Historical Logistical Question Regarding Aircraft Transport

[jimh009]

In AE, short-legged fighters (particularly for the Allied) generally often move between ports by a cargo ship (such as SF to Pearl, etc..). Once at port, the planes than magically become ready for missions in a few days.

My question relates to how it was done historically. How did the Allies move planes off the cargo ships and get those planes to the airfields. I've seen photos of cargo ships unloading fighter planes onto docks and even onto small 50 ton barges. But I've always wondered how did those planes make it from the dock (or off the barge) to the airfield? Were special trucks used to transport the planes on special roads designed for aircraft transport?

Anyways, just curious how it worked in real-life.

Jim

[wdolson]

It varied. Once the Allies had a lot of CVEs, many were used to transport aircraft, larger ones were partially disassembled. The US also welded pierced decking to the top deck of tankers and lashed a few planes there to transport them. They were also boxed up in wooden crates and shipped as regular cargo on xAKs.

Larger ports had cranes to hoist the planes off the ships along with other cargo. Many cargo ships also had their own cranes to hoist stuff up from the holds and onto docks.

Single engine fighters and carrier bombers intended for land use (no arresting gear) were often launched from CVEs at sea (and occasionally larger carriers) and flown to their destination. The game allows fighters to fly off carriers this way. The Japanese CVEs don't usually have air groups because they were mostly used as aircraft ferries.

Bill

[Trugrit]

+1

They improvised with flatbeds, crane trucks and anything else they had available.

The top picture below shows crane movement from a ship to a barge.

The bottom picture is movement through the streets of Noumea.
They often had to take telephone poles down to get it done.

Note in the bottom picture that they have taken beams and put them crossways
On a flatbed truck. A sailor rides on top of the crane to clear overhead utility lines.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was not established until 1970.

[BBfanboy]

For a small aircraft like that F4F, a truck could tow it tail first from the dock on its own main landing gear if the path to the airfield was smooth enough. The US had lots of PSP to carpet the way. They would have to take care not to lift the tail too much or the prop would strike ground.

[m10bob]

Not totally off topic..The Japanese did not always have long production lines to create their planes. The "Zero" for instance was made in hundreds of "mom and pop" shops all over the place where a single plane might move from assembly barn to assembly barn by way of horse drawn wagons, till the plane was completed.
Not efficient and very time consuming.

Eric Bergeruds' fantastic book FIRE IN THE SKY details how the Japanese deployed their planes by flying them, island hopping till they ended at a "staging pool".
Major problem the Japanese had was a real shortage of skilled ground crew and spare parts production, to brand new planes were being cannibalized for their parts before leaving the repo depots.

Every airfield captured by the allies was littered with Japanese planes grounded for lack of perhaps a single part, and in the Philippines, many of those planes were otherwise brand new and unassigned "parts planes".