The most deranged military rant I've seen.

[Vendetta]

I don't know where he got the idea that a modernized Iowa could just steam through littoral waters with no concern for diesel-electric coastal subs or mines, either. It's not immune to mines, and certainly not to modern torpedoes.

Same place everyone else who wants to resurrect the Big Dumb Object method of naval combat does. Their cock. They have a hardon for big ships with big guns.

[phongn]

Here is the page where he wanks to battleships and suggests how they can be upgraded to be better than carriers (turn down the volume, like all Mike Sparks sites it comes with automatic music). Scroll down a bit to see his "modest proposal" (his words, not mine) for a battleship carrier, where he wraps two runways around the rear 16 inch turret of a fucking Iowa.

As it happens, that proposal was actually made (not by Sparky, that is), though with the deletion of the rear gun.

[Beowulf]

Modern attack aircraft would most likely not be attacking with torpedos. It's mostly a matter of range, I think. If they can get close enough to drop a torpedo, they can get close enough to drop a bomb. If they don't get close enough to do so, then they just toss a couple anti-ship missiles at the ship.

Battleships are only hard to sink if it takes a while to hit it enough times to inflict critical damage. A modern attack aircraft would be striking with guided bombs (if they attacked with bombs). As such, a mere 4 ship flight could carry enough munitions to sink a battleship.

[PeZook]

Modern attack aircraft would most likely not be attacking with torpedos. It's mostly a matter of range, I think. If they can get close enough to drop a torpedo, they can get close enough to drop a bomb. If they don't get close enough to do so, then they just toss a couple anti-ship missiles at the ship.

Battleships are only hard to sink if it takes a while to hit it enough times to inflict critical damage. A modern attack aircraft would be striking with guided bombs (if they attacked with bombs). As such, a mere 4 ship flight could carry enough munitions to sink a battleship.

A mere four F-18s would be able to carry sixteen Harpoons between them, which would be more than enough to knock the battleship out of the fight. If the BB has escorts (it would need them, realistically), then just launch more airplanes to destroy them as well.

I was commenting about torpedoes since Sparky believes a recomissioned Iowa would be able to just stroll into coastal waters without having to worry about SSKs lurking there. A single hit with a modern torpedo would probably be a mission-kill and necessitate months in drydock, and since the BB would need to move very close to the target to engage, it would be basically coming to the subs, not the other way around.

[Pelranius]

The modern battleship would also have to worry about land based anti ship missiles. Some of those things have 300 and even 500 kilogram warheads, which is substantially more than what a Harpoon has. And then there's other things to worry about, like rocket artillery (a Smerch barrage would wreck havoc with even the Missouri, if the rockets are guided).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Of all modern ships the most survivable are those with phased array radar. AEGIS is named what it is for a reason--it really is the ship's shield. About the only place for armour is around the reactor compartment of nuclear powered surface ships these days. I'd much rather have sixteen or thirty-two VLS cells loaded with four-packs of ESSM and four RAM launchers protecting the vessel I'm on than a foot and some change of armour, and if we ever did bring back into service a hull of that size, it would unquestionably be a large nuclear cruiser with such capabilities and (the way technology is moving now) probably some sort of anti-missile energy weapon.

[Coyote]

I'm trying to envision Sparky's Army:

An all Battle-Carrier Navy...
An F-35 Air Force with Commandos in drop pods...
An Army completely kitted out with nothing but M-113s and their myriad spinoffs.

This has fanfic written all over it. Makes that "supercavitating submarine" guy look like Isaac Fucking Aasimov in comparison.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Don't forget magic ISO containers, Arik!

[PeZook]

Don't forget magic ISO containers, Arik!

These containers are actually his best idea. If only the name wasn't so retarded, and he didn't pitch them like it was the Thing To Win All Wars...

[FOG3]

By the way, regarding the survivability of battleships: although USN aircraft sunk both the Yamato and the Musashi, it took MULTIPLE attacks to sink either ship (six waves that hit the Musashi with 17 bombs + 20 torpedoes, three waves that hit the Yamato with 8 bombs + at least 13 torpedoes). I know that doesn't excuse the stupidity of his claim (a conventional carrier can better defend itself from an air attack by having its own aircraft perform combat air patrols and intercept enemy aircraft), but it does show that battleships are DAMN HARD to sink.

Not really. Especially as Musashi had the advantage of being counter flooded in the process. You want me to start bringing up the hit numbers on the various WW2 carriers and how they went down, or is the implication enough? Enterprise and otherwise took a lot of torpedoes during their service.

Plus modern torpedoes are designed to be a threat to full size carriers, and the Iowas don't even have a built in sonar.

Furthermore WW1's naval side was dominated by battleships living in mortal terror of even a hint of a glimpse at a periscope, which they'd proceed to fire inordinate amounts of ordinance at. Something of a statement on their vulnerability to torpedoes, ne?

In WWII, a destroyer was dead if it tried to engage a battleship, but this isn't the case today.

Battle of Leyte Gulf would say otherwise. Samar basically started off with a Destroyer moving to taking on not just a battleship, but basically Kurita's entire Center Force that utterly out numbered, out gunned, and out tonned Sprague's Taffy 3.

If you count put in repair dock until the end of the war our little fleet of Casablancas and destroyers did mission kill battleships in that engagement.

[Coyote]

Should we invite Sparky here for some fun?

[Straha]

Should we invite Sparky here for some fun?

That could put the Coliseum to good use. I sincerely doubt he would come here though.

[Zixinus]

From what I have read of him, it wouldn't be more then either a shouting match or a therapy session of some sort. The guy completely refuses to debate even remotely sanely and creates new depths of Ad Hominem. A debate with him would be used for nothing but for amusement.

[Coiler]

Should we invite Sparky here for some fun?

Yes. I would certainly enjoy it.

From what I have read of him, it wouldn't be more then either a shouting match or a therapy session of some sort. The guy completely refuses to debate even remotely sanely and creates new depths of Ad Hominem. A debate with him would be used for nothing but for amusement.

Eh, everybody needs a punching bag at times. I say we invite him to the Coliseum. Only question is, what should the topic be? The abilities of the M113? The feasibility of his naval plans? (I'm personally willing to debate him on the latter issue.)

[Edward Yee]

Details on those drop tanks/pods?

[Sea Skimmer]

For comparison, what were the kill ratios obtained by the subs of other navies (US, British, German, etc.)?

USN submarines sank 1,114 significant Japanese ships, plus a very few German ones I don't have a precise figure for. This figure doesn’t not count things like sampans and trawlers, nor ships sunk by submarine laid minefields. In return the US lost 52 submarines, including a number of friendly fire losses and one sub bombed when it in dock for repairs, but those fates afflicted submarines of all nations so they still count. So anyway it works out to be about a 21.5 to 1 kill/loss ratio.

The above numbers are pretty damn firm; the numbers for the Germans and Japanese are not quite as accurate, every source you can find will disagree, in the end it doesn’t matter, the ratios are not seriously affected. Also note that these numbers do not include midget submarines, almost every midget sub design in the war as just plain suicidal.

Germany lost 752 submarines in action, training, accidents and base bombing, plus about 215 more to scuttling at the end of the war (not counting boats scuttled by the allies) which I’ll ignore for this. In return they sank about 2,875 allied ships. That’s a 3.8 to 1 ratio. If only the 620 ‘operational patrol’ U-boat losses are counted the ratio goes up to about 4.6 but thats not really being fair. That said one should still keep in mind that in 1944-45 U-boat operations basically amounted to suicide, the kill to loss ratio was often LESS then 1:1, while at the peak of effectiveness in early 41 the kill to loss ratio approaches 65 to 1! It stayed in the range of 20-40 kills per loss until mid 1942 after which lethality quickly dropped off towards the 1944 numbers.

Japan lost 128 submarines (including six of them in twelve days to the submarine slaughtering machine USS England), and sank about 195 ships in return; so the ratio is about 1.5:1 and not 1:1 as I was recalling. Still the substantially reduced effectiveness of Japanese subs is clear. For most of the war the US didn’t even bother with convoys except in immediate combat areas and for amphibious shipping loaded with troops.

I don’t have numbers for British submarines; I do know they suffered heavily for what they accomplished, but with a good excuse. Aside from a handful of boats assigned to the Pacific in 1944/45 British submarines spent the whole war attacking small yet typically heavily defended axis convoys in European littoral waters, and even those convoys didn’t come along too often.

[Coiler]

I don’t have numbers for British submarines; I do know they suffered heavily for what they accomplished, but with a good excuse. Aside from a handful of boats assigned to the Pacific in 1944/45 British submarines spent the whole war attacking small yet typically heavily defended axis convoys in European littoral waters, and even those convoys didn’t come along too often.

For what it's worth, Combinedfleet.com states that British subs sank 493 merchants, and this site says that they lost 82 submarines. If the figures are accurate, the British had a roughly 6 to 1 kill/loss ratio for their submarines with merchants alone (adding warships would make it go up).[/url]

[Sea Skimmer]

Not really. Especially as Musashi had the advantage of being counter flooded in the process. You want me to start bringing up the hit numbers on the various WW2 carriers and how they went down, or is the implication enough? Enterprise and otherwise took a lot of torpedoes during their service.

USS Enterprise was never torpedoed, and no US carrier survived more then one torpedo hit.

Now for a list of CVs sunk torpedo hits; Ark Royal, Taiho (exploded by 1 torpedo), Lexington (exploded), Shoho (exploded), Liscome Bay (exploded), Eagle (sank in 4 minutes flat), Courageous, Adacity (exploded), Zuiho, Shokaku, Zuikaku, Hiyo (exploded), Shinano, Unryu (exploded), Taiyo, Unyo (exploded), Chuyo, Chitose, Yorktown, Hornet, Wasp (massive fires, might as well have exploded, lessons learned saved several CVs later)

That’s a whole damn fleet of carriers sunk by torpedoes, and several of those which exploded did so almost instantaneously after being hit.

The battleship while quite possible to sink was and is far more survivable then an aircraft carrier of comparable displacement, it has better passive protection, better stability (very serious issue, the Essex class was especially fucked stability wise), more and better fields of fire for anti aircraft weapons and most importantly, its not loaded with absurd tonnages of volatile aircraft fuel, thinly cased bombs and flammable aircraft. The battleship died out because its ability to inflict damage on the enemy was less then that of carrier aircraft, not any vulnerability issue.

Plus modern torpedoes are designed to be a threat to full size carriers, and the Iowas don't even have a built in sonar.

Sonar could be easily added if anyone cared to do so; carriers don’t have sonar either, because any large ship radiates too much self noise to be an effective sonar platform. Modern torpedoes are typically designed as ASW weapons BTW.

.

Furthermore WW1's naval side was dominated by battleships living in mortal terror of even a hint of a glimpse at a periscope, which they'd proceed to fire inordinate amounts of ordinance at. Something of a statement on their vulnerability to torpedoes, ne?

No, not really, all surface ships feared torpedoes in WW1 because it predated effective torpedo defence systems and effective ASW countermeasures. Carriers would have been no better off, and anyway only one dreadnought was sunk by torpedo attack in WW1, two hits from an Italian motor torpedo boat.

If you count put in repair dock until the end of the war our little fleet of Casablancas and destroyers did mission kill battleships in that engagement.

No Japanese battleship was put in dock until the end of the war after that engagement. In fact none of them was damaged to any significant degree, and most of the damage they did have came from the fast carrier strikes on the 24th in the Sibuyan Sea.

[Winston Blake]

From what I have read of him, it wouldn't be more then either a shouting match or a therapy session of some sort. The guy completely refuses to debate even remotely sanely and creates new depths of Ad Hominem. A debate with him would be used for nothing but for amusement.

I agree. It would be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; unless we can find somebody who is both knowledgeable and very patient, such that they can slip through his defenses. Someone who puts the 'convert' in 'convert or die'.

[Sidewinder]

Details on those drop tanks/pods?

In the mid-90s, I read an article in 'Popular Mechanics' about McDonnell Douglas privately funding R & D for a pod that can carry personnel inside, that the AV-8B Harrier II can carry under its wings like drop tank; the idea was to combine a fixed-wing aircraft's speed with a helicopter's versatility when extracting special forces operators. I couldn't find the article through Google; I'm assuming it's because the US military wasn't interested in the idea, so McDonnell Douglas stopped funding R & D for the pods.

This has fanfic written all over it. Makes that "supercavitating submarine" guy look like Isaac Fucking Aasimov in comparison.

I'm having trouble finding the "supercavitating submarine" guy on Google. Do you have a link? (I'm assuming the problem with a "supercavitating submarine" is that the noise generated when it's supercavitating will make its own sonar useless, that it'll be a very obvious target to enemy warships, and that it'll maneuver as easily as a cannonball makes 90 degree turns in the middle of its flight.)

[Sea Skimmer]

The gas bubble concept the Russians used for that high speed supercavitating torpedo simply does not scale up, building a submarine to use it would be physically impossible, water pressure will simply crush the bubble.

As for the underwing pods for personal, that’s nothing special, in WW2 such pods where common and the Russians still have them for tactical jet aircraft. The main use is for emergency transportation of personal, especially in evacuation situations, like your airbase is being overrun by Nazi Muslim SS Panzertroops or something. Cargo pods are also common, both for external carriage and internal carriage on bombers, so that aircraft can bring along a couple vital spare parts and supplies when making deployments, reducing the required number of accompanying transport plane sorties. Also they sometimes just get used for a pilots luggage.

Now making a pod you could release and airdrop would be something new, and I’m not inclined to dismiss its possible utility, but its hard to see it being any real advantage over a High-Altitude-High Opening parachute jump. Especially since we now have GPS/computer guided parachutes.

[FOG3]

USS Enterprise was never torpedoed, and no US carrier survived more then one torpedo hit.

CV-5 Yorktown got two torpedoes and three bombs, only to be picked off two days later by submarine is sufficient to poke a hole in that statement. Given the Battleship incidents we're comparing it to, I don't want arguing from you about afloat and being towed not counting. Being able to stay afloat for three days is much better damage control verse counting extra torpedoes because they hit both sides and were counter flooding a ship already on its way down with Musashi.

I admit I'll have to go back over my material as I don't have the various incidents memorized, but I know there was battle damage the various carriers took that they repaired and then moved on, including to my recollection several torpedo hits.

The battleship while quite possible to sink was and is far more survivable then an aircraft carrier of comparable displacement,

You're splitting hairs. IJN Yamato wasn't about to allow itself to just take a torpedo in the Battle of Samar, as you should know, despite being the basically the last word in big battleships.

Sonar could be easily added if anyone cared to do so; carriers don’t have sonar either, because any large ship radiates too much self noise to be an effective sonar platform.

Carriers also don't have delusions of invulnerability following them around like toilet paper stuck to a shoe.

Modern torpedoes are typically designed as ASW weapons BTW.

And sub can carry ballistic missiles. Even if it's true, so what?

I've talked with guys on Los Angeles-class boats, they consider their Mk 48 21" torpedoes a threat to full size Carriers. What do Mk 46 & 50 12.75" Torpedoes have to with that outside of CAPTOR mine usage?

No, not really, all surface ships feared torpedoes in WW1 because it predated effective torpedo defence systems and effective ASW countermeasures. Carriers would have been no better off, and anyway only one dreadnought was sunk by torpedo attack in WW1, two hits from an Italian motor torpedo boat.

And England basically being strangled to death to the point that even though they did come out on top in the end their treasury was depleted to the point they lost their status as the dominant sea power is just a minor footnote I suppose.

Given the heavy role the airplane play in effective ASW in WW2 this argument seems rather sophist, at best. It's not like they downgraded to SSKs in WW2.

No Japanese battleship was put in dock until the end of the war after that engagement. In fact none of them was damaged to any significant degree, and most of the damage they did have came from the fast carrier strikes on the 24th in the Sibuyan Sea.

I've read differently and given your statement about no carrier surviving more then 1 torpedo you will excuse me if I doubt the validity of that.

If you want to play this game, how about this? Evidence that the Battleship played a real role beyond National Pride of who could make the biggest most intimidating, between the Russo-Japanese War and WW2 excluding NGFS missions. I posit the NGFS restriction given preference historically has been for 75mm only going up for bigger guns as they go out of progressively bigger guns range, and Battleship guns suffer from lack of rate of fire in that role having historically cut into their effectiveness as a thread presently on the WAB shows.

HMS Dreadnought for instance has a service record noteworthy only for ramming a submarine that would if not for the development of mechanical trouble have sunk it.

EDIT: I was probably thinking CV-3 Saratoga instead of CV-6 Enterprise. 1942 was torpedoed by I-6 and continued under its own power. Got another one from I-26 the same year. Survived the War I might add.

Then theres CV-7 Wasp which took 3 torpedo hits, and was basically okay except the firefighting equipment had been knocked out, which allowed for an orderly almost hour long disembarkment. Took another 3 torpedoes in an attempt by friendly forces to scuttle her, and basically burned to death over a six hour period, while only having actual damage control efforts over part of the first hour. All of hers were full sized ship launched torpedoes. I've yet to see anything breaking down torpedoes on Yamato based on the different sizes.

Then there's CV-8 Hornet, which took a lot more punishment then Wasp in the attempt to scuttle her.

Fine Sea Skimmer, I picked the only one of the originals, ignoring CV-4 Ranger which didn't participate and thus doesn't count, that didn't take multiple torpedoes. I skipped checking because Enterprise, was well The Enterprise. Happy?

[Sea Skimmer]

CV-5 Yorktown got two torpedoes and three bombs, only to be picked off two days later by submarine is sufficient to poke a hole in that statement.

Does not matter; those hits killed all power and thus doomed the ship. Staying afloat doesn’t count for anything if you can’t move and get away to fight another day. Loss of power was the doom of numerous warships which did not have any serious risk of sinking, but it’s a matter of ship design to see to it that you don’t lose all power. Thinly protected carriers with very high power requirements are not good combinations.

Given the Battleship incidents we're comparing it to, I don't want arguing from you about afloat and being towed not counting. Being able to stay afloat for three days is much better damage control verse counting extra torpedoes because they hit both sides and were counter flooding a ship already on its way down with Musashi.

Musashi was still under power when she sank; no trivial feat after 17 torpedo hits. Yorktown was first disabled by her second bomb hit (the first hit was instantaneously fused and burst on the flight deck), and then lost all power for good from two torpedoes. She was a tough ship, but she also faced weapons with very small warheads, 551lb bombs and torpedoes with 385/441lb warheads, and would have outright disintegrated under the kind of pounding both Yamatos stood up to. Anyway Japanese damage control sucked by any standard and the ships actually had very poor counter flooding capability for the displacement.

I admit I'll have to go back over my material as I don't have the various incidents memorized, but I know there was battle damage the various carriers took that they repaired and then moved on, including to my recollection several torpedo hits.

Single torpedo hits were withstood a few times; but a single torpedo damn well shouldn’t be a sinking risk to a warship bigger then a heavy cruiser, and yet I have already pointed out several carriers sunk, and at least two that got outright exploded, by single torpedoes.

You're splitting hairs. IJN Yamato wasn't about to allow itself to just take a torpedo in the Battle of Samar, as you should know, despite being the basically the last word in big battleships.

The fuck are you going on about? I’m splitting hairs by stating a simple fact? I define survival as just that, you fucking survive, Yorktown died a lingering death and had a dozen submarines coming after her, she sank from her damage, deal with it.

And sub can carry ballistic missiles. Even if it's true, so what?

I've talked with guys on Los Angeles-class boats, they consider their Mk 48 21" torpedoes a threat to full size Carriers. What do Mk 46 & 50 12.75" Torpedoes have to with that outside of CAPTOR mine usage?

Why exactly the fuck are you bringing ballistic missiles and a fucking ASW only mine into this now? The Mk48 is designed as an ASW torpedo, it has a big enough warhead that it can sink surface ships but that wasn’t its intended task; end of story. In fact for some time the USN was working on a complementary anti surface only torpedo called ASUW that would have cost 1/12th as much. It would have had simplified guidance, simplified propulsion and a significantly heavier warhead using all the space that freed up.

And England basically being strangled to death to the point that even though they did come out on top in the end their treasury was depleted to the point they lost their status as the dominant sea power is just a minor footnote I suppose.

What the fuck does the economic state of Britain do with the vulnerability of carriers and battleships? In case you forgot the British kept building battleships, more laid down between the wars then any other nation in fact, and the British also came up with the idea of heavily armoring carriers at the expense of air group because they thought they’d be highly vulnerable in wartime!

I've read differently and given your statement about no carrier surviving more then 1 torpedo you will excuse me if I doubt the validity of that.

I said no US carrier survived more then 1 torpedo and it is completely true. I don’t fucking care how long a ship takes to sink, if its fucking lost then its lost and the fact that it took a long time to do down does not matter. Shit happens in war. A ship with more protection could have avoided the loss of power and gotten away.

Now prove that a Japanese battleship was crippled for the rest of the war at Samar or shut the fuck up about it.

If you want to play this game, how about this?

How about no. Your ignorance is not my problem, if you don’t know what you’re talking about then go research it; nothing being talked about here is hard to find information on.

EDIT: I was probably thinking CV-3 Saratoga instead of CV-6 Enterprise. 1942 was torpedoed by I-6 and continued under its own power. Got another one from I-26 the same year. Survived the War I might add.

So? That is perfectly in line with what I said; and one would damn well hope a 36,000 ton carrier built on the hull of a capital ship could withstand a single torpedo hit. Taking another torpedo months later after all damage has been repaired does not count.

Then theres CV-7 Wasp which took 3 torpedo hits, and was basically okay except the firefighting equipment had been knocked out, which allowed for an orderly almost hour long disembarkment.

Basically okay? You call a massive fire and multiple gasoline vapor explosions and a 15 degree list within the first half hour, followed by explosions of aircraft munitions basically okay?

Yeah she lost pressure in PART of her fire main system, so? Thats what happens when a ship gets hit, and low and behold, the massive fires got fed by fractured AVGAS tanks, the most dangerously explosive thing carried by any ship, which points exactly to my original position which is that a carrier is inherently more vulnerable then a battleship. A fully working fire main system would almost certainly not have saved Wasp; the USN concluded as much and made major fleet wide changes to firefighting and damage control equipment afterward. That probably saved several carriers later in the war.

Took another 3 torpedoes in an attempt by friendly forces to scuttle her, and basically burned to death over a six hour period, while only having actual damage control efforts over part of the first hour. All of hers were full sized ship launched torpedoes. I've yet to see anything breaking down torpedoes on Yamato based on the different sizes.

Yamato was only ever hit by two different torpedoes, a Mk14 with 643lb of Torpex in 1943, and a shit load of Mk13s with 600lb Torpex in 1944.

Wasp was hit by Japanese Type 95 torpedoes, with 893 lbs of Type 97 explosive, which has about about 107% the blast effectiveness of TNT. So that’s about 955lb equivalence.

The US Mk13 aerial torpedo meanwhile had by 1944 been upgraded to carry a 600lb charge of Torpex, which has about 150% the power of TNT, giving it about 900lb TNT equivalent. 55lb is a pretty irrelevant difference with warheads this big so basically the two torpedoes are equal in firepower. In 1942 the US Mk15 torpedo still used an 800lb TNT charge, Torpex hadn’t been introduced yet, so it’s the least powerful weapon in comparison. Later Mk15s had 825lb Torpex charges.

So basically all the torpedoes are can be considered more or less equal. Doesn’t matter though, Wasp was lost as a fighting ship by the initial spread of torpedoes. The scuttling was just a scuttling. Yamato and Musashi certain took some serious overkill, but both still maintained high speed and could have remained in a battleline after taking the first three torpedo hits and a whole lot more damage after that. Both sank while still underway. That’s a vital difference, as long as a ship can move it has some hope, if even minor damage brings you to a halt you have an immensely serious problem and become absurdly vulnerable to follow-up attacks.

Japan BTW expected the Yamato class to remain in a battleline (not listing too much to aim the guns) after five torpedo hits on one side, and expected them to remain afloat after eight hits. That’s pretty much in line with what was actually observed during the attacks.

Then there's CV-8 Hornet, which took a lot more punishment then Wasp in the attempt to scuttle her.

That she did, tough ship in death, but the fact remains she was brought to a halt by the initial pair of torpedo hits and that doomed her. Even if a Kate hadn’t scored a third torpedo hit she could never have been towed away at 1 knot in time to escape the massive Japanese surface forces in the area. As it was those surface forces did find her, and a spread of Long Lances finally sent her to the bottom.

[Patrick Degan]

If a carrier took a full spread of torpedoes, it was a sure bet she was going down within the hour if not sooner. The Shokaku at Philippine Sea springs immediately to mind as an example. Four fish from the submarine Cavalla and she was a goner. Rolled over and sank not very long afterward with over 1600 of her crew. By contrast, even an old rebuilt WW1-era battlewagon like the Hiei required a whole afternoon's worth of rotation bombing from land- and carrier-based squadrons to whittle her down and force the crew to evacuate and scuttle.

No carrier could withstand the sort of pounding a battleship could endure for hours at a stretch. They may have been superior offensive platforms, but they were also very fragile in comparison. A carrier could be destroyed or rendered inoperable in mere minutes.

[Edward Yee]

In the mid-90s, I read an article in 'Popular Mechanics' about McDonnell Douglas privately funding R & D for a pod that can carry personnel inside, that the AV-8B Harrier II can carry under its wings like drop tank; the idea was to combine a fixed-wing aircraft's speed with a helicopter's versatility when extracting special forces operators. I couldn't find the article through Google; I'm assuming it's because the US military wasn't interested in the idea, so McDonnell Douglas stopped funding R & D for the pods.

Thank you for the elaboration, I really did not know about any of this; if the BBG-21 page used that to explain the F-35B carrying SOF teams I must have missed it. Now that we have how it could be done, here's my problem:

#1: Probably too high a R&D cost and too long a development spiral -- unless the DOD wants it right the hell yesterday or someone like the CIA/DARPA has done their own work on it, I can't see this coming to fruition.
#2: Depending on the mission, I can see security clearances (i.e. which pilots are allowed to be in on the mission at both insertion and extraction) being an issue.
#3: ... so stealth fighter-bombers are supposed to (instead of bombs) drop SOF personnel onto ground (assuming that they and all their gear survive) or into the water, in the example at the BBG-21 page to act as spotters/target designators for 16-inch guns, then the stealth fighter-bombers are to extract them plus whatever they may have had to pick up?