Summary of Development, Current State and Future of the US Aircraft Carrier
Here is a summary of the past, present and future of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier:
Past:
- The first U.S. aircraft carrier, USS Langley, was commissioned in 1922 after being converted from a collier. It was used to experiment with and develop aircraft carrier operations.
- Key pre-WWII developments included the introduction of islands on carriers Lexington and Saratoga to manage exhaust and the building of USS Ranger as the first carrier designed from the keel up.
- WWII saw the evolution of armored flight decks, starting with the Essex-class, to protect against bombing and kamikaze attacks. The Midway-class further improved armor protection after the war.
Present:
- 10 Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarriers are the current backbone of the carrier fleet. Commissioned from 1975-2009, they feature an angled flight deck, steam catapults, and advanced radar and defensive systems.
- The lead ship of the new Ford-class, USS Gerald R. Ford, joined the fleet in 2017. Key innovations include electromagnetic catapults, advanced arresting gear, a redesigned island, and greatly increased electrical power generation.
Future:
- The U.S. Navy plans for the Ford-class carriers to remain in service for 90 years with excess power capacity to support future technologies.
- Potential future developments hinted at include harnessing artificial intelligence to process targeting data from networked sensors and weapons ("mosaic warfare"), and the increasing use of long-range standoff weapons and unmanned aircraft.
- However, the documents note the difficulty of predicting carrier technology needs so far into the future, given the rapid pace of change. Flexibility will be key.
In summary, U.S. aircraft carriers have constantly evolved from their start as an experimental concept in the 1920s to today's nuclear-powered supercarriers. The future remains to be written, but versatility to incorporate new technologies will define the carrier's continued relevance into the late 21st century and beyond. Let me know if you need any clarification or have additional questions!
Video Summary
The video discusses the evolution of aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy, focusing on pivotal design changes that have improved safety and efficiency on the flight deck.
Key points include:
1. Early experiments with launching and landing aircraft on ships, such as USS Langley, and the development of arresting systems and catapults.
2. The introduction of island superstructures on USS Lexington and USS Saratoga, which improved exhaust management but created challenges for landing aircraft.
3. The limitations of early carrier designs due to naval treaties and the Great Depression, as exemplified by USS Ranger.
4. The armoring of flight decks and hangers in response to lessons learned during World War II, starting with the Essex-class carriers and evolving through the Midway-class.
5. The transition to jet aircraft after World War II, requiring modifications such as angled flight decks and steam catapults, as well as the introduction of optical landing systems and barricades for emergency landings.
6. The development of supercarriers, starting with the Forrestal-class and evolving through the Kitty Hawk-class, Enterprise, and Nimitz-class carriers, featuring nuclear power, improved radar systems, and modular construction.
7. The challenges of flight deck operations, including the potential for accidents and the need for well-coordinated crews.
8. The introduction of the Ford-class carriers, with electromagnetic launch systems, advanced arresting gear, redesigned islands, and increased power generation for future technologies.
The video concludes by noting that the U.S. Navy expects Ford-class carriers to remain in service for 90 years and questioning the ability to predict technological advancements over such a long period.
The 50-Year Dilemma In Aircraft Carrier Design and the Future of American Naval Aviation | Center for International Maritime Security
By Brent D. Sadler
June 2024 marks the 90th year since commissioning the Ranger (CV-4), the first purpose-designed and built U.S. aircraft carrier. The Ranger stood on the legacies of several ships, most notably the converted collier Langley (CV-1), commissioned in 1922. A century of lessons learned from fleet experimentation during the interwar period, wartime experiences from World War Two, and the necessities of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War coalesced into today’s premier aircraft carrier, the Ford (CVN-78).
This legacy is more than just the evolution of the aircraft carrier as a ship; it represents a complex interaction between aircraft design, operational requirements driven by the battle space, and technology like nuclear propulsion. That said, there are consistencies throughout the evolution of the aircraft carrier: the importance of sortie rates, the advantage of longer operational range (for aircraft and ships), sensor coverage (to include scouting aircraft), and secure communications. As such, American aircraft carriers persevered over the challenge of Imperial Japan’s Kamikaze attacks, Soviet bomber long-range anti-ship cruise missiles, and will likely again over China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles. The bottom line is that the threats are not new, but how the carrier and its airwing evolve will determine its future. Contemporary nuclear-powered supercarriers, like the Ford, are built with a service life of 50 years, a timeframe equal to half the period aircraft carriers existed.
Today, the aircraft carrier faces evolving challenges and emerging technological opportunities. Amidst these challenging times, there is no single or clear picture of how these warships and their airwings will best perform in a modern blue-water war. However, with the next major war shaping up to be a modern replay of the last war in the Pacific, geography shows it is highly likely the aircraft carrier will play a leading role again, but not in traditional battle or strike group formations.
The fifty-year dilemma of today’s aircraft carriers and airwings is how to embrace various technological developments in unmanned platforms, long-range weapons, and new methods of processing massive amounts of targeting data. Wartime experience in the Pacific clarifies that getting this right is never assured. Building flexibility and adaptability is paramount for today’s aircraft carriers and airwing.
Introduction
Aircraft carrier design is based on a simple premise: launching, recovering, and sustaining aircraft at sea. In addition, a range of naval missions—strike, air defense, and submarine detection—influence naval aircraft design and inform carrier design and operations. It is an iterative process with successes and failures littered throughout the century of aircraft carriers’ existence.
Today, as historically, there are technologies weighing on the aircraft carrier and its airwing. For example, weapon systems can hold the aircraft carrier and its airwing at risk well outside its organic sensors and weapons range. Top of the threat list is the much-hyped Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile (e.g., DF-21, DF-26) with a range of more than 3,000 miles. These weapons were in steady development for almost 20 years, building on a similar Soviet weapon system of the Cold War. Today, the Houthis are employing anti-ship ballistic missiles to limited effect in the Red Sea, and China’s military is certainly taking note to improve its designs and operational concepts. Chinese air-to-air weapons outrange today’s U.S. airwings with anti-air missiles like the PL-15 or newer PL-17, with ranges of around 186 miles, and exacerbate kinematic shortcomings. Importantly, weapons’ range is only effective if fed with precise targeting. Weapon evolution is nothing new, and the carriers and their airwings evolved to overcome such threats in the past. For example, the AIM-54C “Phoenix” air-to-air missile was developed to defeat Soviet Backfire bombers before reaching its weapons’ launch range against the carriers.
The ability to make sense of massive amounts of networked sensor data is rapidly evolving for attack and defense. Effectively placing a weapon on a target hundreds of miles away or defending against such an attack is a team effort. Vital to success is the ability to reliably connect various platforms and sensors across hundreds of miles and rapidly process copious data. The key to these efforts is artificial intelligence and big data management systems to focus and speed up human decision-making. Networking the naval and even proximate land and space assets together is widely recognized as fundamental to success on the battlefield today and well into the future. Thus, it will be a key element of future carriers and their airwings.
A January 2024 Paris naval conference focused on how these forces will shape U.S. and allied navies’ next-generation aircraft carriers and naval airwings. For the host, the impending decision by the French Navy to determine the requirements for its next aircraft carrier loomed over many of the panels’ discussions.1 The U.S. Chief of Naval Operations reflected on 100 years of U.S. aircraft carrier experience: “…one thing that you really see from carrier aviation and carrier strike groups is their adaptability.” The theme resonated throughout the conference and was echoed in the over 40 submitted papers for review, which informed the event’s numerous panels. Adaptability is a common feature of successful warship designs in naval warfare. The history of the aircraft carrier, its airwing, and associated escort ships’ success is a testament to the persistent value of adaptability.
Aircraft carriers are a significant investment, costing over $13B and requiring a highly trained crew numbering in the thousands. As such, aircraft carriers are built to last 50 years and so must be adaptable. Fifty years ago, the U.S. Global Positioning System or networked fleet units did not exist. Today’s buzz concerns a fourth industrial revolution centered on quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Technology moves fast, and being adaptable is the only way to be ready. The best way to maintain adaptability in a naval warship is with ample space and excess power generation. Observers noted that after advanced electronic warfare systems modification, the Arleigh-Burke class Pinckney sported significant bulges on its superstructure to carry the added gear and new power systems that did not fit into the already full ship.2
Milestones in Aircraft Carrier and Airwing Design
The evolution of the aircraft carrier and its airwing can be boiled down into three evolutionary periods: creation, experimentation, and adaptation. Importantly, adaptation can be broken down into two periods: wartime, notably in the Pacific, and the Cold War. Finally, a fourth era, which arguably we are in today, could be called tessellation or the covering of a space without gaps. Before diving into what tessellation implies for the future of the aircraft carrier and its airwing, a brief overview of the earlier evolutionary periods is informative.
The Age of Creation
The evolution of the aircraft carrier shortly followed aircraft entering the battlefield. For the U.S. Navy, the origin story of the aircraft carrier began with the successful takeoff and landing on an improvised at-sea platform by a plane piloted by Eugene Ely. In 1912, the first U.S. naval aviation unit was established. By 1914, the naval aviation unit was connected to the warships’ command and control network with the adoption of radio.3 However, it would be the U.K.’s improvisation to fight the First World War’s German submarine threat that saw the first viable aircraft carriers put to sea.
The first true aircraft carrier to enter service was the British warship Argus, a repurposed Italian cruise liner whose construction was halted in 1916. The Argus was put to sea in 1918, and it was too late to see combat, but its impact on Japanese and American navies was immense. Three design issues surfaced in this first aircraft carrier: speed, stability, and obstruction to flight operations from the exhaust stacks. In the case of Argus, modifications to the initially very stable cruise liner made the ship top-heavy and prone to rolls that imperiled flight operations. Smoke and physical obstruction from the exhaust stacks were remedied by placing them under the flight deck and aft. This was not a perfect solution, but it was workable. This solution also helped the third challenge, speed. For the underpowered airplanes of the day, wind speed over the flight deck to takeoff required a ship’s speed of 30 to 35 knots. Early wind tunnel studies showed that if the exhaust stacks had been above the flight deck, it would have caused unacceptable amounts of cross-deck turbulence. In 1918, flight trials were conducted with a canvas dummy island installed. With an island structure, the pilots found it easier to judge distances on landing.4 Many of these lessons informed the next era in aircraft carrier and airwing development.
The Age of Experimentation
1922 marked the beginning of a nearly 20-year process of experimentation and design improvements to the aircraft carrier and its airwing. That year, the Langley (CV-1) entered service as the first U.S. aircraft carrier after a two-year conversion from a collier. She became a test platform for naval aircraft carriers and airwing operations until her conversion to a seaplane tender in 1937, as a war in the Pacific loomed. During this timeframe, she was joined by the much larger converted cruisers Lexington and Saratoga. Through a series of major naval exercises called “Fleet Problems,” the Navy experimented with various operational approaches. Through the 1920s, the Navy learned that the larger aircraft carriers afforded stability, which enabled flight operations in rough seas. The Navy also realized the value of the aircraft catapult, the importance of open hangers for rapid aircraft readying, and the need to focus on sortie rate.5 The lessons learned from these three warships informed the first purpose-built aircraft carrier, the Ranger.
Ratified in 1922, the Washington Treaty ratified constrained naval construction by tonnage for the world powers. The treaty made naval aviation and aircraft carriers an attractive and powerful addition to the fleet for less tonnage. The Ranger design incorporated the lessons of the 1920s when it was commissioned in 1934. Originally designed with a flush deck like the Langley, an island superstructure was later added while being built to aid in flight operations, direct defensive weapons, and navigate the ship. The Ranger’s naval designers required an endurance of 10,000 miles to support long-range operations in the Pacific. War plans anticipated in the 1930s that American possessions, the Philippines and Guam, would be cut off in any war with Japan, with naval forces having to fight their way across the Pacific. During the design phase, consideration of aircraft accommodation, like deck weight constraints or catapult design limitations, weighed heavily on the Ranger’s final specifications. These considerations included compatibility with a 10,000-pound bomber with a flight deck of 665 feet.
Light cruisers, notably the New Orleans-class and the Benson-class destroyers, would eventually play a key role in supporting aircraft carrier air defenses. The Navy realized from the Fleet Problems by 1930 that surface warships, including the aircraft carrier, were susceptible to air attack, which resulted in efforts to improve air defenses at sea. Fleet Problem IX in 1929 was a watershed event; it demonstrated the value of independent carrier operations relying on the speed and range of its striking airwing while exposed to shore-based threats.6 Nonetheless, the too-short range of then naval aircraft and a too-modest speed advantage against surface warships meant the Navy’s early carriers were vulnerable. Eventually, this led to purpose-built escorts filling the air defense mission, mitigating the need for defenses on the aircraft carrier and freeing deck space and tonnage for more aircraft.
By 1930, the Navy considered operating heavier naval aircraft with greater range from carriers. This required greater strength of the flight deck, catapults for launching, stronger arresting gear for landings, larger hangars and elevators to move aircraft to the flight deck, and other design improvements. The airwing of the early 1930s consisted of 18 heavy-attack bombers, 12 scout planes, and 2 squadrons (36 planes) of fighters. The next generation of aircraft carriers, the Yorktown-class, was planned to carry four 18-plane squadrons, with various proposals that included dive-bombers with 1,000 payloads and fighter-bombers. All variations of the next airwing included long-range scouts, which were critical to spotting enemy fleets and launching attacks before the enemy. To accommodate the future airwing, the Yorktown-class aircraft carriers grew from Ranger’s 16,140 tons to well over 20,000 tons. The three carriers of this class played critical roles early in the Pacific theater of World War II. Yorktown was lost at the Battle of Midway, Hornet at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, and Enterprise survived the war. These three aircraft carriers provided important wartime lessons that continue to inform aircraft carrier and naval aviation designs today.
Adaptation – Wartime
The Atlantic theater of World War II differed from the long-range naval operations conducted in the Pacific. As such, the theater demands on the carrier and its airwing were incongruous, contributing to the Navy’s decision to send the operationally limited Ranger from the Pacific to service in the Atlantic. The Ranger ultimately served in the November 1942 invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch and attacked German shipping along the Norwegian coast in October 1943 in Operation Leader.7 The larger legacy carriers, Lexington and Saratoga, were retained in the Pacific and saw action early in the war. In the Pacific, operational range and striking power were paramount, correlated to the fuel carried onboard and the ability to sustain a large airwing.
Critically, the larger Lexington and Saratoga were able to operate the heavier new aircraft entering service in the late 1930s. Size and catapults mattered in ensuring an aircraft carrier could adapt to new aircraft. Wartime experience, especially during late-war countermeasures against Japanese Kamikaze suicide attacks, validated the expansion of air defenses and dedicated escorts. The loss of the Hornet and damage to the aircraft carrier Intrepid, both Essex-class, underscored the importance of machinery redundancy and the physical separation of engine rooms.8,9 The first post-naval limitation treaty-designed fleet carrier arrived a week after the end of the war. Unconstrained by the Washington Treaty, the Midway-class was able to bridge the technological divide from propeller aircraft to jet-powered naval aviation.
During World War II, the nation lost six aircraft carriers, and it was the only time U.S. aircraft carriers were sunk from hostile action.10 At the time of its sinking, the Langley was no longer an aircraft carrier but a repurposed seaplane tender ferrying crated fighters for the defense of the Dutch East Indies. Four carriers were sunk in the first year of the war, and the last loss was the light carrier (CVL) Princeton in October 1944 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Once wartime industrial production hit its stride by January 1944, the Navy reached its zenith in August 1945 with a fleet of 99 aircraft carriers (28 fleet carriers and 71 escort carriers).11 The bottom line is that World War II experiences validated the importance of carrier designs to ensure the ship could fight despite battle damage.12 Modern U.S. aircraft carriers continue that legacy in stringent design specifications written in blood. Carriers are usually well protected and operated in concert with escort warships, providing air and submarine defense.
Adaptation – Cold War
The war in the Pacific set important precedents in carrier design and reaffirmed during the conflicts of the Cold War, namely Vietnam, Korea, and the Gulf War. The Midway-class began its design process in 1940 to lead attacks on Japanese island garrisons and surface action groups. These new aircraft carriers were nearly double the size of the Essex-class at 58,600 tons and a flight deck almost 100 feet longer at 968 feet. Arriving too late to see service in World War II, the Midway-class made its mark in the early Cold War evolution of jet-powered naval aviation. The larger size enabled the carriage of more fuel, defenses, radar, and aircraft. It also allowed modernization in the 1950s to carry the first jet-powered carrier-based naval aircraft, the FH-1 Phantom. The final ten Cold War carriers were of the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class, which remain in service today. The airwing also adapted throughout this period to counter the potent Soviet submarine threat with dedicated anti-submarine warfare aircraft. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the threat was deemed minimal and could be adequately covered by land-based aircraft and shipboard helicopters. The last carrier-based anti-submarine fixed-wing aircraft, the S-3 “Viking,” ended its sea service in 2009.
What will be the carrier strike group’s development focal point for future naval combat?
Two factors weigh on the response to this question: the survivability of the carrier and its airwing under modern threats, principally Chinese, and the effective long-range employment of the airwing beyond effective enemy defenses. Of these, the factor meriting the greatest focus, given the maturity of the current Ford-class design today, is the need for longer-range aircraft and weapons. This will impact the mission-airwing-carrier developmental cycle going forward.
Today, the U.S. Navy struggles to adapt its current F/A-18 attack aircraft and increasing numbers of the F-35 to meet longer-range requirements. One bridging solution is with drones repurposed to function as tanking aircraft like the MQ-25. Of course, the F/A-18 also doubles today as a tanker, but this detracts from available aircraft to execute strike missions. This modus operandi must change and will propel designs of future carrier aircraft with operational ranges exceeding 1,500 miles. New operational requirements will also inform future carrier design, such as the requirement for larger ammo elevators, support systems, and size of the airwing, amongst other considerations. The Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) is an example of a new system to avoid costly future catapult re-designs that, without, would lead to aircraft or weapon capability sacrifices.13 EMALS can adjust the force more precisely and across a larger spectrum used to launch aircraft, using more force for future heavier-loaded aircraft and less for lighter unmanned aircraft.
Effective long-range employment of the airwing will rely on an effective and dispersed sensor network. Much is written on this concept, referred to by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as Mosaic Warfare. This concept would, if achieved, employ a network of sensors and weapon systems that would overwhelm an adversary while providing seamless sensor coverage, like tiles in a mosaic.14 What is needed to achieve this tessellation is largely known, leaving the resolution of various engineering and operational problems to endeavors such as the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2).15 What is clear is that target-level data will need to be passed seamlessly amongst various platforms to create the opportunity for the best-placed weapon to be employed against the enemy. The carrier will be a network-making node in this construct, providing platforms and operational control to manned and unmanned platforms. That said, given the distances and enemy interference, dispersed command nodes of the airwing will be needed beyond the carrier.
Longer-range air-to-air missiles will be another key element informing the composition and design of airwings and the aircraft carrier. New missiles may require modifications to existing carrier elevators as longer-range weapons typically are larger and heavier. These long-range weapons may include hypersonic missiles with a larger fuselage and weight, adding demands on the carrier and aircraft design.
Sortie rates still matter, giving rise to the need for what could be called a modern escort carrier. Such ships would allow large, manned carriers to focus on strike missions using heavier payloads. In contrast, largely drone-equipped carriers could provide the strike group’s air defense at a shorter range but with longer sustained operations. Given the threat of massed air, drone, and missile threats, the ability to mass large numbers of airborne aircraft continues to matter and is playing out in the Red Sea under massed Houthi missile and drone attacks.
Era of Tessellation – Carrier Operations in a Modern Pacific War
Taking the above together, the aircraft carrier and its airwing of the future are perhaps best viewed as a link between platform tiles in a sensors-weapons mosaic. The aircraft carrier sustains a robust aerial network of aircraft and assists in coordinating massive targeting data processes for prolonged periods. The carrier will critically retain the ability to execute five or more days of combat operations before leaving station to rest and refit. This aligns with the aircraft carriers’ historical experience, role, and mission. At the same time, U.S. systems’ range and response time are crucial in overwhelming the enemy’s sensors-weapons network. The U.S. system must integrate sensor coverage from carrier airwings, naval warships, shore, and space-based sensors to support long-range weapons. Response time will be critical as a modern adversary like China should be assumed to possess parity with the ability to detect and target U.S. forces. To accelerate decision cycles and targeting, Mosaic Warfare envisions massive data processing using artificial intelligence to synthesize and recommend placement for naval platforms for the best chance of victory.
In such a construct, future carrier operations offer mobility that adds significant complexity to an adversary that fixed targets cannot. Taking the fight to China inside the first island chain requires penetrating deep into China’s anti-access envelope to conduct strikes. Another carrier mission that will see added emphasis is the need to provide a screen for Army and Marine Corps forces operating within the first island chain. Those ground and amphibious forces will provide land-based weapons and sensor coverage to cue naval operations. Air Force and Navy land-based aircraft must be integrated into this tessellated sensors-weapons battlespace. Of course, to remain in the fight, land forces must also be resupplied.
The Marine Corps and the Army plan a maneuver campaign within the first island chain, which is intended to contest China’s naval and air operations. The Marine Corps concepts are expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO) and littoral operations in a contested environment (LOCE).16 These concepts inform the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030, envisioning a light, mobile amphibious force. The Army’s concept is similar but less mobile, emphasizing long-range missile systems to include air and missile defenses. The Marines are restructuring their forces to include new formations called littoral regiments.17,18 These new regiments are purpose-built to provide highly mobile air defenses centered on the new AN/TPS-80 radar system and road-mobile launchers of anti-ship missiles to hold enemy warships at risk just over 100 miles from shore.19
For the Army, the concept of operations is multi-domain operations (MDO). The Army will likely deploy tailored multi-domain task forces (MDTF) to counter the first island chain’s specific threats.20 The MDTF would likely be equipped with air defenses, radars, and long-range rockets like the Precision Strike Missile, with an approximate 300-mile range.21 Also under development is long-range hypersonic weapons (LRHW) modeled on the Navy’s hypersonic weapon development with an estimated range of 1,725 miles.22
To succeed in the first island chain, the Marines and the Army will need logistics ships and mobility to complicate Chinese targeting. A carrier and airwing designed for air dominance could provide that screen as those ground forces are re-positioned or resupplied. At the same time, ground forces would receive and provide targeting data for threats as the carrier screening force sweeps through the area.
In a modern Pacific war, the aircraft carrier and its airwing must execute a screening force along the first island chain and a surge strike force. Historically, carriers acted as screens, notably during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands as Marines fought on Guadalcanal.23 Also, while evading Japan’s extended maritime defenses, carriers famously executed a series of strikes during the Doolittle Raid. By the end of the war, large fast carrier task forces executed raids on the Japanese home islands and Taiwan. As proven in that war, carriers are remarkably survivable and complicate China’s ability to defend and target U.S. forces.
An attempt was made to achieve operational integration between naval carriers and their airwings with other services called Air-Sea Battle. The concept was born from a collaboration between the Navy and Air Force in 2009 to address the challenge of China’s capabilities by developing and practicing new joint tactics.24 However, it failed to gain traction and funding, and by January 2015, it had been folded into the Joint Staff, effectively sideling the effort.25 In a January 2023 article, Admiral James Foggo and Steven Wills argued for resurrecting the Air-Sea Battle, given developments in long-range weapons advances in networks.26 The time is ripe for a relook. After all, achieving effective operational tessellation of the Western Pacific requires a high degree of integration. The carrier and its airwing will be a critical, mobile platform enabling significant sensors-weapons tessellation of the battlefield. The carrier and its airwing must be seamlessly integrated with land and space-based platforms and sensors to overcome China’s significant sensor and missile threats. This will require technological advances as advocated by the proponents of Mosaic Warfare, but also developing the operational rigor learned through a new series of fleet problems backed by a resurrected Air-Sea Battle initiative.
Conclusion
The good thing is that the technology being proven now on Ford, like the advanced arresting gear and electromagnetic aircraft launch systems, provides the flexibility needed for deploying a wider range of aircraft with future munitions. The key will be how well these systems have performed recently in the Eastern Mediterranean during the ship’s 2023 deployment. This information will inform decisions for future carrier and airwing designs and operations that maximize flexibility and adaptability – a core feature and advantage of the aircraft carrier stretching back to its origin.
Captain Brent Sadler (Ret.) joined the Heritage Foundation as a Senior Research Fellow in 2020 after a 26-year naval career in nuclear submarines and as a foreign area officer. He has extensive operational experience in the Western Pacific, having served at Seventh Fleet, Indo-Pacific Command, as Defense Attache in Malaysia, and as an Olmsted Scholar in Tokyo, Japan.
References
1. “Paris Naval Conference 2024: The Evolving Role of the Carrier Strike Group,” French Institute of International Relations, January 25, 2024 (accessed February 27, 2024).
2. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Refining Plan for its $17B Destroyer Electronic Warfare Backfit with 4 Test Ships,” USNI News, January 19, 2024 (accessed February 27, 2024).
3. E. B. Potter, Sea Power: A Naval History, second edition (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1981), pg. 500-501.
4. David Hobbs, British Aircraft Carriers (Yorkshire: Seaforth Publishing, 2013), pg. 119-129.
5. Norman Friedman, U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983), pg. 47.
6. Albert A. Nofi, To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940 (Newport: U.S. Naval War College Press, 2010). Pg. 109-126.
7. “USS Ranger (CV-4),” Naval History and Heritage Command, (accessed March 7, 2024).
8. “Structural Repairs in Forward Areas During World War II,” Bureau of Ships, December 1949, pg. 82-84, (accessed March 8, 2024).
9. Norman Friedman. U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983), pg. 91 and 154-155.
10. Cid Standifer, “Sunk, Scrapped or Saved: The Fate of America’s Aircraft Carriers,” USNI News, August 18, 2014 (accessed May 1, 2024).
11. Thomas Heinrich, Warship Builders: An Industrial History of U.S. Naval Shipbuilding 1922-1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2020), pg. 91-92, 97-102 and 114-116.
12. Bureau of Ships, “Structural Repairs in Forward Areas During World War II,” U.S. Navy Department, December 1949, pg. 89-97, (accessed May 2, 2024).
13. “Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS),” Naval Air Systems Command (accessed May 2, 2024).
14. “DARPA Tiles Together a Vision of Mosaic Warfare: Banking on cost-effective complexity to overwhelm adversaries,” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (accessed May 1, 2024).
15. “Summary of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control Strategy,” Department of Defense, March 2022 (accessed May 2, 2024).
16. Andrew Feickert, “U.S. Marine Corps Force Design 2030 Initiative: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, June 30, 2023, pg. 1,3,7 and 11, (accessed April 27, 2024).
17. “Marine Littoral Regiment,” U.S. Marine Corps, January 11, 2023 (accessed May 2, 2024).
18. “Marines Strike Ship With Pair of Naval Strike Missiles,” U.S. Marine Corps, August 21, 2021 (accessed May 2, 2024).
19. “2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment Becomes First Marine Unit to Fire NMESIS Missiles,” U.S. Marine Corps, June 29, 2023 (accessed May 2, 2024).
20. Andrew Feickert, “Defense Primer: Army Multi-Domain Operations (MDO),” Congressional Research Service, January 2, 2024 (accessed April 27, 2024).
21. Andrew Feickert, “U.S. Army Long-Range Precision Fires: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, March 16, 2021, pg. 16-18, (accessed May 2, 2024).
22. Andrew Feickert, “The U.S. Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW): Dark Eagle,” Congressional Research Service, March 13, 2024 (accessed May 2, 2024).
23. Lars Celander, How Carriers Fought: Carrier Operations in World War II (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2018), pg. 158-171.
24. “Air-Sea Battle,” Air-Sea Battle Office, May 2013, pg. 4, (accessed May 2, 2024).
25. Sam LaGrone, “Pentagon Drops Air Sea Battle Name, Concept Lives On,” USNI News, April 27, 2024 (accessed May 2, 2024).
26. James Foggo and Steven Wills, “Back to the Future: Resurrecting ‘Air/Sea Battle’ in the Pacific,” Breaking Defense, January 24, 2023 (accessed May 2, 2024).
Featured Image: Eugene Ely flies his Curtiss pusher biplane from the USS Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on Nov. 14, 1910, the first time an airplane took off from a U.S. warship. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
Aircraft Carriers
The history of the U.S. Navy’s use of naval vessels to launch and recover aircraft dates back to 14 November 1910 when American civilian pilot Eugene Ely flew his Curtiss pusher airplane off a specifically built platform on the deck of cruiser Birmingham (Scout Cruiser No. 2) in Hampton Roads, Virginia. On 18 January 1911, Ely landed on a platform built on the quarterdeck of battleship Pennsylvania (Armored Cruiser No. 4) using wires attached to sandbags as arresting gear in San Francisco Bay. Later that day, he took off from the same ship.
The Navy’s first aircraft carrier, Langley (CV-1), was developed from Proteus-class collier Jupiter and served as an unarmed test bed for deck and flight operations throughout the 1920s. During this time, the Navy learned from its experiences on Langley how better to park and launch aircraft more quickly. The experiences that took place onboard the converted aircraft carrier set the state for fleet aircraft carriers that followed. Ranger (CV-4) was the first U.S. Navy ship designed and built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. She was commissioned in 1934 and served in the Atlantic during World War II.
During World War II, carriers were the dominant combat vessel playing leading roles in the Pacific, such as the battles of Midway, Coral Sea, and Leyte Gulf. Carriers, built during the war, continued to improve, not only in size and lethality, but technologically as well. Catapults, flush with the deck, assisted in launching aircraft. Aircraft were fitted with retractable hooks that engaged transverse wires on the deck, braking them to a quick stop. The control centers of the carriers were situated in the superstructure (the “island”), at one side of the flight deck. Aircraft landings were guided by radio, radar, and by visual signals from the deck.
Carriers built after the war were even larger and came equipped with armored flight decks. The use of jet aircraft on carriers also posed significant changes, because of their greater weight, slower acceleration, higher landing speeds, and greater fuel consumption. Steam-powered catapults and angled flight decks were just some of the modifications that were installed to counter the much more powerful aircraft. In 1961, the first nuclear-powered carrier, Enterprise (CVAN-65), was commissioned. Enterprise was powered by eight nuclear reactors (two for each of its four propellers) and had a deck that was 1,101 by 252 feet (the largest at the time). Over the course of her 51-year career, Enterprise completed 25 deployments to include the Cuban Missile Crisis and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Navy used aircraft carriers as the primary base for American air power.
Today, the only aircraft carriers in service are the remaining Nimitz-class and one Gerald R. Ford-class, which is meant to replace the Nimitz carriers in the coming decades. The Gerald R. Ford-class carrier is about 1,100 feet long, has a crew of 4,500, and can carry up to 75 aircraft, to include the F35-C, the world’s first long-range stealth strike fighter.
This page provides links to selected aircraft carriers throughout American naval history. In addition, check out the National Naval Aviation Museum’s website for updates as we celebrate the centennial commemoration (March 2022) of the U.S. Navy’s utilization of aircraft carriers.
Evolution of Aircraft Carriers
Compiled by Andrea Watters, Naval Aviation News editor, and Fred Flerlage, NAN Art Director.
“One day,” said Capt. Thomas T. Craven, who had relieved Capt. Noble E. Irwin as Director of Naval Aviation in May 1919, “one day, when someone suggested that shoveling coal was becoming unpopular, we proceeded to angle for the colliers Jupiter and Jason. Although some conservative seniors frowned on the plan, in time and with the Secretary of the Navy’s [SECNAV] approval, we persuaded Congressional committees of the wisdom of converting one ship, [USS] Jupiter, into an aircraft carrier. Having an entirely inadequate speed, the vessel could not possibly fulfill all service requirements, but she could serve as a laboratory for determining naval needs. Naval Aviation took heart.”
At the end of World War I, Great Britain had the Hermes, Eagle and Argus in operation, while Germany successfully converted the merchantman Stuttgart into a carrier. Craven was in France at the time, assigned as aide for aviation to Commander, U.S. Naval Forces and Commander, Naval Aviation Forces. He was approached by the CNO—and later, by SECNAV Josephus Daniels—and asked to assume the Office of Director of Naval Aviation.
Returning to America, he immediately studied the problems of strengthening the Navy’s complement of pilots and support personnel, obtaining “apparatus suitable for their use,” and developing tactics.
Cmdr. Kenneth Whiting, in a memorandum to the Committee on Naval Affairs, sized up the situation: “When the sear ended those who had chosen the Navy as a life work, and especially those of the Navy who had taken up Naval Aviation, revived the question of ‘carriers’ and ‘fleet aviation.’ They found the sledding not quite so hard as formerly, but the going was still a bit rough.
“The naval officers who had not actually seen Naval Aviation working retained their ultra-conservatism; some of those who had seen it working were still conservative, but not ultra; they were in the class ‘from Missouri’ and wished to be ‘shown.’ Others, among the ranking officers who had seen, had conquered their conservatism, and were convinced.
“This latter group, headed by the General Board of the Navy, and including Adm. Henry T. Mayo, Adm. N.C. Twining, Capt. Ernest J. King and Capt. W.S. Pye, both on the staff of the commander in chief during the war, Capt. H.I. Cone and Capt. Thomas T. Craven, demanded that ‘carriers’ be added to our fleets.
“The net result of these demands was the recommendation that the collier Jupiter be converted into a carrier in order that the claims of the naval aviators might be given a demonstration.”
Jupiter did not possess all the characteristics that would have made her an ideal aircraft carrier, but she did have many advantages. Commissioned April 7, 1913, as fleet collier No. 3, she, with the Neptune, carried the first Naval Aviation detachments to France in World War I. At war’s end, she was scheduled for retirement.
“At the time she was selected [for conversion to an aircraft carrier],” Whiting pointed out, “her advantages outweighed her disadvantages.”
The ship was slow and might prove a drogue to a fast-moving fleet. But she did have the necessary length to permit planes to fly off from a specially prepared deck. Her hold spaces were very large, “with high head room in them, a difficult thing to find in any ship. She had larger hatches leading to these holds than most ships, a factor permitting the stowing of the largest number of planes.”
Jupiter was electrically driven. Her top speed was a comparatively slow 14 knots. One of the clinching arguments for her conversion was her small crew requirement. With hostilities over, non-regular Navy men were eager to continue civilian activities and were leaving service in large numbers.
Jupiter sailed to Norfolk Navy Yard where the conversion work was accomplished. “We thought she could be converted cheaply,” Whiting said, “—that was a mistake, however. In any event, she will have cost less when completely converted than any other ship we might have selected. We thought she could be converted quickly—that was another mistake. The war is over, and labor, contractors and material men are taking a breathing spell.
“The recommendation for her conversion was made by the General Board of the Navy early in 1919; Congress appropriated the money [on 11 July] 1919; she was promised for January 1921; she may be ready by July 1921.” She was not.
Jupiter’s designation was changed to CV on July 11, 1919; she went into the yard for conversion March 1920 and was commissioned USS Langley (CV 1) on March 20, 1922, at Norfolk.
In the yards, all the coal-handling gear was removed from the collier and a flight deck, 534 feet long and 64 feet wide, was installed. At first, it was planned that this deck would be completely free of obstruction, and so it was in the Langley.
An elevator was installed to lift planes from the assembly and storage deck to the flight deck. A palisade was built around this elevator to provide a windbreak, protecting the planes and men while the aircraft were being assembled.
For the hoisting of seaplanes, two cranes with large outreach were installed on the hangar deck, one on either side of the ship. Traveling cranes were installed beneath the flight deck for hoisting planes from the hold and for transferring them fore and aft to the ship spaces and elevator.
The collier’s firerooms were located well aft. This permitted an easier handling of gasses to guarantee a minimum interference with planes when they touched down on her deck. She had ample space for machine, carpenter, metal and wing repair stowage; spare parts, spare engines, and shops; for gasoline and lubricating oil and aircraft ammunition. Her living quarters appeared to be a bit crowded, but sufficient for the work to be undertaken.
From May 1919 to March 1921, Craven directed much attention to the training of pilots. “Pending the completion of facilities that would enable the Navy to train pilots to fly landplanes from the deck of a carrier,” he wrote, “arrangements were effected to have naval flyers instructed in the Army school at Arcadia, Florida. The entire naval contingent[s] quickly and easily completed the Army’s course.” They also received Army training at Mitchel Field on Long Island and at Langley Field, Virginia.
Earlier, Lt. Cmdr. Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier led a team of 15 pilots who were put into training with landplanes, practicing touch-and-go flight deck landings on a 100-foot-long platform constructed on a coal barge at the Washington Navy Yard. The barge was moved to Anacostia where landing tests were conducted.
Experiments were conducted at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in which Lt. Alfred M. Pride participated. A turntable platform was used, similar to the type the British developed in WWI—in turn, an improvement of Ely’s arrangement used on the Pennsylvania. A Bureau of Aeronautics (BUAER) letter dated Nov. 19, 1923, described the Langley and British systems. The Langley gear, the letter states, “depends on an athwartship retarding force while the [British] gear depends on air resistance together with the resistance set up by fore and aft cables.” The Langley wires were suspended about 10 inches above the deck. They were not entirely satisfactory, but were used, with some modifications, in the Lexington and Saratoga until 1929.
When Langley eventually went to sea in September 1922, she had an arresting gear installed.
The first take-off from the deck of Langley was piloted Oct. 17, 1922, by Lt. Virgil C. Griffin in a VE-7-SF. On Oct. 6, the first landing was made by Chevalier in an Aeromarine aircraft while the ship was underway. He had contributed significantly to perfecting the arresting gear installed aboard—still in an experimental stage. His plane nosed over. Whiting, on Nov. 18, became the first to catapult from the deck of Langley; he flew a PT torpedo bomber.
These aircraft—and other types used at the time—were of standard design. BUAER decided to delay introducing new types, although studies of planes built for carrier operations started with the conversion of the collier. Vought and Aeromarine service types were first to be modified for operations aboard; arresting hooks were installed, and the landing gear strengthened.
For the first three years following her commissioning, USS Langley had no regularly assigned squadrons. She was used as an experimental ship, testing gear and aircraft, and training pilots and support personnel. For the first five years of her operations, she was the only aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy. Because of the flight deck installed, she was quickly dubbed “the Covered Wagon,” and this was reflected in her official insignia.
The principle purpose of Langley was to teach naval aviators about carrier operations, but the early days were certainly tough on pilots, according to “Our Flying Navy,” a book published in 1944.
“‘Instrument face’ was the distinguishing mark of Langley’s pilots, who
loosened teeth and flattened noses against their instrument panels while
negotiating the hazards of landing on Langley’s small flight deck and
crude arresting gear. Planes went overboard, piled up in the crash
barrier, stood on their noses and came apart. [There were few
fatalities.] But the science of carrier operations was developed as a
monument to these pilots’ perseverance.” The “small flight deck” was as
long as later-day “baby flattops.”
Arresting gear and catapult systems were tried, modified, improved upon; pilots qualified for carrier landings and take-offs. In March 1925, Langley entered her first fleet exercise, Fleet Problem No. 5, off the lower coast of California. Scouting flights from the carrier now became standard procedure and so impressed official observers that they recommended the completion of USS Saratoga and USS Lexington be speeded up.
There was an urgency related to these tests. Already in the ways were the keels of two battle cruisers destined for the scrap heap as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. A clause within this treaty permitted their conversion to aircraft carriers. Tests aboard Langley were to influence greatly the final designs of the two ships under conversion. These converted battle cruisers were to become USS Lexington (CV 2) and USS Saratoga (CV 3).
Before Langley was commissioned, Craven became Commandant of the Ninth Naval District, and was relieved March 7, 1921, by Capt. William A. Moffett, who became the last Director of Naval Aviation. On July 26, 1921, that office was abolished, replaced by the newly authorized Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, which Moffett assumed.
For the full article and series, visit:
https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/naval-aviation-history/evolution-aircraft-carriers.html
Aicraft Carrier History Video Transcript
The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is often described as one of the most dangerous places to work in the world because of numerous aircraft landing, taxiing or taking off in a relatively small, confined area. Moreover, there are rockets, fuel, catapults and the arresting wires which have plenty of potential for things to go wrong. Any job that requires you to be on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is considered the most dangerous job classification in the U.S. Navy. According to one study, during a 15-year period, 918 deck personnel were injured. That included 43 fatalities, 47 disabilities, and the rest sustaining major injuries. Over 90 percent of all accidents were attributed to human error.
Modern aircraft carriers are much safer and more efficient than ever before. Every 37 seconds, they can launch two aircraft and recover one in daylight. That said, in recent years the injury rate has fallen to as low as 30 incidents per 100,000 aircraft recoveries. But this wasn't always the case. In this video, we'll take you on a journey of how aircraft carriers evolved to what they are today, with a focus on pivotal design changes. The most significant design change in the newest Ford-class carrier is so subtle, straightforward and long-term in vision that the chances are it's not what you think.
On November 14, 1910, the U.S. Navy successfully launched an airplane from a light cruiser, USS Birmingham. Two months later, the first arrested landing occurred on board USS Pennsylvania. These two events were considered the starting point of American naval aviation. But a true game changer came 12 years later when a 7-year-old collier, USS Jupiter, was converted to an aircraft carrier and renamed USS Langley. With a 542 feet long flight deck and retractable masts and exhaust pipes, USS Langley had a flush deck design.
USS Langley was an experimental ship, so it was not restricted by naval treaties. Its goal was to figure out a basic doctrine on how to operate an aircraft carrier. As the first landings and takeoffs occurred, the U.S. Navy gained invaluable experience on the flight deck of USS Langley. As experimentation continued, arresting wires and catapults were tested, modified and improved. Let's not forget that in this process, many airplanes crashed, flipped and nosedived. Pilots were injured. There were even a few fatalities. But they were determined, and eventually they got it - they figured it all out, even though at a great cost.
The earlier arresting systems were weight-based, with the initial system relying on sandbags. The wires were suspended about 10 inches above the deck, and this worked, but was by no means perfect as it would result in what was called "instrument face." The "instrument face" was a distinguished mark of Langley pilots, as they spent five years figuring out the basic operations on the carrier and oftentimes during unsuccessful landings, the pilot's face would smash against the instrument panel, wiping out teeth and breaking noses. It was rough. The weight-based system was in use until the 1930s. After that, it was replaced by a hydraulic-cylinder type arresting gear, which allowed for landing of heavier aircraft at higher speeds.
USS Lexington and USS Saratoga were the first two American carriers to feature islands. The biggest benefit of the island was redirecting exhaust plumes up and away from the flight deck. The biggest downsides were increased air turbulence and decreased clearance on the flight deck. The island superstructure was a great hazard to landing aircraft, but its benefits outweighed the risks. The islands on both carriers were installed on the starboard side of the carrier. This was intentionally done because propeller planes would inherently swing to the port side due to the torque effect of the propeller spinning clockwise. Pilots had to correct for this during takeoff and landing, and thus it made sense to have the island on the starboard side. Another benefit was that it was easier for the aircraft carrier to navigate in smaller channels.
Lexington-class carriers were originally laid down as battle cruisers. After World War I, however, during construction they were modified to be aircraft carriers. Lexington and Saratoga proved extremely successful as aircraft carriers, and they convinced the U.S. Navy of the value of large carriers. Lexington-class carriers were almost 900 feet long, had a top speed of up to 35 knots, and carried about 90 aircraft. They had two elevators and a giant hangar divided by a fire curtain. The height of the hangar was not exceeded until the mid-1950s. Lexington and Saratoga were the largest aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy until 1945.
During peacetime between World War I and World War II, Lexington, Saratoga and Langley often engaged in war game exercises. This is when many strategies on how to best utilize aircraft carriers were developed. Carriers, battleships and other surface combatants were split into two teams and were presented with various problems to solve. Fleet Problem 10 involved testing shore and naval defenses of the Panama Canal against a battleship attack. In a daring move, USS Saratoga separated from the fleet with a single escort cruiser to make a wide sweep to the south and attack the Panama Canal. The airplanes were launched at 2 o'clock in the morning while being 200 miles at sea. At dawn, the Panama locks were hit with a dive bombing attack. The defenders were taken completely by surprise. The effectiveness of this attack was the beginning of the carrier-centric task force as was advocated a year later by Lieutenant Commander Forrest Sherman.
In the early days of aircraft carriers, if the airplane failed to catch the arresting wire, it was improbable that it would take off again. For this reason, barrier wires were installed to prevent aircraft from crashing into the crew and other airplanes that were parked in front of the landing area. Crashing into the barrier wires would usually result in damage to the airplane and injuries to the pilot, but it was much better than the alternatives. If an airplane landed successfully, the barrier wires, which were installed three to four feet above the flight deck, would be lowered so the airplane could taxi over them.
In 1931, USS Ranger was laid down. This was the first American ship to be designed and built from the ground up as an aircraft carrier. During the design phase, Ranger was conceived to have a flush deck design, just like the Langley, but during construction an island superstructure was added. Due to the Washington Naval Treaty, Ranger was a relatively small carrier, having a displacement of about 14,000 tons. While the vessel was still under construction, the U.S. Navy realized that the minimum effective size of a carrier was at least 20,000 tons, so in a way, Ranger was obsolete even before its construction was completed. Due to budget cuts as a result of the Great Depression, a lot of design features were removed from the carrier, such as extra elevators, elimination of catapults, simplified fire control and so on. But it did still feature weapon elevators, and it appears to be the first carrier to ever have them. USS Ranger was kind of a flop considering it was built from the ground up as an aircraft carrier. She was deemed too slow to operate in the Pacific, so she missed most of the action during World War II. Instead, she was deployed in the Atlantic, and after the war was sold for scrap.
Yorktown-class and Wasp-class were the last carriers limited by the Washington Treaty. There were three ships in the Yorktown class, including USS Enterprise and USS Hornet. USS Wasp was the sole ship of her class. Yorktown-class carriers had been given an extra elevator, since the existing two elevators on the Lexington class were proven to be inadequate.
Deck edge elevators were first introduced on USS Wasp as an experiment, and were later incorporated into the Essex-class carriers. If the legacy elevator ever broke and got stuck in the down position, that would affect flight deck operations. But having an elevator on the side would not compromise the carrier's operations. Deck edge elevators would become the norm in future carrier designs. Another benefit of this design was increased deck space when the elevator was in the up position, as it provided additional parking space.
Essex-class carriers were the most numerous class of capital ships built in the 20th century. In total, 24 ships were built out of the 32 that were ordered during World War II. Since the class was not limited by naval treaties, it was about 60 feet longer and 10 feet wider than the previous Yorktown class. As the airplanes kept getting larger and heavier, a lot of attention was directed towards the larger size of the flight deck and the hangar space below. Other innovations of the Essex class include torpedo protection, hangar deck armor and the bulbous bow. By the way, the bulbous bow always looks like that, even when the ship is not excited.
Early flight decks were made of wood and had no armor. This made the flight deck lighter, which lowered the ship's center of gravity. The wood was also easy to repair. The issue was that bombs could easily penetrate the flight deck and reach both the hangar deck and even lower decks. Pre-World War II carriers, such as Yorktown and Wasp class, had little to no armor. This was a severe design flaw which was even acknowledged during the construction phase, but nothing could be done because the carriers had a restricted tonnage limit due to the treaty. The absence of armor on USS Wasp proved fatal when she was lost due to a torpedo attack in 1942. Similarly, USS Yorktown was lost during the Battle of Midway, and USS Hornet was lost during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands.
Meanwhile, none of the Essex-class carriers were lost during World War II, as these ships were much more heavily armored. Specifically, a two-and-a-half-inch hangar deck armor was introduced on the Essex class. These carriers did take a lot of beating from bombs, suicide planes and fires, but none were lost. USS Franklin was the most heavily damaged carrier during World War II that still survived. She was badly damaged by a Japanese air attack in March of 1945, but still managed to return home on her own power. Similarly, USS Bunker Hill was severely damaged by two kamikazes within a 30-second period. She also survived and made it back to Pearl Harbor.
From the lessons learned during World War II, a decision was made to start adding armor to flight decks. The Midway class of three carriers received a three-and-a-half-inch armor plating at the deck level and two-inch plating at the hangar level. Midway was the first class of American aircraft carriers which had armor protection for hangars. Of course, the downside of adding all this armor was increased top-heaviness of the vessel, which resulted in poor seaworthiness as the flight deck would get washed over during higher sea states.
The Midway-class carriers were capable of embarking as many as 137 aircraft, but it was deemed impossible to operate more than 120 from a single carrier. Midway-class carriers in their original configuration were the last ships to be limited by the Panama Canal locks' limit size. In other words, the next carrier class was going to be a supercarrier.
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By the end of World War II, it became clear that the future of naval aviation was in jets. But this meant that carriers needed to be modified in order to accommodate these heavier and faster jet aircraft. The modifications varied from simpler things like adding a jet engine test facility at the fantail area of the carrier to major modifications like a complete redesign of the flight deck.
The angled deck was first tested in 1952 by the British and later by Americans on USS Antietam, which was a modified Essex-class carrier. Antietam's flight deck angled 10.5 degrees to the left of the longitudinal axis. Jet aircraft's higher speed would have required the entire length of the centerline flight deck to arrest the airplane on landing, which would have meant no aircraft could take off if one was landing - obviously very inefficient. But an angled flight deck allowed for simultaneous launch and recovery operations of aircraft. But even more importantly, the new design fixed another big issue, because now airplanes that failed to catch an arrester cable could accelerate and relaunch without any risk to the parked aircraft in the front. The trials on USS Antietam were so successful that the U.S. Navy decided to retrofit angled flight decks onto most of the Essex and Midway-class carriers.
Jet aircraft presented another major issue to the carrier's operations. What happens in the event of an emergency landing, in case a tail hook or landing gear breaks? Simple barrier wires may not be sufficient to stop the aircraft, so barricades were invented to deal with this problem. A barricade is an emergency recovery system that can be set up within minutes. It relies on webbing that consists of upper and lower horizontal loading straps that transfer the energy of the landing aircraft to the arresting engines below the deck. While barricade engagements are rare, they have saved numerous lives.
The Forrestal class of four ships was the first class of supercarriers. Forestalls were about 25% larger than their predecessor Midway class. Specifically, they were 100 feet longer and nearly 20 feet wider. Additionally, a deeper hull resulted in much better sea keeping than the previous class while still incorporating an armored flight deck. Originally, Forrestal and Saratoga were laid down as axial deck carriers, but during construction both were converted to angled deck ships. This allowed for a larger island, roomier hangars and better damage control.
Forrestal class also had four catapults and four elevators compared to just three of each on the Midway class. As the first supercarrier, Forrestal's design was not mature, so some mistakes were made. In particular, the positioning of the port side elevator was problematic to say the least, as it was located at the fore of an angled deck next to the catapults, and this severely limited flight operations whenever the elevator was in the down position. This issue and other ones were fixed in the future Kitty Hawk-class carriers, as the elevator was moved to the aft end of the angled deck.
Kitty Hawks were essentially Forrestals with a few improvements, like the angled deck being 40 feet longer, larger fuel tanks, repositioned elevators and installation of Terrier missile launchers. In total, three Kitty Hawk-class carriers were built, with the fourth one, USS John F. Kennedy, being considered as a subclass due to many minor design changes. JFK was originally supposed to be a nuclear-powered carrier, but due to budget cuts was converted to be a conventionally powered carrier. And she was the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier built for the U.S. Navy.
You may be wondering why we haven't talked about catapults yet. Well, the reason is that prior to World War II, they were seldomly used. Even by the end of the war, it was estimated that about 40% of the aircraft launches relied on catapults. But in the early '50s, with the rise of supercarriers and jet aircraft, catapults became essential.
After the war, Commander C. C. Mitchell of the Royal Navy developed a steam-based catapult system which was both effective and efficient in launching jet planes. The United States Navy was very impressed with this British invention and immediately bought five steam catapults. One was used for testing in Philadelphia Navy Yard. USS Hancock and USS Ticonderoga also got two catapults each, and then Project Steam was born, during which sea evaluations of these new catapults were conducted. A variety of jet aircraft were tested with these new steam catapults. Propeller airplanes were tested as well. Overall, the trials were extremely successful. The most significant attribute of steam catapults was consistent acceleration for most of its stroke.
After the end of Project Steam, the U.S. Navy adopted steam catapults on all of its carriers. An interesting tidbit is the two extensions at the end of the forward catapults which were called the "bridle catcher." The bridle would link the shuttle to the aircraft and would pull it down the catapult's track at increasing speed. At the end of the catapult track, the aircraft would depart into the air and the bridle would be flung out into the sea, unless the carrier had a bridle catcher which would recover the bridle so it could be used again. But modern carriers do not use bridle catchers anymore, as bridles are now obsolete. Instead, the catapult launch bar is directly attached to the nose gear of the aircraft.
During the early days of naval aviation, pilots relied entirely on their visual perception of the landing area as well as the aid of Landing Signal Officers, or LSOs. LSOs utilized colored flags, cloth paddles and lighted wands. While LSOs are still used today in the U.S. Navy, an optical landing system does most of the ball work.
Originally developed by the British after World War II, the Optical Landing System, or OLS, was deployed on American carriers in 1955, which greatly improved safety on the flight deck. The original optical landing systems relied on a concave mirror that was gyroscopically controlled on the port side of the flight deck. But the next generation of OLS, which are also referred to as the "lens," consists of a row of green lights called datum lights and a column of vertical lights. An amber light, called the "meatball," travels up and down the column depending on the relative position of the aircraft to the flight deck. If the meatball is above the green light, the aircraft angle of approach is too high. If the amber light is below the green light, the aircraft is too low. And if the meatball is in line with the datum line, the aircraft is on the right track.
At any given point, the LSO is in control of the lens and also in contact with the pilot via radio. The LSO would also operate wave-off lights, which are red flashing lamps that instruct the pilot to go full power or go around. The original idea was that the OLS would completely eliminate the need for Landing Signal Officers, but when the OLS was introduced, the accident rate actually went up. Prior to using the lens, the accident rate on American aircraft carriers was 35 per 10,000 landings. After the introduction of the lens without the LSO, it went up significantly. But when the lens was combined with the LSO, the accident rate dropped to 7 per 10,000 landings in 1957. Sometimes technology or personnel alone are not sufficient for a better outcome, but combining the two was truly a great leap forward towards safer flight operations on the carriers, which is still in use to this day.
The first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier took three years to build at a cost of $4.16 billion. USS Enterprise, also known as "Big E," had eight A2W nuclear reactors, each replacing one of the conventional boilers. Being nuclear powered meant that USS Enterprise could cruise around the world for 20 years before needing refueling. Simultaneously, the U.S. Navy was building smaller nuclear surface combatants, such as USS Bainbridge and USS Long Beach, as it was envisioned at the time that the future of the American Navy was nuclear. But cost overruns prevented this from happening, as Big E was the only one built out of the six carriers originally planned.
With a displacement of 93,000 tons, she was quite something - the longest naval vessel ever built. Big E had four rudders, which was two more than any other carrier, and she had the most amount of electronics installed on her at the time, which included 1,800 telephones for a crew of 6,000. The unique square-shaped island was a result of the most powerful radar system installed at the time. The SCANFAR radar was a long-range air search and target acquisition radar which relied on vacuum tubes and consumed a lot of power. As you can imagine, it took a lot of space inside the island. SCANFAR was one of the earliest phased array radars, a worthy predecessor to the future AN/SPY-1 radar that is used in the modern Aegis Combat System.
The flight deck is a dangerous place to be, as there are a lot of things that can go wrong. The following two accidents are prime examples of how the U.S. Navy learned about how simple flight deck operations can result in huge loss of life. In 1969, USS Enterprise was almost lost due to a single rocket. An MD-3A Huffer, a tractor-mounted unit used to start aircraft, had its exhaust positioned two feet away from a Zuni rocket attached under the wing of an F-4 Phantom bomber. The exhaust heated the rocket in excess of 320 degrees Fahrenheit, which caused the rocket to explode. The blast damaged the Phantom's fuel tank, from which burning jet fuel poured onto the deck. That set off a chain reaction with more planes and bombs exploding. Nearby, USS Bainbridge and USS Rogers rushed to help. It took four hours to extinguish the fire. Sadly, 28 sailors lost their lives and over 300 were injured. 15 aircraft were destroyed and the flight deck took some major damage.
Two years earlier, in 1967, a similar accident happened aboard USS Forrestal. A Zuni rocket was missing a safety pin, and during the switch from external to internal power, an electrical power surge occurred which caused the rocket to fire into the external fuel tank of an A-4 Skyhawk. The resulting fire from the spilled jet fuel started a series of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161.
The USS Enterprise and Forrestal fires prompted the Navy to revise its operational procedures, such as better weapon handling, improved firefighting, better communication between key senior personnel, and educating the flight deck crew on subjects such as ordnance cook-off temperatures and times.
The 10 Nimitz-class carriers are the workhorses of American naval aviation. The carriers can operate over seven types of aircraft and carry up to a maximum of 90. During flight operations on a flight deck the size of five football fields, a carefully choreographed team ensures both safety and efficiency while traveling at speeds in excess of 30 knots. As many as four aircraft can be launched every minute while simultaneously recovering aircraft.
Four elevators, each the size of two average city lots, bring the jets to the flight deck from hangars below. The various functions of the flight deck personnel are identified by various colors they wear: purple for fuel handlers, yellow for officers and aircraft directors who are responsible for movements on the deck, green for catapult and arresting gear crew, blue for tractor drivers and elevator operators, brown for plane captains that ensure aircraft is safe to fly and inspected after landing, white for landing signal officers, safety observers and medical personnel, and finally red for crash and salvage teams and the ordnance handlers.
The design of the Nimitz-class carriers is based on the lessons learned from Forrestal and Enterprise supercarriers. The ship's layout is somewhat similar to the Kitty Hawk class. The biggest design change from Enterprise was using two A4W nuclear reactors instead of eight. This greatly freed up space which allowed Nimitz-class carriers to carry an additional 3 million gallons of fuel for aircraft on board and escorts. The two nuclear reactors produce enough electricity to power a city of a hundred thousand.
The carriers have about 90 days worth of food and supplies on board. Four water distilling units provide 400,000 gallons of fresh water each day that are used by propulsion plants, catapults and the crew. The flight deck angle was slightly reduced to nine degrees, which improved airflow around the carrier. Defensive armament varies from ship to ship, but usually includes three or four Phalanx CIWS, a dozen or two Sea Sparrow missiles and sometimes RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles.
Starting with USS Carl Vinson, the ships have been constructed with anti-submarine capabilities. Another thing that was pioneered on USS Carl Vinson was Carrier Classic, which was a basketball game between North Carolina and Michigan State on Remembrance Day in 2011. Everyone was all hands on deck.
Starting with Theodore Roosevelt, the carriers were manufactured with modular construction, meaning that instead of building the carrier from the ground up, there are pieced together from prefabricated blocks, which greatly increased construction efficiency. The average costs of building each Nimitz-class carrier was $9.7 billion.
Since the first Nimitz-class carrier was laid down in 1968 and the last one was commissioned in 2009, there have been quite a few changes as the class design has evolved. For instance, the newest Nimitz-class carriers, USS Ronald Reagan and USS George H.W. Bush, only have three arrester wires compared to four on the previous ships. This was due to the introduction of the Improved Fresnel Optical Landing System.
During Refueling and Complex Overhaul, which happens every 20 years, Nimitz-class carriers are updated with the newest equipment, which brings all their carriers up to the new standards.
At this point, Nimitz-class carriers have a mature design with not many things that can be significantly improved, which brings us to the latest and greatest class of American supercarriers, the Ford class. The Ford-class carriers feature numerous incremental updates to most of the legacy systems.
Steam catapults were replaced with the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS. The biggest benefit of this new design is smoother acceleration, which results in less stress on the aircraft's airframe. Other benefits include the system's reduced weight, the ability to launch a greater range of aircraft, and reduced maintenance. But the issue is that EMALS are still not mature enough and tend to be less reliable than the legacy steam catapults.
Similarly, the Advanced Arresting Gear landing system pioneered on USS Gerald R. Ford utilizes electromagnets to stop aircraft instead of using hydraulics, with the main benefit being reduced shock on the airframes at the time of landing.
The main visual difference between Nimitz and Ford-class carriers is the slimming and relocation of the island about a hundred feet aft. This allowed for the creation of a "pit stop," a centralized location for rearming and refueling aircraft instead of moving the aircraft around to perform various tasks. This concept is supposed to decrease turnaround times, which ultimately means more sorties per day.
Other updates to Ford-class carriers include new stealth features, new radars, updated RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles, and also increased automation resulting in a crew of several hundred fewer personnel compared to Nimitz-class carriers, which will save millions of dollars over the life cycle of the carrier.
Finally, the biggest improvement in this class of carriers is the redesigned nuclear reactors that can produce 25% more power. This enhancement, coupled with the fact that Ford-class carriers do not use steam for catapult operations, means that the steam produced by the two A1B reactors can generate two and a half to three times the amount of electricity that Nimitz-class carriers produce.
Nimitz-class carriers suffer from chronic overloading of their electrical generators, but that's because the Nimitz class was designed in the 1960s when on-board technologies required much less electrical power. So now it has a limited margin available to meet the increasing demand of electricity. In fact, the limited electricity supply of Nimitz-class carriers is the primary roadblock to installing new but power-hungry technologies.
With this in mind, during the design phase of Ford-class carriers, the decision was made to future-proof the class from this problem by doubling the supply of electricity. Currently, only half of the electric power generation capacity is being used, with the remaining half available for future technologies.
The U.S. Navy expects the Ford-class carriers to be in service for 90 years. Who knows what naval aviation will look like in 90 years, given how quickly technology evolves? Maybe the decision makers in the U.S. Navy are really ahead of our times, or maybe they're just full of optimism. Take a minute to think about it - is there much that you can predict 90 years ahead of time? Drop us a comment. We know.
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