The Soviet Union had a substantial naval air arm without carriers. Like the Japanese, it operated land-based bombers and its fighters defended naval bases. The bombers, of the same types operated by the land air force, were organised into Mine-Torpedo Regiments. They were expected to neutralise an enemy fleet by mining his bases and their approaches. This force was not particularly effective during the war, but the Mine-Torpedo Regiments evolved after the war into missile-firing units which the US Navy considered the most serious threat to its carriers. The shore-based naval fighters were absorbed into the Soviet national air defence arm only about 1956.
Wellingtons proved to be effective night torpedo bombers. This aircraft of 38 Squadron is shown in Egypt in 1942. Note the absence of the usual air tail. (Philip Jarrett)
The Beaufighter played several important parts in the war at sea. Initially the Admiralty saw it as long-range fighter capable of covering major fleet units near enemy territory in European waters, much as it thought the Germans were using their long-range fighters to give their own capital ships freedom of action. On this basis the Admiralty convinced the Ministry of Production to keep the Beaufighter in production after the initial RAF night fighter requirement had been met. Coastal Command also wanted Beaufighters, both to protect coastal shipping and as a strike aircraft. In 1942 it began to form Strike Wings consisting of both torpedo Beaufighters (Torbeaus, shown) and anti-flak Beaufighters whose strafing runs were intended to suppress enemy air defences. This combination proved far more successful than the earlier masthead-level attacks. The success may have been due in part to the greater number of attacking aircraft involved, which helped saturate enemy air defences, and also to the relatively high speed of the Beaufighter, which also made defence more difficult. (Philip Jarrett)
Other countries had independent air arms whose interest in attacking ships was often connected with a claim that airpower made navies obsolete. The first was the Royal Air Force (RAF), founded in 1918. The associated aircraft development and production organisation was the Air Ministry, which continued in that role for both naval and land-based aircraft after the Royal Navy regained control of the Fleet Air Arm in April 1939. Thus the two services shared R&D resources such as the Royal Aeronautical Establishment (RAE). Even when the RAF controlled the Fleet Air Arm, the Admiralty paid for the aircraft and supplied many of the observers, but there was no career path comparable to that in the US Navy, from pilot to admiral. That limited the air-mindedness of the naval officer corps. Also, without its own air staff to advise it, the Admiralty could not be sure that those providing technical advice truly understood naval issues. A subtler effect of the shift to the RAF was the limited aircraft capacity of British carriers, which made it difficult to combine adequate fighter defence with powerful strike capacity.7 During the Second World War the RAF continued to be responsible for land-based maritime strike aircraft, although their Coastal Command came under Admiralty operational control.
The US Army Air Corps (and later the Army Air Force) considered coast defence an important role, and therefore equipped its land-based medium bombers to drop torpedoes (it had no interest, however, in dive bombing). In the South Pacific, the Army Air Corps attacked Japanese shipping, on at least one occasion (the battle of the Bismarck Sea, 2–4 March 1943) achieving considerable success with skip-bombing.
Italy had a unified air force (like the RAF), although the Royal Italian Navy retained ship-based floatplanes and seaplanes. Air unification probably prevented the navy from building the carriers it wanted during the inter-war period (it finally received permission during the Second World War, after the Royal Navy demonstrated the value of carriers).
Air Attack
Before the advent of guided weapons, an aircraft delivering an attack was, in effect, the gun launching a projectile. The pilot gave the projectile both direction and forward velocity. Accuracy depended both on how well he aimed and on how well the projectile (bomb, torpedo, later rocket) followed through. The pilot’s need to steady up on course in order to aim was the main opportunity afforded the anti-aircraft defence, since until then the pilot was more or less free to manoeuvre. Conversely, anti-aircraft fire could ruin a pilot’s aim by forcing him to manoeuvre instead of steadying on course. The only exception to the straight run was that, like its sea-launched counterpart, an aerial torpedo could, at least in theory, be set to turn (angle) after launch. This possibility seems to have been realised only by the British, the Germans, and probably the Italians.
Prior to the Second World War it was accepted that a fleet in harbour might well be subject to night attack – as at Taranto in November 1940 – but it seems to have been assumed that ships at sea would be too difficult to locate. That was not at all true on a moonlit night, as wakes could be very visible. They were often phosphorescent, too. Night attacks on moving ships at sea, which were first mounted by the Italians in the Mediterranean in 1940, changed the situation considerably. Airborne radar much simplified night attack, although blind attacks were not possible until the advent of centimetric radar, which was limited to the Allies. Night also limited fighter defence. Even in 1945 the US Navy operated special ‘night carriers’, the other carriers being limited to day aircraft. Ships’ guns were the main night fleet air defence, and they were limited by the development of radar-controlled blind fire. As late as 1945 US doctrine for night convoy air defence was to make smoke and not to fire unless attacked, because muzzle flashes would become aiming points for the enemy.
For the inter-war US Navy, the single most important aviation development was the discovery of just how many aircraft the two huge carriers Lexington and Saratoga could operate. Exercises at the Naval War College showed that numbers of aircraft were paramount, and when he became Commander of Air Squadrons of the Battle Fleet (which then had the single small experimental carrier Langley) Captain Joseph M Reeves, Jr. asked his pilots how they could operate more aircraft. They discovered that instead of striking aircraft below as they landed – as in the Royal Navy – they could have them moved forward, protected from landing aircraft by a wire barrier. That made for a much shorter interval between landings. The shorter interval supported a much larger carrier air group. This was an inherently dangerous procedure, but it worked, and it gave the US Navy considerable numerical advantages over the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy (which followed British operating practice). Unlike the British and the Japanese, the US Navy equated aircraft capacity to the size of the flight deck, which determined how many aircraft could be parked forward during landing, or how many could be spotted aft before take-off (leaving enough of a deck run to take off). Huge US carrier air groups made the balance of air forces at Midway much closer than the ratio of carrier numbers (four to three) might otherwise suggest. Its numerical advantage in turn made the US Navy more conscious of the value of carrier fighters, because it could have both a large fighter complement and a large striking force, even of massive torpedo bombers. Once it also had radar, the fighters made an enormous difference in fleet air defence. The US operating practice did have its drawbacks, however. With the deck loaded aft for a strike, it might be difficult to recover scouts. With aircraft filling the foredeck, it might be difficult to launch them. Arresting wires were rigged at the bow as well as the stern. The carrier would steam astern to recover aircraft: Essex class carriers were designed to steam astern at 20kts on a sustained basis. To launch aircraft when the deck was full, they were given hangar-deck catapults. Neither solution was particularly happy, and the US Navy was