The Ship Model Forum

I had reason to be talking about some of the old carriers yesterday.The thing that sticks in my mind was a hull survey done on one ,with the idea of turning her into an offshore major medical center,and the flight deck would be retained aft to allow medivac choppers to land and take off.Would you believe that we put a sledge hammer through the shell plating just below the bilge keel???Now think a minute.This wasn,t all over the ship just in spots.As well as that we found spongy feeling steel under the flight deck at the midships location.When we cut a hole the steel just fell away in areas around the hole.Now this ship served her country well for many years.I do believe that mothball neglect and just plain fatigue caught up with her.It turned out to be cheaper to build this vessel out of a containership that just turned four and was sold by her company as being "old". The idea is sound for small aircraft and island nations but plain and simple it,s way to costly to take an old carrier and refit her for these duties.The cost would eat up maintenance and profit monies for too many years before it was cost effective. commodore 4

Saratoga was worn out seriously, as was Ranger. Enterprise would have made a decent LPH. Many CVE were converted into merchant service. Remove everything above the main deck was the first step.

The CVE's were built specifically to be CVEs, at least after the initial freighter conversions. They couldn't handle much more than a TBF/TBM on that size deck.

As to the C-47s, many are still flying. Military and civilian versions were upgraded to turbo-prop engines. The predecessor to the AC-130 gunship was the AC-47. Whever I fly to an island, I always check the more commercial, non-airline, areas of the field. I usually see some DC-3/C-47 being used for inter-island cargo.

On the other planes, many were used as fire bombers.

But you're right in one respect, much WW II military equipment from the Pacific never made it back to the US and was intentionally made unusable, after stripping, before the US pulled out. Most of the PTs were burned instead of being left to the islanders. Same thing with trucks and jeeps.

HMAS wrote:join them altogether ie a pontoon bridge if you like.
Then you could drive over the oceans.

lol

join them altogether ie a pontoon bridge if you like.
Then you could drive over the oceans.

Oh well...It still is a nice idea, other than paying all of those stupid air fares.

It's probably not noon yet in Hawaii

Edit: Oh wait, yes it is! Erm, some spot of the Pacific, for your sake

Yeah. True. Do ya think I can get away with saying that it was jus a joke??

Making all of those cargo planes sea- and carrier-worthy would be quite a chore; they'd have to be strengthened to take the stress of a carrier landing. Furthermore, the money and manpower needed to run those floating airports would likely make it an impractical exercise - it would be more efficient to just design and build more intercontinental-ranged aircraft that can use existing land-based airports.

With ships like the Enterprise, Saratoga, Ranger, and about 150 CVEs surplus after the war, how about a good purpose for them after they finished their war careers. Also, with thousands of surplus C-47s, B-25s, and C-46s being used commercially, why not extend their range? How would using these ships as stationary Airports work? If they were placed around the world's Oceans, they would have opened the world even further to connection. The islands of the CVEs would just need to be taken off though.