Talk:Johnston/@comment-85.76.32.212-20181227203021/@comment-2605:6001:F460:F00:D8E3:DC8F:8229:C1D8-20181229003935

>The other Essexes took barely scatches compared to what Franklin and Bunker Hill suffered plus somebody commenced to crash Franklin into port after it. Saving them for a later remodel is also a reasonable theory, but I don't remember if it was ever confirmed and they still remodeled seven Essexes which were completed after the war.

On topic of the Essexes completed after the war. The Navy had in fact decommissioned the older Essex class ships that had served in the war. This includes Bunker Hill and Franklin. While the Navy kept those ships completed in 1945 and 1946 commissioned. The one of the few older Essex class to escape a decommisioning during this pre Korean war was surprisingly the Name ship herself. The Essex class who got decommissioned and would be recommissioned would not be active until after the Korean War. Remember the US Navy's budget was slashed along with the Army's while the USAAF and Truman concentrated on building new bombers that could carry the atomic bomb. This means that as the younger sisters suffered through wear and tear in the following years, the older ones would stay in reserve. And the of the older ones, Bunker Hill and Franklin had the newish hulls due to being the last to be completely repaired.

This is contrast to the RN carriers who were not put into a reserve state while not being in the best of state. I remember you saying something that carriers due to shock damage and blast damage from bombs/torpedoes/kamikazes can be greatly reduced in capacity which is what happened with the RN carriers. However this is not due to damage being undetected, this is due to the lack of repairs to the hull(apparently it was a mixture of lack of skilled workers and victorious soaking up all the funds the RN had allocated for it's carriers) while still using them. I guess you could say the post RN was using them recklessly, though that is something we can only say with hindsight.