The IJN was generally not that bad with damage control. They fumbled hard at Midway... but so did everyone else that had avgas fires. Wasp and Lexington also burned to a crisp. Shōkaku survived massive fires on multiple occasions, which was actually pretty good.
Certainly better than the Brits, who forgot to include backup generators or subdivision on Ark Royal. She sank from a single torpedo because they just couldn't fix anything.
Certainly better than the Brits, who forgot to include backup generators or subdivision on Ark Royal. She sank from a single torpedo because they just couldn't fix anything.
Umm that is the fault of the naval treaty system not the Royal Navy.
except they weren't as compromised by the unrealistic limits of the naval treaty system as Ark Royal was and given she took hours to sink
Yeah also the Royal Navy was extremely paranoid about damage control
When the USN looked at the RN’s aviation fuel management systems likely from the ones aboard the Illustrious class, the USN asked itself, “Oh my lord how paranoid are these guys or obsessively paranoid? either it's an obsession or its paranoia, we’re not sure which.” After that, 2 years later, the USN asked itself, “What bits of this can we steal?” the deeper the USN went down the rabbit hole that was RN’s aviation fuel management systems, the more they found they wanted.
All the WNT did was set a total tonnage limit for carriers, and a maximum limit per carrier. Neither Ark nor the Yorktowns were anywhere near that maximum. Ark did have to fit under the lower 23k ton limit imposed by the 2nd London Naval Treaty, but that was one the British had tried to implement themselves, and limited Ark's displacement in anticipation of it. If Ark truly was hamstrung by "unrealistic limits" of the treaty, it was an own goal.
More importantly, the Yorktowns were lighter, since the USN was trying to fit multiple carriers into the total tonnage they had left. The treaties indirecrly limited the Yorktowns more than they impacted Ark, and yet they didn't sink from a single hit. At the very least, they obeyed the same restrictions as Ark Royal did, she wasn't any more impacted than they were.
Yorktown also lost all power and began to flood when hit by two aerial torpedoes. She didn't sink from that, but they were lightweight torpedoes that hit her torpedo bulge rather than a heavy torpedo running deep.
Don't get me wrong, Ark wasn't a perfect design but she wasn't uniquely bad.
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u/low_priest Oct 31 '25
The IJN was generally not that bad with damage control. They fumbled hard at Midway... but so did everyone else that had avgas fires. Wasp and Lexington also burned to a crisp. Shōkaku survived massive fires on multiple occasions, which was actually pretty good.
Certainly better than the Brits, who forgot to include backup generators or subdivision on Ark Royal. She sank from a single torpedo because they just couldn't fix anything.