Has to be Harriers. F-35s will melt their decks.
No Elektro boats? No minelayers? No Sen-toku Special Types? Man, you must enjoy sinking my dreams.
Which is why those submersibles ran on the surface whenever they could.
It's more of the standoff thing I was thinking about. Carriers are the only capital ships I can think of that can't take hits. Battleships, Ironclads, the great tall ships of Nelson, etc were all "in the thick of it" and would be expected to laugh off enemy fire while prosecuting said enemy. It's not a perfect correlation, but Battleships are a lot closer than carriers to the historical ideal.This is a rather skewed perspective. It's worth remembering that dominant strategies for naval engagements generally break into one of the following:
If we're going to talk about pre-modern sea battles, then we should recognize that more time was spent with greek fire (and similar forms of napalm) and fire ships then ships designed for the line of battle. It might also be worth noting that the earliest battleships can trace their history is to the all steel designs of the mid 1800s, and that's only if you count designs like Monitor.
- Board the enemy and take their ship (this was Rome's big thing)
- Ignite the enemy and laugh as the burn to death (this was Byzantium's big thing)
- Standoff advantage (this is what carriers have dominated for nearly 80 years)
To put this another way, the true historically dominate ship you should be focusing on would be:
Well, they're right. The carrier is utterly dominant in its time.
So? Just because those aircraft aren't useful here doesn't mean that the role they play hans't been eliminated. You know what forced the U-boats into the Mid-Atlantic Gap: land-based patrol aircraft. What put the final nail in the U-boat's coffin? Escort carriers in convoys and sub-hunter task groups. The WWII submersible's biggest threat was not from the waves, but from the sky. Jersey can, mostly, pick up Abyssals on her radar, so it and other old-fashioned WWII technology/tactics like HF/DF, Sonar, Magnetic Anomaly Detection, and so on should still be available to shipgirls, right?
Because WWI/II was more complicated than that. I should know, my parents are shelling out their money for me to learn this stuff.
Jutland-scale BB duels are fine, but a carrier has many more uses than just sinking surface vessels. Especially when two battleships are about to face a giant Aircraft Carrier, and kind of need a bunch of other carriers to not horribly die.
Because WWI/II was more complicated than that. I should know, my parents are shelling out their money for me to learn this stuff.
The GTR and a lot of modern supercars are cool, but they're a very different kind of cool.
Firstly, no need to get worked up. Secondly, my point is that there's plenty for aircraft carriers/aircraft to do, and even be essential for, even within the author's limitations of Battleships being the main focus for the story.
... which involves WWII ships being summoned as shipgirls to fight pseudo-WWII Naval engagements against a pseudo-WWII enemy. You can't just throw WWII out the window, it's an integral part of Kantai Collection.* If the story wasn't about World War Two, answer me this: Why are all the characters involved ships from that time period? Why are the Abyssals using WWII-derived weapons/ships?
Way to over simplify... and all those AA guns were still not sufficient for the job given. You literally cannot have enough dakka, the/a bomber will always get through.
I never said I wasn't going to bring carriers out (or if I did, that wasn't what I meant to imply.) Carriers are a crucial part of naval warfare. They might not have the same prominence as they did in real life, but they're still Capital Ships. The fact that all the main characters of this fic are surface warships means that the carriers jobs might happen mostly off-screen, but it doesn't mean I'm just gonna leave the CV's hanging.
WWII was the last great naval war. Nothing since has had even close to the same massive battles erupting over the waves. A shipgirl gets her soul from her crews, and valorous acts in battle is the surest way give her soul a solid imprint. There's also other reasons that haven't been revealed yet, but I'm not saying because spoilers. (Also because it's quite late and I'm sleepy.)
They did a better job than just about anyone else, and American ships tended to have stupidly large AA suites, especially when compared to their Japanese counterparts.
Jersey: You misspelled "FREEDOM!"
Wrong. There's a whole lot of science behind all that good american steel that made it so effective. Not to mention that it isn't pile a shit load of guns onto a hull to provide a flak screen. Gun placement and good design are also a science.
