Lieutenant Commander John A. Collett, U. S. Navy, has submitted the following: Major de Seversky in his book, Victory through Air Power, has stated the case for air power with brilliant clarity. A very great deal of what he says is all too true. The Major, however, has fallen into grievous error when he puts to sea. In his recently published newspaper articles he has attempted to create in the minds of the American public the impression that the aircraft carrier is rapidly becoming obsolete and that land-based aircraft will control the oceans by the time our vast projected aircraft carrier building program can be completed. Nothing that has happened in this war will support such a contention and there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary by those who really know.
The one thing that has proved the most devastating in the sea warfare which has so far occurred is the carrier air groups composed of dive bombers and torpedo planes launched from American aircraft carriers in the Pacific. Previous to the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, Japanese carrier air groups operating in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and against the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse had proved extremely effective, but they have proved no match for their American counterparts. Long-range army bombers used by both the Japanese and the Americans so far in attempting to do high altitude horizontal bombing against maneuvering surface ships in general and against aircraft carriers in particular have met with very indifferent success. This is no reflection on American and Japanese army bombers who .are both brave and skillful but is simply a case of using a weapon for which it was never designed and has never in this war been successfully used. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that high speed maneuverable ships such as aircraft carriers and cruisers can maneuver out from under bombs dropped from high altitude horizontal bombers using even the best bomb sight and the most skillful bombardiers.
The British Navy has virtually controlled the Mediterranean Sea throughout the war using battleships and cruisers with very little air support. (British aircraft carriers haven't so far had the aircraft striking power possessed by their American and Japanese counterparts.) How can they do this when they have operated well within the range of German and Italian long-range, land-based bombers? The reason is simple; long-range army bombers doing high altitude horizontal bombing are not the weapon to gain control of the sea. It may sound like a startling statement, and is meant as no reflection on our gallant allies who have done a magnificent job, but had the American task forces built around aircraft carriers which have operated so successfully in the Pacific been introduced into the Mediterranean against the British Navy as it has there been constituted, they would have swept that ocean clear of British sea power in very short order. It would simply be a case of using the most effective naval weapon against something which was never designed to oppose it. British naval power has operated very successfully against German and Italian air power except in the restricted waters of Crete and Norway but against an enemy using aircraft carrier task forces as the American and Japanese Navies do it would be a very different story indeed.
Why cannot the dive bomber and the torpedo plane then be land-based and thus control the sea without the use of any aircraft carrier? The dive bomber by reason of its very construction is a short-range airplane and there are no long-range dive bombers in the world today. Whether one could be designed is very questionable and if it could it would be so large as to be relatively ineffective. The torpedo plane, to only a slightly less extent, must also be a short-range weapon. While it is perfectly feasible to launch aerial torpedoes from even the largest army bombers and therefore carry them long distances, the large unwieldy plane flying low in a torpedo attack is extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire as well as fighter plane attack.
The newest type American carrier-based torpedo planes operated in large numbers against a single target are a greatly superior weapon by reason of their vastly superior maneuverability and relative smallness. We have then established beyond a reasonable doubt that our most potential aerial weapon against warships is a short-range weapon. Either, then, the enemy fleet must approach close to our shores, as the British aircraft carrier Illustrious did when it was so effectively attacked by German dive bombers, or else we must take our planes to sea on aircraft carriers and attack him in the middle of the ocean as British torpedo planes did to the German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic. If we are to control the supply lines of the world which stretch across vast oceans, we must carry our most effective aerial weapon to the very middle of those oceans.
Major de Seversky states that the carrier airplane by reason of the limitations inherent in its construction must invariably be inferior to the land-based airplane. This is true only for bombing planes and is most decidedly not true of fighter planes. The latest type of Japanese and American carrier-based navy fighter planes are fully a match for the best land-based pursuit planes. The feat of shooting down five large Japanese army land-based bombers by Lieutenant Commander O'Hare in a very few minutes is a pretty good demonstration of the effectiveness of our carrier-based fighters. Japanese Navy carrier- based fighters have held their own with the best allied pursuit planes in northern Australia. I will grant the Major we can't base any flying fortresses on our carriers but I am sure that for our particular aerial problem we would find them not nearly as useful as what we have.
In summation let us put the case this way. Aircraft carriers cannot successfully operate close to shore where they can be attacked in overwhelming numbers by land-based aircraft particularly of the torpedo and dive bombing variety. They din and have operated at moderate distances well within the sphere of long-range army bombers and come off extremely well. Major de Seversky's fundamental thesis that with the increasing range of land-based army bombers aircraft carriers will become obsolete as they are forced to operate within that range will simply not hold water. They are already operating practically with impunity where land-based bombers can and have reached them. As fighter aircraft become more and more effective the carrier will have stronger and stronger aerial protection and the job for the attacking bombers will become harder and harder. Our large carrier building program is sound indeed and will give us complete control of the oceans of the world.