Shipbucket

In my continuing effort to understand ship design better, another question. Why are CV islands on the starboard side? I know one IJN carrier had it on the port side, but that's the only one I know of. Is it a case that the first was built like that so every one else did, or is there a better reason?

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Eschew obfuscation

The reason why the IJN had two carriers with portside islands was so that they could operate in concert with their near-sister (Akagi and Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu) in very close formation and have one ship receive aircraft while the other was launching. This was almost never done beyond a few experimental exercises. When operating individually, it was found that the portside islands created some weird wind resistance, or simply because of the natural tendency in which planes floated when landing...err long story short planes kept smacking into the island when it was portside and less so the other way. And that is why islands otherwise are always starboard.

IIRC, it was the planes wanting to drift to one side on landing. I think it was due to the engines of the planes and the direction they spun. With modern twin engine jets, I don't think that would be an issue anymore.

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Of course with jet engines, even single engined aircraft don't tend to drift like that. The reason is the torque caused by the spinning propeller of the aircraft. As a side note the French navy in the 1930's was trying to develop twin engined bombers in which each propeller turned in the other direction, so that they will cancel the problem. In fact almost all French twin engined aircraft of the period had that, and also the Royal Navy Sea Hornet.
Anothe solution was the contra-rotating propellers like the Fairey Gannet.

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"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

It has been said that pilots felt "naturally" inclined to turn to the left in an emergency (something with how the brain works I suppose), although I guess they might have been trying to make use of the extra torque of the propeller in break away from crashing into the island.

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Reminds me of the Grumman Trackers operated from RCN and RAN carriers. They only had a few feet to spare to avoid hitting the island on take of and landings - brave chaps.

That's what it boils down to, since working against the torque of the propeller was next to useless.