True, I'm oversimplifying. That said, with propellor aircraft, speeds are low enough that axial deck is reasonably safe, and trying to push for angled decks on the Essex girls is a good way to introduce delays in the shipbuilding process, which we really don't need. The USN needs a whole lot of good carriers now a lot more than the USN needs the same carriers, with a somewhat better design, several months to a year, possibly more, later.
I think we hashed this out once before, but I'd say this--if Thompson suggests the angled deck as a way to improve safety (which is the reason the Brits came up with it
before they started jet carrier ops), while it's a relatively minor change, there would end up being three different Essex classes instead of the historical two:
A) As-designed Essex class. Several of the ones already ordered would probably be too far advanced for any real changes. These roughly correspond with the "short-hull" Essexes OTL, covering CV-9 through CV-13.
B) Semi-angled Essex class. Ships coming down the line later than that initial batch could be given a somewhat experimental modification that requires very, very little actual physical alteration to the ship. Basically, by skewing the wires across the deck (possibly using the passthroughs for separate wires?) and painting the deck differently, as
the Brits did on their Centaur-class carriers, you can gain some of the benefits of an angled deck without actually physically modifying the hull structure. These roughly correspond to the initial-order members of the "long-hull" variant OTL, covering CV-14 through CV-19.
C) True angled Essex class. These would have the full angled deck of the SCB-125 upgrade from the yards, and would be the ones ordered after this point, CV-21 and -22 plus CV-31 through CV-40 and CV-45 through CV-47. This might delay their delivery by six to twelve months, and CV-21 and -22 might be ordered to the semi-angled design to save time as a result.
Given that only two of the ones ordered after Pearl Harbor (which covers all of group C) were in service by the end of the war OTL, this would result in no real loss of force for the USN in wartime, and would gain the benefits of the AFD very quickly postwar.
