How would earlier Soviet carriers affect USN developement?

[Yellow Palace]

Oh, ew, Lord I hope not!

You'd get swarmed by land-based aircraft if you tried that!

The Sea of Marmara might not be a terrible carrier bastion, in the Vestfjord model. Not loads of sea room to get away from air attack, but very hard to get a submarine into!

There was a 1990s PC combat flight simulator called U.S. Navy Fighters, whose prepackaged campaign envisaged a US carrier operating in the Black Sea to intervene in a 1997 war between Russia and Ukraine. I can't remember how it tortured the Convention to justify the carrier being there, but 1990s video games made all sorts of strange assumptions.

 

[1635yankee]

The Bosporus Straits are very narrow -- down to 700 m -- and the Dardanelles are narrow (1.2 km). I suspect getting a carrier through the straits against Turkey would be quite difficult. It's likely challenging with Turkish assistance.

The question would be, of course, when and why would it ever be necessary. In Warsaw Pact days the Black Sea was largely surrounded by the USSR and its allies, so putting a carrier through the straits would put a carrier into a very vulnerable situation After the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, most of those Soviet allies were no longer interested in helping their once overlords and, later many would become US allies through NATO.

Outside of the Black Sea, a significant Soviet carrier force would make the USN look harder at anti-surface warfare capabilities for its surface ships and carrier air wings.

 

[Grey Havoc]

On another note, TomcatVIP's post over in the L3Harris Sky Warden thread reminded me about the Douglas A2D Skyshark; that might have made into service in this timeline.