shrinking USN carrier air wings

[AegisFC]

Any USN aircraft carrier not named:

Lexington
Hornet
Enterprise
Langley
Independence
Constellation
Saratoga
Wasp
Midway
America
Ranger
Intrepid

Needs to be renamed IMO.

I have long believed the US Navy should rotate those 12 names for big deck carriers.

You forgot Oriskany!

 

[AegisFC]

Only if all goes well and the $$$ are there for them! If they didn't go "all nuclear", it would be possible to have 2x as many CVs and their AWs as CVNs with their AWs, for

This has been debated to death and is pretty much a dead horse, the USN likes its CVN's and feels that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Oh and I've been unable to find any information that says the USN only plans on procuring 3 Ford class ships, everything I've seen only mentioning the funding and planning for the first 3.

By 2023, the USN will be down to just 9 CVNs if CVNs 78 & 79 aren't comissioned yet, and the older ones are retired [/quote]

That information is very out of date, it is from FAS (which is usually suspect) and is dated 1998.

Forward deploying 2 more CVNs in Guam and/or HI would increase their time on station, when they aren't undergoing refits. Those in the Atlantic would take longer to get to the W.Pac.

Japan has agreed to let the George Washington be forward deployed out of Yokosuka. Guam and Hawaii are not getting nuclear carriers for the same reason why Mayport isn't getting one, the facilities and base upgrades to handle nuclear ships would cost too much for minimum benefit, besides the USN would have trouble finding crews willing to go to Guam of all places for one carrier let alone 2.

Speaking of ASW and tankers, C-130Js could be adopted for both (there are already CG MPA & tanker versions in the USMC),

The USN already has P-3 and soon it will have P-8 both of which have much longer loiter time and can carry more weapons (torpedoes and Harpoons) than the C-130.

and it can be made into a seaplane, as well as land on & takeoff the flight deck!

That is a neat trick and all but when the C-130 was on the deck all flight activity had to stop, no planes could take off or land while the C-130 was on board.

 

[battlensign]

You forgot Oriskany!

What about Yorktown? Essex?

 

[weasel1962]

Re:

Deleted

 

[Sea Toby]

Reading these CBO reports is like reading science fiction. While the reports are interesting with projected inflation figures, they are still projected. No one really knows what future costs will be. No one really knows what future ship designs will be. No one really knows what state the future economy will be. We do know its more likely that Congress will eventually cut the programs in the next 30 years than it is likely these programs will be fully funded. Any time a ship last longer than its expected life or doesn't last its expected life will screw these figures up considerably.

Notice how the graphs shows considerable sawtooth waves. In the future its most likely we will see much less sawtooth waves, the waves will be much more flat. The question remains whether that wave will be higher or lower. And the answer is what will be the state of the economy at that time in the future. While we expect a 313 fleet navy, it could just as easily end up at 270 ships.

While its good science fiction, it is a good read.

 

[AegisFC]

What about Yorktown? Essex?

Essex is an LHD and Yorktown is currently held by a decommissioned Ticonderoga and I wouldn't expect to see another Yorktown in commission for a long time.

 

[Firehorse]

This has been debated to death and is pretty much a dead horse, the USN likes its CVN's and feels that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Japan has agreed to let the George Washington be forward deployed out of Yokosuka. Guam and Hawaii are not getting nuclear carriers for the same reason why Mayport isn't getting one, the facilities and base upgrades to handle nuclear ships would cost too much for minimum benefit, besides the USN would have trouble finding crews willing to go to Guam of all places for one carrier let alone 2. The USN already has P-3 and soon it will have P-8 both of which have much longer loiter time and can carry more weapons (torpedoes and Harpoons) than the C-130. That is a neat trick and all but when the C-130 was on the deck all flight activity had to stop, no planes could take off or land while the C-130 was on board.

Well, they don't have to like CVs, but if they are to have enough carriers they better start building them again! BTW, Guam & HI already host SSNs. When a few years ago San Diego was going to get more CVNs homeported there, some were against that, but that area also had SSN base at Point Loma for years. I suspect that Guam and HI just don't have a powerful enough lobby to get CVNs stationed there. When Navy sailors get orders, they must go wherever their ships are going or homeported. That's why it's called "sea duty". Making accomodations for their dependants is important, but is a secondary issue.
MPA that they have and will get- P-3s & P-8s, as well as USMC/AF tankers are all land-based and therefore can be easily interdicted. That's why I don't think "more weapons carried" is going to make much of a difference for them or their enemies. During UNREPs, for safety reasons, no take-offs and landings are done on CV/CVNs. The aviation fuel and other cargo can be delivered by seaplanes and/or baseline C-130s faster, safer, and with less flight deck down time!

 

[gf0012-aust]

During UNREPs, for safety reasons, no take-offs and landings are done on CV/CVNs. The aviation fuel and other cargo can be delivered by seaplanes and/or baseline C-130s faster, safer, and with less flight deck down time!.

I think its important that you look at the history of seaplane development rather than present sound bites of info that you've come across and then try to present it as a cohesive argument.

There are some very clear reasons as to why seaplanes went the way of the dodo. Its got nothing to do with technological aversion by some of the professionals in here that you seem to think have not considered the arguments.

These people (AegisFC, RickUSN etc....) have functional operational history that is based on lessons learned. Selective scraping of information from multiple sources without a background knowledge can be a dangerous exercise - you need to understand the basics.

 

[Firehorse]

I may not know all there is to know, but IMO they put all their eggs in 1 basket by sticking with carrier and land-based aviation. I've also read that the CV lobby killed seaplanes to get all the funding. The proposed Pelican

..would operate from a runway with 76 retractable wheels although the dual concept of a water landing craft is on the agenda.

 

[AegisFC]

Well, they don't have to like CVs, but if they are to have enough carriers they better start building them again! BTW, Guam & HI already host SSNs.

Their are major engineering plant and reactor differences between SSN and CVN's, that doesn't take into account facilities for catapult, arrestor wire and other flight deck gear maintenance, none of that stuff is cheap and Guam and Hawaii can't dry dock a carrier either.

When Navy sailors get orders, they must go wherever their their ships are going or homeported. That's why it's called "sea duty". Making accomodations for their dependants is important, but is a secondary issue.

You don't know how the Navy does its order selection process. We look at available orders from a website and pick and negotiate from that list, undesirable duty locations (like Guam) require incentive pay or other perks, that is no big deal for something like the submarines stationed their since they don't require much in terms of crew but carriers require a massive amount of crew that require massive amounts of shore side support.

MPA that they have and will get- P-3s & P-8s, as well as USMC/AF tankers are all land-based and therefore can be easily interdicted. That's why I don't think "more weapons carried" is going to make much of a difference for them or their enemies.

That doesn't hold any water, MPA aircraft won't operate alone and unsupported, their will be friendly fighters and AEW in the area in addition to friendly AAW ships. A P-3 or other good long endurance MPA is much more effective than any helo.

During UNREPs, for safety reasons, no take-offs and landings are done on CV/CVNs. The aviation fuel and other cargo can be delivered by seaplanes and/or baseline C-130s faster, safer, and with less flight deck down time!.

And what happens when that C-130 breaks? It is stuck on the flight deck until fixed and that means the carrier can't do its job until that plane is off the deck one way or another.
It does not take that long for a carrier to do an UNREP and I'd bet money that it would take less time to do a traditional UNREP and VERTREP than it would to do your idea, cheaper as well.

 

[kato]

The aviation fuel and other cargo can be delivered by [...] baseline C-130s faster, safer, and with less flight deck down time!

You do realize you're talking about up to 100 C-130 loads replacing a possible single UNREP procedure? And that's just for fuel.

 

[gf0012-aust]

I may not know all there is to know, but IMO they put all their eggs in 1 basket by sticking with carrier and land-based aviation. I've also read that the CV lobby killed seaplanes to get all the funding. The proposed Pelican

Huh? The CV lobby struggled under Adm Townshend to even get established due to the likes of LeMay. It resulted in a revolt by all the Admirals in the late 40's. It also resulted in the USAF being formed as a byproduct from the USAAF.

Seaplanes were owned by the Navy and USAAF, the USAF (when it was established) didn't want them as it didn't see them as "real aircraft". LeMay thought that the USN could be disbanded completely now that they had atomic weapons and intercontinental bombers. On every account he was wrong.

The USN abandoned sea planes because they could not perform the requirements that supported a blue water navy - it had nothing to do with the threat to carrier funding.

You need to look at actual history and look at the actual players involved (LeMay, Eisenhower, Stennis, Forrestal etc...) The actual history is much more useful than hair brained theories that might have been scraped from the internet somewhere....

Bottom line, seaplanes are not a platform de majeur because they cannot fulfill the meaningful roles required to support an intertheatre capable bluw water navy in its likely area of operations. This is also a Navy that has access to over 136 countries in either land based airport facilities or shipping ports. It's an idiotic luxury that doesn't measure up to reality and fails every process of logistical dissection

 

[Firehorse]

They better not take access to other countries for granted! Turkey, a NATO ally, has denied it recently, and allowed it to FSU many times during the Cold War! If they are good for Chinese, Japanese, and Russians, I wonder what makes the USN so exceptional when it comes to seaplanes?

If the status quo perpetuates, the Navy will replace its limited P-3C land-based patrol aircraft with yet another runway-dependant patrol plane adopted from a civilian airliner. Is this a "vision" that advances the state of maritime operations?
Hardly.
The earth is 100% covered by air and on the surface 75% by water yet we don't act like it, do we? When the time comes to replace our worn-out platforms we must obtain new capabilities to better patrol the earth, and slapping in electronic gadgets doesn't count, you can do this into most anything. Clearly at the dawn of the jet age the U.S. Navy had lost its way and now at the dawn of the 21st century fallen into irrelevance. We have forgotten the words of courageous Commander Liebhauser who in a prescient article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings "Capital Ship for an Air Navy", (Vol. 83 September 1957 - No. 9 - Pages 961 through 969) reminded us of the tremendous potential for seaplanes in our Navy.[1] The reason is we have forgotten about the physical in favor of the mental. When we do "physical" its overly large, costly and cumbersome. Instead of physically adapting to the sea, we have worked around our weakness by giving land planes an artificial land runway on huge aircraft carriers or tried to make high endurance civilian airliners into combat planes. This is the exact same mistake the Germans made in WWII with their flimsy FW 200 Condor aircraft which never controlled the low-level air battle space over the water like we did. [2] The new Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) is about to repeat the mistake a second time for the post-WWII U.S. Navy by selecting yet another weak civilian airliner as a quasi-mount for military maritime patrolling.[3] How did we win the sea lanes in WWII? Not with civilian airliners.
We did it with military, combat seaplanes.
Jet SeaPlanes are the answer to 21st century MMA Requirements
The seaplane can land on water and be refueled and re-armed by ships and not need to flee back to an aircraft carrier or land base. In our discussion here we define "seaplane" as ANY aircraft that can land on water be it floats, skis, air cushions or a boat shape hull. What I am not going to do is marginalize and disparage seaplanes with water landing hulls as "flying boats"; a clever semantical tactic of the foes of amphibious combat aircraft. Any airplane that can land on the sea is a seaplane, PERIOD. So while the Germans struggled to provide land based aircraft cover to self-protect their U-Boats which needed to surface to run their diesel engines to recharge their batteries, we were fanning out all over the oceans in search of prey with our PBY Catalina "Black Cat" and other type seaplanes. [4] The seaplane can listen for submarines while in the water and not have to spit out a limited number of expensive sonobuoys. If the Seaplane is damaged by combat action, its crew is not lost but can float in the water, be retrieved and repaired to return to duty. The seaplane rescues other pilots and seamen from sunk ships. These things do happen in war. Our Navy if its to contribute to the global war on terrorism needs self-reliant jet seaplanes to patrol the oceans and when needed land and be an impromptu patrol boat to board/inspect and yes--raid vessels smuggling terrorists and their weaponry. The Patrol Navy can no longer afford to remain stand-offish to what's going on in the water or fly overhead as the enemy knows we can't stop what they are doing on the surface.
The first and oft-heard baloney about seaplanes is that if they use boat hulls their aerodynamic performance is severely handicapped to the point that they are disqualified from further consideration as an USN patrol means. This is patently false; the P6M Seamaster jet patrol bomber in 1960 flew over 600 mph which is faster than today's B-52 heavy land-based bombers still in use by our Air Force.[5] The R3Y Tradewind turboprop seaplane transport still holds the prop seaplane speed record of 403 mph--this is faster than the USAF's new C-130J Hercules with propfans which can do 400 mph.[6] The point is that at the dawn of the jet age just when we had figured out how to make seaplanes just as--if not faster than land planes--"we gave up the ghost", for I suspect purely parochial bureaucratic reasons. The faulty engines on the Tradewind aircraft were replaceable, and the design of the Seamaster was well on the way to perfection as the Russians have operated fast jet seaplane patrol bombers for years to our everlasting shame. The real reason was/is the Navy brass were threatened by seaplanes and decided not to do them anymore. True, you don't receive flag rank commanding a seaplane, but you could if you commanded a large grouping of seaplane jets. The narcissistic "career path" is there if we want it. America does not need and can ill afford to subsidize anything but the very best and most efficient means possible for her military and its time the Navy patrol community get back into the genuine maritime patrol business which requires seaplanes.
Moot point: Seaplanes with wheels land on runways, too
The next straw-man objection to seaplanes is the myth that they are limited to the water; open up almost any WWII naval aviation book and you will see PBY Catalina flying boats with regular wheeled landing gear sitting on the tar mac on naval bases after landing on runways like land based planes.
The Corrosion Non-Problem
The next excuse used to dismiss seaplanes is the whine that its "too hard to maintain them in sea water from corrosion, blah, blah, blah". So what does the 5,000 sailors do to the Nimitz class aircraft carrier? They fight corrosion in a daily and labor-intensive costly basis. So we can and should do the same for 100 seaplane jet patrol bomber MMAs at far less cost than a 5,000 man Nimitz class carrier with just 48 attack planes. Have I spit on someone's sacred cow to remind us of honest reality? When we talk of MMA we need them regardless of what we do with our supercarriers, anyway. But the MMA must be a seaplane jet to render new capabilities to return our Navy and marines to relevancy and we will not forget the forest among the trees here. Corrosion on a relatively small seaplane that spends most of its time in the air is less of a problem than corrosion on a 85,000 ton super carrier that constantly sits in sea water 24/7/365. The Beriev Be-12 has been in use for over 4 decades since 1960--the year we gave up on the P-6M. When taken apart recently they found NO CORROSION inside. Berievs are well-built.
The final excuse: "we don't do seaplanes, anymore" falls
The status quo apologists final card is to admit that seaplanes are indeed superior, but in the same breath say that "none are available" so we have to use their conservative and visionless land-based aircraft means. It is true, U.S. aircraft manufacturers no longer make large seaplanes. But the Russians and several other countries still do. There is no reason why the 470 mph+ Russian Beriev A40 jet seaplane patrol bomber couldn't be fitted with more powerful and fuel miserly U.S. turbofan engines and the same MMA electronics MENTAL packages as the Lockheed-Martin P-3 Orion 21 and Boeing warmed-over 737 airliner have, at the same time creating, new unprecedented maritime mission PHYSICAL capabilities because it can land on water. There is nothing stopping the A40 design being built at Boeing or at a Lockheed-Martin plant, to get our "feet wet" again with advanced seaplanes. The A40 carries more weaponry/payload, and has greater range than either the Orion 21 or 737 MMA. The A40 is much faster than the Orion 21 and only 55 km/hour slower than the 737 MMA: not bad for a seaplane that is assumed to be aerodynamically inferior.[7]
When we are not at war: saving human lives is good PR for the Navy
Most of the world fortunately is not directly engaged in the global war against sub-national terrorists. However, boats and ships are still in peril in the seas, and need more than a Coast Guard C-130 to fly over and drop a raft and a promise "help is on its way". No one talks about the number of people who have died who could have been saved had it been a seaplane that spotted the survivors clinging to body heat in the water and had landed immediately to get them out of harm's way.[8] We don't talk about this because we are unprofessional and self-serving to the our comfortable status quo. Real professionals don't smugly sit on their laurels and means given to them by their betters in the past, they constantly seek to do better, to find faults and correct them, they take chances, they try new things, BECAUSE THEY GIVE A DAMN ABOUT PEOPLE. The status quo is never good enough so long as one person has to die needlessly one second before they have to.
If our navy were to adopt a MMA jet seaplane we could as needed, pitch in and land on the water to save lives that are now being lost in our current land plane finds, wait-for-helicopters-and-surface-ships-to-come-later approach. MMA seaplane jets can land and refuel from surface ships and stay on station longer to cover a larger search area faster to find what we are looking for be it survivors, enemy subs, surface combatants. If the waters are too choppy to land, the A40 MMA jet seaplane crew drops a lifeboat with a Fulton Surface-To-Air II (STAR II) "SkyHook" kit, and possibly a combat rescue swimmer by parachute to assist. The MMA jet seaplane snags the tethered balloon and "snatches" up to 6 people, and reels them inside.
New Seaplane Jet MMA Patrol Paradigms
The jet seaplane MMA could carry a small Zodiac F470 rubber boat with outboard motor and armed special boat team(s) to board/inspect suspicious boats/ships that might house terrorists. SEALs in this manner could be the entire mission payload as the A40 MMA seaplane flies overhead with guns/rockets/missiles providing air cover after dropping off the boarding party boat teams.
A40 MMA jet seaplanes can carry large bomb loads to support special operations forces inland looking for hidden sub-national terror groups freeing up large aircraft carriers and reducing American presence which inflames locals. The A40 MMA jet seaplane's bombloads are twice that of a F/A-18 Hornet and with far greater range.
When patrolling for submarines, the A40 MMA seaplane can set down in the water and use dipping sonar instead of using up its limited supply of costly sonobuoys, providing better and farther reaching ASW capability for our Navy. When a rogue diesel-electric submarine is spotted, the A40 MMA jet seaplane can attack/destroy it with homing torpedoes and depth charges. Everything a P-3C Orion, Orion 21 or 737 MMA can do, a jet A40 MMA seaplane can do better.
A variant of the A40 MMA could have its nose open like the Tradewind seaplane transport did to offload SEAL boat teams faster or even Army or marine troops in ocean-going M113A4 Amphigavin light tracked armored fighting vehicles with ARIS SPA waterjets and nose sections.[9] Who says forces can only come ashore from large, expensive and vulnerable ships packed full of men for 6 months at a time?
Synergism means over-lapping capabilities
The current egocentric mentality that everyone protects their own role & mission has resulted in Navy/marine irrelevancy on the non-linear battlefield full of enemies who know to stay far inland and be intermingled with civilians and difficult, closed terrain. The Navy's P-3Cs have only gotten action over Iraq due to Army/Air Force foolishness to retire OV-1, OV-10 manned observation/attack aircraft and over-rely on non-existent Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). Now our Orions are worn out and need replacing.[10] The marines only get action due to our small 10-division Army being exhausted by back-to-back deployments. With everyone staying-in-their-lane, gaps in coverage are readily apparent and our enemies are exploiting them. THE EARTH IS STILL A VERY LARGE PLACE. True "jointness" means sharing the glory and mission areas so there are more coverage and overlaps, anything less and the enemy will continue to get away and be able to strike homeland America with potentially a city-wiping out WMD attack. Its high time our Navy embrace jet seaplanes for the MMA and start providing new and urgently needed air/sea/land capabilities; its time to set a new course and steer away from the current course taking us towards the rocks of irrelevance and mission failure. America expects us to come through with the needed punch.
http://www.geocities.com/usarmyairforceaviationjournal/july2004.htm

These large, high-performance aircraft will give the Navy a long range striking force in a separate sphere from that of the aircraft carrier striking force. The carrier task force obtains and maintains local air superiority and concentrated attack with the use of a large number of relatively small aircraft from a highly mobile and self-contained base; the Seaplane striking force can concentrate a heavy attacking force from widely dispersed bases, or provide single units on widely scattered missions. Thus one form of naval air power support and complements the other, with neither needing to fix the position of its base of operations any longer then the operational commander desires.
Farther in the future is the aerial navy, adhering to all the well-established principles of naval warfare, employing the air oceans as a traveling medium, the water oceans as a base, and the unparalleled ability of water logistics in support, which can control the seas, the air above the seas, and the land boundaries of those seas. The tactical unit around which its striking power centers is the large Seaplane, a true naval unit and a capital ship in its own right. http://www.combatreform2.com/seaplanetransports.htm

 

[gf0012-aust]

Can you refrain from cutting slabs of info just to make it look as though you have a supporting argument?

Pay attention to what has been said,. Cut and paste does not constitute comprehension.

Have a look at the world map and start mapping all the countries where the US has landing and access rights or partnering agreements. Or. look at the countries you have just mentioned and identify where the US has immediate access to neighbouring states.

Then look at US military force deployment autonomy - and more importantly look at their logistics reach.

Cutting and pasting slabs of information that is irrelevant to the debate dioes not make you appear knowledgable. You've already quoted systems and functions out of context, so it would pay for you to pause and start to understand concepts before automatically replying.

This is getting rather tedious. There are people in here who are trying to help, if you can't make the effort to look and learn then you are destined to be an internet warrior rather than someone seeking information that is based on outcomes and not on theory or hair brained logic.

 

[AegisFC]

They better not take access to other countries for granted! Turkey, a NATO ally, has denied it recently, and allowed it to FSU many times during the Cold War! If they are good for Chinese, Japanese, and Russians, I wonder what makes the USN so exceptional when it comes to seaplanes?

Those countries are the exceptions and the article you posted has a LOT of holes in it, the Tradewind had a lot of problems and the USN only kept it around for a couple years, yes at one point the USN planned a fleet of flying boat bombers, transports and even fighters but those concepts did not work out and a lot of money was wasted on development of those planes, it wasn't a conspiracy from the carrier admirals.
One clue that that article is rubbish is when it mentions "The seaplane can listen for submarines while in the water and not have to spit out a limited number of expensive sonobuoys", sonar bouys are NOT expensive they are designed to be disposable and can be spread out over a large area and cover much more than a single plane landing to listen with a very small hull mounted sonar that doesn't put out much power (how big of a hull mounted sonar do you think that plan can carry compared to a warship?).

 

[Firehorse]

OK, we have access to a bunch of strategicaly placed ports, bases, etc. But when mortars flew over the bow of USN ship in Aqaba, Jordan, that access wasn't that long!

 

[Sea Toby]

You seem to forget the lessons of anti-submarine warfare. Read about the battle for the North Atlantic during World War II. Most of the German submarine activity happened there because that was not only their hunting grounds, it was also where the most of the shipping traffic was. On top of the fact that their submarine's range limited them to the North Atlantic.

Today, I am willing to admit that there is a lot more shipping traffic to Asia and the Middle East. But we have access to ports practically world wide. However, the key to anti-submarine warfare is to hit the enemy near the funnel of their home bases. During much of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, that was at the Greenland, Iceland, and United Kingdom gap.

Not only did we place below the surface sonars, SOCUS, we even built TAGOS ships manned with civilians to tow sonars below the surface. With nuclear propulsion submarines have unlimited range today. Destroyers and frigates would sail hundreds of miles out of their way to track Soviet submarines during the Cold War.

We had Orions in the air from land bases. We had destroyers and frigates, and civilian manned ships listening to their sonars. We had ship based helicopters dropping cheap sonar buoys. Helicopters also used their dipping sonars.

Don't you think the US Navy knows how to wage anti-submarine warfare by now? The PBYs were replaced by Orions, Vikings, and ASW helicopters.

 

[Jon K]

Then look at US military force deployment autonomy - and more importantly look at their logistics reach..

Well, according to some studies seaplanes might have their place as a part of seabase concept supporting expeditionary warfare. From layman's point of view in light of experiences of such missions as Falklands or a potential mission to Central Africa an amphibious plane might be very useful.

Of course, whether development of suitable seaplanes for those duties would be cost-effective or not depends upon number of congressmen working for states where the seaplanes might be developed and manufactured.

As for replacing UNREP with seaplanes, that would probably require a lot of congressmen to fund the concept.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Well, according to some studies seaplanes might have their place as a part of seabase concept supporting expeditionary warfare. From layman's point of view in light of experiences of such missions as Falklands or a potential mission to Central Africa an amphibious plane might be very useful.

Seaplanes in a niche discretionary role? Perhaps.

As articulated in here, and wrt Squadron levels of force development? No, and the arfguments aren't sustainable or look at logistical impact or operational realities.

The technical benefits as presented in those articles clearly show someone not versed in ASW fundamentals etc......

 

[Salty Dog]

You seem to forget the lessons of anti-submarine warfare. Read about the battle for the North Atlantic during World War II. Most of the German submarine activity happened there because that was not only their hunting grounds, it was also where the most of the shipping traffic was. On top of the fact that their submarine's range limited them to the North Atlantic.

Today, I am willing to admit that there is a lot more shipping traffic to Asia and the Middle East. But we have access to ports practically world wide. However, the key to anti-submarine warfare is to hit the enemy near the funnel of their home bases. During much of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, that was at the Greenland, Iceland, and United Kingdom gap.

Not only did we place below the surface sonars, SOCUS, we even built TAGOS ships manned with civilians to tow sonars below the surface. With nuclear propulsion submarines have unlimited range today. Destroyers and frigates would sail hundreds of miles out of their way to track Soviet submarines during the Cold War.

We had Orions in the air from land bases. We had destroyers and frigates, and civilian manned ships listening to their sonars. We had ship based helicopters dropping cheap sonar buoys. Helicopters also used their dipping sonars.

Don't you think the US Navy knows how to wage anti-submarine warfare by now? The PBYs were replaced by Orions, Vikings, and ASW helicopters.

Well put mate. No navy will go the amphibian route. It's an un-necessary cost to support a new system with missions already performed adequately by existing systems.

Commercial aviation has very limited use for amphibians except for island hopping or water bombers (fire fighting). Just as the glory days of the Pan Am Clippers have long ended, so too are those of the PBYs.