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I'm more than happy to criticise the design because they are proven not to work efficiently and it is pretty obvious that such hybrids suffer a lot from either area of hybridisation impacting on the other. They may look cool but they don’t work.Layman and McLaughlin’s book (The Hybrid Warship) does detail the later efforts of the USN and RN in the 40s towards hybrids. But these are not efforts being motivated by introducing a new superior type of ship but rather to try and get more aircraft capability into the fleet as rapidly as possible. Which meant what can we do with less effective units like gun wagons and cruisers to try and get the most out of them. They made the right conclusion that such a hybrid wasn’t worth the effort and the existing programmed units should either be converted to full aviation capability or put aside and resources diverted to carriers. The Japanese in a far more perilous situation carried out minimal conversions of some of their BBs to leverage their heavy investment in float planes to try and get more aircraft into the fleet. I’m sure they would have preferred to retain a BB and have built a new carrier.The Saratogas were 40,000 tonne ships so could afford a full flight deck with 8x8s. Because of treaty limitations the size of the proposed hybrid cruisers was much smaller so they had to share hull length between guns and flight deck.The experience of the Saratoga 8” guns showed how useless such hybrids was. Because the carrier manoeuvred to launch aircraft they were split from the battle line and didn’t need to use their guns. Also the firing of guns severely affected any aircraft parked on deck which also limited the guns training arcs. The guns were found to be superfluous and harmful to the most effective part of the ship: the air wing.
I'm more than happy to criticise the design because they are proven not to work efficiently and it is pretty obvious that such hybrids suffer a lot from either area of hybridisation impacting on the other. They may look cool but they don’t work.
Layman and McLaughlin’s book (The Hybrid Warship) does detail the later efforts of the USN and RN in the 40s towards hybrids. But these are not efforts being motivated by introducing a new superior type of ship but rather to try and get more aircraft capability into the fleet as rapidly as possible. Which meant what can we do with less effective units like gun wagons and cruisers to try and get the most out of them. They made the right conclusion that such a hybrid wasn’t worth the effort and the existing programmed units should either be converted to full aviation capability or put aside and resources diverted to carriers. The Japanese in a far more perilous situation carried out minimal conversions of some of their BBs to leverage their heavy investment in float planes to try and get more aircraft into the fleet. I’m sure they would have preferred to retain a BB and have built a new carrier.
The Saratogas were 40,000 tonne ships so could afford a full flight deck with 8x8s. Because of treaty limitations the size of the proposed hybrid cruisers was much smaller so they had to share hull length between guns and flight deck.
The experience of the Saratoga 8” guns showed how useless such hybrids was. Because the carrier manoeuvred to launch aircraft they were split from the battle line and didn’t need to use their guns. Also the firing of guns severely affected any aircraft parked on deck which also limited the guns training arcs. The guns were found to be superfluous and harmful to the most effective part of the ship: the air wing.
