Russian Navy Confirms Severe Damage to Black Sea Flagship, Cruiser Moskva, Crew Abandoned Ship

@whowasthatmaskedman
If you're referring to the Force Z debacle, that is partly true. The British carriers were smaller than their American counterparts and their air wings at the start of the war had aircraft that were nearing obsolescence. It was one thing to go after a single ship to cripple her (Bismarck) or launch a raid on Taranto. It would have been quite another to take on the IJN.

But had the carrier Indomitable been with the force as planned, her air wing would have given Admiral Phillips invaluable intelliegence the morning of the battle, such as realizing that the Japanese landings he was intending to prevent had already taken place.

(Prince of Wales' radar had malfunctioned before reaching Singapore and there was no time to repair it. At one point Force Z passed within about, I believe, five or so miles of a screening Japanese cruiser force. Although the IJN was well-trained in night battles, they hadn't fought any yet. And they never spotted the British ships. At that range, the British ships would have likely blown the Japanese cruisers out of the water had Prince of Wales' radar been operational.

Instead, two valuable naval assets were needlessly squandered. Had the ships returned safely to Singapore, the Battle of the Java Sea in February 1942 might have turned out differently. And Admiral Sir James Somerville might have had those two valuable ships to make Admiral Nagumo think twice about the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942. (But it would have still been advisable for Somerville to retreateto Africa. The old World War I era battleships he had remaining were too slow and would have necessitated Prince of Wales and Repulse to reduce their speed to maintain fleet cohesion.

Later in the war, British carriers did show they had one advantage over U.S. carriers - their armored flight decks. Kamakazi attacks against British flattops didn't inflict the severe damage that some U.S. carriers with wooden decks did.

@beckyromero I cant dispute any of that. But things played out as they did. The British conduct of the war in the Pacific on land and sea was really a matter of bouncing from one disaster to the next. Its a matter of conjecture whether Britain kept all this better commanders back in the European theatre. And those wooden carrier decks were a real issue..😷

@whowasthatmaskedman ...and the early torpedo bombers (Fairy Swordfish) used couldn't catch their carrier if it was sailing into a decent gale... Brave pilots!

@walabby Indeed. Those crates were deathtraps even before someone started shooting at them..😷