I'd add in that ot would have been difficult to operate as well.
For starters aircraft carriers face into the wind for takeoff and landing. So that means either engines for maneuvering (noted in the article) or support vessels. Presumably support vessels are vulnerable so not in the picture.
It would sail like a pig ‐ with 90% underwater it'll pretty much go where the current goes. And very slowly.
I imagine the engines would either be small (slow maneuvering) or large (need fuel etc).
Once you need significant fuel you need to store it. Plus of course all the men, and their stores. And a lot of this doesn't like freezing temperatures.
To be useful the thing presumably has to be far from land, presumably closer to the enemy. So the enemy deploys a bunch of anti-aircraft ships to basically follow the thing. Returning aircraft are sitting ducks.
I'm no mechanical engineer, but none of this makes any sense to me at all.
I'm even less an admiral or air marshall but I dont see any tactical or strategic advantage here either.
> I'm even less an admiral or air marshall but I dont see any tactical or strategic advantage here either.
Not disagreeing with your main points at all, but from a strat/tac point of view, up until later in the war, there was an air gap in the Atlantic where German U-Boats didn't have to worry about a significant air threat from the Allies. A large airfield parked mid-Atlantic might have significantly improved Allied air coverage, and helped reduce the stunningly bad shipping losses they were experiencing.
Exactly, and we also developed longer range aircraft and better anti-U-Boat weaponry. Hence my observation regarding the air gap that existed earlier in the war (not that the bergship would have been ready then)
If your runway is a mile long you can tolerate a lot more crosswind component (or, more precisely, aren't so desperate for every know of apparent headwind).
For starters aircraft carriers face into the wind for takeoff and landing. So that means either engines for maneuvering (noted in the article) or support vessels. Presumably support vessels are vulnerable so not in the picture.
It would sail like a pig ‐ with 90% underwater it'll pretty much go where the current goes. And very slowly.
I imagine the engines would either be small (slow maneuvering) or large (need fuel etc).
Once you need significant fuel you need to store it. Plus of course all the men, and their stores. And a lot of this doesn't like freezing temperatures.
To be useful the thing presumably has to be far from land, presumably closer to the enemy. So the enemy deploys a bunch of anti-aircraft ships to basically follow the thing. Returning aircraft are sitting ducks.
I'm no mechanical engineer, but none of this makes any sense to me at all.
I'm even less an admiral or air marshall but I dont see any tactical or strategic advantage here either.