NO Need To Buy HOI 3.....Get Arsenal of Democracy Instead

[Neil]

Carriers are more important. They're quite useless and always get themselves blown up in vanilla

Yeah I had this big battle against the Americans and I lost FOUR CARRIERS as the Japanese.  Like that could ever happen in real life.

Were those 4 carriers fighting a group of destroyers and submarines?
As that happens...

A group of submarines and destroyers would annihilate any four carriers I can think of, if they were in range.

[Ideologue]

Subs stealing carrier kills is fine and good--Ark Royal, Shinano, Saratoga (iirc), and so forth.  But DDs or other surface combatants should rarely be in a position to strike at a carrier.  I can only think of one time that's ever happened, at Samar, when CVE Gambier Bay was sunk and the rest of Taffy 3 heavily damaged.

Has there been another instance of a carrier being sunk or heavily damaged by anything other than aircraft or opportunistic submarines?

[Viking]

Subs stealing carrier kills is fine and good--Ark Royal, Shinano, Saratoga (iirc), and so forth.  But DDs or other surface combatants should rarely be in a position to strike at a carrier.  I can only think of one time that's ever happened, at Samar, when CVE Gambier Bay was sunk and the rest of Taffy 3 heavily damaged.

Has there been another instance of a carrier being sunk or heavily damaged by anything other than aircraft or opportunistic submarines?

Not quite Neil's BBs but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are either Heavy Cruisers or Battle Cruisers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glorious_%2877%29

Glorious was part of a troop convoy headed for Scapa Flow, also including the carrier Ark Royal, but in the early hours of 8 June Glorious requested and was granted permission to proceed independently, and at a faster speed. It is believed this was because D'Oyly-Hughes was impatient to hold a court-martial of his Commander (Air), J. B. Heath, who had refused an order to attack certain shore targets on the grounds that his aircraft were unsuited to the task, and had therefore been left behind in Scapa to await trial.[1] While sailing through the Norwegian Sea, the carrier and her two escorts, the destroyers HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent, were intercepted by the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The carrier and her escorts were sunk in two hours, roughly 280 nautical miles (510 km) west of Harstad,

[Tamas]

Not quite Neil's BBs but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are either Heavy Cruisers or Battle Cruisers.

Don't start it again, please.

[Josquius]

A group of submarines and destroyers would annihilate any four carriers I can think of, if they were in range.

Range is all important and its I think where carriers fail in the game. They seem to just go storming forward to meet the enemy shooting at it with their deck guns.

[Valmy]

A group of submarines and destroyers would annihilate any four carriers I can think of, if they were in range.

My point was that carriers were in fact very fragile and vulnerable things.  That is why the US and Japanese were so obsessed with protecting them.

[Valmy]

Subs stealing carrier kills is fine and good--Ark Royal, Shinano, Saratoga (iirc), and so forth.  But DDs or other surface combatants should rarely be in a position to strike at a carrier.  I can only think of one time that's ever happened, at Samar, when CVE Gambier Bay was sunk and the rest of Taffy 3 heavily damaged.

Has there been another instance of a carrier being sunk or heavily damaged by anything other than aircraft or opportunistic submarines?

Well it would require the carrier to be out alone without escorts and with its planes distracted elsewhere...

[Viking]

Subs stealing carrier kills is fine and good--Ark Royal, Shinano, Saratoga (iirc), and so forth.  But DDs or other surface combatants should rarely be in a position to strike at a carrier.  I can only think of one time that's ever happened, at Samar, when CVE Gambier Bay was sunk and the rest of Taffy 3 heavily damaged.

Has there been another instance of a carrier being sunk or heavily damaged by anything other than aircraft or opportunistic submarines?

Well it would require the carrier to be out alone without escorts and with its planes distracted elsewhere...

The Glorious was ambushed and sunk by two Battle Cruisers hiding in a fjord.

[Neil]

Subs stealing carrier kills is fine and good--Ark Royal, Shinano, Saratoga (iirc), and so forth.  But DDs or other surface combatants should rarely be in a position to strike at a carrier.  I can only think of one time that's ever happened, at Samar, when CVE Gambier Bay was sunk and the rest of Taffy 3 heavily damaged.

Has there been another instance of a carrier being sunk or heavily damaged by anything other than aircraft or opportunistic submarines?

Not quite Neil's BBs but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are either Heavy Cruisers or Battle Cruisers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glorious_%2877%29

Glorious was part of a troop convoy headed for Scapa Flow, also including the carrier Ark Royal, but in the early hours of 8 June Glorious requested and was granted permission to proceed independently, and at a faster speed. It is believed this was because D'Oyly-Hughes was impatient to hold a court-martial of his Commander (Air), J. B. Heath, who had refused an order to attack certain shore targets on the grounds that his aircraft were unsuited to the task, and had therefore been left behind in Scapa to await trial.[1] While sailing through the Norwegian Sea, the carrier and her two escorts, the destroyers HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent, were intercepted by the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The carrier and her escorts were sunk in two hours, roughly 280 nautical miles (510 km) west of Harstad,

I think it is safe to call Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battleships.  They were properly armoured, and clearly intended to be surface combattants.

[grumbler]

The Glorious was ambushed and sunk by two Battle Cruisers hiding in a fjord.

  I love how history gets all mashed together until the Germans were hiding in a fjord!

Gniesenau and Scharnhorst rode down Glorious in poor weather with Glorious's deck crammed with extra fighters evacuated from the Narvik campaign.

In clear weather, this wouldn't have happened, but no one can guarantee the weather.

[Berkut]

I thought the Brits were supposed to be good at the naval warfare thing.

[saskganesh]

Their success depends on how they simulate naval warfare.

Indeed.  Especially dreadnoughts.

Carriers are more important. They're quite useless and always get themselves blown up in vanilla

By dreadnoughts.

that's like, beautiful

[Neil]

The Glorious was ambushed and sunk by two Battle Cruisers hiding in a fjord.

  I love how history gets all mashed together until the Germans were hiding in a fjord!

Gniesenau and Scharnhorst rode down Glorious in poor weather with Glorious's deck crammed with extra fighters evacuated from the Narvik campaign.

In clear weather, this wouldn't have happened, but no one can guarantee the weather.

It also wouldn't have happened if the British had spared a single R-class battleship to escort the Glorious.  Despite the theoretical superiority of the two German ships, they were risk-averse.

[The Minsky Moment]

A group of submarines and destroyers would annihilate any four carriers I can think of, if they were in range.

My point was that carriers were in fact very fragile and vulnerable things.

They were fragile and vulnerable but mostly vulnerable to opposing air wings.  Though of course a sub can be a danger for anything that floats if it gets lucky.

In the pre-missile era it would take unusual circumstances for a carrier to face significant danger from gun-firing surface combatants.  Assuming vaguely competent handling and appropriate escorts and screening.

[Ideologue]

Subs stealing carrier kills is fine and good--Ark Royal, Shinano, Saratoga (iirc), and so forth.  But DDs or other surface combatants should rarely be in a position to strike at a carrier.  I can only think of one time that's ever happened, at Samar, when CVE Gambier Bay was sunk and the rest of Taffy 3 heavily damaged.

Has there been another instance of a carrier being sunk or heavily damaged by anything other than aircraft or opportunistic submarines?

Not quite Neil's BBs but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are either Heavy Cruisers or Battle Cruisers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glorious_%2877%29

Glorious was part of a troop convoy headed for Scapa Flow, also including the carrier Ark Royal, but in the early hours of 8 June Glorious requested and was granted permission to proceed independently, and at a faster speed. It is believed this was because D'Oyly-Hughes was impatient to hold a court-martial of his Commander (Air), J. B. Heath, who had refused an order to attack certain shore targets on the grounds that his aircraft were unsuited to the task, and had therefore been left behind in Scapa to await trial.[1] While sailing through the Norwegian Sea, the carrier and her two escorts, the destroyers HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent, were intercepted by the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The carrier and her escorts were sunk in two hours, roughly 280 nautical miles (510 km) west of Harstad,

Ah, that's right.  I knew there was one I was forgetting.