Military History
|
How To Make War
|
Wars Around the World
Rules of Use
How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Attrition
Discussion Board
Return to Topic Page
Subject:
China Takes The High Road to Carrier Operations
SYSOP
7/17/2014 6:19:21 AM
Quote
Reply
Show Only Poster Name and Title
Newest to Oldest
keffler25
7/17/2014 12:19:41 PM
It’s unknown if the Chinese are also following the pre-World War II Japanese Navy approach to carrier pilot selection in training. The Japanese entered World War II using a system similar to what China is using now. In 1941, a Japanese pilot trainee needed 700 hours of flight time to qualify as a full-fledged pilot in the Imperial Navy, while his American counterpart needed only 305 hours to serve on U.S. carriers. About half of the active duty pilots in the U.S. Navy in late 1941 had between 300 and 600 hours flying experience, a quarter between 600 and 1000 hours, and the balance more than 1000 hours. Most of these flight hours had been acquired in the late 1930s.
Thus at the beginning of the war nearly 75 percent of the U.S. Navy's pilots had fewer flying hours than did the least qualified of the Japanese Navy's pilots.
And it showed in battle.
The early carrier battles between the Japanese and their British and American opponents revealed three things...
a. Japanese pilots could formate and fly off as coordinated strike groups in as little as fifteen minutes after the first plane lifted off from their flight decks. This was astonishing, when you realize that this was their performance level at Midway!
One Japanese carrier hit the Yorktown twice with strike packages spaced no more than five hours apart.
b. What Japanese training did for their pilots extended to their carrier air divisions. Specialist with hundreds of hours experience in maintaining arming fueling and moving planes manned Japanese carriers. Japanese industrial management experts had worked out an extremely dangerous strike below arm refuel and move above deck aircraft cycle that allowed the Japanese carriers to retain relatively uncluttered decks during carrier operations. This made for a sortie tempo that at times was twice as fast as their American counterparts, who as late as the battle of the Eastern Solomons still had not worked out the US decklanding recovery spotting and arming procedures. American practice as it developed was to refuel and rearm on the deck, which cluttered takeoff runs and crowded a flight deck. It might take an American carrier an hour to get its strike package off in the middle of 1943. Japanese sorties could take as little as thirty minutes and this after their China war veterans were mostly dead., The allies do not like to mention exchange ratios and losses from this part part of the war. It is rather embarrassing.
C. While the sheer speed and professional offensive oriented procedures the Japanese adopted bore early fruit, it proved disastrous in a sustained operational tempo by the numbers naval war. The law of averages catches up when a training program that produces thousands of 200 hour pilots wipes out the 2000 600 hundred pilots you had, and you are left with 90 hour wonders to face veterans who have accrued a thousand hours apiece in COMBAT over two years of very hard fighting in the Solomons . Wrong deck handling procedures and a fatally incompetent firefighting doctrine and I can see where the the outcomes in the Pacific campaign at sea came..
I hope the Chinese are stupid enough to follow Japanese and Russian naval practices. .It will make them easier to KILL.
Quote
Reply
avatar3
Damage Control
7/17/2014 8:28:21 PM
I have always believed that part of the reason for the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy was Hubris. The Japanese Navy had been undefeated since the Russo-Japanese war 40 years before Pearl Harbor. They had dedication, equipment, training and leadership and they knew it! We still believed in Battle Ships. When Battle Ship Row went up we were forced to rely on carriers with wooden flight decks, a few pilots, and a lot of planes that were out of date (remember the Buffalo Brewster?). In our insecurity and fear of paying an even bigger butchers bill, we developed Damage Control Sections (DC), trained our sailors to be firefighters and practiced worst case scenarios. We took a beating, but learned lessons. Damaged aircraft with ammo and burning aircraft were pushed over the side. Bomb slides were rigged to push explosives into the sea, safety personnel were stationed at key points. When enemy aircraft were sighted, carrier fuel tanks were vented and the air was replaced by Carbon Dioxide Gas. Fire retardant suits, hoses, breathing equipment and specialized DC personnel were on station - even emergency electrical and communication lines were laid out in case of need. Ships Officers, Chiefs and Sailors trained as hard as the Pilots, and that's what won the carrier war. Go aboard any US Navy Ship today and you will find that Fire Fighting Drills are a constant. :7)
Quote
Reply
tteng
7/18/2014 3:30:53 PM
To bring it up to speed, wouldn't it be easier to go to various PLAAF units and pick the 'cream' of its 4/4+ gen pilots (whom already routinely fly 200 hours annual), and retrain for carrier training/duty?
Quote
Reply
keffler25
7/18/2014 4:09:34 PM
Nope.
Quote
Reply
keffler25
7/18/2014 4:10:18 PM
To bring it up to speed, wouldn't it be easier to go to various PLAAF units and pick the 'cream' of its 4/4+ gen pilots (whom already routinely fly 200 hours annual), and retrain for carrier training/duty?
Nope.
Quote
Reply
Photon
7/23/2014 6:11:38 PM
I think what the Chinese are after is to build a cadre of well-trained naval aviators, then worry about expanding its corps of naval aviators. Highly skilled and technical positions like carrier aviation and operations is not exactly something one can cut corners. As for the qualitative factor, they do not necessarily have to match their US counterparts; if they can hold against other Asian air forces, then they are in a good position. As a student of the Cold War, they are less likely to stumble into the kind of US-Soviet arms race. (Chances are, they do not have to, as the US is going through imperial overreach which means it cannot leap into another arms race. Will US allies increase their burden on military spending? So far, this has not taken place.) The expansion of military power is only one of the components of Chinese strategy; economic and diplomatic weights against their neighbors play bigger roles.
Quote
Reply
Latest
News
Most
Read
Most
Commented
Hot
Topics
LEADERSHIP: Russia’s Wartime Economic Crisis
PROCUREMENT: Turkish Armaments Industry Takes Flight
PROCUREMENT: Crowdfunding for Sea Baby UUVs
ELECTRONIC WEAPONS: Risks of Going All Wireless
AIR DEFENSE: New Iranian Air and Coast Defense Systems
FORCES: Russia’s Conscription Crisis
PROCUREMENT: Italy Rearms
SEA TRANSPORTATION: The Yemen War on the Suez Canal
PROCUREMENT: Russian Resources Diminished in Ukraine
ELECTRONIC WEAPONS: Electronic Weapons: Russian Botnets on the Offensive
PROCUREMENT: Russian Resources Diminished in Ukraine
ELECTRONIC WEAPONS: Russian Botnets on the Offensive
COUNTER-TERRORISM: No One Expects The Fatemiyoun Brigade
SURFACE FORCES : Expanding Iranian Navy
AIR TRANSPORTATION: Israeli Airliner Runs into Red Sea Problems
INDIA-PAKISTAN: India-Pakistan February 2024
PROCUREMENT: Countries Closer to Russia Spend More on Defense
CHINA: China February 2024
ATTRITION: Russia Loses Another A-50U AWACS
FORCES: Russian Army Kidnapping Foreigners to be Soldiers
INFANTRY: Russia’s Foreign Legion
LEADERSHIP: Russia’s Expensive War in Ukraine
ARTILLERY: North Korean Budget Ballistic Missiles
SPACE: Dependable Expendable Space Satellites
WEAPONS: DevDroid Enhanced Weapons
ELECTRONIC WEAPONS: AI Powered Diagnostics
ELECTRONIC WEAPONS: MagNav Can Now Replace GPS
INTELLIGENCE: Cold War American Tactics Return
ATTRITION: Two Years of Russian Losses in Ukraine
ELECTRONIC WEAPONS: The Dark Side of AI
Subscribe to Our RSS Feed
Armor: Russia Rebuilds Its Tank Forces
Artillery: Fire Weaver and Long Spike
Armor: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
Weapons: Putting a Spike in North Korean Aggression
Air Weapons: The Ukraine Unmanned Systems Force
Surface Forces: Ada Class Corvettes
Procurement: The Russian Smuggling Industry
Armor: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
WARS Afghanistan: Afghanistan March 2024
WARS Russia: Russia Claims a Lot More Than Ukraine
Weapons: Unjammable Wire Controlled UAVs
Attrition: Patterns of American Combat Casualties
Electronic Weapons: Norway Again Attacked by Russian Jamming
Naval Air: Cruise Missile Pretenders
Murphy's Law: China Harasses Foreign Investment it Encouraged
Surface Forces: Unmanned LUSV Ships at Sea
AIR WEAPONS: The Ukraine Unmanned Systems Force
WEAPONS: Putting a Spike in North Korean Aggression
SURFACE FORCES : Unmanned LUSV Ships at Sea
SPACE: Russian Roscosmos Retreating
AFGHANISTAN: Afghanistan March 2024
PROCUREMENT: The Russian Smuggling Industry
PROCUREMENT: The Russian Smuggling Industry
WEAPONS: Putting a Spike in North Korean Aggression
AIR WEAPONS: The Ukraine Unmanned Systems Force
AIR WEAPONS: The Ukraine Unmanned Systems Force
ARMOR: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
SURFACE FORCES : Ada Class Corvettes
ARMOR: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
ARMOR: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
ARMOR: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
ARMOR: Evolution of Tank Warfare in Ukraine
ARTILLERY: Fire Weaver and Long Spike
ARMOR: Russia Rebuilds Its Tank Forces
ARTILLERY: Fire Weaver and Long Spike
ARTILLERY: Fire Weaver and Long Spike
News
How To Make War
Wars Around The World
Austin Bay's On Point
StrategyTalk
Dirty Little Secrets
Features
Al Nofi's CIC
Videos
Photos
Jokes
Community
Military Discussion Boards
Military Jokes
Military Photos
Military Book Reviews
StrategyPage
Account Manager
Login
Feedback
About Us
Search
Advertise With Us
Search