While this is a concept of mine, I welcome other ideas regarding the same concept: That being said...
Historically at least two airborne aircraft carriers have actually been built: The Akron and Macon -- There might be others, but I can attest to these two. Unfortunately both were destroyed due to either weather or structural defect but the fact of the matter is that they were both capable of carrying aircraft aboard them.
Unfortunately, the problem with them as I see it is (clearly any structural defecit
) that they only had a capacity for 4 x F9C's which were extremely small. They were not able to carry more ordinary sized fighters of the era, and certainly not the fighters that would be in the air by the late 1930's such as the F4F or P-40, and certainly not the dive-bombers such as the SB2U and SBD; I'm not going to even discuss the TBD's
What I was thinking was a design that could carry both normal sized fighters of the time and reasonable numbers of them. I've outlined several designs below
CLASS-A
- Complement: Either 4 to 8 F4F or P-40
- Aircraft to be fitted with foldable wings
- Fuel and ammunition carried for the fighters to be 1/2 to 1/3 the equivalent of a sea-based vessel due to the speed differences inherent in these aircraft
- Fuel to run the ship for the same period of time
- Airship would by necessity have a number of defensive armament which would be dictated on size/shape of vessel with ammunition based on duration of mission
- Geodetic construction
CLASS-B
- Complement: 18 aircraft (either 18 x F4F/P-40; 12 x F4F/P-40 and 6 x SBD)
- Aircraft to be fitted with foldable wings
- Fuel and ammunition sufficient for aircraft sortie numbers 1/2 to 1/3 that of a traditional carrier
- Fuel to run the airship a duration 1/2 to 1/3 a normal on-station time between UNREP for a CV
- Necessary defensive armament based on size, ammunition requirements based specified mission duration
- Geodetic construction
CLASS-C
- Complement: 36-40 aircraft (either 36-40 x F4F/P-40; 24 x F4F/P-40, 12 x SBD)
- Aircraft to be fitted with foldable wings
- Fuel and ammunition necessary sortie numbers 1/2 to 1/3 that of a traditional carrier
- Fuel to run the airship a duration 1/2 to 1/3 a normal on-statio time between UNREP as a traditional carrier
- Necessary defensive armament for a vessel it's size; ammunition levels acceptable for mission duration
- Geodetic construction
Class A would probably be a plumper and grotesquely scaled up ZRS-4 Akron
Class B would either look like an even more obscenely scaled up version of Class A, though it's possibly even at this point some hull flattening/widening might be seen such as depicted here
Though I cannot imagine the need for a runway at this scale (the skyhook would be used)
Class C would almost certainly require some flattening and widening to allow a maximal degree of carriage capacity relative to length without producing an excessively "fat" ship. This design could use a skyhook and/or a runway up top in a manner similar to this design
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/ModernMechanix/10-1934/xlg_aerial_landing_field.jpgCrew would increase with the size of each vessel which is a major problem as well.
Airships are an interesting vehicle as despite their reputation as frail or flimsy, they are actually surprisingly sturdy in some cases
- Even hydrogen filled Zeppelins were able to get shot up left and right and often didn't blow up even despite carrying hydrogen in them
- Helium is a natural fire suppressant
- The airship if designed properly should have no fundamental structural point of failure
- While I suppose repeated blows with aircraft ramming it could rupture the helium; the fact is that it's still naturally buoyant
- The only way to destroy it would be to basically strafe the areas where the Gondola is, the crew compartments, and/or shell it with artillery repetitively or bomb it a couple times until the thing broke apart
Weather can be a problem, and that's one point where it might very well be weaker than a surface ship, that and getting shelled; other than that though it's a pretty tough beast in an odd way.
The logistical issues that would come into place would be
- Securing the funds to build it
- Developing the infrastructure to fuel and re-arm it
- Helium reserve limits. (I've done some research on the strategic helium reserve, and while I have no idea how much helium they had in the 1920's and 1930's: I do know the reserve has at least a billion cubic meters of the stuff as of the past 5-10 years)
Robyn
BTW: I apologize. I posted this on another forum; then I posted it here and I somehow thought I screwed up again and deleted it and I finally reposted it after I managed to get my two left thumbs to re-enter my pasword right