"The U.S. Navy’s Forgotten Great Lakes Aircraft Carriers" Topic

"ALTHOUGH THE UNITED STATES commissioned a staggering 151 aircraft carriers during World War Two, it's safe to say that none were as strange as the USS Wolverine and her sister ship the USS Sable.

Not only were the two flattops the only American wartime carriers powered by coal (most naval vessels of the era ran on fuel oil), both served their entire military careers on Lake Michigan – more than 2,000 miles from the Pacific!

And while these freshwater fighting ships faced no enemy and fired no shots in anger, they were invaluable to the American war effort. Both vessels prepared thousands of naval aviators for the dangerous job of landing planes on pitching and rolling flight decks at sea. And it was squadrons of these same naval aviators that helped turn the tide against the Axis.

Yet despite their importance, the Wolverine and Sable have become little more than two curious footnotes to the larger history of the Second World War. Here's their story…"
More here
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Amicalement
Armand

Now that was interesting! I did my naval training at Great Lakes and I still had never heard of the Cornbelt Fleet.

Very nice find Armand!

Ah my favourite, Project Habbakuk

link

Pyke conceived the idea of Habbakuk while he was in the United States organising the production of M29 Weasels for Project Plough, a scheme to assemble an elite unit for winter operations in Norway, Romania and the Italian Alps.[1] He had been considering the problem of how to protect seaborne landings and Atlantic convoys out of reach of aircraft cover. The problem was that steel and aluminium were in short supply, and were required for other purposes. Pyke realized that the answer was ice, which could be manufactured for only 1 percent of the energy needed to make an equivalent mass of steel. He proposed that an iceberg, natural or artificial, be levelled to provide a runway and hollowed out to shelter aircraft.

One of the 'secret weapons' that gave the US an edge during the war.

-Will

Happy you like it my good friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Coal fired, side paddlewheel propulsion air craft carriers – would make great prototypes for VSF naval ships.

Saw a show on PBS that included these carriers. The just of the show was recovery of some of the crashed aircraft and there restoration.

I have models for these in my Imagi-Nation called Freeland.