Nerd question of the week...Chinese CVx

[clerick]

Diminishing marginal returns on cheap equipment would quickly eat up whatever you saved by buying it.  The barge can carry a lot of oil, but the force of an aircraft landing is enormous.  Add in the weight of supplies, ordnance, planes, cabins, reinforcements, and defensive armament and you have violated goal of CV design- creating a mobile, offensive, aircraft platform.

-Penguin

define "enormous" as you mean it. I doubt it's anywhere near as much as the force applied to the hull during a moderate storm.

[Wildcat1]

What? A carrier doing 100 kts?! Say it ain't so

Is that Larry Boy as your avatar? Never thought I'd see him again

[Rich52]

Then why did the U.S., U.K. and Japan convert all those tankers and freighters into carriers in WWII? Many were even new built with freighter hulls.

I havnt read the entire thread but has anyone found one tanker hull turned into a CV in WW2? I always thought the converted CVs were originally BB or HVY cruiser Hulls.

[mthrockmor]

USS Saratoga and USS Lexington, converted battlecruiser hulls. USS Langley, converted collier (?).

The Navy didn't get that far into building a ship made of ice though they did extensive studies on it, and considered it. The point is, the luxury of having seemingly unlimited funds means the US does what they will. Evidenced by the burn rate of the F-35, F-22, etc, etc. Money is no object. The Russian CVs (one now owned by China) have a ski jump for the reason the Russians did have the funds and knowledge base to solve a catapult system. Converting an ice breaker wasn't so far off reality as it would seem.

Tsun Tsu's art of war thinks further outside the box. A super tanker conversion is crazy, but why wouldn't it work? I hear lots of downsides compared to a Nimitz. What if you don't have the ability to do a Nimitz? The French are pretty far along on the technology scale and have struggled to get the Charles da Gaulle working properly, and they have access to much of our CV technology. I know, time to crack jokes at the French. My point, doing it the American way isn't an option. How far outside of reality is finding a solution with a proven platform the Chinese have the industrial base to do well?

Boo

[Penguin]

define "enormous" as you mean it. I doubt it's anywhere near as much as the force applied to the hull during a moderate storm.

The deck would need to be completely stripped down and converted in order to withstand a multi-ton aircraft coming down at at least 200 km/h.

-Penguin

[clerick]

The deck would need to be completely stripped down and converted in order to withstand a multi-ton aircraft coming down at at least 200 km/h.

-Penguin

Not a difficult process at all. The forces involved aren't all that great. If you had to build carriers in a pinch, not a bad idea.

[Ack-Ack]

They never got too far into building one made of ice.  The boats melted in the water like icecubes.  In addition, while concrete has a high compressile strength, it doesn't have a good shear or tensile strength.  In layman terms, that means that one good whack against a rock and the whole thing tears and cracks like a frozen tissue.  That's why steel is still the best for the job.  It rusts, but paint and this nickel-zapper whose name escapes me keeps it off for the most part.

-Penguin

The British actually got quite far in making an aircraft carrier built out of ice (pykrete) that was quite strong and robust.  Read about Project Habukkuk before making claims that aren't back up by the historical record. 

It was the vast amount of resources needed is what ultimately killed the project, not the tensile strength of the pykrete used to build the CVs.

ack-ack

[Penguin]

They got it that strong?  Amazing!  I must have had the wrong formulation of pykrete- or they had something I didn't (likely).  The winter after I heard about it, I built a little boat of pykrete and set it out on my little swimming pool (it's about a meter wide and 20cm deep).  I threw some rocks at it and the thing just ripped in half, then I watched Mythbusters and saw the boat fail there, too.  It just goes to show that nothing beats reading the original account.

-Penguin

[Tom5572]

They got it that strong?  Amazing!  I must have had the wrong formulation of pykrete- or they had something I didn't (likely).  The winter after I heard about it, I built a little boat of pykrete and set it out on my little swimming pool (it's about a meter wide and 20cm deep).  I threw some rocks at it and the thing just ripped in half, then I watched Mythbusters and saw the boat fail there, too.  It just goes to show that nothing beats reading the original account.

-Penguin

Lol agree

[B-17]

Is that Larry Boy as your avatar? Never thought I'd see him again

You sir, just made my day

It is indeed

[Rob52240]

Pykrete is bulletproof.  It also melts really really slowly.

During a demonstration of his invention, they shot a block of ice with a revolver, shattering the block of ice.

Then they shot a block of Pykrete, the bullet ricocheted into the leg of an admiral that had come to see the demonstration.
 
I think the Normandy invasion and the A Bomb did more to kill the habekuk than anything else.

[mthrockmor]

Three pics...







Does it matter if the CV moves at 35 knots, or 15 knots or has to be towed into place? They are no longer dodging Japanese Long Lance torpedoes, 16" shells or Val dive bombers. The threat comes in at 2,000 mph and the movement of 1,000+ foot long metal object going 40 mph is inconsequential. Detection is pretty easy, or so I am told. Satellites pick these bad boys up with much ease. Being sunk or not is about controlling the surface, air and subsurface around them, regardless of speed.

In any case, food for thought.

Boo