[gurps] TL6? Sub Carriers

[Onno Meyer]

> My vision for this starts with a non-cylindrical pressure hull (it might
> be two cylinders side by side, or just one big box) with the flight deck
> on top. Conning tower (and flight ops) off to one side above the flight
> deck. Two parallel "runway" spaces, no catapults (hydraulic and rocket
> ones were available but experimental). Aircraft lifts at the stern.

Now that is tricky. Without catapults, you need an optimized STOL 
plane, and that comes at the expense of combat performance. To 
further complicate matters, aircraft carriers turn into the wind and 
go to top speed to launch heavy planes, which adds 30 mph even
on a calm day. The sub won't have the same surface speed. 
 
> This is basically a sneak attack weapon. It gets in close to the target,
> launches all its aircraft (which is a challenge, given that it can't get
> them all onto the deck before they start flying), submerges while the
> raid is in progress, recovers the aircraft when they return (possibly
> landing over the bows if they're light enough), and sneaks away again.
> It doesn't seem to make any sort of military sense in other roles. In
> the context of Crimson Skies, the British Empire is building it
> basically to show off...

So it doesn't have to work perfectly, it just has to be credible enough
to get off the drawing board and into prototype development. People
managed to sneak surface carriers into good positions, and that sub
carrier could be just a bit better. Get into the Med without anybody 
noticing, say.