carrier life help needed

[foxwolfen]

As part of my next story, I am including a longish section on the Indomitable, a British aircraft carrier. I want to be able to somewhat accurately describe life aboard the carrier.

I have been trying, with out any real success to find photos and or personal recollections of life aboard a carrier in the Pacific (of any persuasion) during WW2. Mostly what I have found are exterior shots or stories about attacks and air ops.

This is not what I want (I can describe that no problem). I am more interested in where they slept, ate breakfast, shaved, what the briefing rooms were like, the ops room ... all of that.

If anybody knows of resourced (online) that might fill in the gaps I would very much appreciate it.

Cheers
Shad

Not what I need but a cool pic I found:

www.1000pictures.com/aircraft/carrier/turning.jpg

[bhk]

These may help........
www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/special_packages/wwii/13155028.htm
www.uss-bennington.org/non-benn-life_on_carrier.html
usmilitary.about.com/cs/navy/a/diarysailor.htm

Bruce

[foxwolfen]

Actually they did help (I can not access the centredaily.com one though). They provided some flavor that I, being an airforce guy, have no experience with.

Most of the deck ops described we quite similar to regular air ops with the exceptions of our airfields dont move, nor are their catipults. We did use arrestor cables and barriers though. They are standard airbase saftey equipment (at least in Canada)

The part about dentists and the mess being open 23 hours a day was cool. I may have one of my pilots have a tooth ache in the story. It never dawned on me there would be a dentist on board.

Thanks Bruce.
Shad

[foxwolfen]

Well, continuing research has filled in some holes. There would seem to be much more published about US carriers but I suspect that many things are similar.

A good ww2 ship/AC history site, with a lot on carriers:

www.fleetairarmarchive.net/

Cheers
Shad

[Bookman]

That photo is, unless I'm grossly mistaken, a photo taken during sea trials. One of the maneauvers undertaken during trials is the high-speed evaisve turns...

I'd say that was what we are viewing.

The decks are empty of superfluous equipment.

KB

[foxwolfen]

Indeed, that would be the case. It goes to show you just how fast it really is... when you hear 30 knots you just don't make sense of what that means.... until you see that and realize its an aircraft speedboat, not carrier