Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 090" video.

  1. wrt saving Hornet. The only thing that could have been done to Hornet after the battle, would be if they had some large collision mats premade to lash over the holes in the engine room. That might control the flooding, but I wouldn't want to be in the engine room, if they try to make any speed, with nothing but the collision mat between me and the ocean From my reading of the Friedman carrier book, the Yorktowns had a fatal flaw in the design, all the boilers were grouped together, and all the turbines were grouped together. They could take a real beating, anywhere but in the boiler and engine rooms. Hornet was hit in the engine room, twice, leaving her dead in the water and unable to exit the area. The design flaw was corrected in the Essex, where boiler rooms and engine rooms were staggered, so a hit in one engine room would not leave the ship dead in the water. I don't know why such an obvious vulnerability was designed in to the Yorktowns, unless it was the same reason an entire list of vulnerabilities were designed into Wasp: to save weight. Prior to the second London treaty, the tonnage limit on carriers was 27,000. The Yorktowns only displaced 20,000. The tonnage that had been "saved" to build Wasp could have been divided between Yorktown and Enterprise to make them both 27,000 ton carriers as robust as the Essex. Hornet was built after the second London treaty collapsed, so could be built to the same 27,000 ton design.
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