The Southland Times FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1942. Limitations of the Aircraft Carrier

Southland Times, Issue 24864, 2 October 1942, Page 4

The Southland Times FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1942. Limitations of the Aircraft Carrier

A FURTHER tribute to the efficiency of the aircraft-carrier in modern naval warfare was quoted in a cable message yesterday which reported an interview with the commander of an American carrierbased fighter squadron. “Give us a couple of dozen aircraft-carriers, a properly balanced, task force _ and sufficient marines to make landings,” said this airman, who has fought in every major battle in the Pacific, “and we can cut a patch across the Pacific to Japan itself and make it stick.” He went on to declare that “every major* victory won in the Pacific either by the Japanese or the Americans had been won by carriers,” and that “so far carrier-based planes had out-performed landbased planes in the Pacific.” It is true that Japanese carrier-based aircraft achieved a tremendous initial success in their attack on Pearl Harbour. But those who remember how the later sea-and-air battles were fought, notably the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea, will be inclined to feel that these statements are too sweeping. While . carriers played an important part in both battles, most experts concede that it was the land-based aeroplane which played the decisive part. Landbased bombers from Midway and Hawaii inflicted terrible damage on the approaching Japanese fleet—in spite of the fact that this fleet was heavily supported with carriers. No fewer than four Japanese carriers were sunk —though not all by landbased aircraft —and the fleet ultimately withdrew because it could find no reply to the land-based air power that was used against it.. A similar situation exists today in the Solomons. Now that the Americans have established a strong air base on Guadalcanar a reconquest of the island has become virtually impossible. “United States air power is such that the Japanese have not dared, after their initial attempt, to bring in convoys of big ships,” wrote an American correspondent on the island. Another message referred to Guadalcanar as “an unsinkable air-craft-carrier many times more

powerful than any sea-going carrier.” Carriers are, of course, vitally necessary to protect battle fleets and to carry air power* into “blind spots” on the oceans which cannot yet be reached by aircraft operating from land bases. But carrier-based air power can never match landbased air power. The wide flight deck of the carrier and its heavy loads of petrol and bombs make it particularly vulnerable to attack from the air. Moreover, its aircraft are necessarily inferior to landbased aircraft because every engineering attribute of an aeroplane has to be modified before it can operate from a carrier. It may have happened that the American Navy fighters in service at the outbreak of war were superior to the American army fighters: this might explain Lieutenant-Comman-der Thach’s rather astonishing statement that “so far carrier-based planes had outperformed land-based planes.” But in the long run landbased aircraft must be superior, because their design is. not restricted by considerations of size, weight and take-off. When the United States has a sufficient number of carriers to enable her to disregard losses, she will, no doubt, by the superiority of her aircraft and her highly trained assault crews, be able to cut a path towards the Japanese mainland. But it should not be forgotten that the enemy holds a wide protective zone of land air bases, and that the conquest of these “island carriers” will be costly and difficult.