Flying aircraft carriers

[Sky Captain]

I was watching Captain America Winter Soldier few days ago and it got me thinking would flying aircraft carriers be useful if you had the tech to build them? For this discussion let's imagine that 10 - 20 years in the future some research organization develops anti gravity tech that allows to levitate massive objects with relatively small power usage (say around 100 MW for 100 000 ton vessel), but you still need conventional thrust to actually move around kind of like neutrally buoyant submarine or airship. With nuclear power you have unlimited range and endurance similar to existing sea based carriers.

However because of some physics constraints it is impossible to miniaturize the tech to conventional aircraft scale. Assume that you you need a sphere 25 m diameter to hold smallest possible anti gravity generator. For anything that may come under enemy fire it would be good idea to have several redundant anti gravity generators so minimum vessel size would be quite large.

Advantages to sea based carriers would be ability to travel over land and go much faster, change altitude depending on situation, possibly easier, safer to operate aircraft, maybe easier anti missile defense.

Downsides probably extra cost and in case carrier comes under heavy attack that takes out your anti gravity propulsion your carrier becomes most expensive dumb bomb in history (although this is probably somewhat true to sea going carriers as well - have it eat several large anti ship missiles and it is mostly scrap metal anyway.

Would flying carriers be useful/worth the extra cost in this scenario?

[RogueIce]

Well, for a country with a similar geographic situation as the US I'd imagine it'd be easier and faster to just fly over the country than sailing around South America (or its equivalent) if they needed to swap how many carriers were on each side of the world (assuming they still base out of their home continent in between deployments).

Other than that...not really? I mean you're still limited to mostly flying over international waters, unless you have agreements with friendly countries to traverse your heli-carrier over their land. I guess it would also depend on whether or not your flying carrier can match or exceed 30 knots, how well they handle weather, can they fly over said weather, etc.

[Sky Captain]

Other than that...not really? I mean you're still limited to mostly flying over international waters, unless you have agreements with friendly countries to traverse your heli-carrier over their land.

That's valid point, if you are fighting landlocked country you pretty much need friendly neighboring country that allows to use their territory and airspace. No need for a carrier then since air base always will be cheaper to operate. In this case anti grav tech could be highly useful to transport troops, equipment and supplies.

I guess it would also depend on whether or not your flying carrier can match or exceed 30 knots, how well they handle weather, can they fly over said weather, etc.

If the thing is reasonably aerodynamic it should be capable of much higher speed than ship limited by water drag. So 100 MW to keep it aloft and if it uses comparable powerplant to Nimitz class carriers you would have 150 - 200 MW to generate forward thrust. Should be easily enough for 200 - 300 km/h possibly even faster. Historical airships managed ~150 km/h with few MW power.
Bad weather also likely not major problem since when it comes to withstanding turbulence and high winds bigger and heavier = better.

How high the thing could fly? Not sure theoretically if you can cancel gravity altitude wouldn't matter. Practically I guess there would be a point where air would become too thin for propellers to work effectively and reactor cooling also would become problematic if there is too little air to dump waste heat into. At some point you would need rockets to move around and require huge radiators to radiate waste heat - essentially a spaceship.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, if you're going to have an aircraft carrier, one that is actually designed to carry combat aircraft and launch them... you need to have a flight crew running around on the flight deck, or at least in some kind of hangar bay built into the ship.

If you get up high enough that those flight crews have to wear oxygen masks it will impede operations. If you get up high enough that they have to wear heated pressure suits or something, it will really impede operations.

Plus, a lot of aircraft may find that taking off from a carrier moving at 100 to 300 km/h at high altitude means that they're going below their stall speed.

[Terralthra]

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

[Thanas]

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

Sure, but what I think Simon is saying that the advantages of sea levels (flying into the wind, plus lower altitude so better air for takeoff) won't be there if you are going at several thousand feet.

[Sea Skimmer]

If the thing is reasonably aerodynamic it should be capable of much higher speed than ship limited by water drag. So 100 MW to keep it aloft and if it uses comparable powerplant to Nimitz class carriers you would have 150 - 200 MW to generate forward thrust. Should be easily enough for 200 - 300 km/h possibly even faster. Historical airships managed ~150 km/h with few MW power.

They also only weighed a few hundred tons though. Remember you still need to accelerate the mass of the ship at a useful rate or else you will have considerable problems with weather and recovery of speed lost turning, as well as plain straight line acceleration from a stop.

Oh and if you use nuclear power don't forget about all the air drag that will be generated by the cooling system, and the need for increased armor mass around the reactors and said cooling system to protect from penetrating hits from below. Seawater is a really useful thing to have around.

Bad weather also likely not major problem since when it comes to withstanding turbulence and high winds bigger and heavier = better.

The ability to operate the flight deck is more relevant then ability to hold the ship steady, that should be fine enough with enough thrust vectoring, total installed power and automatic controls. It'd sure help if the anti gravity can eliminate pitching though.

Count me as in the camp of not even remotely believing that conventional flight deck operations would be possible though, at least not at an altitude high enough to protect the ship from mines and smaller caliber ground fire. It'd probably have to be everything done in the hanger, except maybe weapon fusing. On the plus side matched speed takeoffs and landings now become an option for consideration, and could allow removal of the catapults which would save a bunch of weight and installed power, but mean the ship cannot operate planes at low air speeds.

Your raw altitude limit would most likely be set by pressurization requirements before anything else. ~6,000ft wouldn't require it and would render the ship at least difficult to effectively engage with man portable weapons. Pressurization would be kinda annoying and dangerous, as it would mean for example that the hanger must be sealed. That would be very bad if you suddenly had fire in the hanger at 35,000ft.

For tactical reasons being low would be desirable most of the time anyway, so you don't show on enemy radar.

You certainly won't gain any advantage flying higher in terms of air operations, the thinner air only increases takeoff air speed requirements, so no real reason to design for high altitude unless you wish to operate special high altitude only aircraft, which wouldn't really make sense a decade from now. It might several decades from now if laser weapons are prolific enough.

Personally I'd use the tech to build squadrons of missile destroyers though before I built carriers (assuming you know, budgets exist), and I would build them for high speed-high altitude capability. That way say my 400 knot destroyer can use glide bombs on the enemy like a plane, but still support a lot more radar and defensive weapons then any actual aircraft could. Planes can be inflight refueled and what not to a considerable degree and conventional aircraft carriers can already get within range of most of the worlds surface (and about all of the really important bits). High carrier transit speed is appealing, but then for what the flying carrier is going to cost we might easily build two seagoing ones.

As for vulnerability, a modern super carrier should easily absorb several very heavy missiles. See the USS Forrestal Fire for example, where nine heavy bombs exploded on the flight deck plus a massive fuel fire, and the ship never lost power or came close to sinking, and she was about 20,000 tons smaller then a Nimitz. Or say, USS Franklin where something like fifty bombs exploded on the flight and hanger decks, plus two Japanese bombs which preforated the armor deck.

That's the glory of a well designed carrier on the water. Your upper works are vulnerable, but they also have little ability to transmit damage to the vitals. A carrier on water just has to avoid sinking. It can loose power and have a huge fire and still be okay. It can also eat a lot of torpedoes without being sunk, though crippling will come faster. If your flying.... you can now be hit on the top and bottom so the odds of taking damage to the power plant go way up in the event of a missile attack, and by nature your propulsors themselves are now exposed to direct attack, making the ship in general a lot more vulnerable to smaller caliber weapons of all times.

[LaCroix]

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

Sure, but what I think Simon is saying that the advantages of sea levels (flying into the wind, plus lower altitude so better air for takeoff) won't be there if you are going at several thousand feet.

But then, if you are launching from a carrier at high altitude you do have the option of going into a dive after leaving the platform.

[Enigma]

I don't know where I read this, but wouldn't all that air being pushed downwards by the turbines flatten anything on the ground? Fly over the city and cause a huge catastrophe without firing a single shot. ?

[Sky Captain]

They also only weighed a few hundred tons though. Remember you still need to accelerate the mass of the ship at a useful rate or else you will have considerable problems with weather and recovery of speed lost turning, as well as plain straight line acceleration from a stop.

That would be an issue if there is too little thrust to mass ratio. So there would be some minimal thrust to mass ratio below which maneuverability would be below acceptable levels.

As for vulnerability, a modern super carrier should easily absorb several very heavy missiles. See the USS Forrestal Fire for example, where nine heavy bombs exploded on the flight deck plus a massive fuel fire, and the ship never lost power or came close to sinking, and she was about 20,000 tons smaller then a Nimitz. Or say, USS Franklin where something like fifty bombs exploded on the flight and hanger decks, plus two Japanese bombs which preforated the armor deck.

That's the glory of a well designed carrier on the water. Your upper works are vulnerable, but they also have little ability to transmit damage to the vitals. A carrier on water just has to avoid sinking. It can loose power and have a huge fire and still be okay. It can also eat a lot of torpedoes without being sunk, though crippling will come faster. If your flying.... you can now be hit on the top and bottom so the odds of taking damage to the power plant go way up in the event of a missile attack, and by nature your propulsors themselves are now exposed to direct attack, making the ship in general a lot more vulnerable to smaller caliber weapons of all times.

Increased vulnerability would be major problem and I don't see an easy fix there because of a different way the flying carrier operates. At least flying carrier would be safe from torpedoes. Being higher up than water based carrier maybe would give more warning time in case of missile attack hoverer if operating in enemy territory a surprise missile attack is far more likely than when over water. If you are forced to stay over water anyway then may as well stick to sea going carriers. A point defense system capable of reliably dealing with saturation attacks is a must for operations over hostile territory.

Personally I'd use the tech to build squadrons of missile destroyers though before I built carriers (assuming you know, budgets exist), and I would build them for high speed-high altitude capability. That way say my 400 knot destroyer can use glide bombs on the enemy like a plane, but still support a lot more radar and defensive weapons then any actual aircraft could.

That sounds sensible. A flying missile destroyer also could easily have pressurized hull since there are no need for exposed aircraft hangars and deck operations allowing to fly as high as tech allows. Missiles and bombs would have greatly increased range when launched from high altitude and high speed. If flying at 20 - 30 km or even higher only top end SAMs would be a threat and high altitude would give point defense more time to intercept hostile missiles. Point defense lasers would greatly benefit from not to have burn through dense atmosphere full of dust and moisture.

[Sky Captain]

I don't know where I read this, but wouldn't all that air being pushed downwards by the turbines flatten anything on the ground? Fly over the city and cause a huge catastrophe without firing a single shot. ?

No, thrust would be used only to move the ship, weight would be supported by anti gravity gizmo. Most of the time thrust would be directed parallel to ground similar how airships operate. A flying carrier on a scale similar to Nimitz class that uses pure thrust to stay aloft would be impossible anyway.

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

Sure, but what I think Simon is saying that the advantages of sea levels (flying into the wind, plus lower altitude so better air for takeoff) won't be there if you are going at several thousand feet.

But then, if you are launching from a carrier at high altitude you do have the option of going into a dive after leaving the platform.

That would work however without catapults you would be forced to fly at certain minimum altitude and/or airspeed during flight operations which may or may not be acceptable design tradeoff.

[Simon_Jester]

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

Good luck building a catapult that can compensate for the stall speed being, oh, 200 km/hr above the airspeed of the carrier.

But then, if you are launching from a carrier at high altitude you do have the option of going into a dive after leaving the platform.

Leaving the carrier in a stall and diving for the ground in hopes that your engines reignite before you hit the ground is a risky way to operate. Not very practical.

[Terralthra]

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

Good luck building a catapult that can compensate for the stall speed being, oh, 200 km/hr above the airspeed of the carrier.

Good thing I don't have to. The latest generation EMALS (electromagnetic aircraft launch system) accelerates the load by 130 knots/240 km/h. In fact, basically every steam-powered catapult ever has been able to do that, all the way back to the Midway, which could accelerate the load by 108 knots/201 km/h.

Leaving the carrier in a stall and diving for the ground in hopes that your engines reignite before you hit the ground is a risky way to operate. Not very practical.

Um...are you under the impression that a stall involves engine power loss? That's not a stall, that's an engine failure and is a much more serious problem. A stall is a flight condition in which you don't have sufficient lift to maintain altitude.

[Ted C]

Would flying carriers be useful/worth the extra cost in this scenario?

You have an airbase that's even more mobile than a sea-based aircraft carrier. Assuming that your nation can support its fuel and maintenance costs without an order of magnitude more expense than a conventional aircraft carrier, I'd say it's quite plausible.

Added bonus is that it's ability to launch and retrieve aircraft is not dependent on weather conditions at sea-level. Since it can change altitude, it can operate as long as weather is acceptable at any altitude that is reasonable for its airwing.

[Darth Tanner]

Would being required to operate only a few km up in the air to preserve air crew operations be that much of a vulnerability to an aircraft carrier role which should be staying away from hostile areas anyway?

An even more useful application would be a huge armoured troop lander... imagine a 100,000 tonne transport/mobile army base that can deploy anywhere and deploy a couple hundred Abrams as well as a few thousand men all in one go whilst having enough supplies and helicopter landing pads to support the whole operation for months. You could call it a battle barge.

[Sky Captain]

Would being required to operate only a few km up in the air to preserve air crew operations be that much of a vulnerability to an aircraft carrier role which should be staying away from hostile areas anyway?

In theory it should be that way however in practice since the carrier can fly you may be more willing to put it closer to combat area to reduce the transit time for aircraft and bet on your planes, escorts and point defenses to keep it safe from missiles and enemy aircraft. Or it simply could be if fighting landlocked country (where flying carrier would be most useful) you have only a permission to overfly some neighboring country but are not allowed to launch attacks from their territory and airspace and have no choice, but to penetrate enemy airspace with carrier and escorts.

An even more useful application would be a huge armoured troop lander... imagine a 100,000 tonne transport/mobile army base that can deploy anywhere and deploy a couple hundred Abrams as well as a few thousand men all in one go whilst having enough supplies and helicopter landing pads to support the whole operation for months. You could call it a battle barge.

That's true, large scale transport vessels certainly would be very useful application of anti gravity tech. Technologically also less demanding than flying carrier.

[Grumman]

I don't know where I read this, but wouldn't all that air being pushed downwards by the turbines flatten anything on the ground? Fly over the city and cause a huge catastrophe without firing a single shot. ?

It would if you were relying on pure thrust and you flew it too low. The higher you fly the more the jets of air will disperse before hitting the ground, and the less of your aircraft carrier's weight any given square foot of surface has to withstand.

Another thing you would need to worry about is the weather caused by the aircraft carrier itself. If you're creating a localised downdraft forceful enough to keep a hundred thousand tons of material in the air, that's likely enough to affect cloud formation and the like.

[SpottedKitty]

Another thing you would need to worry about is the weather caused by the aircraft carrier itself. If you're creating a localised downdraft forceful enough to keep a hundred thousand tons of material in the air, that's likely enough to affect cloud formation and the like.

Not just cloud formation — isn't that how microbursts are formed? I can't see a mobile microburst generator being a particularly welcome sight, especially anywhere near any other air traffic or airports.

[Elheru Aran]

If you have a method of antigravity capable of lifting things the size of aircraft carriers kilometers high... expect a concomitant increase in 3A defenses in general.

That said: Why aircraft carriers? Think mobile flying base that moves in short hops as a FOB of sorts. Mobile tank transporter. Mobile assault vehicle. Mobile Gundam carrier (hey, if you've got antigravity, you could probably knock together something Gundamish). Fact of the matter is there are so many more practical concepts available. Putting a big object into the sky is painting a massive bulls-eye on it. It's worth noting that, in the Avengers film, the carrier has at the very least an optical cloak and is presumably radar and infrared stealthed in some fashion. For something really big, it's far more practical to only be in the air for short, unpredictable periods. When you're on the ground, you don't have very far to fall.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Others have covered the practical details on carrier stuff better than I can, but I would say the biggest impact of this magi-tech would be in big airborne freighters. Something that can carry the same load as a bigass cargo ship but can move at aircraft speeds and isn't dependent on where the seaports are would be a big deal.

In military terms, the missile ships Sea Skimmer mentioned would probably be more useful than a carrier, although I suppose countries like the USA would probably build the things anyway.

[Broomstick]

Taking off from a carrier going 30 km/h at sea level is going below their stall speed too. That's why aircraft carriers have catapults.

Good luck building a catapult that can compensate for the stall speed being, oh, 200 km/hr above the airspeed of the carrier.

But then, if you are launching from a carrier at high altitude you do have the option of going into a dive after leaving the platform.

Leaving the carrier in a stall and diving for the ground in hopes that your engines reignite before you hit the ground is a risky way to operate. Not very practical.

Simon, putting an aircraft into a dive to re-start a turbine is actually an old and well-established procedure that has worked many a time. The key is to have enough altitude to pull it off successfully.

That said, between a dive to achieve airspeed (not a problem with an aerodynamic aircraft, gravity-powered acceleration without working turbine is sufficient, for example, for your average airliner to achieve Mach 1 in a dive, the worst issue being the controls aren't really designed for that speed so good luck getting out of that dive) and some mechanism on board to start/assist the turbine run-up a purpose-designed aircraft for this is well within reach of our current tech.

The notion of an airborne aircraft carrier is nothing new. The US had one in 1931, the USS Akron and sister ship USS Macon

One of the Akron's aircraft in the hangar:


The deployment/capture hook of the Macon with Sparrowhawk fighter plane:


Although there were successful launches and "landings" from both the Akron and Macon the concept proved not to be as useful as hoped, not the least because of the vulnerability of airships to weather (the Akron was lost in a thunderstorm, the Macon to windshear).

The airship carrier was "practical" in the 1930's due to the whole airship technology... except that airships proved to have fundamental flaws. It is an illustration of a system that did allow for airborne aircraft carriers that didn't cause massive ground disruptions due to downward thrust. If your proposed "anti-gravity" tech was as kind to the terrain below as an airship, but less vulnerable to weather, I suspect the militaries of the world would have definite interest in the concept. Not to mention the potential for civilian cargo. Lighter-than-air flight allowed for reasonable energy costs for enormous and very heavy ships because you didn't need to constantly expend vast amounts of energy to stay up in the air.

[Patroklos]

These things are just giant targets. It could take hundreds to thousands of large area attack ballistic missiles (ie Chinese) to render the multiple runways of major airbases completely useless. Even if you could do so with a few smart munitions those have to penetrate air defenses. Static defenses ground defenses that are a lot cheaper, easier to maintain, and harder to avoid than whatever this boondoggle has. One missile could potentially take out a flying aircraft carrier. You might say the same could be true of a sea based carrier but I would point out:

1). A sea based carrier operates at sea level and thu is not viewable from ground based sensors at more than a few dozen miles and has the benefit of ground/sea clutter to make detection that much harder from airborne sensors. A flying carrier given its size and operating at any altitude can probably be detected from many hundreds if not upwards of a thousand miles out. Probably at a greater range than the aircraft it carries its over a few thousand feet in altitude. Many weapons can engage it with impunity from the lower end of those distances as well. When lasers come into their own and can basically engage anything in the atmosphere in their view (the YAL-1 was demonstrating the acquisition and destruction of ballistic missiles at thousands of miles of range) this thing becomes even more vulnerable (all aircraft actually).

2.) Advanced interdependent technologies means that one hit is generally a mission kill for any modern warship. The difference here is that a mission kill, which probably includes at least temporary engineering losses in many cases, means you sit dead in the water for a bit while you restore propulsion if possible. At the very least you are still there with living crew and a surviving aircraft inventory even if vulnerable and useless. If you sink that's not generally a fast process and the sea, while not the most hospitable environment to evacuate too, is a viable escape route short term. A mission kill, from just one missile, on a flying carrier probably always means it crashes quickly for a total loss with all hands and aircraft.

3.) Fidelity in maintenance. The maintenance and quality control for warplane logistics is far grater than surface ships. That goes all the way from testing of initial materials before part fabrication to testing for stresses and thresholds for replacement to the training and accountability for maintenance personnel and actions. When dealing with aircraft it is either working and you are alive or its not and you are dead. That's in contrast to a ground vehicle where a broken axel just means you can't move but are otherwise fine or a ship where even a catastrophic loss still means you can jump in the water for rescue. Sure you could maybe bail out of said carrier but the point is the cost of maintaining a beast such as a flying carrier to basically the same but probably greater standards as your average warplane is a daunting and probably prohibitive task as far as logistics go.

[Broomstick]

One missile could potentially take out a flying aircraft carrier.

It depends on the nature of the tech. To return to history for a bit, the large airships were built with multiple gas cells, so even if one fully ruptured the remaining ones would be sufficient to allow continued operation. This was even more true of the helium ships (the US ones, largely) than the hydrogen-lifted ones (primarily German, since German access to helium was severely restricted due to political reasons) as helium will not support combustion.

If you're talking about pure thrust keeping this massive proposed carrier up there are all sorts of problems that make them stupidly impractical. If you're talking about some sort of unknown anti-grav tech, though, a lot depends on how that tech works.

1). A sea based carrier operates at sea level and thu is not viewable from ground based sensors at more than a few dozen miles and has the benefit of ground/sea clutter to make detection that much harder from airborne sensors. A flying carrier given its size and operating at any altitude can probably be detected from many hundreds if not upwards of a thousand miles out. Probably at a greater range than the aircraft it carries its over a few thousand feet in altitude. Many weapons can engage it with impunity from the lower end of those distances as well. When lasers come into their own and can basically engage anything in the atmosphere in their view (the YAL-1 was demonstrating the acquisition and destruction of ballistic missiles at thousands of miles of range) this thing becomes even more vulnerable (all aircraft actually).

Satellite observation pretty much eliminates this difference. Yay, Google Earth. Actually, the military had that tech before Google, but the fact this tech is in civilian hands pretty much means you can't hide your ships in the ocean anymore.

A mission kill, from just one missile, on a flying carrier probably always means it crashes quickly for a total loss with all hands and aircraft.

I question that.

People HAVE escaped from wrecked, disintegrating aircraft. It's not always possible, but how fast the thing goes down, how/how thoroughly it breaks up, what sort of safety gear/parachutes are available.... they all factor into the survivability of such an incident.

[Patroklos]

If you're talking about pure thrust keeping this massive proposed carrier up there are all sorts of problems that make them stupidly impractical. If you're talking about some sort of unknown anti-grav tech, though, a lot depends on how that tech works.

I was thinking thrust based, or whatever this thing uses. At some point any positive force requiring aircraft is more susceptible to material failure. An inherently buoyant (is that the right term here?) craft like an sea borne aircraft carrier or airship is far safer and I would suggest using such for an air carrier were one to actually be constructed. Being naturally inherently buoyant (ie not requiring gas envelopes for an airship, water displacement bulkheads for a sea vessel) is the really safe option but that's not an option for any aircraft. A ship could be but it would be a weird beast.

Satellite observation pretty much eliminates this difference. Yay, Google Earth. Actually, the military had that tech before Google, but the fact this tech is in civilian hands pretty much means you can't hide your ships in the ocean anymore.

Sorry, that's not how it works. Its a great tool but it works more like the photographic spy planes of old which were not a 100% (or 10%) solution in this regard. The world is a big place and optics are only so good and can only be analyzed so fast. Google Earth is good for looking at ship is port, little else. But not even then. Go check on Norfolk and tell me who is in port, I'll bet its not the same ships I'll see when I drive home today. Tactically targets move, and for most intents and purposes satellites generally can not loiter. So between the limited data a picture can tell you, the delay from when you get that picture and you figure out what is there and how its relevant, the fact that all targets have moved perhaps dozens of miles from whatever you see in any direction as a conservative estimate, there will be large breaks between satellite coverage, and that you can't shoot anything off that data its not the particularly useful. At least not to the level I interpreted your comment to mean. We hide our ship sin the ocean just fine, even if not as well as one hundred years ago.

Satellites will also become dubious in value once high powered lasers come into their own, just like high altitude aircraft. Also, you aren't getting firing solutions from such recon either, so even if you can see it optically by satellite in real time being seen by radar at range is still far more dangerous for either carrier.

I question that.

It would come down to how much redundancy the vehicle has and how fragile those systems are. If its similar to current aircraft propulsion systems and aircraft in general fragile is the appropriate description.

Again, a place where being inherently buoyant in your medium gives you a default safety edge. The OP air carrier is not, a sea based carrier is. Whether it is one hit or ten, the simple fact is the sea borne carrier will survive it better than the air borne one as a general rule.

People HAVE escaped from wrecked, disintegrating aircraft. It's not always possible, but how fast the thing goes down, how/how thoroughly it breaks up, what sort of safety gear/parachutes are available.... they all factor into the survivability of such an incident.

Sure. Would you care to contrast air craft crash versus ship wreck survival rates? Or times? Also, can you think of an easy way to quickly evacuate thousands of people from a 100,000+ ton dead weight exerting many Gs or force on its crew moments after they were moving around doing whatever a sea carrier crew has to do to make such a thing effective? Unless you were sitting down and strapped in at the time of hit you are pretty much hosed. If they are all strapped in are they restricted to dedicated escape pods at all times?

I did not mean to say its impossible to survive, but compared to escaping a sea based ship for all effective purposes it basically is for your average airmen working on one of these.

[Broomstick]

Satellite observation pretty much eliminates this difference. Yay, Google Earth. Actually, the military had that tech before Google, but the fact this tech is in civilian hands pretty much means you can't hide your ships in the ocean anymore.

Sorry, that's not how it works. Its a great tool but it works more like the photographic spy planes of old which were not a 100% (or 10%) solution in this regard. The world is a big place and optics are only so good and can only be analyzed so fast. Google Earth is good fir looking at ship is port, little else. Tactically targets move, and for most intents and purposes satellites generally can not loiter. Satellites will also become dubious in value once high powered lasers come into their own, just like high altitude aircraft.

Also, you aren't getting firing solutions from such recon either, so even if you can see it optically by satellite being seen by radar at range is still far more dangerous for either carrier.

Well, I'm not privy to what the military currently has or is using, but I'm assuming it's an order of magnitude (at least!) better than what the civilian world has, and probably several. Also, keep in mind that Google Earth is the free civilian tool, not the best tool in the civilian toolkit.

True, satellites do not loiter... but put enough up you'll have excellent coverage. That is, after all, how GPS works so reliably these days. Between GPS coordinates and "smart" missiles I'm pretty sure it's getting harder and harder to hide your boat just by being in the middle of the ocean.

People HAVE escaped from wrecked, disintegrating aircraft. It's not always possible, but how fast the thing goes down, how/how thoroughly it breaks up, what sort of safety gear/parachutes are available.... they all factor into the survivability of such an incident.

Sure. Would you care to contrast air craft crash versus ship wreck survival rates? Or times? Also, can you think of an easy way to quickly evacuate thousands of people from a 100,000+ ton dead weight exerting many Gs or force on its crew moments after they were moving around doing whatever a sea carrier crew has to do to make such a thing effective? Unless you were sitting down and strapped in at the time of hit you are pretty much hosed. If they are all strapped in are they restricted to dedicated escape pods at all times?

I did not mean to say its impossible to survive, but compared to escaping a sea based ship for all effective purposes it basically is for your average airmen working on one of these.

Well, yes, there are problems with evacuating a large ship, be it an airship or an ocean ship. There are plenty of other factors, too - there are many ocean areas in the world where jumping off a sinking ship still means you're dead - just of hypothermia instead of smacking into water at terminal velocity. Hell, the Great Lakes have that problem, for much of the year in most of those waters falling overboard without an arctic type survival suit means you're going to die within minutes.

In WWII a lot of guys successfully bailed out of wrecked bombers. And a lot of guys drowned at sea, or were eaten by sharks or whatever. People tend to overestimate survival post-shipwreck in the water and underestimate survival post-airwreck.