Well, if it gives you a decisive advantage, why not Chinamax?
I'm not sure it does. Not when you need double the installed horsepower for 25% more flight deck.
At that point it would be a barge rather than a carrier.
It's not like the USN never studied the problem.
well, in priiinciple you can return to a two-sided arrangement...
And at 450,000 horsepower the reactors are the least of your problems, this runs into shaft load limitations like a brick wall. Even on six shafts you'd probably need completely new-design propellers that can absorb that much power and there's still no word that that's even possible aside from very old rumors on the Fords.
If you look up, "world's largest piston engine" it's over 100,000shp driving a single screw.
That's bhp, not shp.
At 107k bhp is the difference enough to not make the point?
Malacca isn't a canal, it's a wide open strait between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Only limiting dimension is depth, unless you think the 65 kilometre minimum width of the strait is actually limiting. The only functional limiting factor for a Chinese CV is the size of Chinese naval harbours. If they want to assert their power further afield, then Suez rears its head, and you get the 254ft/77m size for the flight deck.
18000TEU Malaccamax limits:370m long*59m beam*25m draft
What the US learned was there was a physical limit to the number of planes a carrier could operate. Too many and you have planes sitting unused much of the time. Too few and you can't cycle strikes efficiently.
The straits of Malacca have maximum allowed dimensions, which includes length.
Exactly. But even with vastly more efficient flight deck layouts, that number of maximum operational aircraft is still about 100. Even during the most-packed-decks era of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Nimitz class went with ~90 aircraft.
Nope. By 1944, the US had sufficient replacement planes and pilots to simply send more out to replace losses. Even as early as Midway this was occurring. The Saratoga was overloaded with planes including ones to replace losses--in part--of the carriers in that battle. Carrier battles were found to be intermittent where you had a few days of battle, then a period of as much as weeks until the next battle.
The difference between theory and experience.
When I was on the Enterprise (dating myself some here) we were returning from the IO and the Midway was going to the IO. In the Philippines our two A-7 squadrons swapped aircraft with the Midway because our squadrons had more operational planes than theirs. That way Midway had the operational planes they needed and their broken ones went back to the states for major overhaul.
How did you get the broken planes from Midway to Enterprise?
We were in port and they were off loaded to the pier then on loaded to the other carrier. Those that could fly simply changed carriers (some were broken but flyable. That is, they could fly but were not operational for combat missions).How did you get the broken planes from Midway to Enterprise?
I had visions of trying to move them from one ship to another while at sea.
I think the stores high-lines can handle the weight of A-7s, they're only 20klbs empty, but I don't think anyone in the Navy is crazy enough to try it.I had visions of trying to move them from one ship to another while at sea.
From your linked wiki page: "Malaccamax is a naval architecture term for the largest tonnage of ship capable of fitting through the 25-metre-deep (82 ft) Strait of Malacca" Followed by: "A typical Malaccamax tanker can have a maximum length of 333 m (1,093 ft), beam of 60 m (197 ft), draught of 20.5 m (67.3 ft)"
Glad to see they're doing that successfully. Carrier aviation is dangerous, and relatively small carriers are more dangerous than the big ones.
A lot of it comes down to dutiful preparations, a sufficiently skilled and experienced workforce and possible carry over design elements from previous carriers like Fujian. The latter can't be confirmed or denied 100%, might as well be entirely different
