My questions were why tanks rounds would sink the carrier (and battleship as well I believe) and why my 5" gun had no effect on the tanks. I did try both HE and AA but stuck with AA mostly because it gave a better visual of actually hitting. I see now where that could be the problem, the proximity exploding AA shell might not do much to a tank unless it's a direct hit, since it's just throwing out shrapnel. Maybe none of my HE shots were direct hits either (the range was >3K). I can see the Tiger shells penetrating and doing some damage, perhaps, but sinking the whole thing? In addition, I have actually sunk carriers and battleships with the 40 mm cannon on the back of a PT boat. That doesn't seem right either.
You don't have to actually sink the ship in R/L. You just have to kill off enough to the crew and light enough fires to force them to abandon it. Remember the deck on top of the Essex is wood, chuck enough high explosive/incendiary at it and you'll have a lovely bonfire.
Send HE shells through the tower and eliminate the command staff and the ship is being run by less-experienced Officers. With no major command/control happening the crew can only react and realisticly get the ship out of danger. That means the engine room is chucking full rudder to come about and setting the boilers and engines into overdrive. I'm pretty sure, but not certain, that an Essex going all out could hit 20-30 knots.
In the game however, we don't have crews, we just have vital portions of the ship that can get hit and when enough of them get hit with enough force it goes kaplunk.
I'm also fairly certain the side armor on an Essex is thinner than that of a Tiger, and the 17 pounder on the VC can knock right through that. Using HE, you only have to hit a spot once to rip apart the steel and then you've got a lovely route into the interior where you can hit everything from fuel tanks, coal bunkers, ammo bunkers. You could knock a round into the Galley and send flour all over the room only for it to be ignited by a secondary fire and erupt in one nasty explosion.
Despite their size, Essex Class Carriers are not that strong, especially against direct fire weapons. The hits they took from Japanese bombers were mostly on the upper decks, the flight deck or the hangar deck which are the thickest decks the Essex has. The aircraft elevators themselves weigh in at nearly 100 tons. (It's a bit disturbing when you hear that the forward elevator weighs 100 tons and you look up and realized that they turned the space underneath that mass of metal designed to move into an.. Imax theatre.)
Once you get underneath that, though, there's alot of vital systems in very vulnerable areas.
The torpedo hit the U.S.S. Lexington took crippled her and she was only saved by three very brave crewmen who gave their lives to get the rudder working somewhat so they could limp back to Pearl for repairs. That was also just one torpedo, too. So I think 5-10 tanks chucking large caliber anti-tank/High explosive rounds into the side for a good 4-8 minutes would do some nasty damage.
