1980's 600 Ship Navy Essex Class Reactivation Plan

CV12Hornet said:
The British show a general preference for not stuffing their carriers quite as densely as American, in peacetime - witness the Suez Crisis where all of the British carriers involved embarked an extra squadron of aircraft. This is probably a cost thing but also has benefits in deck handling. Hence a smaller air wing.
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At one point, USN doctrine called for 60% of the air wing on deck, while RN doctrine called for one-third on deck. Given equal-sized hangars, that results in an RN air wing 40% smaller than an USN air wing.
orlovsky said:
Eben giving the Buccaneer an A-4 spot factor of 1.5, and adding gannets and Helos, that's what, about 60 A-4 spots?
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FWIW, the Buccaneer is pretty close to having the same spot factor as an A-7. It folds up small, considering it's in the same weight class as the A-6.
 
I have seen several times that the RN used only 3/4 (usable, not theoretical) capacity, that would fit into the 60/83 dimension.
Just wondering whether Eagle and Ark Royal could handle 1/3 more than Ark's actual air group?
 
orlovsky said:
I have seen several times that the RN used only 3/4 (usable, not theoretical) capacity, that would fit into the 60/83 dimension.
Just wondering whether Eagle and Ark Royal could handle 1/3 more than Ark's actual air group?
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Maybe.

Eagle definitely carried more aircraft than Ark during the Sea Vixen days, indicating there was spare capacity. For a year and a half after her refit she carried 45 aircraft: 16 Sea Vixens, 14 Buccaneers, 5 Gannets, 4 Scimitars, and 6 helicopters. Ark's air wing in the same period was only 41 aircraft: 14 Sea Vixens, 14 Scimitars, 5 Gannets, and 8 helicopters, with Scimitars in particular being more compact than either the Buccaneer or Sea Vixen.

How much of that extra space could be used for more aircraft on Ark is an open question, between the space the Phantom takes up and also the fact that until post-Phantomization she had a smaller flight deck than Eagle.

Complicating matters further is that Rebuilding the Royal Navy states that Eagle's initial post-refit air wing was supposed to be 12 Buccaneers, 12 Sea Vixens, 12 SR.177s, 14 Gannets, and 2 helicopters, a firmly larger air wing than any of the ones actually carried by the ships; it's probably at least 1/3 more than Ark's Sea Vixen/Scimitar air wing, but without any decent spotting numbers for any British plane besides the Buccaneer it's up in the air in comparison to Eagle.
 
I think the hangars lost a lot of area in the various refits to workshop etc. Difficult to compare.
 
orlovsky said:
I think the hangars lost a lot of area in the various refits to workshop etc. Difficult to compare.
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HMS Eagle hangars as built: 364 x 67 x 17.5ft (+45ft fwd of the fwd lift [Upper]) + 364 x 54 x 17.5ft [Lower]
Refitted to a completely modern design 1959-64, new compartments built in aft 192' of lower hangar end for weapons storage and assembly. Aft lift stopped at upper hangar level; lower aft lift well used for accommodation and all other changes needed to bring the ship fully up to date. Lower hangar now 172'.

HMS Ark Royal hangars as built: 364 x 67 x 17.5ft (+45ft fwd of the fwd lift [Upper]) + 364 x 54 x 17.5ft [Lower]
Refitted 1958-9 with new compartments built in aft 69' of lower hangar end for weapons storage and assembly. Aft lift stopped at upper hangar level; lower aft lift well used for accommodation, deck-edge lift removed. Lower hangar now 295'.
Major refit 3/1967 to 1970 with a further 78' of aft lower hangar converted for electronics repair shops. Lower hangar now 217'.
 
That would be ~3300 m2, similar to the Clems.
Essex class about 4000m2?
Deck parking should also have more space on the Essexes.
 
CV12Hornet said:
Complicating matters further is that Rebuilding the Royal Navy states that Eagle's initial post-refit air wing was supposed to be 12 Buccaneers, 12 Sea Vixens, 12 SR.177s, 14 Gannets, and 2 helicopters, a firmly larger air wing than any of the ones actually carried by the ships; it's probably at least 1/3 more than Ark's Sea Vixen/Scimitar air wing, but without any decent spotting numbers for any British plane besides the Buccaneer it's up in the air in comparison to Eagle.
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I think that might have had something to do with them installing new living quarters within the aft sections of their lower hangars during their refits, which cut the lower hangar space in half.
 
Temeraire said:
I think that might have had something to do with them installing new living quarters within the aft sections of their lower hangars during their refits, which cut the lower hangar space in half.
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As I noted 2 posts ago (early yesterday) but with actual numbers.
 
I have looked at the GAO report on reactivating Oriskany. Not a heck of a lot of detail. Does mention that they decided not to equip with CIWS. Any idea on what they might do about changing the radars? How would the ship's appearance change, if at all?

From the GAO description, it looks like the Navy really only wanted a ship to support amphibious landings with attack aircraft. That would have been pretty limited, and limited requirements for the ship other than to keep operating for another 10-15 years. That was already going to be really expensive.
 
I have now done some research on the proposal to reactivate Oriskany. The proposal predates the Reagan administration. My guess is early 1980. I'm not sure where it originated, but in summer 1980, Carter's Secretary of Defense wrote that he was going up to Capitol Hill to argue against reactivation of Oriskany and the battleship New Jersey.

Although Oriskany possibly could have been equipped with F/A-18s, that would have required more upgrades to the ship. Also, new aircraft. The Oriskany proposal was trying to increase the number of carriers in the Navy from 13, but without spending too much money. They didn't want to gold-plate the proposal, so the F/A-18 seems to have been a non-starter. Also, there are indications that by using the existing Marine A-4M wings, this would have kept costs down. They were not standing up and equipping new wings, just putting land-based Marine aircraft to sea.

Although the Carter administration was opposed to reactivating Oriskany, Reagan's new Secretary of the Navy John Lehman proposed it in March 1981. This is probably what prompted the GAO to produce its report, posted up-thread. The GAO said that Oriskany was going to be expensive--at ~$500 million, it would cost as much to reactivate Oriskany as it did to SLEP USS Saratoga, which was a much more capable ship. Also, the Oriskany would not have anti-submarine or self-defense capability, meaning it would be reliant upon other ships, possibly including other carriers.

The GAO report is pretty good at providing information on this. Worth reading. But nobody did an actual inspection of the Oriskany at the time. One aspect of the GAO report that is interesting is that an initial cost estimate for Oriskany was based upon bringing the ship back for only five years. They then did another cost estimate for bringing it back for 10-15 years. This was a lot more expensive. So it sounds like some people initially thought that it would not cost too much and then got sticker shock when they got a more realistic estimate. And of course that estimate was not even based upon a thorough inspection of the ship, which would have turned up more problems.

The Senate rejected the Oriskany reactivation in April 1981 and that was that. In his memoir, Lehman acknowledged that the ship was in poor condition and had not been properly prepared for long-term storage.

I'm working on a short article about this that will appear in coming weeks. It includes some never-before-seen photos of Oriskany. I wish I had some more photos of her in mothballs, but have not found any.
 
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I did a little more searching on the Oriskany issue. As I noted above, the proposal to reactivate Oriskany was circulating by mid-1980, and my guess is that it was going around a few months before then. However, the fact that no inspection had been performed by March 1981 indicates to me that this was just talk, not an active effort. If Carter's Secretary of Defense opposed it, then it is possible that some in the US Navy were pushing it in 1980, but they could not get very far with that. So it seems more likely that the idea was circulating on Capitol Hill, and maybe some people in the Navy were indicating that it was a possible way to increase the number of carriers. But it did not have a lot of thought behind it.

What I found from searching the NY Times from those years is that it was not mentioned in the Times until 1981. At that point it appears that the House authorizing committee approved it, and maybe even the House armed services committee improved it, but the Senate armed services committee said no. (I have to check my notes on this and will post back.) The Senate indicated that this was proof that they were not simply going to rubber stamp Reagan's defense buildup. (Addendum: There's no indication that there was a lot of support for this in Congress.)

But it seems like a bit of a no-brainer: Reactivating Oriskany was not going to really add to the Navy's carrier fleet, because the ship would be limited in capability; the initial cost estimate (which was flawed) had already jumped a lot; and the higher cost estimate, which was equal to the service life extension program for USS Saratoga (~$500 million), was not actually based upon a detailed inspection of Oriskany. It is almost guaranteed that once they did a detailed inspection of Oriskany, the actual reactivation cost would have increased a lot, as would the reactivation time.

One addendum: as I was digging around for information on Oriskany, I saw reports that twice in the late 1960s she lost a propeller. I don't know how common that was for Essex-class carriers, but it could be an indication of just how hard the ship was being used. So when she was retired, she might have had a lot of things that were broken.
 
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