Originally Posted by
just another jocky
I'm not lying, nor mistaken....
So as a base, Kandahar operated 7 days a week, with only 1 or 2 detachments stood down per day, leaving all the other dets flying combat ops. Every day. Non-stop.
I wasn't asking if a carrier could conduct combat ops for 7 straight months, merely pointing out that carrying them out for less than 50% of the time was not very efficient when compared to modern land-based operations.
Aaaah! I missed your point. You were comparing land based vs sea based operations. My bad.
May I ask, of those "dets flying combat ops", how many stayed in Kandahar for 7 months at a stretch? My guess is none. How many stayed in Kandahar three months at a stretch? Two months? I really don't know.
If you're going to be in one place for years operating combat aircraft, I agree that a land base is certainly more "efficient" than a carrier. But how long did it take to get the airbase in Kandahar combat ready? Weeks? Months? Years? A carrier can be on station, ready for combat, in days. Now suppose the fight moves elsewhere. An "efficient" base like Kandahar is utterly useless when the war is in Syria. How many bombs did aircraft from Kandahar put on target in Syria? None you say? That's
miserable "efficiency." That's the advantage of a carrier. It goes where the war is, and can arrive at most any hotspot very quickly and ready for combat. If you're going to have a sustained airwar in one place, then by all means, take the time to build a land base there. But that's a pretty big investment that ends up being useless and gets abandoned when the war ends or moves elsewhere.
I agree that my WW2 example was less than ideal. But consider Vietnam and Yankee Station. Despite having "efficient" land bases in South Vietnam and neighboring nations, carriers were called on to support the ongoing sustained airwar against North Vietnam. To compare those days to what
Bush just accomplished, consider that it took THREE carriers to maintain round the clock ops. One was assigned to provide air ops from noon till midnight, a second from midnight till noon, and a third provided additional coverage on an as needed basis during the more effective daylight hours. A single carrier today can generate the same number of sorties it took three carriers to generate and each sortie is much more effective than the Vietnam days. Now, please consider what happened to all those "efficient" land airbases in Southeast Asia when the war ended in 1973. They were lost forever. The carriers by contrast went home and continued to serve into the
next century. The South China Sea is now an international hotspot. How "efficient" is Da Nang airbase in today's US operations in the South China Sea?
Bottom line: there are
many ways to measure "efficiency." Be very careful how you measure.