Carrier versus Carrier strategy questions

[Cavin]

I enjoy messing around with the scenerio editor, but one thing that i keep attempting is what if two aircraft carriers of roughly equal escorts, and air wing capabilities fought each other? How would one go about winning? Because the conclusion i have seem to come too is that it would pretty much be fought to a stalemate once both sides lose a large number of fighter jets.

Asuming both strike groups are modern American Nimitz class, with Burke and Ticonderoga escorts my questions are



-Could/Should Hawkeyes be used Offensively to get a percise location of the enemy fleet?
-How far away should the 2 groups fight from?
-Should all Fighter jets be armed with AMRAAM's initially to destroy the enemy air wing? Or should some also be armed with Harpoons to strike the group itself?



I like to use the scenerio editor as a bit of "learning tool". And the general conclusion i seem to have come too is that the only way to win a Carrier vs Carrier battle is to engage it in a two-to-one scenerio attacking it with two aircraft carriers, preventing you from losing too many fighter jets, and thus stalling your attack. But maybe I'm just missing something.

[Half life Expert]

I saw this post not long after it was put up, and my apologies for taking so long to respond.

The thing about Carrier vs Carrier warfare, there isn't a whole lot of real world stuff to work off of.

Since 1944, the US had, and still has, clear dominance in Naval Aviation, meaning that any carrier engagement would most likely be the US against some other nation's inferior carriers.

In your case, having the totally unrealistic situation of two US Carrier groups battling is the only way of having two perfectly equal carrier groups clash, that is if you want US carriers involved. The only non-US Carrier that might be closest to the US ones would be the French Carrier Charles de Gaulle, but even so it would not be fair.

More fair matchups have been made that completely omit the US navy, such as the Standalone scenario "The Tiger and the Dragon 2019" which features India against China in the South China Sea, and the new scenario in the Community Scenario Pack "Between Ascension and San Carlos-The Carrier Duel 1982" which has HMS Invincible go up against ARA Vientecinco de Mayo in the South Atlantic during the Falklands War.

While that latter scenario is fictional, a clash between The British Carriers and the de Mayo very nearly did happen, but wind conditions prevented the bomb armed A-4s from launching from the de Mayo, and the carrier returned to Argentina after the well known sinking of the cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

That situation in 1982 was in fact the only time since 1944 when two opposing aircraft carriers could have engaged each other in a somewhat of a fair fight.

All that being said, in terms of tactics to use in such a battle, you really have to look just outside CMANO's timeframe at the Carrier Battles of World War II. There are five true carrier battles which I will list now for your reference:

The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 6-8 1942

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea

The Battle of Midway, June 4-7 1942

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway

The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, August 24-25 1942.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Eastern_Solomons

The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, October 25-27 1942

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Islands

The Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 19-20 1944.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Philippine_Sea

There were a few other times when carriers attacked other carriers, but those were cases of the defending carriers being largely unable to defend themselves or counterattack and are not true carrier battles, chiefly the Battle of Cape Engano in 1944 and the Sinking of HMS Hermes during Japan's Indian Ocean Raid of 1942.


While these engagements are outside of the technological and chronological timeframes of CMANO, there are the only Carrier vs Carrier battles that ever happened, and provide the only real battle case studies. And also keep in mind that all of these true carrier battles had at least two carriers on each side, so we do not have a real world instance of one carrier vs one carrier that actually happened.

While a modern Carrier battle would obviously feature missiles of all kinds and much faster aircraft, and longer ranges with tankers, some of the same principles still apply.

You do not want your carrier's position revealed to the opposing fleet if you can help it. And you also want to find the enemy's carrier(s) as soon as you can.

Ideally, you want to strike first, although Philippine Sea was an exception to this, I will explain if you don't have the time to read about the battle in detail.

Submarines have historically played important roles in carrier battles, both as scouts and as attack platforms, so don't discount using them or the enemy using them.

You can use your AEW assets for offensive scouting, but they can be vulnerable to enemy CAP fighters, and can you spare any aircraft to escort them? Those things are not easily replaced. Also the enemy may elect to not engage that Hawkeye, but rather watch it fly home when it hits bingo fuel to get an idea of where your carrier is.

If at all possible, I would use land based aircraft as your primary airborne scouts.

In terms of what ordinance to equip your aircraft with, well first I will assume you are working with current US Carrier Aircraft, where basically the only combat platform is the F-18. Previous carrier loadouts made these choices easier by having different aircraft for different roles (F-14s for Air-to-Air, A-6s for Anti-Ship).

Now with this issue of what to equip your aircraft with, instead of giving specific advice, I will simply relate a part of the most famous carrier battle that I think illustrates very well what a Carrier commander needs to think about when making tactical decisions. I am speaking of "Nagumo's Dilemma".

When the Japanese navy approached Midway island, the commander of the main Japanese carrier force was Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, seasoned veteran of carrier ops in the Pacific war up to that point, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, although he was not present at Coral Sea, so Midway was to be his first Carrier Battle.

The plan was for his aircraft to attack Midway island in one massive strike, ideally destroying the base's airpower, and then have his reserve aircraft be already armed with anti-ship ordinance (Torpedoes and armor piercing bombs) for when the US fleet eventually showed up. Of course none of the Japanese knew that the US carriers were already in position when that airstrike was launched, due to successful codebreaking that gave Nimitz early warning of the operation.

Land based scouts had found Nagumo's fleet at roughly the same time as his airstrike was on it's way to Midway. So Midway Island launched every attack plane and bomber it had at Nagumo's carriers, with the fighters staying behind to protect the base.

When the Japanese attacked Midway, the US Fighters were overwhelmed and the base was hit hard, but not knocked out. Then Midway's aircraft attacked Nagumo. None scored a single hit, but it was more than enough to convince Nagumo that Midway needed to be attacked again. Nagumo ordered his reserve aircraft to be armed with ordinance for use against Midway.

Then, while this was happening, one of Nagumo's scouts reported US ships off to the west. While it would take some time to confirm the presence of US carriers, clearly the US navy was where it wasn't supposed to be.

Here was "Nagumo's Dilemma": Without confirmed US carriers, does he ignore these ships and continue arming for an attack on midway, or does he reverse the rearmament order to attack the US ships as soon as he can?

Nagumo ultimately made the decision to wait for the Midway Strike force to return and land, and while that was happening, he would reverse the rearmament order to get torpedoes and armor piercing bombs onto his reserve planes. Nagumo, correctly, judged that the US Fleet was likely the more important target than Midway island, which had already been hit once.

It was during this process that the US carrier planes made their famous attacks. The torpedo planes, while failing to cause any damage, delayed aircraft launches and threw the Japanese CAP off balance, which paved the way for the decisive dive bomber attacks from Enterprise and Yorktown.

Nagumo could not have recovered from those dive bomber attacks, effectively losing 3 of his four carriers in a matter of minutes.

Nagumo's decisions can be debated, but it is the dilemma he faced that is the important lesson. Carrier ops take time, in some ways more time than land based air ops, so the commander must make wise use of his aircraft and be fully aware the capabilities of not only his aircraft, but his aircrews in preparing and recovering the aircraft.


I do not have specific pieces of advice to give you regarding modern carrier ops, but I can advise that learning about the Five Carrier Battles will give you some ideas and lessons, both of what not to do and what to do, that you may be successful in your Carrier Vs Carrier engagements.

[AveFerrum]

Abstractly speaking, if two identical carrier groups engage eachother, it basically becomes a game of chess. Very positional and tactical. If they're not identical it would be all about playing to the own group's strengths and targeting the enemy's weakness.

[Cavin]

@Half Life Expert

I just wanted to thank you for your very detailed reply