schainks 1 day ago

The assets that leave the ship could get shot down, so the ship needs to be self-sufficient, too.

Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Ford class EMALS systems have redundant power supplies, for example. That's a huge expense in both weight and operations.

Not saying this is smart or 'right', but I imagine that's the logic behind the decisions for this stuff.

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RugnirViking 1 day ago

In general the US carrier force in ww2 was well known for having excellent redundancy and damage/fire control. Its a doctrinal thing, and a legacy they're quite proud of.

For example, USS Yorktown (CV-5) - took bomb and torpedo hits, with flooding and fires. Limped to pearl harbour, Was repaired in !!3 days!! and sent right back out to battle, where she was extremely heaviliy damaged again, but kept afloat through several days of bombardment before sinking.

USS Enterprise (CV-6) - hit by several bombs, a large fire in multiple compartments started. Fire control and damage repairs got the flight deck partially operational for launcing and recovering flights within an hour

USS Franklin (CV-13) - took almost 600 casualties, and had massive fires and ammunition explosions and fuel explosions. Despite extreme damage, she limped back to home port. Her survival is considered one of the greatest acts of shipboard damage control in naval history.

there are several more. A part of this is a difference in their design - british and french carriers used thick armoured flight decks, wheras the americans sacrificed these for speed and internal machinery space