[Barnacle Bill]

Soviet-style armies run 3 tank platoons, 3 platoons + command tank to make a company.

A USN carrier air group consists of 24 fighters (F-14), 34 strike aircraft (mostly F/A-18 nowadays, used to be A-6), 10 AWS aircraft (S-3), 6 ASW helicopters, 4 ECM (modified A-6), 4 radar (E-2C, kind of a pocket AWACS) and 4 tankers (KA-6D).

French carriers have 39 aircraft, types?

The above naval info is from a 1993 book, so it could have changed a bit.

I have a lot more data on WWII carrier air Groups. The split was between fighter, dive bombers & topredo bombers. I believe each type was organized as a single squadron. The total numbers per carrier went up throughout the war as they got more creative about packing 'em in, and the ratio of fighters to bombers was also steadily increasing. Just a sample:

At Midway, Enterprise carried 79 total - 27 ftr, 37 dbmr, 15 tbmr. Hornet had 69 total - 17 ftr, 38 dbmr, 14 tbmr. Yorktown had 75 - 25 ftr, 37 dbmr, 13 tbmr.

By the end of the war, Saratoga (Yorktown's sister ship) had 96 ftr, 15 each dbmr & tbmr).

On the other side, at Midway Kaga had 30 ftr, 23 dbmr, 30 tbmr. The other Japanese carriers at Midway carried 21 each type. Japanese carriers usually carried less than rated capacity (opposite of USN practice), which was about 90 for Akagi & Kaga, about 70 for Soryu & Hiryu, about 85 for Shokaku & Zuikaku. This is because of internal design problems of their carriers as well as less efficient folding wing designs than the US planes, and because they never adopted the US practice of storing aircraft on deck.



[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 26 April 2001).]