/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>25815651
I mean, if you just want to throw shade without regard for the different constraints the ships were expected to operate under, we can just call it here. But in the slight chance you actually care, all of the US fleet carriers carried partially disassembled aircraft suspended from the hangar ceiling as spares. That's been common practice in the USN since they were built in the '30s, and continued on at least through Korea. Lexington for example originally carried around 30 spares suspended from her hangar ceiling when the USN first adopted the practice. Aircraft compliment can also vary drastically depending on whether you carried more fighters, or more bomber aircraft, so once again just looking at the total number doesn't give you the whole picture. In the early war the RN carriers tended to carry very few fighter aircraft in comparison to strike aircraft. Of the 5 squadrons Ark carried at the time of her sinking, three of those were torpedo squadrons equipped with Swordfish biplanes and the other two were 2-seater Fulmars used as fighter-bombers. She may also have been light on aircraft at the time of her sinking as well given that she was returning to Gibraltar after ferrying more aircraft to Malta. Her nominal complement in 1941 was 50-60 aircraft depending on type after all.

On protection, it ended up not mattering because the hit that sank her was a torpedo than ran deep and impacted the bilge keel, where no TDS actually covers. This opened a massive hole in her side, and was made even worse when the resulting power and communications failures prevented the captain from immediately ordering a stop. Hornet's not faring any better after a hit like that, and a comparison to Ranger is laughable considering how little protection she had, to the point that the USN expected to lose her if she took a single hit in combat. That's the reason Ranger spent most of the war engaging targets that couldn't hit her back.