Akron/macon Type Airship-carriers In Ww2!

[Lawman]

With the impending conflict with Germany, the UK places immediate orders in 1938 for an initial batch of six large airship aircraft carriers, similar to the Akron/Macon. These are to be used for long endurance aircover over the North Atlantic, carrying no fewer than a dozen Swordfish torpedo bombers. These are supplemented by a second batch of six airships, to allow them to escort the convoys for the majority of the passage across the Atlantic. The dozen airships enable most convoys to be accompanied all the way across, especially once Canada and the US start operating their own airship carriers, along with the more conventional escort carriers. By early '42, all convoys are being escorted by either airship carriers or MAC carriers, allowing the escort carriers to go U-Boat hunting immediately.

The Swordfish proves to be ideally suited to the task, and can fold up quite tightly in the cramped hangars, and still operate efficiently. They are able to respond to any U-boat sightings, and as a result, U-boat losses are disastrous. This allows for the massive build-up of supplies in Britain needed for the invasion of Europe, but much earlier. Convoys find themselves experiencing almost no losses, due to U-boats not daring to get close (due to themselves often being hit first, especially with many ships sprouting US-supplied semi-obsolete 37mm anti-tank guns, which prove highly succesful at damaging U-boats).

The airship-carriers end up providing sterling service, especially when combined with radars, allowing them to patrol wide areas, and spot any U-boats that are on the surface recharging. One concern is the survivability of the airships if faced with enemy aircraft, and therefore they mostly operate outside the range of most land-based types.

Supplementing these airship carriers, the large escort carrier building program is initiated in the late '30s, meaning that no fewer than fourty merchantment are ready for conversion by '41! These would be similar to the American Bogue class, and embark around two dozen aircraft. In the escort carrier role, this generally consists of a dozen each of Swordfish and Wildcats/Hellcats. They allow the RN to operate a significant carrier fleet, which is put to good use, often seeing no fewer than eight carriers operating together, typically with a normal fleet carrier. This means a highly potent fleet, with more than 200 aircraft (routinely around 250!).

Unrelated, but of interest to me!

The improving level of supplies reaching the UK helps with spending as well, as it costs much less when you're not losing dozens of ships a month. Partly as a result of this, the UK makes the hard decision to adopt some new US gear, conveniently built in Canada to keep it in the family... The .303 round is supplemented by the American .30-06, allowing immediate adoption of the M1 Garand and M1919, finally giving British troops a semi-auto rifle, and a medium machinegun (i.e. between the Bren and heavy water-fed Vickers). The Army sticks with the nine man section as standard; with a gun group having one Bren (modified to fire .30cal) gun, an assistant gunner, and a sniper; and a six man rifle group, having two Thompson/Sten guns and four Garands. The Lee Enfield remains in widespread service, with support troops and many non-combat roled units. Further to this, the appaling 3in mortar is immediately replaced with the much better Brandt-designed 81mm.  

[GTX]

I never really considered British Airship aircraft Carriers - I like the idea of some Swordfish being carried.  Maybe some Sea Gladiators as well?

Regards,

Greg

[Lawman]

Sea Gladiators would be a good option - not 100% sure though about their ability to shoot down FW Condors (which would be pretty useful). The main thing is to have compactness, to ensure the airships can carry a decent load of aircraft. I was reading around the escort carrier history, and the fact that convoys that had escort carriers attached didn't lose ships at all, which is darned impressive!

I would really love to see the British government quietly buying up a bunch of merchantmen for proper conversion. At the start of the war, they would be finished to the same sort of 'real' escort carrier design as the Sangamon class. This would allow them to carry around 36 aircraft, and yet cost a fraction of the cost of a normal fleet carrier. The UK could have built plenty of these ships, and they would have been very helpful in stopping losses. It made no sense to have to build hundreds of thousands of tons of new shipping every month, when building a couple of hundred thousand tons of escort carriers could have prevented/minimised the losses. The UK would build four batches, each of eight escort carriers, to accompany the war build destroyer batches - two batches of eight destroyers to one batch of escort carriers. These would then be split, to give flotillas of four carriers and eight destroyers - one heck of a fleet! The RN may not like the idea of 'mere' escort carriers, but when combined, four escort carriers can carry more aircraft than a pair of the RN's largest fleet carriers!  

[fabe]

Of course the Germans need to respond in late 1940 the Starrluftschiffjagdstaffel (Stalja) is established. Pretty quickly both sides are playing cat and mouse with the British trying to make their airships even faster. Some Fw-200s are converted to air-ship hunters using radar, a 15cm Howitzer or alternatively Napalm rocket launchers.
(BTW for those interested Nazi Germany did have some kind of recon Zeppelin the LZ-130 which entered British airspace sveral times before WW2, sometimes even escorted by Bf-109)

[Archibald]

Fabe, maybe the Luftwaffe could buy the Graf Zepelin and adpt it for the role, maybe with He-51s or even old Me-109s variants (B/C/D) ?

I suppose LZ-130 was the one which made ELINT missions over the channel in 1939 ? its captain detected nothing on its scopes, then concluded that there was no chain of radar  around Great Britain.
Can't remember his name aside the fact that it sounded italian, something like Ricardi...

[Lawman]

One thing to remember is that the Germans were slower in development of airborne radars, so we could well have the Germans flying Condors to hunt them down, only to be ambushed by British fighters.

One possibility, in place of something like Gladiators, would be an evolved version of the Gloster F5/34 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_F.5/34), perhaps 'grown up' to use the bigger Bristol Hercules (or at least the Pegasus). It certainly seems to have the making of an excellent naval fighter, especially if grown a bit. It should be able to be scaled up to a 1200-1400hp engine, which should easily put it in the same class as the American F-4F Wildcat. I suspect the F.5/34 could have been developed into a British Wildcat, being built in large numbers in '37-'41, being replaced by a bigger version, much like the F-6F Hellcat... The airships and escort carriers would initially use older types, with the F.5/34s on the fleet carriers; then the replacements would allow them to be shifted to the escorts, just as happened with the F-4Fs and F-6Fs in US Navy service.

Another major change would be to avoid the predecessors of the Lend Lease system, which hurt the British economy, and brought it pretty close to bankruptcy. If Britain can keep losses of equipment to the minimum, then it helps a lot - perhaps even no 'destroyers for bases' deal, Britain instead starting a 'war emergency' program much earlier, possibly even 1930, though without the word 'war'. The aim is to get a class ordered every year, with each class consisting of two batches of eight destroyers - sixteen per year, with almost ten years to get them into service would mean nearly 150 destroyers being in service by the true start of the war. The rate then increases to two classes being ordered per year, once the war starts, to keep the numbers up. If these are built alongside the 'merchantmen' that are intended for carrier conversion, the RN would find itself very well equipped for WW2.

On the aircraft front, I would generally just want to speed up development of various systems. The Polsten 20mm cannon, for instance, was much cheaper than the Oerlikon, and could have been operational much earlier, boosting ground defences. It might have been sensible to start setting up engine and aircraft manufacturing facilities in Canada and Australia much earlier, allowing production to be ramped up when hostilities begin. If you can have peacetime capacity to produce, say, four thousand aircraft per year, then in wartime you should be able to gear it up to around four times that (double the floor area and two shifts in each plant). In peacetime, it would be F.5/34s, Swordfish and Barracudas for the RN, and Hurricanes, Spitfires (maybe also Miles M20s, but a little earlier) and probably Halifax/Stirling bombers. The aim would be to ideally produce all the types to be capable of using either normal water-cooled Merlins, or the radial Pegasus or Hercules engines. This would mean that airframes could be built, and equipped with whichever engine is available - a major benefit in terms of uprades, since the best engines could be used for the aircraft needing them most, with their old engines (the second best) being handed down to the less needy units. As a result, you would get competition between the manufacturers to develop/build the best engines possible.  

[GTX]

Britain instead starting a 'war emergency' program much earlier, possibly even 1930,

But why would they do this?  Especially right in the midst of the Great Depression - the only thing I can think of would be if Brittain went Germany's way in dealing with the Depression (i.e. become more militaristic).

Regards,

Greg

[Lawman]

Well I suspect there could be a middle ground - somewhere between the German method (major military build-up to spur industry) and the American method (major civil construction etc...). The aim would be to strike a comfortable medium, perhaps building new docks, and better transport links, such as a new East and West coast railway and road network; as well as the military buildup. The aim is to get the economy going again, which wouldn't be easy, but there aren't many better alternatives.  

[jcf]

With the impending conflict with Germany, the UK places immediate orders in 1938 for an initial batch of six large airship aircraft carriers, similar to the Akron/Macon.

Most likely it would be based on the Barnes Wallis designed Vickers R100. The R100 was the machine for which Wallis developed his method of geodetic construction. Unlike the government designed and built R101, the R100 was a very good machine.





A free paper model of the R100:
http://www.currell.net/models/r100.htm




Profile of R100 as built, with gondola mods and proposed stretch.

From this page, check out the big fictional machines:
http://www.wolfsshipyard.mystarship.com/Mi...ps/Airships.htm

Jon