I think those get filed in the same category as the "Helicopter Destroyers" that the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces have. They're not aircraft carriers, because they're not, despite checking all of the boxes.
Recall that many earlier aircraft carriers were basically just battlecruiser hulls with the superstructure cleared away to make room for a flight deck. HMS Furious was an example of an active battlecruiser being modified into a carrier, while USS Lexington was an example of a battlecruiser which was redesigned while still under construction.
Shinano was a converted Yamato(!) class battleship and a testament to the incompetence of Japanese Damage Control. She was less than useless compared to Yamato or Musashi.
To be fair, she did about as well as any ship would if it hadn't finished construction before going out to sea. They were trying to move her to another harbor because a USN patrol plane was spotted flying over her original base, leading them to assume she'd been spotted (ironically enough, it turns out the Navy hadn't seen her after all, and only discovered the ship existed when she ran afoul of a submarine outside of the Bay of Tokyo.)
Even then the navy didn't belive the submarine until after the war.
"Your claiming you sunk a 60,000 tone carrier? Every other carrier is 20,000 tones max and if it was one of those we would have seen it", begrudgingly crediting her with a kill on an unkown shokaku class after the crew would not let up for weeks insisting they had sunk a mammoth carrier.
...
It was only after the war when they asked us for our records so they could make the submarine crew that insisted they splashed some form of super carrier in Tokyo Bay shut up that they realized they were telling the truth.
There was a lot of stuff the Americans didn't figure out that the Japanese had until after the war. There was a massive munitions factory and storage depot just outside of Tokyo that was so well camouflaged and dug in that the US didn't know about it until months after the war. It was used to support the Allied efforts in the early stages of the Korean war before the logistics chain ramped up enough to render it redundant, and at some point it got turned into a golf course and camp resort operated by the US Air Force.
Tama Hills. Pretty nice place. Spent part of my childhood camping out there.
To be fair to that guy, he was trying to vent the area and wouldn't have known the design flaws that just resulted in the gas circulating the ship.
Maybe, its been a while since I read about the Taiho's loss.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerTo be additionally fair, I would think it would be an attempt at trying to prevent another Kaga/Soryuu Akagi who did have a massive buildup of avgas vapors while on fire and resulted in the ship blowing up too.
That Taihou wasn't built to properly vent it as the guy was intending was less incompetence at damage control and more poor design.
Still, somebody should've at least told them that the vent systems are interconnected as opposed to exhaust systems.
Edited by MajorTom on Sep 20th 2020 at 11:01:57 AM
To fairer even if you go full blame on the idiocy it's not the fault of Taihos damage control team but the peopl that shoved them into the war without training.
Though it was pure idiocy even acording to my grand father who served on one of those ships, they appently should have sprayed the fire suppression foam down the elevator since that existed back then and would have blocked the fumes, much, much better then the disassembled tables which they tried.
...
That and it wasnt the spreading the fumes through the ship that made venting bad, it was collecting in the hanger already.
The problem is that the venting fans were electric brush fans...
...
Which any one who has ever felt with those should see the problem here.
Edited by Imca on Sep 20th 2020 at 3:50:32 AM
Didn't Japanese carriers have enclosed hangars, as opposed to American carriers which had open hangars? I presume that helped with the whole avgas fumes problem.
I remember years ago someone shared an article talking about how the hangar design on American and Japanese carriers affected the tactics used by both sides (short version: The Americans could do engine run-ups belowdecks and then use the elevators to raise the planes up to the flight deck once they were ready to launch, while Japanese planes had to be on the flight deck to do engine run-ups if they didn't want to fumigate the entire hangar deck, which meant the Americans had a lot more flexibility when it came to launching and recovering planes because they could keep their flight decks clear more of the time)
Sometimes. There were a number of incidents of US carriers dang near getting literally blown out of the water as well. One of them USS Saratoga suffered an effective Career-Ending Injury in a way when a kamikaze caused her fuel and ammo stores for planes to blow up.
Turns out it didn't matter the side, aircraft carriers in WW 2 were Made of Explodium.
I remember hearing that Taihou was supposed to receive the more experienced damage control crews from Zuikaku, but because the Imperial Japanese military was nothing if not petty, the damage control crews kept coming up with excuses to delay transferring to a new ship until all of a sudden there was no Taihou to transfer them to.
A Fire Broke Out Aboard The Coast Guard Cutter USS Waesche While Operating In The Pacific.
Ship was saved, damage under inspection/determination in Yokosuka, Japan, minor crew injuries.
And if I'm reading right, there have a been a string of fires aboard US Navy/Coast Guard ships in the past two months since the Bonhomme Richard fire, most of them minor.
Can the Marines stop playing with matches please?
In other news...
Russian Warship Kazanets Has Collided With A Civilian Freighter In The Baltic Sea.
Specifically it occurred a few kilometers from the Oresund Bridge off Sweden. No contamination of oil or anything but the damage indicates a fairly good bump. Allegedly Kazanets was operating with its tracking beacons deactivated.
Seems the Russians want in on the whole string of colliding into things (or being rammed by other things) that the US Navy had a couple years ago and in one case sank the frigate Helge Ingstad. (The US Navy was obviously not responsible for that one.)
I just dont understand how you can keep getting warships colliding with cargo freighters, like maybe once or twice.
But neither of those objects are exactly small, nor are they fast, and warships have some pretty damn tight turning radius for there sizes of only 2-3 times there length....
What the fuck is going on, is the helmsmen asleep?
It feels like this, but accidental some how.
Edited by Imca on Sep 27th 2020 at 5:43:19 AM
From what I understand, a lot of these collisions happen in narrow waterways, like harbor approaches and such. The sea is very big, but the portions of it that are navigable get much smaller as you get closer to land, so everything gets clustered together and your room to maneuver to avoid problems gets very smol.
Kind of like how most mid-air collisions happen around airports or navigational radio aids, because airplanes tend to fly towards/away from those, making them natural intersections.
Why The Destroyer USS Paul Hamilton Came Home Flying A Crescent Moon Flag And A Long Pennant.
The stories behind the Moultrie flag and the Homeward-Bound-Pennant seen there are interesting reads!
So I have just seen how the JMSDF has gotten around calling the Izumo and Kaga carriers this time, and I have fucking lost it and have to share it.
AKA: They aren't aircraft carriers because the airplanes belong to the air force, they aren't ours.
Pssssst heheheheh! Those ships are my favorites because of the increasing implausible deniability surrounding them. Just declare them aircraft carriers, seriously.
...Yes, I know they can't be called that for legal purposes, but still. That's what they are. Aircraft carriers.
What are the specs on them, by the by? Not the specifics, but how do they hold up as carriers?
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer

What about the "through-deck cruisers" that were all the rage in the 1960s as the WW 2-era carriers outside the US wore out and retired?