5 "Vals", and 5 "Kates" as spares for a total of 84 aircraft."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shōkaku-class_aircraft_carrier#Flight_deck_and_hangars

The spares here were disassembled aircraft, and they weren't deck parked. When it comes to the Japanese aircraft carriers, they had a smaller flight deck than the Americans. The Shokaku and the older Lexington was 794 feet, vrs 866 feet.

If you look later on, during the battle of Leyte Gulf, the last real use of Japanese aircraft carriers as far as I know, they still were able to outfit them with aircraft - in this case the Zuikaku held 66 aircraft just as their contribution. I am sure there were some still remaining on the carrier, but of course I cannot be 100% sure of that.

"Battle of Leyte Gulf

In October 1944, Zuikaku was the flagship of Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's decoy Northern Force in Operation Shō-Gō 1, the Japanese counterattack against the Allied landings on Leyte. At this time, the ship had 28 A6M5 Zero fighters, 16 A6M2 Zero fighter-bombers, 7 D4Y reconnaissance aircraft and 15 B6Ns. On the morning of 24 October, she launched 10 fighters, 11 fighter-bombers, 6 torpedo bombers, and 2 reconnaissance aircraft as her contribution to the airstrike intended to attract the attention of the American carriers away from the other task groups that were to destroy the landing forces. This accomplished little else as the Japanese aircraft failed to penetrate past the defending fighters; the survivors landed at airfields on Luzon."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shōkaku-class_aircraft_carrier#Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf

 

[Alex_brunius]

I saw a picture of the Lexington from some months back and it could hold less than half (30 planes) than what it historically should - 78 aircraft.

I don't think you need to be too worried about numbers shown in dev diarys. Devs themself have stated multiple times that numbers shown are not final and all of them can change, and they do read the forums so who knows?

 

[Daelyn75]

I don't think you need to be too worried about numbers shown in dev diarys. Devs themself have stated multiple times that no numbers shown are final and all of them can change, and they do read the forums so who knows?

Agreed. Although I just want to make sure that that isn't the final build of it.

 

[Alex_brunius]

We will see, and even if it is I'm sure it can be modded easily like all unit stats in previous HoI games

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

No, I have to disagree with you here. The top deck did hold the extra aircraft and it was also called deck park, or deck parking.

Quite true. But I was thinking of this in regards to the 30 spares in the Lexington example:

 

[Daelyn75]

Quite true. But I was thinking of this in regards to the 30 spares in the Lexington example:

Yes, that is also what I thought of after I read what you had wrote.

 

[Wraith11B]

Finally flight deck angling could be retrofitted but it was a pretty hard task, I'd argue that that and catapults should probably be kept as tech that has to be available from the laying down of the aircraft carrier. Landing aids, deck parks, night takeoff&landing, radar guided air patrols would have all been doctrinal shifts that occurred during the war.

Hard? Not really, but it did take a carrier out of commission for anywhere from >1 to 3 years for the Essex-class, and 3 years for the Midway-class. I don't know if it could 'fit' in the game (as none of this started until 1953(?) but maybe the final carrier model could have them.