USS Enterprise

[Loy Hamilton]

"The carrier that fought the most through the entire war..."
Dedicatory Plaque, Enterprise Tower, U.S. Naval Academy
Enterprise entered World War II on the morning of December 7, 1941, when her scout planes encountered the Japanese squadrons attacking Pearl Harbor. Not until May 14, 1945, when a Kamikaze attack off Kyushu, Japan, left a gaping hole in her flight deck, was she forced to leave the war.

Of the more than twenty major actions of the Pacific War, Enterprise engaged in all but two. Her planes and guns downed 911 enemy planes; her bombers sank 71 ships, and damaged or destroyed 192 more. Her presence inspired both pride and fear: pride in her still unmatched combat record, and fear in the knowledge that Enterprise and hard fighting were never far apart.

The most decorated ship of the Second World War, Enterprise changed the very course of a war she seemed to have been expressly created for.

Story of Phil Smith, one of two brothers, one aboard the Big E, CV6, and the other was aboard the U.S.Franklin, CV13.

In Phil's words: "I tell my grandchildren about the 'Last Attack', on May 14, 1945, as a single
Zeke came from behind clouds, about 0700, and headed straight for the Big E. We were at
General Quarters, all the hatches battened down, all men at their battle stations. I was assigned
fire extinguisher near our shop. I could not see the action, but I heard the five inch guns, the
40mm, and the 20mm, then the crash and explosion. The plane had gone through the flight
deck and stopped in a corner of the No. 1 elevator pit. The 500 lb bomb had broken loose and
went to the 4th deck, which was armor plated, and exploded in a room where rags for wiping oil
off planes, toilet tissue, and other soft items were stored. The force of the explosion went
straight up and carried about 9 tons of the elevator over 400 feet in the air. Fire erupted but
damage control men got the fire under control within minutes after the blast. A photographer
from the ship next to us took the photo of the blast with the elevator at about 400 feet above the
flight deck. The loss of life was minimal, 13 dead and 68 injured. I learned about concussion.
We had about 80 planes on the hangar deck and everyone was damaged by concussion. We
stripped the planes of radio and radar gear, engines were removed, and the twisted bodies were
pushed over the aft end of the flight deck. What about the pilot of the Zeke? If the impact of the
plane with the ship did not kill him, concussion from the blast did. Chaplin Tower insisted on a
short memorial service for the pilot. I and a few others went with the Chaplin to the fantail,
where he offered a prayer and the body was committed to the briny deep."

[mdoerner]

The nature of the battle-cruiser.....big and fast, made them a "natural" for conversion to aircraft carriers....and a lot of them were! IJN's Akagi and Kaga were both battle-cruiser conversions...ditto the HMS Glorious, HMS Courageous, and HMS Furious (FWIW: The 15" guns pulled off the Courageous and Glorious when the vessels were converted to aircraft carriers were, under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, supposed to be destroyed, and the Royal Navy dutifully reported to the Home Office that they were. In reality, the guns and mounts were dismantled, sealed in iron boxes, and hidden under rather massive Royal Navy coal piles at Portsmouth. These guns became the "X" and "Y" turrets of the Royal Navy's LAST battleship, HMS Vanguard, finished after WW II.

John

And while we're on the subject of corrections. The battlecruisers the Japanese wanted to convert were the Akagi and Amagi. The Amagi was damaged in the earthquake of 1923, so the battleship Kaga was substituted. The Kaga's sister ship, the Tosa, was expended in armament trials.

Also, HMS Furious mounted a single 18" gun on it's fantail as a battlecruiser. The gun "shook her up" so badly the gun was dismounted, and she was put through her 1st conversion as an aircraft carrier (i.e. no change in superstructure, just a deck all around.) Anyhoo, that 18" gun was the largest piece of artillery afloat until the Yamato and Musashi showed up.

I'm not trying to turn this into a Monty Python skit...really.

Mike Doerner

[John Kepler]

Actually, HMS Furious as a "light battlecruiser" (as with Glorious and Courageous, a highly specialized shallow-draft vessel designed for operations in the Baltic that never happened) had 2 single-gun turrets fore and aft.

IJN Kaga wasn't quite a battleship....and not quite a battlecruiser either, more like HMS Hood and/or an improved IJN Kongo-class battlecruiser. Like the Kongo's, she was proof that the IJN was more than capable of "paddling their own canoe" when it came to warship design. It had more armor than Akagi and Amagi...but not as much as a true contemporary Japanese battleship like Nagato. I've seen it described both ways, but the more current evaluation is that it was a heavily armored battlecruiser

[Mk VII]

When does the USS Robert S McNamara commission?

[John Kepler]

Which version? The Container ship, the Guided Missile Frigate, the Fleet Oiler, the Floating Drydock,or the Amphibious Assault Ship....one size fits all ya'know!

[mdoerner]

Actually, HMS Furious as a "light battlecruiser" (as with Glorious and Courageous, a highly specialized shallow-draft vessel designed for operations in the Baltic that never happened) had 2 single-gun turrets fore and aft.

I thought only the aft turret was mounted and trialed on Furious. Yeah, G & C were another Jackie Fisher thing, but more like a French or Italian cruiser with 15" guns. Anyways, once the the aft turret was unacceptable on HMS Furious, they ditched the other turret before it was mounted. (I thought only 3-18" tubes were made) Is there a source for a photo with the 18" gun mounted on the fore end? I haven't seen it yet. Not that I don't trust you or anything, I just want the eye candy...

IJN Kaga wasn't quite a battleship....and not quite a battlecruiser either, more like HMS Hood and/or an improved IJN Kongo-class battlecruiser. Like the Kongo's, she was proof that the IJN was more than capable of "paddling their own canoe" when it came to warship design. It had more armor than Akagi and Amagi...but not as much as a true contemporary Japanese battleship like Nagato. I've seen it described both ways, but the more current evaluation is that it was a heavily armored battlecruiser

The Kongo was designed by the British, unless you're referring to their "refits" where they were extensively modified. But that would only put them in the same league as that Tomcat operator in the Persian Gulf (can modify, duplicate, and improve, but not manufacture the whole kit-and-kaboodle). The Yamashiro and Ise were designed and built in Japan, but the Japanese couldn't figure out why it was a bad idea to keep sticking Q turrets and magazines next to the boilers for some reason.... Maybe if they had paid more attention to the Jutland action (or even before this the QE or R class) they could have saved some weight and added some armor or speed or triple turrets to improve the design.

Mike Doerner

[John Kepler]

The Kongo alone was built in Britain as a pattern....the other three in the class were Hiei, Kirishima, and Haruna, and they were built in Japan as battlecruisers. They were all re-configured in the 1930's as fast-battleships. The reclassification as battleships was dubious....the class proved to be VERY "battlecruiser-esque" in regards to destructiblity! Hiei was pounded into a wreck by cruisers USS San Francisco and USS Portland, Kirishima reduced to a hulk by a real battelwagon, USS Washington in less than 15 minutes, and Kongo was sunk by a single torpedo hit from USS Sealion. Of the class, only Haruna survived the war after a fashion.

[John Sukey (Deceased)]

HMS Furious. Can't see why they took that 18 incher off, just because when it was fired it popped rivits in the shaft tunnel

[Quarks]

... that the current Enterprise (CVAN-65) is scheduled to be decommissioned and scrapped? The closest to dieing I ever came was off her front end on 6 Nov. 1968!

What happened, Red? If you don't mind my asking.

[Art]

Calling a cat a dog dosen't make it a dog. Despite being re-rated as "fast battleships" the Kongo's remained battle cruisers in concept all of their lives.

The Japanese it's true stuck to the midships dual turret for a long time but didn't pay much of a price for it. Ise and Hyuga were two of the fastest battleships of their day at 25 knots and unlike the Queen Elizabeth fast battleships that were never able to make their design speed, were able to actually make that speed and sometimes a bit better all their lives.

The decision after Midway to convert the Ise and Hyuga to hybrid battleships was a poor one. It took both ships out of service during the Solomons campaign where they could have been very useful. The Hyuga lost her number 5 turret to an explosion in gunnery practice in May 1942 so the aft flight deck may not have been a totally bad idea where whe was concerned. However the Ise with her World War 2 speed of 25.25 knots approached the speed of most World War 1 battlecruisers. Her 12 14" guns would have made her a better ship for the night bombardments of Henderson field than the Kongos, and her heavier armor would have made her more survivable in the night gun and torpedo actions around Guadalcanal. These were very tough ships. The Yamashiro of the older Fuso class took an unbelievable pounding at the Surigao Straight but was firing back and manuverable almost to the very end. In fact some think she might have actually escaped if not hit by the two torpedos at the end of the battle that actually sank her.

The conversion of the Ise and Hyuga to hybrid battleship carriers was just another fortuitous poor decision by the Japanese that helped shorten the war. They would probably have been better served by an expedient we used, converting some of the building Agano class light cruisers to light aircraft carriers.