Disco Duck
Posts: 552
Joined: 11/16/2004
From: San Antonio
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
I have a suggestion about why a CV would re-arm faster than a BB , but I'm hesitant to mention it. I'm almost afraid that before the elctrons are dry, some gray beard master chief is going to attack and insult my knowledge, understanding and even my man hood. But I'm going to make my suggestion after a couple of disclaimers.
1) Although I did serve in the USN/USNR , I never served on a Carrier, cruiser,destroyer,battleship or any thing else that floats , except a brief TDY assignment to a Frigate , and that ship (USS Constition) never left the pier so that doesn't count. (In my defense, no one took Boston while I was aboard her).
2) I've never been a master chief,Senior chief, indian chief,fire chief,chief chef,or any other kind of chief (except in boot camp I briefly became the "chief scullery minion").I don't know why, but for some reason that title, the phrase "I was there and you weren't" or "I read it in a book" all seem to have great magic power on these forums. I don't have or do magic. Go find a unicorn.
3) In short, I don't know nothing about nothing (This was said to save critics some time).
What I have noticed by working around various ships , including CVN's,DD's etc, (And living in a USN shipyard for two years where I watched refits on everything from SSN's to CVN's) is that CV's seem to load much faster than subs and surface ships as a result of handing space and handling devices. I've noticed that both during UNREPS (yes, I've watched a few) and from shore , carriers have massive wide open spaces (flight decks) that "stuff" can be stacked on and "dumped' (yes I know these are not correct Naval terms) to be "put away" later and quickly. A sub has one door way (Hatch, hole, passageway , whatever) that EVERYTHING has to go down and then someone has to find a "Home" for it. To a lesser degree , this is also true of surfaceships.
A carrier can (when shoreside) have a railroad car (or a truck container) hoisted aboard .Then as there are lots of devices for bringing "stuff" up (Airplane lifts/elevators, bomb lifts/elevators etc) which are designed to move big "Stuff" below rather quickly. I've never loaded a ship (or unloaded) but I've unloaded hundreds of trucks , and one thing I've noticed is that a palletized cargo can be unloaded VERY rapidly, where a UPS style, one box at a time loaded truck takes quite a bit longer.
As I said before , I've NO expertise on anything , but could this be a plausible explaination why CV's load faster than BB's? 
I have been on two WWII battleships. North Carolina and Massachusetts. Neither had very many openings. And no cranes to speak of. I am sure that before their retrofits to handle helicopters there were cranes to handle the float planes. Those could not have been used to load the forward guns. The deck hatches were intentionally as small as possible for integrity reasons. I have looked on the internet in vain for anything on underway supply replenishment. I have found some interesting documents on refueling at sea. But that is not the subject here.
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BB Ammo Replenishment - 
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