U.S.S. Saratoga torpedoed on this date in 1942

The U.S.S. Saratoga was one of our first fast aircraft carriers. She was converted while building from a World War I design battlecruiser under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. In the years before World War II the Saratoga was distinguished from her sister ship and class leader Lexington by a large black vertical stripe down her funnel and was known as "Stripe-Stacked Sara."

On January 11, 1942 the U.S.S. Saratoga was hit by a single torpedo from the Japanese submarine I-6. She limped into Pearl Harbor where a temporary patch was applied, then went to the U.S. West Coast for more extensive repairs and modifications. These included the replacement of the 8" guns by the more efficient 5"/38 guns that doubled as antiaircraft weapons.

Saratoga arrived at Pearl Harbor just too late for the Battle of Midway in June 1942, fought in the Solomons campaign later that year when she was torpedoed again by another Japanese submarine, helped the British Far Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean in 1944, and was damaged by kamikazes off Japan in 1945. She was sunk by atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946 and today is a popular destination for scuba divers.

Victory Through Air Power

Alexander P. de Seversky came from Russia to the United States after World War I. His airplane company made the first metal monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear for the United States Army Air Corps in the mid-1930s. He was a better pilot than he was a businessman though, and by the end of the decade the board of his own company replaced him.

In 1942, just a few months after Pearl Harbor, Seversky's book Victory Through Air Power was published. It was a best seller and made some impact on the American public concerning air power. I first read this book when I was a young boy. I have read it again several times since then, or at least portions of it.

Recently I started taking notes of specific claims made in the book about specific aircraft, ships and historical events. I checked some of these out according to modern sources and wrote an essay about it that I posted today on my web site as My thoughts on Seversky's book Victory Through Air Power. This is the first new post to the Studies section of my web site since 2004! This essay may be modified in days or weeks to come, but I posted what I have now as it is for what it's worth.