AIRCRAFT CARRIER 100: The 100th Anniversary of the American Aircraft Carrier

aircraft carrier100 The 100th Anniversary of the American Aircraft Carrier

aircraft carrier100

The 100th Anniversary of the American Aircraft Carrier

INTERVIEW..........................................................................................................................................8 Rear Adm. John F. Meier Commander, Naval Air Force Atlantic

INDUSTRY INSIGHT......................................................................................................... 12 Dennis FitzPatrick, Director, Boeing Navy and Marine Corps Field Marketing

USS LANGLEY (CV 1)........................................................................................................ 14 From floating fuel farm to first flattop, the “Covered Wagon” was a trailblazer.

BY EDWARD LUNDQUIST

COMMUNICATION, COMMISSIONINGS, COMMITMENT....................................... 20

The Navy League supports the Sea Services

INDUSTRY INSIGHT........................................................................................................ 28 “Always Good Ships” Newport News Shipbuilding

OCEANA MASTER JET BASE IS THE EAST COAST HUB OF NAVAL AVIATION.................................................................. 30 AIRCRAFT CARRIER EVOLUTION............................................................................... 32

BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN

INDUSTRY INSIGHT........................................................................................................ 46 Kevin Mickey, Vice President and General Manager, Air Dominance Division, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems

THE POSTWAR CARRIER REVOLUTION...................................................................48

BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN

TOMORROW’S AIRCRAFT CARRIERS........................................................................ 56

BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN

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INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW:

REAR ADM. JOHN F. MEIER COMMANDER, NAVAL AIR FORCE ATLANTIC was recognized as Instructor Pilot of the Year in 1995; EA-6B placement officer at Navy Personnel Command; senior operations officer and emergency actions officer on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the National Military Command Center; requirements officer for EA-18G at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) N88; assistant chief of staff force readiness officer at Commander, Naval Air Forces; assistant commander, Navy Personnel Command for Career Management (PERS-4); and commander, Navy Warfare Development Command.

Meier has participated in operations around the world since Desert Storm, led Southern Partnership Station, and built the crew and culture of USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) as the first commanding officer. He has accumulated more than 4,000 flight hours and 675 carrier landings. Meier assumed command of Naval Air Force Atlantic on May 1, 2020.

His decorations include the Legion of Merit and various other personal and unit level awards.

What lessons can a century-old converted collier provide to a 21st century U.S. Navy?

Just as we knew a hundred years ago with the conversion of USS Jupiter to USS Langley, innovation and modernization are imperative for the U.S. Navy. The Langley was named in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American aircraft pioneer and engineer, and was thus a tribute to the pioneering spirit that is naval aviation.

The aircraft carrier has served as one of the key symbols for our Navy, and from CV 1 to CVN 78, these ships have proven to be the U.S. Navy’s preeminent power projection platform.

How important to the nation were U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and naval aviation over the past century of their existence?

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As the world has evolved over the last century, so has the requirement for the modernization of aircraft carriers and the capabilities they possess – and could possess in the future. From Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) to exercises with allies and partners, to serving as the flagship for the carrier strike group, our carriers continue to deter aggression and assure our national security. They serve significant operational and diplomatic objectives for the United States, are the cornerstone for our Navy’s ability to project power, and maintain our commitments worldwide. It is no surprise that in times of crisis, presidents and senior leaders alike ask: Where is the nearest carrier?

Rear Adm. John F. Meier, Commander, Naval Air Force Atlantic

What have been the most important advances in aircraft carriers and carrier aviation?

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO

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ear Adm. John F. Meier, a native of Export, Pennsylvania, graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1986 with a Bachelor of Science in general engineering. He completed flight training in Beeville, Texas, and was “winged” as a naval aviator in August 1988.

Meier’s operational assignments include Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 141, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, VAQ-128, and executive officer onboard USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), during which the command was recognized with the 2008, 2009 and 2010 Battle “E” and the 2009 Safety “S.” Command tours include VAQ-136, earning the Safety “S” and Battle “E” in 2004 as well as the 2005 Retention Excellence award; USS Gunston Hall (LSD 44), earning the 2011 Battle “E;” and Precommissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), earning the 2014 and 2015 Retention Excellence awards. Meier most recently commanded Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 10, earning the Humanitarian Service award.

Meier’s shore assignments include tours at VAQ-129, where he

U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS MEGAN ALEXANDER

(1) The advancement of nuclear propulsion has provided a critical capability in the sustainment of military operations worldwide. It allows us to be self-sufficient, with more room for jet fuel, ordnance, and stores – thus reducing our dependence on logistics and lowering the cost of operations. For example, we can transit over 700 miles in 24 hours to provide support in various regions around the globe. (2) By providing long-range flight operations for over 75 aircraft per carrier, the U.S. Navy can provide a range of multi-mission capabilities to numbered fleet commanders as well as for partners and allies.

What have been the most important changes and innovations in carrier aviation over the past century?

CVNs, and the CVWs they carry, are constantly evolving in order to remain dominant over realized and potential threats around the globe. The adaptability of the carrier and its multimission capabilities ensure they remain effective, relevant, and potent year after year and decade after decade. Recent advancements on the carriers include the USS Carl Vinson’s (CVN 70) most recent deployment with the F-35C Lightning II

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Aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing 2, including F-35Cs and CMV-22Bs, are secured on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), Feb. 1, 2022, during Carl Vinson's deployment in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. Among recent advancements to U.S. Navy aircraft carriers are new aircraft, both manned and unmanned.

spectrum of conflict. In the increasingly globalized world economy, carriers are a key tool in providing a safe, secure, and stable maritime system to all of humankind. Their ability to adapt with their strike groups is the foundation of the U.S. maritime strategy and their presence alone is used for a myriad of operational and strategic objectives.

and the CMV-22B Osprey, and USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) deck testing for the MQ-25, the world’s first operational, carrier-based unmanned aircraft to provide aerial refueling, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.

What have been the most important aspects of carrier aviation that have endured over the past century?

The fighting spirit in our pilots during events like the Battle of Midway still holds true today. Their professionalism and dedication to training helps to preserve the readiness and warfighting capability that are vital to U.S. naval aviation.

Why do U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and naval aviation continue to be important to the nation, and why will they be important to the future of the United States?

No matter where you are in the world, the aircraft carrier serves as the ultimate symbol for the U.S. Navy. They can conduct full-scale military operations for over 70% of the Earth’s surface and have an unequaled ability to provide warfighting capabilities across the full

What are the differences or improvements between the Ford class and the Nimitz class that preceded it?

Ford-class CVNs serve as the cornerstone of a lethal, agile, resilient, and readily adaptable distributed maritime force required by the National Defense Strategy. They also represent a revolutionary jump in carrier aviation and the future of large-deck, nuclear-

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INTERVIEW

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO COURTESY OF CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER'S MATE JOHN LEE HIGHFILL

No matter where you are in the world, the aircraft carrier serves as the ultimate symbol for the U.S. Navy. They can conduct full-scale military operations for over 70% of the Earth’s surface and have an unequaled ability to provide warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.

A Boeing F4B fighter of Fighter Squadron 1B (VF-1B) landing, probably on USS Saratoga (CV 3), during the Golden Age of naval aviation in the early 1930s. Whatever the advances in aircraft and technology, the professionalism, dedication, and fighting spirit of naval aviators have endured for a century.

powered aircraft carriers designed to fight and win in a contested environment.

Their capabilities (i.e. Enterprise Air Search radar, electromagnetic aircraft launching system, and enhanced flight deck configuration) demonstrate the dedication to innovation in naval aviation and provide our forward deployed Sailors and Marines more speed, survivability, and lethality to outpace adversary threats.

What do you see as the greatest challenges for the future of aircraft carriers and carrier aviation? What do you see as the most exciting developments for the future?

Just as the world continues to evolve, so does the requirement to modernize

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the carriers and their ability to support national defense requirements. As technology transforms the way we approach warfighting (i.e. artificial intelligence and networked automation) the U.S. Navy must prioritize ways to expand carrier-based power projection while advancing key capabilities to retain tactical relevance. Kinetic and non-kinetic weapons will continue to become smarter and more survivable with increased range, flexibility, and lethality – therefore, finding their place within the multi-mission capabilities of the carrier strike group framework is critical to the future of our power projection.

How important is Manned-Unmanned Teaming to the future of naval aviation, and what are the challenges involved in developing the capability?

How will unmanned aircraft on flight decks affect the culture of naval aviation?

The Navy is preparing for tomorrow’s fight by investing in unmanned technology to increase the fleet’s capability, capacity and lethality, and pace the evolving

challenges and threats of the 21st century.

Continued Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) development will enable information sharing across a distributed force, increasing survivability, reducing risk to manned aircraft, and ensuring weapons capacity. Future unmanned air vehicles will be survivable platforms, with sensors and tools to expand range, targeting, and armament capabilities.

Examples: UAS will fill diverse roles in the future air wing and the distributed surface fleet in missions such as refueling, communications relay, logistics, airborne electronic attack, strike, and ISR-T. Persistent unmanned tanking is a force multiplier that frees up the Navy’s strike fighters and pilots currently carrying out the tanking role and delivers greater range and endurance for the CVW to execute missions.

The MQ-25 will be the Navy’s first aircraft carrier-based unmanned platform and will increase the lethality and reach of the CVW as a tanker with a secondary ISR role. Along with organic tanking, the MQ25 will pave the way to extend strike range and enhance maneuverability. CV100

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INDUSTRY INSIGHT

INTERVIEW:

DENNIS FITZPATRICK Director, Boeing Navy and Marine Corps Field Marketing

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s the United States prepares to celebrate the centennial anniversary of United States Navy aircraft carriers, the Navy League of Hampton Roads spoke with Dennis FitzPatrick, Boeing’s director of Navy and Marine Corps Field Marketing, on the future of carrier aviation. FitzPatrick served for 31 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a rear admiral. A former F/A-18 pilot, his assignments included command of the USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67), director, Joint Operations Division, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, and commander, Strike Force Training Atlantic. He currently leads personnel in seven field offices throughout the United States at key Navy sites.

Boeing has been represented on the U.S. carrier deck for nearly a century.

What does this long-term commitment mean to Boeing and to the Navy?

Boeing, directly and through its heritage companies, has been a part of carrier aviation from its beginning. We have proudly designed and built the airplanes that naval aviators have trained in and flown into combat throughout the history of naval aviation. Virtually every naval aviator, in both the 20th and 21st centuries, has flown a Boeing aircraft at one time or another, and Boeing has the honor of helping Sailors and Marines safely and effectively complete their missions at home and around the globe.

Operating from the deck of an aircraft carrier is one of the most challenging forms of flight, and it takes special skills and special airplanes. The airplanes must be designed with engineering excellence and built with manufacturing prowess focused on quality, reliability, and most importantly, safety. From the Douglas D-T, specially equipped with a

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Dennis FitzPatrick, Director, Boeing Navy and Marine Corps Field Marketing

brand new innovation – the tail hook – to the FB-2 flying off the USS Langley (CV 1), to the SBD Dauntless that turned the tide in the Pacific War at the Battle

of Midway, to the F2H Banshees and AD Skyraiders battling over bridges of North Korea, to the A-4 Skyhawks, F-4 Phantoms, and RA-5C Vigilantes over the Tonkin Gulf, to the F/A-18 Hornets in the Persian Gulf, and to today’s F/A18 Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler, CMV-22 Osprey, and MQ-25 Stingray – if aircraft carriers were there, so was Boeing. Beyond the aircraft, we have supported the Navy through training, support, and maintenance, helping to ensure Sailors and Marines are ready whenever and wherever the mission requires. Nearly every Navy trainer has come from either Boeing or one of its many heritage companies: the N2S “Stearman” Kaydet, SNJ Texan, T-28 Trojan, T-2J Buckeye, TA-4 Skyhawk, and today’s T-45 Goshawk. Boeing takes that responsibility seriously and continues to invest in the future of Navy aviation. Boeing aircraft have been on the carrier deck for almost a hundred years, and with the strength of Boeing’s experience, dedication, engineering

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excellence, and creativity, I have no doubt we’ll continue to see Boeing aircraft launching from the decks of carriers for the next hundred years.

U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS BRANDON ROBERSON

Most people know Boeing for its aircraft. How does Boeing’s training and maintenance expertise and its supply chain management support Navy readiness?

We are hand in glove with naval aviation, looking to the future and continuing to bring Boeing’s innovative technology to the carrier deck. Naval aviators are able to train better, more quickly, and at a lower cost than they did even a decade ago using Boeing-developed training and simulation resources. With regard to readiness, Boeing’s analytics, supply chain expertise and global network are a critical support structure in Navy global force projection.

The CMV-22 Osprey recently achieved Initial Operating Capability to serve the carrier onboard delivery mission.

How will the CMV-22 affect future carrier operations?

CMV-22 Osprey, a tiltrotor aircraft, is based on proven variants currently in service with the Marine Corps and the Air Force. The tiltrotor allows it to take off and land like a helicopter and then, once airborne, achieve the speed and altitude common to a turboprop aircraft. This flexibility is ideal for the carrier onboard delivery mission, where its unique capabilities provide new flexibility and capability for the carrier battle group.

This aircraft will provide increased flexibility for logistics movement and carrier support compared to legacy platforms. Beyond the vertical lift capability, the range and versatility will enable the Navy to conduct carrier logistics differently and more efficiently than they have in the past and gives the commander greater options. The story of the CMV-22 has yet to be written because the Navy is going to find new and innovative ways to use that aircraft to increase the combat effectiveness of the carrier air wing.

The MQ-25 is going to dramatically enhance Navy operations. How will the Stingray enhance carrier operations?

The MQ-25 allows the Navy to free up

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Sailors and Boeing employees look for discrepancies in the positioning of the Boeing unmanned MQ-25 aircraft on the flight deck aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). The MQ-25 will be the world’s first operational, carrier-based unmanned aircraft and is integral to the Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems (AWotF FoS).

combat airplanes for combat missions versus refueling operations, enhancing strike capability while reducing wear on the airframes. This will give carrier strike groups greater striking range and flexibility of movement. Beyond that, the MQ-25 allows leadership and Sailors to see how piloted and unmanned aircraft can combine for greater mission effectiveness.

What are your thoughts on the future of naval aviation?

I see a bright future for naval aviation and carrier-based aviation, with high demand continuing for the Navy’s ability to prosecute any mission, anywhere in the world to defend the United States and our allies. I think we’re seeing the beginning of what’s next right now. We’re seeing greater use of analytics to better manage maintenance, readiness, training, inventory management, etc. We’re using more virtual reality and artificial intelligence to help

with everything from training to mission planning. We’re seeing unmanned and autonomous assets on the deck like the MQ-25 Stingray, and what would previously be considered non-traditional aircraft such as the CMV-22 Osprey.

For the next several decades, as these new features become more mature, the carrier deck will also have some familiar elements. For example, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet has been the backbone of naval aviation for many years. Boeing continues to evolve and enhance the F/A-18 and EA-18G with new capability, combining its proven performance with new technology to maintain its relevance in meeting present and future threats.

The combination of the F/A-18 Block III upgrade, the Growler Block-II upgrade and the Service Life Maintenance Program will have Super Hornets on the carrier deck well into the 2040s.

Boeing isn’t resting on its history. It’s combining industry-leading knowledge of the maritime domain with worldclass innovation and significant research and development to continue inventing and innovating products, services, and capabilities that enable the U.S. Navy to remain the preeminent navy on the planet. And that’s how Boeing remains a partner on the carrier deck for the next hundred years and beyond. CV100

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USS LANGLEY (CV 1)

BY EDWARD LUNDQUIST

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he story of the USS Langley (CV 1), America’s first aircraft carrier and the first electric-drive ship, is unique in more ways than one. And lessons learned on Langley are still being applied today – 100 years later.

While she wasn’t designed to be an aircraft carrier, she was heavily modified from the time she began her life in 1912 as a collier named USS Jupiter. Originally classified as Fuel Ship No. 3, or Fleet Collier No. 3, and eventually AC 3, Jupiter was one of four Proteus-class colliers built for the U.S. Navy. But while her near sisters were propelled by reciprocating steam engines (Cyclops and Proteus) and geared steam-turbine drive (Nereus), Jupiter was singled out for a new kind of electric drive. Her two (later three) boilers powered two shafts through a General Electric turbo-electric transmission to give her 7,000 shaft horsepower

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a range of about 3,500 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 12 knots. One of the benefits of the electric-drive system was a somewhat simplified propulsion plant.

The boilers powered turbines that in turn powered large turbo-electric motors connected to the propeller shafts. The need for large reduction gears was eliminated.

Turbo-electric drive was successful enough that the Navy used the propulsion system in six battleships commissioned between 1918 and 1923, as well as two battlecruisers converted into the big aircraft carriers Lexington (CV 2) and Saratoga (CV 3).

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U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

From floating fuel farm to first flattop, the “Covered Wagon” was a trailblazer. and a top speed of about 15 knots, with

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION

USS LANGLEY CV 1

Opposite page: USS Langley (CV 1), with Vought VE-7 aircraft on deck in 1923. In the background are the battleships she and the aircraft carriers that came after would supersede as the primary striking power of the U.S. Navy fleet. Right: An Aeromarine 39B approaching the flight deck of USS Langley (CV 1) during landing practice in October 1922. This was the type of aircraft to make the first landing on Langley, piloted by Lt. Cmdr.

Godfrey deC. Chevalier, on Oct. 26, 1922. Below right: A Vought VE-7 plane hangs from the traveling crane beneath Langley’s flight deck, July 10, 1923, as it is lifted onto the ship’s elevator. The elevator, even when fully lowered, projected some feet above the main deck, so every aircraft had to be craned on and off the elevator to be lifted up to the flight deck.

Jupiter was bound up with U.S. Navy aviation even before conversion to an aircraft carrier. One of her first captains, from April 1913 to April 1914, was Cmdr.

Joseph M. “Bull” Reeves, later known as the “Father of Carrier Aviation” for his work in integrating aircraft carriers into the fleet.

Not long after, with America’s entry into World War I in 1917, the government of France requested American naval aviators to carry out patrols against the German U-boat threat. In response, the U.S. Navy’s 1st Naval Air Unit, or Aeronautic Detachment No. 1, was formed, under the leadership of Lt. Kenneth Whiting, a naval aviation pioneer who would become the first executive officer of USS Langley when she was commissioned, and later her captain. Jupiter was called upon in May to transport personnel of Aeronautic Detachment No. 1 to France, docking at Brest on June 5, 1917 – the first U.S. military unit to arrive in France.

When World War I ended in November 1918, the U.S. Navy began to draw down in numbers of ships and personnel. Coal as a fuel for warships was also on its way out, so Jupiter’s career as a collier was a relatively short one. Jupiter was taken out of service in 1920, and that’s when her transformation into an entirely new type of ship – the aircraft carrier – began.

Jupiter was a good candidate for conversion because she had a lot of internal space for carrying fuel and stowing aircraft and parts. The Jupiter’s six coal bunkers would provide ample space for Langley’s aircraft and associated logistical and maintenance requirements.

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The forwardmost (No. 1) coal bunker was converted to hold 578 tons of aviation fuel.

Bunkers 2, 3, 5, and 6 held unassembled aircraft, machine shops, and parts. The upper half of No. 4 was dedicated to the machinery for the flight deck elevator. An unfortunate feature of the elevator was that when fully lowered, it still stood several feet above the main deck, which meant aircraft had to be craned on to it from the main deck. The ship’s magazine was located beneath the elevator machinery spaces. Her conversion required a reconfiguration of her stacks (one of several) to accommodate her flight deck, which ran the entire length of the ship, covered her bridge and deckhouse, and stood high above the main deck, elevated on spindly steel truss towers. The combination of these towers and the wooden flight deck above earned her the nickname “Covered Wagon.” A gantry crane traveling fore and aft beneath the flight deck transported aircraft from

the holds to the main deck and onto the elevator. Arresting wires were arranged both athwartships and fore and aft over the flight deck, and a catapult was installed at the bow.

The Langley had no actual hangar deck.

Aircraft were brought up from the holds, assembled or serviced on the ship’s original main deck, which was more or less open to the elements, and craned onto the elevator, which then raised them to the flight deck.

With these and other changes, USS Langley was commissioned March 20, 1922, with XO Cmdr. Whiting as her acting commander.

Since Whiting had been one of the most outspoken advocates for aircraft carriers during the interwar years, it was fitting that he was the de facto first commander of the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier.

Her conversion to an aircraft carrier was basically an experiment, because Langley, with her 15-knot top speed, was never going to be fast enough to keep up with the

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U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTOS COURTESY OF LT. GUSTAVE J. FRERET, USN ( RET).

Left: Aircraft stowed on Langley’s main deck during the 1920s. The ship had no actual aircraft hangar, just the collier’s adapted main deck that lay below the flight deck. Looking forward, Langley’s bridge, with a few portholes visible, can be seen beyond the hook of the traveling crane and below the flight deck, which was built directly on top of it. The larger plane in the foreground is a Douglas DT torpedo bomber, with its wings removed. Other aircraft are Vought VE-7s of Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2). The ship’s boats are stowed along the hangar sides. Below left: Naval Aircraft Factory/Curtiss TS-1 aircraft of VF-1 prepare to launch from Langley, circa 1923. All the procedures of operating aircraft from a flight deck had to be developed, from chocks and hold-back devices, to hand signals and safety procedures.

fleet. The experiments carried out aboard Langley, however, became the basis of all U.S. Navy aircraft carrier operations to follow, and included many “firsts.”

On Oct. 17, 1922, Lt. V.C. Griffin performed the first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier takeoff, flying a Vought VE-7SF from Langley’s deck. On Oct. 26, Lt. Cmdr.

Godfrey deC. Chevalier performed the first carrier landing in an Aeromarine 39B, and on Nov. 18, XO Cmdr. Kenneth Whiting was catapulted from Langley in a PT seaplane, the carrier’s first catapult launch. The words “pilots, man your planes,” “rig the deck,” and “stand by to start engines,” were uttered for the very first time aboard Langley, the beginning of a culture and traditions that have lasted into the 21st century. These “firsts” were incidental to the pioneering experiments carried out aboard the carrier.

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Langley experimented with different types of arresting gear, catapult types, and how to overcome the many new challenges and dangers of naval aviation. Netting was rigged outboard of the flight deck for crewmembers to use during flight operations and to jump into in case of crashes. Hooks were developed and built for the landing gear of aircraft to engage the longitudinal arresting wires, as well as tailhooks for the crossdeck wires. Plane-handling crews were organized, and since there were no radios in the planes, hand signals had to be developed to use with the naval aviators when directing aircraft on deck.

One of the first problems was how to conduct the first-time launch of Griffin’s Vought when, like most aircraft of the era, it had nothing more than free-wheeling main gear and a tailskid.

“Since planes had no brakes, it was necessary to develop a device consisting of a bomb release attached to a wire about five feet long to allow a plane to turn up to full power and start its deck run,” wrote Rear Adm. Jackson R. Tate in “We Rode the Covered Wagon,” one of the chapters in The Golden Age Remembered, edited by E.T. Wooldridge. “The bomb release was hooked to a ring on the landing gear and the end of the wire to a hold-down fitting on deck. A cord led from the bomb-release trigger to an operator on deck, who could release the plane on signal. … Griffin turned the Hispano-Suiza engine in the Vought up to its full 150 horsepower and gave the signal to pull the trigger on the bombrelease gadget. The released plane rolled down the deck and lifted off easily before it reached the elevator.”

Fore and aft arresting gear, engaged by hooks attached to the axles of the aircraft’s landing gear, was tested as a way to keep an aircraft from swinging out over the side of the flight deck after hook engagement, but was eventually abandoned, while the athwartships arresting gear idea was based on the concept Eugene Ely had used to land aboard Pennsylvania in 1911. All of it was developed in large part through the work of Lt. A. Melville Pride and Lt. Fred William Pennoyer. Various carrier approaches were tested, and a left-hand circuit with “a slow-turning flat approach with the nose high and using power” became standard, according to Tate. Whiting, by this time, was having all the landings filmed with a motion picture camera to determine the best approaches and techniques as well as

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Top: A Vought O2U-1 Corsair that has come to grief aboard Langley some time in the 1920s. The learning curve for naval aviators, aircraft manufacturers, and the crew of the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier was a steep one. Above: A group of naval aviators on the flight deck during the Hawaii cruise of 1925. The aircraft immediately behind them appears to be a Vought VE-7.

well as lighting on the flight deck to aid aviators making those landings. Langley normally carried a squadron of 12 aircraft, plus a handful of utility aircraft, but the promotion of Reeves as Commander Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, changed that. The shortcomings of having a single elevator that had to have aircraft craned on and off of it were that it took several long minutes to perform the evolution.

Storing aircraft on the main deck and then hoisting them up to the flight deck severely restricted the tempo of flight

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U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

what went wrong in crashes, which could be considered the forerunner of the PLAT cameras used today.

Landing aboard, aviators of that time were on their own, but experience aboard Langley changed that.

“When he wasn’t flying, the executive officer [Whiting] watched every landing from the after port corner of the flight deck and mentally made each landing himself,” Tate wrote. “He talked each plane in: ‘He’s too low … now OK … too high,’ etc., with appropriate motions of his hands. Whiting was surprised when informed that all the pilots had noted his anxiety and actions.

They did agree that it was a good idea to place an experienced pilot aft on the port side, so at a later conference the job of landing signal officer was set up. The ‘cut’ and other signals were added later and from then on the pilot was no longer just ‘on his own.’”

Night flying and night deck-landings were another new idea to be explored, as

operations. Breaking with British and Japanese practice, Reeves insisted on spotting aircraft on the flight deck in a “deck park,” eventually increasing the Langley’s aircraft capacity to 34-36 on the flight deck, with a few more stowed below.

With the aviators and crew of the Langley, Reeves succeeded in developing techniques to operate more aircraft at a faster pace for launches and recoveries. Langley also demonstrated the potential of the aircraft carrier and its embarked air group during exercises such as Fleet Problem VII, in 1927, when Langley’s aircraft carried out a successful attack on the Panama Canal, and Fleet Problem VIII in 1928, when her planes achieved complete surprise in an early morning attack on Oahu.

Another collier was planned for a conversion; however, it became clear that the larger, faster ships would be more useful. But Langley showed it could be done. Rather than convert more colliers to carriers, bigger and faster carriers would be required.

So, just as Langley, with her modest flight deck, was entering service, two huge carriers were coming into existence.

Because the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 prohibited new battleship and battlecruiser construction, the Navy took advantage of a pair of battle cruisers that could be repurposed. USS Lexington (CC 1) and USS Saratoga (CC 2) were completed as aircraft carriers CV 2 and CV 3. At 888 feet long and topping out at 48,000 tons, they were substantially larger than Langley (the United States wouldn’t build bigger CVs until the Midway class entered service at the end of World War II). And because they were designed as battle force ships, they had the hull form and propulsion plant to set the pace for any battle group. Lexington and Saratoga were real combatants. They were followed by two unique carriers, Ranger and Wasp, then the Yorktown class, and soon after, the Essex class and several other classes of light and escort carriers [see “Aircraft Carrier Evolution” article].

In 1934, new U.S. legislation included Langley in aircraft carrier tonnage, and the Navy needed to divest itself of the ship, at least in her CV role. In 1937, with new and more capable carriers on the way, Langley was converted to serve as a seaplane tender (AV 3), with a significant portion of her forward flight deck removed.

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO COURTESY OF LT. GUSTAVE J. FRERET, USN ( RET).

USS LANGLEY CV 1

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO U.S. NAVY PHOTOGRAPH

Above: Hook down, a Vought VE-7 utility plane attached to Fighting Squadron 6 (VF-6), comes aboard Langley circa 1927. Along the deck below it run both the lateral, cross-deck wires that the hook would catch, and the fore and aft wires seen here. These wires, propped up on wooden “fiddle blocks,” were intended to be caught by the small anchor-shaped hooks on the underside of the main landing gear axle to keep the plane from swerving off the flight deck to either side when its tail hook caught the arresting wire. Right: Langley in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands, with 34 planes on her flight deck, May 1928. The influence of Capt. Joseph M. Reeves can be seen in the large deck park of 34 aircraft.

As a seaplane tender, she also had the room to ferry aircraft.

At the outbreak of World War II, she was in the Far East, and in February 1942 was being used to deliver Army P-40 aircraft to the beleaguered Dutch forces in Indonesia when she was attacked and severely damaged by a Japanese aircraft. Her crew was removed to her escort ships and Langley was scuttled. Unfortunately, some of the ships involved in getting the Langley crew to safety were also attacked and lost.

But despite her tragic demise, and the fact that she didn’t serve as an aircraft carrier in World War II, she did make invaluable contributions to carrier aviation that helped to win the war, much of which survive today in training, tactics, and procedures.

Langley provided naval aviators with valuable experience taking off from a pitching flight deck; utilized early catapults; was the forerunner in using arresting gear; developed the concept of the landing signal officer; and tested and developed carrier operations and tactics. Langley conducted flight operations in

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adverse conditions, including blind landings and night landings, and in all different environmental conditions, including cold weather operations. It was Langley that signaled a clear deck for generations to come. CV100

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NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES

COMMUNICATION, COMMISSIONINGS, COMMITMENT The Navy League supports the Sea Services

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST SEAMAN JOEL S. KOLODZIEJCZAK

“We believe that the security of our nation and of the

people of the world demands a well-balanced, integrated, mobile American defense team, of which a strong Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine are indispensable parts.

”

- Statement of Policy, Navy League of the United States

F

or more than a century, the Navy League of the United States has supported and advocated for the sea services. Formed in 1902 at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy League’s goals are: • To foster and maintain interest in a strong Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine as integral parts of a sound national defense and vital to the freedom of the United States.

• To serve as a means of educating and informing the American people with regard to the role of sea power in the nuclear age and the problems involved in maintaining strong defenses in that age.

• To improve the understanding, appreciation, and recognition of those who wear the uniforms of our armed forces and to better the conditions under which they live and serve.

• To provide support and recognition for the sea service Reserve forces in our communities in order that we may continue to have a capable and responsive maritime Reserve community.

• To educate and train our youth in the customs and traditions of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine through the

Left: Audience members listen to remarks during the commissioning ceremony for the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. Ship commissionings are among the most visible activities undertaken by the Navy League.

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means of an active and vigorous Naval Sea Cadet Corps.

The Navy League communicates with the general public and national leadership through placement of editorials in the mainstream press, its Sea-Air-Space exposition it holds every year in Washington, D.C., and its magazine, Sea Power.

The Navy League also supports longterm educational efforts such as the reading programs of the Chief of Naval Operations, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Much of the Navy League’s work hinges on advocacy for the sea services and for sea power.

One of the most visible activities of the Navy League is its program of sponsoring the commissioning of new vessels into the sea services. Federal law, ethics rules, and service regulations heavily limit the sea services in what they are allowed to do during the fitting out and commissioning of new vessels, and the Navy League has made it its mission to help out and finish the job the way it should be done.

The Navy League’s contribution to a ship commissioning begins long before the vessel ever goes into the water, working with the shipbuilders and other contractors, the sea services themselves, and local Councils to lay out a program for the ship commissioning that will be supportive of the ship and crew, educational for the community, and, most important, legally allowable for all the parties concerned.

The Councils are involved in a number of ways with the commissioning of a vessel, from the commissioning itself to a discreet process of fundraising to help improve the

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS KYLEIGH WILLIAMS

lives of the crew aboard the vessel. These include finding funds to provide shipboard enhancements to help make the ship more of a home for the young servicemen and women who will live aboard.

Improvements to the ship’s library/ chapel spaces, buying gym equipment for crew fitness, and computers and software for ships’ learning centers are just some of the things that Navy League councils help provide for the men and women who sail America’s ships.

It is important to note that taxpayer dollars do not fund ship enhancements or activities surrounding the commissioning ceremonies. They are funded through private contributions made up of individuals and corporations that understand the sacrifices our service members undertake while at sea and ashore.

“A by-product of all of this is that it brings awareness of the importance of the sea services to the national defense of our maritime nation,” said Maryellen Baldwin, president and chief executive officer of the Hampton Roads Council of the Navy League of the United States (NLUS).

Because of its proximity to the Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipyard and Norfolk Naval Base, the Hampton Roads Council is especially experienced in helping make each commissioning a special event.

“We’ve supported 28 ship commissionings,” said Baldwin. Baldwin said the Navy League is in a unique position to help with events such as commemorating the centennial of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and the upcoming commissioning of the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy.

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Adm. John Richardson, U.S. Navy (Ret.), 31st Chief of Naval Operations, moderates the Tri-Service Maritime Leadership Panel with Adm. Mike Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations; Adm. Karl Schultz, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard; and Gen. David Berger, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, during the 2021 Sea-AirSpace Exposition. The Sea-Air-Space Exposition is an annual Navy League event that brings together key military decision-makers, the U.S. defense industrial base, and private-sector U.S. companies for an innovative and educational maritime-based event.

Navy League of the United States, Hampton Roads is one of 200 Navy League Councils in the United States, with another 26 Councils overseas.

The Hampton Roads Council has many ongoing programs, investing in the success of the annual Sailor of the Year events, Ombudsman Recognition, Sea Cadets Program, Congressional Roundtable, guest speaker programs, and the Oceana Airshow. The Council maintains a strong connection with the USO in Hampton Roads and Armed Services YMCA, Hampton Roads Naval Museum, Nauticus, and other organizations. It supports scholarship programs that include Wings Over America and Anchor and Dolphin Scholarships, as well as Command Award Recognition efforts. Most significant has been the CORE program, which stands for the Continuum of Resources and Education for spouses. The specific program included in CORE is the CPO Spouse Selectee program, which went virtual the past two years.

The Navy League is a membership-based organization, and recently has enabled active-duty service members to join. The Navy League continues to be a strong voice on Capitol Hill, advocating for a strong maritime defense.

It is the Hampton Roads Council’s intent to highlight this Navy milestone of 100 years of the Navy aircraft carrier to communicate the continuing need for carriers, support the defense industry that continues to develop and provide the extraordinary technology underpinning our nation’s defense, and champion the strong leaders and well-educated sailors who serve aboard these vessels.

The Navy is very supportive of its host communities in the Hampton Roads area, and the communities are supportive of the Navy, said retired Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, executive director of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance.

The Navy League is the central actor in all things involving the sea services in the region, Quigley said. A common misconception is that the Navy League mainly raises funds for commissioning events and ship enhancements. They certainly do that, Quigley said, but are so much more.

For more than a century now, the Navy League has kept faith with the sea services and the nation it serves. Even in times when America was not interested in listening, the Navy League has managed to keep its message of sea power’s influence out in the public domain, where it needs to be if the United States is to sustain itself as the preeminent maritime power in the world. CV100

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Navy League of the United States, Hampton Roads Board of Directors Captain Lou Schager, Jr., USN (Ret.) - Chairman of the Board Ms. Maryellen Baldwin- President and CEO Commander Charles Arrants, USN (Ret.) Captain Douglas Beaver, USN (Ret.) Mr. Wayne Callis Colonel Thomas Campbell, USMC (Ret.) Captain Christopher Chope, USN (Ret.) Captain Robert Clark, USN (Ret.) Captain William Crow, USN (Ret.) Captain Robert Geis, USN (Ret.) Commander Joe Gelardi USN (Ret.) Admiral William Gortney, USN (Ret.) Rear Admiral John Kavanaugh, USN (Ret.) Captain Brenda Kerr, USCG (Ret.) Captain Steve Laukaitis, USN (Ret.) Mr. Robert McCashin Force Master Chief James Monroe, USN (Ret.) Commander Mark Newcomb, USN (Ret.) Master Chief Mike Nicosia, USN (Ret.) Captain Michael O’Hearn, USN (Ret.) Captain Leonard Remias, USN (Ret.) Captain Robert Roth, USN (Ret.) Ms. Feba Thomas Fleet Master Chief Jon Thompson, USN (Ret.) Captain Larry Tindal, USN (Ret.) Ms. Jordan Watkins Ms. Linda Ermen Ms. Bre Kingsbury

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100th Anniversary of Navy Aircraft Carriers Sponsors ABB Aermor Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition Arcus Association of Naval Aviation Chenega City of Norfolk Collins Aerospace Elbit Systems of America Faircount Media Group GE Aviation General Atomics General Dynamics NASSCO George and Barbara Bush Foundation ITA International Captain Kevin Wensing, USN (Ret.) Lockheed Martin Corporation Marine Corps Association Milwaukee Valve Nauticus Newport News Shipbuilding a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries Northrop Grumman Pratt and Whitney Raytheon Intelligence and Space Raytheon Missiles and Defense Captain S. Robert Roth, USN (Ret.) The Boeing Company Tri-Tech Manufacturing U.S. Naval Institute

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INDUSTRY INSIGHT

Thousands gathered Nov. 9, 2013, as history was made at Newport News Shipbuilding with the christening of Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the first of the newest generation of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

"ALWAYS GOOD SHIPS" L

ooming over the horizon at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), legendary war hero and the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN 65) awaits her final destination. In her shadow, the newest generation aircraft carrier bearing the same name is being born, bringing full circle NNS’ proud legacy of “Always Good Ships.”

For more than 136 years, the women and men of NNS have built legends. From the tugboat Dorothy in 1891 to today’s technologically advanced Gerald R. Fordclass aircraft carriers, NNS continues its service to America as the nation’s sole designer, builder, and refueler of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and one of only two shipyards in the United States capable of designing and building nuclear-powered submarines.

NNS’ aircraft carrier legends began with Ranger (CV 4). Since her delivery in 1934, the shipyard has delivered 31 aircraft

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carriers, including all 10 ships of the Nimitz class. NNS is currently building three additional carriers.

Each aircraft carrier has her own battle wounds and war stories to tell, such as Yorktown (CV 5), Enterprise (CV 6) and Hornet (CV 8) – which helped turn the tide of World War II during the Battle of Midway in 1942 – and Ranger (CV 61), one of the first carriers to operate jet aircraft.

Throughout their historic service, these symbols of American military power have provided unmatched capability and sovereign U.S. territory wherever they sail. They support and protect the global economy through the protection of sea lanes around the world and provide humanitarian aid in times of crisis. These steel giants are agile, providing a critical mass of air power anywhere in the world it’s needed, when it’s needed.

Future chapters of the aircraft carrier story will share more victories and even greater advancements, and be told by

the Gerald R. Ford class, the first new carrier design in nearly 50 years. The new class’ design provides enhanced flight deck configuration, increased electrical generating capacity, and improved operating margins. These improvements will enable Ford-class aircraft carriers and their embarked air wings to project power, sustain sea control, deter adversaries, and reassure allies well into the 22nd century.

Investments in digital technologies, enhanced construction processes and economic order quantity strategies are helping NNS ensure Ford-class aircraft carriers are built to support future air wings, weapons systems, radars, sensors and command and control systems, and in the most effective, efficient and affordable way.

But the real secret to the shipyard’s success is its shipbuilding team. While the art and science of building ships has evolved over the last century, two things have remained constant: the pioneering

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NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING PHOTOS

Newport News Shipbuilding

Newport News Shipbuilding is busier than it’s been in at least four decades. Today, shipbuilders are working on 25 Navy ships, including five aircraft carriers.

Left: In February 1933, Newport News Shipbuilding launched Ranger (CV 4) into the James River. Ranger was the first U.S. Navy ship designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. However, she was not the first American aircraft carrier. Langley (CV 1), Lexington (CV 2), and Saratoga (CV 3) all preceded Ranger, but they were originally laid down as a collier and battlecruisers, respectively, and later converted. Ranger, commissioned in 1934, earned two battle stars for her service during World War II. The ship was decommissioned in 1946 and sold and scrapped the following year.

and patriotic spirit of NNS’ shipbuilders and the network of shipbuilding suppliers that spans all 50 states, and the strong partnership between NNS and the Navy.

Each day, the NNS team accomplishes what no other team can. They work with their hands, practicing precision and skills that are unmatched anywhere else in the world. And they work with their hearts to serve our country by creating the legends that protect our nation’s freedoms.

Today, 25 Navy ships are being born or reborn behind the shipyard’s gates.

Work includes the refueling and complex overhaul of USS George Washington (CVN 73) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74); and the construction of Fordclass carriers John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), Enterprise (CVN 80), and Doris Miller (CVN 81), some of which will serve for the next five decades and beyond.

Building legends is noble work, and NNS is proud to be an important part of the aircraft carrier story. The shipyard’s longstanding commitment, deep-rooted in determination, patriotism, and its “Always Good Ships” philosophy, will help carry on America’s aircraft carrier legacy for centuries to come. CV100

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NAS OCEANA

U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST SEAMAN MARK THOMAS MAHMOD

OCEANA MASTER JET BASE IS THE EAST COAST HUB OF NAVAL AVIATION

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ince USS Langley’s commissioning 100 years ago, the nation’s aircraft carriers and their embarked air wings have projected American power, supported deterrence and control of the seas, and maintained commitments to allies and partners around the world.

Supporting the nation’s aircraft carriers and their air wings is the mission of the Navy’s Class IV airports, and one of the most important is Naval Air Station Oceana.

Today, NAS Oceana comprises 5,916 acres,

An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to the Gladiators of Strike Fighter Squadron 106 (VFA-106) flies alongside a Chance-Vought F4U-4 Corsair during the Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana Air Show. The two aircraft illustrate NAS Oceana’s eight decades supporting U.S. Navy air power.

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supports 250 aircraft, and is the largest employer in Virginia Beach.

“The airfields of NAS Oceana and NALF [Naval Auxiliary Landing Field] Fentress represent strategic resources within America’s arsenal of support for our aircraft carriers. One of seven Class IV Naval airport systems in the DOD, NAS Oceana on a typical day supports about 600 operations for 17 squadrons, five Carrier Air Wings, and a fleet replacement squadron,” said Capt.

Steven V. Djunaedi, NAS Oceana executive officer.

Oceana was born on the eve of America’s entrance into World War II. In November 1940, the Navy bought 328.95 acres of swampy farmland, laid down asphalt runways, and built a small auxiliary airfield near the little village of Oceana, which was literally the last stop on the rail line. With 32 officers and 172 enlisted assigned, Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Oceana could support a little more than one squadron of aircraft.

By 1943, however, it was clear that the airfield was going to have to expand to meet the needs of a nation at war, and especially the needs of carrier aviation. More airfield acreage, new, longer runways, more barracks, and more hangars were added, and Naval Auxiliary Air Station Oceana was commissioned Aug. 17, 1943.

Growth and building continued throughout the war, but Oceana still struggled to build facilities fast enough to keep up with an expansion that, by 1945, had more than tripled the number of aircraft and officers assigned, and doubled the enlisted personnel. Nor did the growth end with World War II. With victory attained, many bases and facilities were rapidly shuttered, but while personnel were being drawn down, ships were being mothballed, and aircraft were being scrapped, Oceana was still growing, becoming so large that it was designated Oceana Naval Air Station in 1952.

Oceana’s long runways and relatively remote location made it ideal for the Navy’s new generation of jet aircraft, and the chief of naval operations designated Oceana an all-weather air station in February 1954. A little over three years later, the airfield was named Soucek Field in honor of Vice Adm. Apollo Soucek, naval aviation pioneer, test pilot, and chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) 1953-1955. As the Navy adopted

new jet aircraft and adapted to their needs with new and modified aircraft carriers, as well as new concepts of operations, Oceana was a pivotal part of the transition.

“The aircraft carrier is the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy’s arsenal. As it has evolved, and as naval aviation has advanced, so too has Naval Air Station Oceana. With the development of the jet engine, this installation grew from a small auxiliary airfield into the Navy’s East Coast Master Jet Base that we know today,” said NAS Oceana Commanding Officer Capt. Bob Holmes.

Oceana Master Jet Base has hosted five generations of naval jet aircraft, from the earliest Phantoms, Panthers, and Banshees through to today, with the station hosting the latest generations of Navy strike fighters.

“We are called upon to provide operational and logistical support to the fleet, fighters, and families across 19 command departments, five carrier strike groups, 17 squadrons, and 79 mission partner tenant commands onboard NAS Oceana Master Jet Base, Dam Neck Annex, and NALF Fentress to strengthen the fleet’s warfighting forces around the globe,” said Holmes.

Despite echoing Oceana’s early designation as an auxiliary landing field, Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Fentress has a mission vital to 21st century U.S. Navy carrier aviation.

“NALF Fentress enables tactical squadrons to conduct Field Carrier Landing Practice [FCLP] as part of their continuing training and preparations prior to getting underway. Fentress routinely supports 15 local squadrons [14 fleet and one fleet replacement squadron (FRS)] and seven NS Norfolk E-2/C-2 squadrons TACAIR [sixfleet and one FRS]. In addition to TACAIR [Tactical Air] support, Fentress has the shipboard spots [2 LHA, CG 52 and TAOE 6] to provide helicopter/tilt-wing training requirements. Fentress is available 24/7 to support squadron requirements and routinely oversees 60,000-75,000 operations a year, all of which support the mission requirements of our nation’s aircraft carriers,” Djunaedi said.

NAS Oceana and NALF Fentress have been fundamental to U.S. Navy carrier aviation for 80 years, and will remain a key part of naval aviation far into the future. CV100

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AIRCRAFT CARRIER EVOLUTION

BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN

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he U.S. Navy’s Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers represent the newest chapter in a story that began a century ago with the commissioning of USS Langley (CV 1), the nation’s first aircraft carrier, on March 20, 1922. The story of naval aviation, however, can be said to go back even further, to Nov. 14, 1910, when an intrepid aviator named Eugene “George” Ely strapped bicycle inner tubes across his chest as a crude flotation device and, so equipped, flew his Curtiss pusher aircraft off a temporary deck rigged over the bow of the cruiser Birmingham. Two months later, on Jan. 18, 1911, he landed on the cruiser USS

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Pennsylvania, whose fantail had been partly covered by a temporary deck equipped with what we might now call arresting gear ropes. Senior U.S. officers were impressed; they understood that aircraft could change naval warfare by giving fleet commanders much wider vision. However, landing-on and flying-off decks at both ends of a ship were seen as an excessive sacrifice. Instead, work proceeded on a catapult whose fixed track would cover the after guns of a large cruiser. Several ships were so modified, carrying large seaplanes that would land alongside when they returned.

At about the same time in 1911, other navies were experimenting with launching

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO

AIRCRAFT CARRIER EVOLUTION

Left: Eugene Ely stands beside the Curtiss Pusher biplane he landed aboard the USS Pennsylvania on Jan. 18, 1911. Note his jury-rigged life vest made of bicycle inner tubes tied together across his torso.

His primitive arresting gear, composed of ropes with sandbags tied to each end and strung across the wooden deck, nevertheless influenced later U.S. Navy arresting gear design.

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTOS

Above: Ely dives down toward the water to gain speed and lift after leaving the deck of USS Birmingham on Nov. 14, 1910. Despite the Curtiss Pusher touching the water and splintering its propeller tips, Ely made it to shore after recording the first takeoff from a ship. Having proved it could be done, the next step was to begin designing or adapting ships to exploit the promise of naval aviation. Left: The Royal Navy’s HMS Furious was the scene of the first British carrier landing in 1917, but the centrally located superstructure presented a great hazard to her pilots. Notice the dual taxiways extending from the landing-on deck astern to the flying-off deck forward.

aircraft from ships. Several, most notably the British, converted merchant ships into primitive aircraft carriers during World War I. The British in particular demonstrated that carriers (and shipboard aircraft in general) had become a necessary part of fleets. They seemed so important that the Royal Navy chose to complete a new battleship, HMS Eagle, as a carrier (her sister ship was the battleship HMS Canada).

The “large light cruiser” Furious received

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NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

first a flying-off deck forward (in place of one of her two 18-inch guns) and then a flying-on deck aft. She was the scene of the first British carrier landing, in 1917, but the air eddying around her superstructure caused serious problems, including the death of the first carrier-landing pilot. The British also laid down a cruiser-size carrier, HMS Hermes. The first ship to be designed as a carrier from the outset, she showed her importance to the Royal Navy in that the resources she consumed could alternatively have gone into a heavy cruiser. At the same time, all British capital ships were fitted with flying-off platforms for fighters.

Naval aviation clearly mattered. The Germans used Zeppelins for scouting; in August 1916, a Zeppelin’s warning saved their High Seas Fleet from interception by the British Grand Fleet. The lesson the British took was that they had to take fighters to sea to shoot down Zeppelins (which were outside the range of ships’ guns). This was not too different from the later understanding that it took carrier fighters to destroy enemy bombers, ships’ anti-aircraft weapons generally driving them off or dealing with missiles they launched. The British seem uniquely to have appreciated the offensive potential of their sea-based aircraft. By 1918, it seemed clear that the German fleet would remain in harbor, tying down the British, preventing them from using their sea power offensively.

Airplanes offered a unique way to get at the Germans despite their unwillingness to go to sea. In 1916, the British began to develop torpedo bombers. In 1918, they had enough carrier decks, either ready or in prospect, to

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The Royal Navy light aircraft carrier HMS Hermes underway off Yantai, China, in 1931. Laid down on a cruiser-size hull, Hermes was the first ship to be designed as an aircraft carrier from the outset.

plan a recognizably modern carrier raid on the German fleet in harbor. They revived the idea in the 1930s when they had to face war against Italy, and they executed just such a raid against the Italian fleet base at Taranto in November 1940. It, in turn, may have helped inspire the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which had much the same aim.

American naval officers attached to the British Grand Fleet were well aware of the potential of this new kind of warship. They reported home extensively. Too, during World War I, British naval constructor Stanley Goodall was attached to the U.S. Navy. He brought with him plans for British carriers, and he helped frame the first requirements for a U.S. carrier. Like several other navies, the U.S. Navy was determined to experiment with this new kind of sea power.

The first U.S. approach was to convert the large collier Jupiter into the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier; she was commissioned as USS Langley in 1922. Affectionately nicknamed the “Covered Wagon,” Langley was slow, and she had limited hangar capacity. Though her limited size and speed made her unsuitable as a fleet carrier, she tested out everything from various types of arresting gear to aircraft catapults as well as concepts of aircraft carrier operations.

U.S. naval aviation might well have gone nowhere but for two lucky breaks. One was legal. After World War I, the United States and Japan were building large new battle fleets. Many thought that prewar naval rivalry between Britain and Germany had helped touch off World War I. The U.S. government sought a way to stop the building race with Japan (and, to some extent, with Britain) by calling a naval disarmament conference in November 1921.

The resulting Washington Treaty canceled most of the new battleships and battle cruisers then on order. One clause allowed each signatory to convert two of them into carriers. Because the hulls being built were so massive, the carriers that resulted (in the U.S. case, Lexington and Saratoga) were far larger – and far more capacious – than any carriers that might have been designed as such at this time, when carrier aviation was so largely experimental.

The same treaty allowed each of the large navies what might seem an unusually large carrier tonnage, given that such ships were still experimental. It happened that the British demanded this tonnage because their own experience showed that a fleet required a large carrier-borne air arm, and that they believed – as it happened, wrongly – that no carrier could operate many aircraft. This clause made it possible for the U.S. Navy (and also the Japanese) to build carrier arms powerful enough to dominate the early months of the Pacific War. Ironically, the British found themselves saddled with experimental carriers they had begun during World War I. Even though they knew these ships were

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obsolete, they doubted that a cash-strapped British government would willingly replace them. Thus the Royal Navy could not begin its own massive carrier-building program until the overall tonnage limitation lapsed in 1937. This effort proved too late; it was overtaken by World War II. Without any overhang of obsolete tonnage, the United States built the carrier Ranger as the first of five that it hoped would give it the best compromise between carrier capability and total aircraft numbers (it was thought at first that relatively small carriers were best). Indeed, it seemed, before they had been completed, that the big Lexingtons would be white elephants.

They turned out to be anything but, partly because the U.S. Navy concluded that carriers would have to operate individually (a conclusion overturned during World War II). Ranger turned out to be too small to be very useful. Before she was completed, U.S. designers were working on a new ship about 50 percent larger: Yorktown. She and her sister ship Enterprise were followed by a third, improved ship, Hornet, once the interwar limitation had lapsed. These were extremely successful ships. Enterprise fought in every Pacific

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The U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV 1), with a Vought VE-7 landing aboard. Converted from the collier Jupiter, Langley was slow and lacked even a proper hangar, but she served as an experimental platform for tactics and technologies that would transform U.S. naval aviation.

battle, surviving the war. The others were sunk in 1942, but only after they had helped destroy the Japanese carrier force at Midway. Hornet demonstrated the reach of carrier air power when she launched Army B-25 bombers to strike Tokyo in April 1942. Although damage was limited, this raid is widely credited with convincing the Japanese that they had to destroy the U.S. Navy’s surviving carriers, the result being the Battle of Midway – which proved fatal to four of their carriers. Moreover, U.S. industrial capacity could more than replace the four (of seven prewar) carriers lost in 1942, whereas Japan’s could not replace her losses. Newly built U.S. warships dominated the Pacific War from 1943 on.

The other lucky break was that the U.S. Navy of that era tested its ideas on the game floor of the Naval War College, (i.e., not only at sea). Thus the ships and aircraft involved

could adopt whatever characteristics seemed relevant to future warfare. Officers could see what the aircraft of the future (rather than existing, relatively primitive ones) might contribute to a naval battle.

The games showed how important it was to operate aircraft rapidly. Capt. (later Adm.) Joseph Reeves took this lesson with him when he assumed command of the aircraft of the Battle Force, which at the time meant mainly the few assigned to Langley. At the time, U.S. naval aviators followed the British practice of stowing each airplane in the hangar before the next landed onto the carrier, much as aircraft on land would be taxied to their hangars to clear a runway.

That made for slow operation and limited numbers (hence the British insistence on large numbers of carriers at Washington in 1921). Reeves asked his pilots to land on much more quickly. He understood that aircraft capacity depended on the tempo of air operations, so this was also a matter of how much airpower he could pack into his small ship. Reeves found that airplanes did not need the whole deck on which to land.

Instead of being stowed below, they could simply be wheeled forward, protected from landing aircraft by a wire barrier. In this

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NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO COURTESY OF U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE JAMES C. FAHEY COLLECTION

AIRCRAFT CARRIER EVOLUTION

NATIONAL ARCHIVES PHOTOS

way, aircraft could be taken on board much more quickly, and they could be massed more easily for attack. Langley ultimately operated about four times as many airplanes as she had before Reeves arrived.

The contrast between Reeves’ view and that of the Royal Navy deserves comment.

The difference may have been that the Royal Navy surrendered its aircraft to the new Royal Air Force in 1918. When it decided to run tests to see how many aircraft a carrier could operate, it deferred to the expertise of the pilots, who naturally had little interest in risking a crash into parked aircraft as they landed. They were much less interested in providing the mass of aircraft that a fleet commander might want. Reeves had a much broader outlook.

He needed numbers, and the pilots were naval officers responsible to him. Their instincts as pilots were secondary. The new method of operation demanded tight discipline and careful control; it was no accident that U.S. officers visiting British carriers in the 1930s were struck by the looseness of their practices. Nor, probably, was it coincidental that U.S. naval aviators

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Above: USS Saratoga (CV 3) with two O2U Corsair planes overhead, on May 3, 1929. The big converted battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga, with their ability to operate large numbers of aircraft, had a strong influence on the American carriers to follow. Right: The Yorktown-class U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV 6) steams toward the Panama Canal on Oct. 10, 1945, while en route to New York to participate in Navy Day celebrations. The Enterprise was the only one of the three prewar Yorktown class to survive World War II.

understood, and accepted, that theirs was a very dangerous business (the British view was quite different).

On board U.S. carriers, the number of aircraft depended on the size of the flight deck, on which all of them would be parked before taking off, or after having landed.

The U.S. Navy therefore favored long flight decks. It thought of carrier hangars mainly as places where aircraft could be repaired.

The British tended instead to emphasize hangar capacity. When they could not get enough on a relatively short hull, they

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES PHOTO

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

Right: A Fairey Albacore torpedo bomber is struck below to the hangar deck aboard HMS Indomitable in 1940. The armored flight decks of Royal Navy aircraft carriers were admired by U.S. Navy personnel when the two fleets operated together in the Pacific, but exacted a price in shortened flight decks and cramped hangars below.

Below right: The Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Antietam (CV 36) underway off the east coast of Korea, while operating with Task Force 77 during the Korean War. She has Air Group 15 embarked.

Typical of the air groups of the era, she has a mixed group of propeller-driven and jet aircraft, including AD Skyraiders, F9F Panthers, and F4U Corsairs. Two dozen Essex-class carriers were built during World War II, with enough growth margin that they could be heavily modernized to adapt to new aircraft and missions. Several served through the Vietnam conflict and beyond.

developed double-level hangars. Before World War II, they became interested in armoring the hangar, which included part of the length of the flight deck. U.S. carriers could not have accommodated a similar degree of protection, the theory being that their light wooden flight decks could simply be repaired at sea. Indeed, the U.S. Navy adopted light flight decks in its later prewar carriers specifically because flight deck damage was common in war games; hence it was vital to be able to repair a carrier’s flight deck within hours rather than weeks, and in a combat area rather than at a base.

The light deck design explains why the carrier Enterprise was able to fight in all the Pacific carrier battles, despite suffering damage. When carriers of both navies suffered kamikaze hits in 1945, many U.S. officers were impressed by the British designs, commenting that they simply hosed off what was left of the kamikaze and resumed operations. They did not notice a price the British paid. During World War II they were compelled to adopt U.S.-style flight deck practices in order to operate enough aircraft, but their designs made for short flight decks. Shorter flight decks made for many more aircraft missing arresting gear wires and bouncing into (or even over) barriers – and many more dead pilots. U.S. carriers were not nearly so dangerous.

Given Reeves’ innovation, the two much bigger U.S. carriers Lexington and Saratoga operated about 100 aircraft each. With such numbers, they could demonstrate the full potential of carrier aviation, to an extent far beyond what

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the British, who had invented the carrier, could imagine. For example, during her first big fleet exercise in 1929, Saratoga made a surprise attack on the Panama Canal, showing that carriers could extend the reach of the fleet beyond attacking other fleets. The evolving U.S. strategy for a war against Japan, which was considered the most likely enemy, involved seizing island bases as the fleet moved west. Carrier aircraft could provide the Marines with the edge they needed when going ashore.

One consequence was that all U.S. naval fighters were designed to carry bombs.

By 1929, U.S. strategists understood how important carriers would be in such a war, and they began to discuss converting merchant ships – particularly fast liners – to swell carrier numbers.

Large carrier capacities justified a large naval air arm with considerable effect on the U.S. aircraft industry. Naval officers realized that carriers and naval aviation had a future as bright as that of the battleships, which were then the core of the fleet. It helped that Congress passed a law requiring that commanders of carriers and other naval aviation activities be aviators.

By the late 1930s, the Navy’s General Board, responsible for advising the Secretary of the Navy and formulating U.S. warshipbuilding policies, was asking when aviation technology would mature to the point that carriers would replace battleships. By that time, the main brake on U.S. carrier building was the treaty structure of the interwar years, the irony being that the 1921 treaty had provided an unusually large allowance for the time. That was because,

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U.S. NAVY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NAVAL AVIATION PHOTO

A U.S. Navy North American AJ Savage of Composite Squadron VC-6 Fleurs launches from the aircraft carrier USS Midway (CVA 41). In the background are two Grumman F9F-6 Cougar fighters from Fighter Squadron VF-174 Hell Razors. The Midway-class carriers were larger than the Essex class, and introduced armored flight decks. The big AJ Savage was designed to be a carrier-borne nuclear bomber that could operate from existing U.S. Navy aircraft carriers.

even though the Washington Treaty lapsed in 1936, the pre-World War II U.S. naval buildup was based on a legal requirement to maintain a modern fleet of the size imposed by the treaty (a 1938 law, passed in response to Japanese aggression in China, increased treaty ratios by 20 percent). Looking back, the interwar U.S. carrier force may seem inadequate, but to contemporary observers, the U.S. Navy was the most air-minded in the world. After their defeat, a senior Japanese admiral said that in developing their own carrier air arm, the Japanese had followed the U.S. lead.

The foundation built between the wars made it possible for the U.S. Navy to shift toward a carrier-centered World War II fleet. Thus the very successful wartime Essex class, 24 of which were eventually built, was in effect an enlarged and expanded version of the prewar Yorktown, which was unusually large for its time because Lexington and Saratoga had demonstrated the value of massive numbers of aircraft on board each carrier.

As the United States came closer to war in 1941, work began on converting merchant ships into escort carriers, inspired to some extent by British experience. Once the war began, it seemed urgent to convert warships under construction into carriers. Projects to convert battleships were considered but rejected as grossly inefficient.

However, nine new light cruisers became the Independence-class light carriers,

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fast enough to serve alongside the larger Essexes. Neither Britain nor Japan could build carriers at anything like this pace.

The priority accorded carriers became clear early in 1942, when projected battleships were cancelled due to a perceived shortage of steel. Carriers were not.

The huge prewar U.S. naval air establishment was relatively easy to expand to train tens of thousands of new pilots and other personnel. It also trained the senior officers to command a much-expanded carrier fleet. By the end of the war, the U.S. Navy had more than 100 carriers, compared with the seven of the 1941 fleet. Most of them were quick and relatively inefficient conversions of merchant ship and cruiser hulls, but they provided needed air support in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

These ships showed just how flexible naval aviation could be. Before World War II, the main role of naval aircraft was to defeat the enemy’s fleet. Prewar fleet exercises did show valuable potentials for supporting amphibious landings and for attacking enemy shore installations (the U.S. carriers often raided the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor, and Los Angeles), but they were secondary. By 1945, with the Japanese fleet essentially destroyed, U.S. carriers raided Japanese targets, including Tokyo itself.

The Navy staff pointed out that carriers could mount strategic attacks comparable in volume to what the Army Air Force was delivering using its heavy bombers. In the

Atlantic, small carriers proved invaluable in fighting German U-boats. At the end of the war, the Navy commissioned the first of three large Midway-class carriers.

Compared to the wartime Essex class, they were longer and had armored flight decks, but they were intended to operate the same type of aircraft (it took a much larger hull to accommodate the sort of armor the British had on their carriers and embody U.S. requirements).

Modern carriers like the Nimitz and Gerald R. Ford classes were born in the aftermath of World War II. With the defeat of Japan, it seemed unlikely that the United States would soon again face a major sea power. It seemed likely that the Soviet Union would be the next enemy. What would the Navy’s role be in a war against that land power? The Soviets had had the world’s largest submarine fleet in 1941, and many argued that the main future naval role would simply be to fight a future Battle of the Atlantic. Would the big carriers even feature in such a war? The new U.S. Air Force, founded in 1947 but clearly nascent in 1945, argued that they would be useless.

Its strategic bomber men contended that the future of war belonged to long-range bombers armed with nuclear weapons. The main role of the U.S. Navy in such a war should be to defeat Soviet submarines that would threaten supply to the overseas bases from which bombers would fly. To this, one Navy rejoinder was that if the Soviets adopted the new kinds of submarines the Germans were introducing at the end of the war, the best countermeasure might well be attacks on their bases – air attacks mounted by carriers.

Even before the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy convened a panel of experienced officers to ponder the future of the carrier, which it now saw as its primary weapon.

They soon concluded that the main value of a future carrier would lie in its ability to

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AIRCRAFT CARRIER EVOLUTION

deliver heavy bombs, for example to destroy enemy submarine bases. Many must also have remembered the enormous impact of the 1942 carrier raid on Tokyo. Unlike land bombers flying from fixed bases whose location an enemy knew, carrier aircraft could come from almost anywhere; the threat of such attacks would force the Soviets to spread out their air defenses and thus to pay much more heavily for any level of defense they wanted. This sort of leverage might reduce the resources available for any attack into, for example, Western Europe.

The U.S. Navy unsuccessfully touted the Navy’s value as a flanking force, but when he became the first NATO supreme commander in 1950, Gen. (later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower took much the same approach. He likened Western Europe to a peninsula down which a Soviet army might try to surge, the carrier-supported Navy on its flanks. Throughout his presidency he saw the mobility of U.S. sea power as the best counter to the massed manpower that the Soviets and the Chinese could deploy.

It happened that a carrier-based heavy bomber could also drop atomic bombs, but that does not seem to have been the key consideration in 1945-46. Because the bombs in question were about four or five times as heavy as those carried by existing carrier bombers, the carrier of the future would have to operate much larger aircraft. It would have to be much larger. By 1948, a massive new carrier,

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more than twice the size of the wartime Essex, had been designed. Although the keel of this USS United States was laid in 1949, it was cancelled almost at once, a victim of tight funding and, it was said, a campaign by the Air Force to preserve its monopoly on heavy (i.e., atomic) bombing. However, the Navy had already received authorization to use such weapons in war, and by 1949, it was close to having a rudimentary atomic attack capability on board the Midway-class carriers, in the form of large Neptune patrol planes, normally land-based. A carrier nuclear bomber, the Savage, was being developed. In effect the largest such airplane that could operate from existing carriers, it did not approach the capability that had been planned for the new carrier.

Meanwhile, work began to modify existing Essex-class carriers to operate jets.

That involved new catapults and provision for jet fuel. However, the earliest naval jet fighters could operate even from the unmodified ships still in service in 1950.

The Navy had always argued that the value of the carrier lay in its flexibility.

That was dramatically demonstrated in June 1950, when U.S. and British carriers provided much of the critical air support when the North Koreans invaded South Korea, overrunning airfields. Later, jets operating from the U.S. carriers challenged the Russian-supplied (and often -operated)

MiG-15s supporting the Chinese and the North Koreans. The project for a big carrier was revived, although at least in theory it was a flexible tool of limited war rather than a strategic weapon. The first of the post-World War II carriers, USS Forrestal, was a slightly reduced version of the abortive supercarrier of 1949, USS United States. Attempts to shrink the postwar carrier fleet were reversed, war-built Essexclass carriers were returned to service, and others were modernized specifically to operate jets and Savages.

By 1954, moreover, nuclear weapons were small enough to be carried by fighters. There was no longer any question that U.S. carrier aircraft launched from around the periphery of Eurasia could devastate the Soviet Union and its allies.

They formed an important part of any nuclear offensive the United States would mount. Entering office in 1953, the Eisenhower administration much preferred the deterrence carriers could help exert to deploying U.S. troops in sensitive places like Vietnam. Thus, when the French were being defeated there (at Dien Bien Phu), the only U.S. support even considered was a carrier air strike (which the administration rejected). Given the value the carriers had shown in Korea, a new carrier was authorized each year between 1952 and 1958, culminating in the nuclear-powered Enterprise. Because her plant was a prototype, she was followed by the non-nuclear America; another nuclear-powered aircraft carrier would be authorized when experience had been gained with her. Then new carrier construction lapsed, money going into the crash program to build strategic missile submarines. They took over the carriers’ strategic nuclear mission, but not their mission in support of the United States in crisis areas around the world.

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NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

USS Essex (CVA 9) takes spray over the bow while steaming in heavy seas, Jan. 12, 1960. A Grumman TF-1 (C-1) Trader COD plane is readied for launch from the angled flight deck. Several Douglas AD-6 and AD-5W Skyraider and Douglas F4D-1 Skyrays are parked behind the island. The large size of the Essex class allowed them to be heavily modernized with angled decks, steam catapults, and other innovations that permitted the operation of heavier, faster naval aircraft as they were developed.

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

USS Forrestal (CVA 59) at sea on Aug. 29, 1959.

Designed with all that had been learned from previous classes of aircraft carriers, and embodying the postwar innovations of the angled deck, steam catapults, and optical landing systems, Forrestal was the first of the “supercarriers.”

The great lesson was that the crisis mission was paramount. Thus, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, a skeptic, felt compelled to approve a new carrier given the experience of valuable carrier strikes in Vietnam. As the U.S. Navy had argued immediately after World War II, simply by expanding the area from which attacks could come, they enormously complicated an enemy’s task of air defense. At the end of the Vietnam War, only carriers could come to the rescue of the American merchant ship Mayaguez, which had been seized by Cambodians. By that time, the United States no longer had air bases in the area. Administration after administration found that it faced surprise crises in which carriers were the only available air bases.

That is why Gerald R. Ford and three sister ships have been authorized. They are, in effect, third-generation nuclear carriers, the second generation being the 10 Nimitzclass carriers.

The new carriers and rebuilt Essex- and Midway-class ships were viable in the face of modern land-based aircraft because of two innovations adopted from the British: the steam catapult and the angled deck.

They are why the new Forrestal could remain on the front line through several generations of naval aircraft of increasing sophistication and performance. She and her improved sister ships (in all, eight carriers) set the very successful flight deck design that we still see in Gerald R. Ford, more than 60 years later.

Carriers were successful because they were, in effect, the first modular warships: They could operate successive generations of naval aircraft without needing radical reconstruction for each change. As it happened, the outer limits on size, landing speed, and takeoff speed set by the postwar nuclear bombers sufficed for later aircraft such as the F-14 Tomcat fighter and the A-6 Intruder bomber. The current F/A-18 Hornet is smaller than either, and the F-35 is still within these limits. The Navy has tested a large, carrier-capable unmanned

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airplane, the X-47B, and it is often said that the electric catapults of the Ford are particularly adapted to the broad range of aircraft weights and stall speeds associated with a new generation of aircraft. Among them is the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial system, which is slated to take over flight refueling duties from the F/A-18 Super Hornets now on carrier decks.

In a very broad sense, a carrier is a broad flight deck and an open hangar deck ready for whatever aircraft she can launch. She still needs to carry specialized support equipment for each new airplane, but that entails far less effort than the sort of reconstruction surface warships need to accommodate new weapons.

The most important internal change to accommodate a new generation of aircraft was the installation of computer combat direction systems, which began in the 1960s. It radically changed carrier/air group capability, but again it was relatively easy to accommodate from a physical point of view. The same basically modular

ship has supported multiple generations of air weapons, of self-defense weapons (beginning with 5-inch guns and now using short-range missiles), and of radars. Thus, the same ship has offered dramatically different capability over the years.

That Gerald R. Ford resembles the Forrestal of 60 years earlier does not reflect conservatism. The U.S. Navy has periodically looked at radical alternatives.

They included different flight deck arrangements, a smaller carrier, and a carrier equipped only with STOVL (short takeoff and vertical landing) aircraft, which would be so much smaller that it could be built in larger numbers. The first look at flight deck alternatives came as early as 1955, when the first nuclear carrier, USS Enterprise, was being designed. A Forrestallike arrangement was selected instead of exotica such as two-level flight decks and decks with the carrier island in the center (with an angled deck on either side). The flight deck has been modified over the years, with the island pushed aft, but such

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST SEAMAN RILEY MCDOWELL

The Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78, right) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transit the Atlantic Ocean, June 4, 2020, marking the first time a Ford-class and a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier operated together underway.

changes look cosmetic alongside the more radical ones evaluated.

The Gerald R. Ford class differs from Forrestal in being nuclear powered. Carriers were an obvious possibility when the U.S. Navy adopted nuclear power, beginning with eight reactors in USS Enterprise, completed in 1962. They offered enormous advantages, but at a high price. Thus the first carrier to be built after Enterprise was completed, John F. Kennedy, reverted to conventional steam power. While that ship was being built, the naval nuclear reactor organization strove to cut the cost of a nuclear plant by cutting the number of separate reactors a carrier needed.

The next carrier, Nimitz, needed two rather than the eight of Enterprise, making for many fewer special personnel and a simpler overall design. Gerald R. Ford introduces a new reactor with a power output almost three times that of the reactors used aboard the Nimitz class.

Carriers are expensive, so periodically it is suggested that smaller ones should be built. Such proposals have failed for several reasons. First, any carrier needs certain basic equipment, such as her combat direction system and radars. Hull steel is relatively inexpensive. Shrinking a carrier saves surprisingly little money. On the other hand, a smaller carrier operates fewer aircraft, and the cost per airplane can rise dramatically. Moreover, carriers typically operate one by one. That makes it unwise to cut the number of aircraft they can accommodate. Current carrier air wings are smaller than earlier ones, the argument being that the emptier flight deck makes for faster turn-around and hence for more sorties per day and more targets hit per day. However, the large flight deck can still be filled if a carrier must make a more concentrated attack. That would be impossible on a smaller carrier. The question right now is whether the basic hull adopted three decades ago in the Nimitz class should be enlarged, not shrunk.

Periodically it is suggested that the future really lies with much smaller

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carriers operating STOVL aircraft. Other navies have certainly taken that route.

This option seems first to have been suggested in 1955, in connection with a hoped-for STOVL fighter that could operate both from carriers and from large surface ships, and thus could be distributed through a fleet. That would have reduced carriers to attack aircraft, which at the time seemed not to demand so much in the way of catapults and flight decks (it seemed that long-range nuclear attack could be assigned to fleet missiles).

Technology developed the wrong way. The STOVL then expected never materialized, and it turned out that a new generation of fighters required every bit of carrier capability provided in the first place for long-range bombers.

The STOVL idea returned about 1970, inspired by the success of the British Harrier jump-jet. The U.S. Navy seriously considered building a small carrier it called a Sea Control Ship, which was conceived either as a more affordable replacement for big carriers or primarily as a means of dealing with submarines in mid-ocean. The main question was whether a high enough performance STOVL could be built, and

the answer at the time turned out to be no. Spain built a Sea Control Ship (and a smaller version for Thailand), but the U.S. Navy did not. The current F-35B does offer high STOVL performance, but while several navies operate smaller carriers and either operate or plan to operate the F-35B aboard them, no revived Sea Control Ship was proposed for the U.S. Navy. It may be true that a small ship can support a few F-35Bs, but a few such aircraft offer relatively little striking power. The smaller the ship, the less it provides each airplane, for example in terms of weapons and maintenance capacity. In order to provide as much net striking power as a single large carrier, the U.S. Navy would have to build several times as many small ones, and the overall cost would be far higher.

So would vulnerability: It takes a large hull to absorb damage.

The Russian, Indian, and Chinese navies all operate catapult-less aircraft with skijump flight decks to launch conventional aircraft. With sufficient power, a jet can take off from a ski-jump – but its payload is severely limited. As a consequence, the Chinese in particular seem determined to build catapult carriers in the future. CV100

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INDUSTRY INSIGHT

INTERVIEW:

KEVIN MICKEY Vice President and General Manager, Air Dominance Division, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems Your company’s history with the U.S. Navy and with naval aviation is well recognized and goes back a long way.

Can you expand on the nature of this partnership and how it has evolved over the years?

Northrop Grumman’s partnership with the Navy goes back more than 90 years. Through that time, the company has worked to fully understand the needs of the Navy and develop solutions to operate aircraft in some of the most challenging environments.

The company’s commitment to this partnership has only grown stronger as we ensure the needs of our customers are fully understood and incorporated into our offerings.

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Kevin Mickey, Vice President and General Manager, Air Dominance Division, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems

From the 1990s to today, Northrop Grumman [has played] significant roles in the design, development, and sustainment of the F-18 and F-35 programs while delivering the Navy’s newest airborne early warning aircraft, the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. The company has also helped pave the way for the use of unmanned aircraft in naval operations to include the MQ-8 Fire Scout and MQ-4C Triton.

Northrop Grumman also plays a large role in providing sensors and other missions systems on aircraft, including the electronic warfare capability on the EA-18G Growler.

How does Northrop Grumman’s distinguished history in building U.S. Navy aircraft influence the company culture today?

Our focus on developing and delivering purpose-built aircraft and capabilities to the U.S. Navy is a defining part of our culture. We spend more time trying to understand the requirements through continuous communication to ensure we’re understanding what our customers need. This helps us take a systems approach to the design of our systems, helping our teams understand what an aircraft needs to do, but also defining how the aircraft is supported over its entire life cycle.

Within the halls of Northrop Grumman, we also emphasize the important work we are doing to support and protect our service men and women who operate the capabilities we provide.

It’s vitally important that our employees understand and feel a connection to our servicemembers who make the commitment to protect our nation so they understand the critical need to

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NORTHROP GRUMMAN IMAGES

What have been some of Northrop Grumman’s notable achievements in this area?

As a premier provider of naval aviation capabilities, Northrop Grumman’s legacy companies were the first to design landing floats for sea planes, and delivered large numbers of carrier-based aircraft during World War II and into the Korean War. From the 1960s to 1980s the company developed and delivered the A-6 Intruder, C-2 Greyhound, E-2C Hawkeye, designed the YF-17 as the precursor to the F-18, and the vaunted F-14 Tomcat. These aircraft played integral roles in defining how the Navy would operate against peer threats during the Cold War while offering the versatility needed for these aircraft to be used for a variety of missions.

In 2013, the company worked with the Nav y to demonstrate the first takeoff and landing of an autonomous aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier through the X-47B. This also included the first air refueling of an unmanned aircraft in 2015. These were pivotal moments in naval aviation, proving that an autonomously controlled aircraft could safely be incorporated into future carrier aircraft operations.

deliver high-quality systems. This is our commitment, which drives at the heart of everything we do.

Through these actions, we work to be a trusted partner with the Navy as we ensure the needs of our customers are taken into account from development, delivery, and throughout the servicing of the system.

What do you see as the future challenges and milestones ahead for Northrop Grumman in its work with the U.S. Navy?

In my opinion, the growing challenges

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adversaries present to the U.S. Navy are their attempts to deny access to a contested region. This will drive industry to develop new ways for naval commanders to gain access to these areas. For aircraft, this will involve greater use of technologies that improve survivability while increasing their connectivity with other battlefield assets that provide greater situational awareness under the Navy’s Project Overmatch.

Additionally, pairing manned and unmanned assets will be key to taking on greater operational risk.

All of these capabilities will sustain an edge in day-to-day operations while also ensuring the Navy’s readiness for a highend fight.

As an industry partner to the Navy, it will be important to understand how these capabilities will be delivered quickly and affordably. Our adversaries’ technological capabilities are catching up rapidly and we must develop capabilities we can field today while giving them the means to be more easily upgraded as technologies used in future conflicts evolve. CV100

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BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN

T

he U.S. Navy’s newest supercarriers, the Gerald R. Ford class, are the latest beneficiaries of a revolution that, in effect, saved carrier aviation from obsolescence in the 1950s. It was proving increasingly difficult to handle jet aircraft that could compete with the new generations of jet fighters and bombers based ashore. Yet a carrier without high-performance jet bombers could not strike valuable targets ashore, hence would not be a valuable offensive weapon. Without effective fighters, she could not put

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U.S. NAVY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NAVAL AVIATION PHOTO

THE POSTWAR CARRIER REVOLUTION

up a viable defense against an enemy’s air arm. For the U.S. Navy, the critical issue was offensive. By the early 1950s, the U.S. Navy was arguing effectively that it deserved a place alongside the U.S. Air Force in the most important part of the U.S. arsenal: the nuclear force. Although carriers could not deliver nearly as many nuclear weapons as the Air Force, they could do so from many more directions.

That alone would force the Soviets, the main target, to disperse their air defense.

Thus, the presence of nuclear-armed carriers in places like the Mediterranean could contribute enormously to the success of Air Force bombers flying from Western Europe and over the North Pole. To some extent, the Air Force could offer similar flexibility using bases in places like North Africa – except that access to those bases was subject to political instability. When the Libyan king was deposed in a coup, the Air Force lost its base in North Africa – but the Sixth Fleet continued to operate in the Mediterranean.

This kind of consideration made it vital that the carriers be able to operate heavy jet aircraft. Yet that capability was by no means certain in the late 1940s. At that time, the key problem was to launch

NATIONAL ARCHIVES PHOTO

Opposite page: A U.S. Navy Douglas A3D-1 Skywarrior of Heavy Attack Squadron VAH-1 launches from USS Shangri-La (CVA 38). This was the first A3D catapult shot. Without the steam catapult, the Navy would have been unable to develop a jet-powered nuclear bomber capability in the form of the Skywarrior. Right: A Grumman S2F-1 Tracker was the first aircraft to be catapulted by steam from the USS Hancock (CVA 19), the first aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy to be fitted with the revolutionary steam catapult.

the bomber in the first place; recovering it back onto the carrier was considered secondary. At the time, carriers used hydraulic catapults. A system of wires and pulleys multiplied the stroke of a hydraulic ram. How much energy they could handle was limited by the tensile strength of the wires involved. Hydraulics was entirely adequate for World War II airplanes weighing much less than 20,000 pounds, which could fly off at speeds well below 100 knots. Jets were always a problem. A propeller creates a stream of fast air over a wing even when the airplane is not moving, so that the airplane feels lift from the outset. Even without a catapult, propeller aircraft could take off after rolling down part of a carrier’s deck. By way of contrast, a jet engine creates thrust (a force pushing the airplane forward) but not air flow over the wing; it takes forward motion to do that. The earliest jets could barely take off if they rolled the full length of the longest carrier decks. Catapults were not merely helpful, as with propeller airplanes, but essential. As jet weight and stall speed increased, the Navy ran into the limits set by the wires used in hydraulic catapults.

In 1945, the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) began work on a new generation of much more powerful catapults. Instead of being powered indirectly, as in a hydraulic catapult, they would use some source of power to drive a piston down a cylinder. The airplane would be hooked on to the piston.

After briefly considering alternative sources of power, the bureau fastened on explosives: The new catapult would be a kind of gun. Given the expectation that a new generation of catapults would soon be available, BuAer ordered a new generation of heavy nuclear bombers for the new carrier then planned (USS United States).

A variety of exotic designs was offered, but

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in the end, the bureau chose a twin-engine jet, which became the very successful A3D (later A-3) Skywarrior. After a vicious interservice fight, the new carrier was cancelled, but the A3D survived because in theory, existing carriers could operate it – if they were fitted with the new catapults.

That was the rub. As the A3D reached the prototype stage, the “gun catapult” did not. Without it, the A3D could not operate from a carrier and the Navy could not take its desired (and valuable) place in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Fortunately, another navy was also attacking the catapult problem: the Royal Navy. British priorities were very different from those of the U.S. Navy; the Royal Navy was concerned more with protecting convoys around Europe from Soviet naval air attack. This was largely the legacy of experience fighting convoys through to Murmansk in the face of German torpedo bombers. Too, the Royal Air Force successfully barred the Royal Navy from any strategic nuclear role.

Much more importantly, partly because its carriers were significantly smaller than those of the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy needed a new-generation catapult if it was to operate the jet fighters it saw as its own hope for the future. The British had

taken a different approach to the catapult problem. A British engineer, C.C. Mitchell, had been impressed by the way in which the Germans used steam to propel the catapult that launched their wartime V-1 missile. He designed a carrier catapult that was fed by steam from the ship’s boilers.

The U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics had considered and rejected steam as a power source. As the gun-catapult project stalled, the U.S. Navy’s Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Aviation ordered the Navy to test the British catapult. The Royal Navy made its prototype, on board the maintenance carrier HMS Perseus, available.

The steam catapult solved the A3D problem and propelled the U.S. Navy into the jet age. In effect, 200 feet of steam catapult was equivalent to thousands of feet of runway ashore; the Navy could operate fighters and medium bombers every bit as powerful as those flying from land bases. Conversely, without the steam catapult, the U.S. Navy and other modern navies would have been crippled. Much later, very high-powered fighters were able to take off from ski-jumps aboard carriers, prominent examples being the Russian Kuznetzov and the Chinese Liaoning. Other carriers with ski-jumps operate STOVL

A British engineer, C.C. Mitchell, had been impressed by the way in which the Germans used steam to propel the catapult that launched their wartime V-1 missile. He designed a carrier catapult that was fed by steam from the ship’s boilers.

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND PHOTO

Left: An F2H-2 Banshee making a carrier landing aboard USS Oriskany (CVA 34) in 1955 illustrates the dangers of operating jets aboard straight deck aircraft carriers. The only safety feature should the Banshee fail to trap is the barrier rigged across the deck, but if the Banshee bounces above the barrier, or the barrier fails, it will crash into the aircraft arrayed in the deck park forward. The naval aviator of that era faced an all-or-nothing commitment to landing. Bottom left: A Grumman F9F-8 Cougar from Fighter Squadron 91 (VF-91) Red Lightnings engages the crash barrier aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge (CVA 33), in 1956. The barriers that had been so successful in arresting errant propeller-driven aircraft had to be modified to safely catch the smooth, pointed, propellerless shapes of the new jets.

fighters. In both cases, payload is limited by the absence of a steam catapult.

With the Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy is employing an alternative electromagnetic catapult – the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS. It says a great deal for Mitchell that no other highpowered catapult has been perfected in the more than 60 years since the U.S. Navy met his steam catapult. The Bureau of Aeronautics’ gun catapult was never completed, nor was a proposed alternative internal-combustion version.

The steam catapult made it possible to launch an airplane from a carrier,

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but the same airplane still had to land back on. In the 1940s, the U.S. Navy (Bureau of Aeronautics) view was that the problem was simply to provide arrester gear capable of absorbing more energy.

However, landing a jet airplane on a carrier was a more difficult proposition.

Before jets, a pilot approaching the carrier watched a landing signal officer (LSO) signal whether his approach was good.

Once he was “in the slot,” the LSO could signal him to cut his engine, and thus to stall into the deck. For jets, this procedure was dangerous for two different reasons.

One was that a jet engine responded far

more sluggishly to commands. The engine worked using the heat it generated, and cutting the throttle did not suddenly cool the engine or cut the stream of hot air and gas emerging from it. A second was that streamlined jets approached a carrier far faster than their piston predecessors. A pilot and LSO set up a cycle of observation and response, and in the case of a pistonengine airplane, there was just enough time for the pilot to respond effectively.

Again, the British seem to have had more interest in the problem. Their carriers were smaller, and for various reasons, they had less experience with LSOs (before World War II, their pilots landed without them). They became interested in reviving pilot-controlled landing for jets.

To do that, the pilot needed some direct indication of whether he was on the glide path. At Farnborough, Nick Goodhart realized that a combination of a mirror and indicating lights could do just that.

By 1952, Farnborough was experimenting with pilot-controlled carrier landing.

At the time, the U.S. Navy was not particularly interested.

During this period, the British, who had built the first Western jet aircraft, were interested in exotic jet configurations.

For example, unlike a propeller airplane, a jet could land on its belly, saving the weight of landing gear. Inspired by the German Me 163 rocket fighter, which did exactly that, Farnborough investigated the possibility of covering a carrier flight deck with a flexible rubber mat. Through the mid-1950s, work on such flexible decks continued, and for a time, the U.S. Navy was also interested. Ultimately,

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the flexible deck was a dead end – but before it died, it led to something vitally important: the angled deck. At a 1951 conference on the configuration of HMS Ark Royal, then nearing completion, her prospective commanding officer, Capt.

D.F. Campbell (at that time Director of Naval Aircraft Development and Production), asked whether the proposed flexible deck could be angled to one side. In that case, an airplane landing on it could quickly be taken off so that another could quickly land. His next step was to ask whether a conventional carrier landing deck could (or should) be angled to one side. Campbell was aware of Farnborough work on pilot-controlled landing, and he asked whether it should be introduced in connection with the

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angled deck. Campbell later wrote that he had conceived the angled deck even before the crucial meeting. He was concerned that it might be difficult to recover the new Scimitar fighter-bomber on short British carriers, which did not have enough flight deck length for it to decelerate properly.

At this time, standard procedure in both the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy was to park airplanes at the bow after they landed. They were protected from further airplanes landing on board by a wire (later nylon) barrier. In practice, landing airplanes sometimes jumped (bolted) the barrier to crash into the airplanes parked forward, often with disastrous results. It seemed likely that the faster the landing airplanes, the greater the possibility of

bolters and crashes. Angling the landing deck would end this problem, because the landing airplane would never be headed into the airplanes parked forward. If he had to, a pilot could simply apply more power and keep flying, turning around for another attempt. As an incidental benefit, the angled deck ended the question of whether the pilot could or should cut power during an approach: He should not, because he might have to go around again.

U.S. Navy adoption of the British steam catapult in the teeth of opposition by the Bureau of Aeronautics made for interest in other British innovations. Thus, U.S. officers attended British discussions of the angled deck well before the British could apply their idea to their own new carriers (they did paint an angled deck on the trials

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U.S. NAVY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NAVAL AVIATION PHOTOS

Above: The shape of a second chance. A Douglas F4D-1 Skyray of Fighter Squadron (VF-13) Night Cappers approaches the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Essex (CVA 9) in 1959. The angled deck allows the aircraft to add power and “bolter,” or go around for another landing attempt, if the hook fails to engage a wire, all while on a trajectory that avoids the deck park of aircraft forward.

Left: A U.S. Navy Grumman S2F Tracker comes in to land aboard the training carrier USS Antietam (CVS 36) in the Gulf of Mexico, guided in by the optical landing system at the edge of the flight deck. Initially, the system used an actual mirror before being replaced with a Fresnel lens in more modern systems.

U.S. NAVY PHOTOS

Above: Seven aerial photographs showing the major different modernizations of the U.S. Navy Essex-class aircaft carriers (left to right): USS Franklin (CV 13), as delivered, Feb. 21, 1944.

Franklin received no or little modernization. USS Wasp (CV 18), after her SCB-27A conversion in late 1951: new hydraulic catapults, new island, removal of the deck guns, new bow. USS Hancock (CV 19) after her SCB-27C modernization, circa 1955: like SCB-27A but new steam catapults and relocation of the aft elevator to the deck edge. USS Antietam (CV 36) after the installation of an experimental angled deck, circa 1954. USS Bennington (CV 20) after SCB-125: enclosed hurricane bow, angled deck, starboard deck edge elevator. USS Hancock (CV 19) after SCB-125 in April 1957. USS Oriskany (CV 34) received SCB-125A, here on May 30, 1974.

Right: The USS George Washington in 2002 as seen from an F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft assigned to the Jolly Rogers of Fighter Squadron 103 (VF103), during final approach for an arrested landing on the ship’s flight deck. Note the optical landing system along the port deck edge ahead of the parked aircraft, and the two waist catapults on the large area of angled deck. Today’s supercarriers could not exist without the three major postwar aircraft carrier breakthrough developments.

carrier Illustrious to see whether pilots could land at an angle to the ship’s course).

The angled deck was considered so promising that it was almost immediately tested on board the U.S. carrier Antietam.

For the U.S. Navy, the angled deck could solve another problem. When it

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contemplated very large jet aircraft, the U.S. Navy decided to make the open part of the flight deck as wide as possible.

The huge abortive carrier United States was to have had a flush flight deck and a retractable island. There would be only limited space for radars, so plans called for a separate ship (sometimes called a “pilot fish”) to accommodate both long-range radar and fighter control in a carrier task force. The prototype was the converted cruiser Northampton. After the Korean War broke out and funding became available, the Navy ordered another large carrier, a slightly scaled-

down United States, called USS Forrestal.

She too would have had a flush deck, and she too was paralleled by a pilot fish, in this case a projected conversion of the incomplete large cruiser Hawaii. A major irony of both the United States and Forrestal designs was that both featured massive sponsons projecting from their straight flight decks. These sponsons could easily have been parts of angled decks, but that was not the intent. Rather, the idea was that they could support additional catapults. Using them, the carrier could launch bombers and fighters simultaneously.

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U.S. NAVY PHOTOS

Left: An F-4S Phantom II aircraft of Fighter Squadron 161 (VF-161) Chargers thumps onto the deck of USS Midway (CV 41). The angled deck, steam catapult, and optical landing system made it possible for the U.S. Navy to operate the big Phantom II, which had such superlative performance that it was also adopted by the U.S. Air Force. Bottom left: A U.S. Navy F-14A Tomcat from Fighter Squadron VF-51 Screaming Eagles intercepts a Russian Tupolev TU-95 Bear. The big, heavy interceptor with the long-range missiles and powerful radar needed to defend the carrier battle group during the Cold War would not have been able to operate from U.S. Navy aircraft carriers without postwar aircraft carrier innovations.

Once the Antietam tests succeeded, the Forrestal was rapidly redesigned. An angled landing deck would carry even a large approaching bomber well clear of the usual island position on the starboard side of the ship. Given a conventional island, the ship could accommodate the radars needed to control her fighters. The elaborate and expensive pilot fish was no longer needed.

The Hawaii conversion was cancelled.

All later U.S. carriers have angled decks.

The main change from the Forrestal is that the island has been moved aft, farthest so in the Gerald R. Ford class. The further aft the island, the more space is available alongside the angled deck for parking larger and larger aircraft and, as importantly, for servicing them between flights.

As Campbell suspected, the angled deck made it almost mandatory to operate jets at full power when landing, and that further complicated the task of an LSO. Although Goodhart’s mirror landing sight was conceived independently of Campbell’s angled deck, the two innovations fit together

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extremely well. A U.S. Navy receptive to British ideas quickly adopted the mirror landing sight. The main difference since has been to replace the mirror with a Fresnel lens. The landing sight is mounted alongside the landing path, stabilized so that the approaching pilot clearly sees whether he is on the appropriate approach path.

The steam catapult made it possible to operate high-performance jets from carriers. The proof that carrier aircraft were fully competitive with those ashore was the F-4 Phantom II: the U.S. Air Force felt compelled to adopt it as the best fighter of its time. Without the steam catapult, there could not have been a Phantom II. Without the angled deck and the mirror (later Fresnel lens) landing sight, it could not have been operated on board carriers, because it would have suffered an unacceptable accident rate.

These innovations have provided carriers with the flexibility that has made them worthwhile. In the 1950s, the U.S. Navy was interested mainly in maintaining

its ability to deliver nuclear strikes despite improving Soviet air defenses.

It retained a carrier nuclear strike role even after strategic missile submarines took over much of the strategic nuclear mission. It turned out, moreover, that the efforts made to accommodate heavy nuclear bombers on board carriers made it possible for the same carriers to operate heavy fighters and conventional bombers like the Grumman A-6 Intruder and the LTV A-7 Corsair II. Without the big fighters and bombers, carriers would have been unable to participate in the Vietnam War air attacks on North Vietnam.

During the latter part of the Cold War, the carrier’s ability to operate heavily laden A-6s with nuclear weapons was a key element of the Maritime Strategy. At that time, Soviet shore-based bombers were the greatest threat to NATO shipping in the North Atlantic. NATO escorts were unable to destroy the bombers, which had long-range stand-off weapons. U.S. strategists knew that the Soviets were obsessed with U.S. naval nuclear weapons: Attacking U.S. carriers would be their first naval priority in a major war. The carriers became traps for the Soviet Badger and Backfire bombers, largely because the capability developed in the 1950s to handle the A3D made it possible for them to operate big F-14 Tomcat fighters, which could destroy the Soviet bombers. That the carriers had A-6 bombers with nuclear capability on board made them the targets the Soviets had to hit. A quarter-century later, the same innovations that were so important during the Cold War make it possible for U.S. carriers to operate a new generation of heavy aircraft such as the F-35 Lightning II. CV100

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TOMORROW’S AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

BY NORMAN FRIEDMAN

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY ERIK HILDEBRANDT

T

he aircraft carrier has endured for a century because it is so flexible. The future surely belongs to carriers designed to combine that flexibility – that ability to handle so wide a variety of aircraft – with technology that will make them simpler and less expensive to operate, and that will also help defeat whatever new threats they must face. USS Gerald R. Ford was the first of a new class of U.S. Navy aircraft carriers because it seemed that enough new technology existed or was imminent that it was worth re-thinking carrier design. At least for the U.S. Navy, carriers are vital because, despite many attempts, no other kind

Making all auxiliary power electric has the important virtue that power can be switched between various functions, some of them not yet envisaged. For example, it can be concentrated to power future self-defense weapons such as lasers – which seem to be nearly at the point where they can replace conventional close-in antimissile defenses – or railguns. of ship can project power ashore on a sustained basis. Only a carrier can easily take modern precision weapons on board at sea, and only a carrier’s airplanes can deliver them on a sustained and affordable basis (because they can attack, return, and attack again at will). It also seems that only a carrier’s fighters can effectively protect ships at sea from enemy air attacks using long-range missiles. Surface ships may be able to shoot down the missiles – but unless the enemy’s bombers are destroyed, they can keep coming back until the missiles are exhausted. It takes a carrier like Ford to sustain an air offensive or air defense.

The Ford class is built in about the same hull envelope as the Nimitz and her sisters.

The decision was made early in the design process as a way of limiting the ship’s size and cost growth during that process.

There was considerable pressure for growth, and it was not difficult to argue that a somewhat larger, more commodious hull would be more efficient. Moreover, the Nimitz design is now about 50 years old. Although it has evolved through at least three versions (Nimitz, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan), the basic internal configuration of the Nimitz class and even its power plant have not changed very much. Naval architects say that the design has exhausted its margins, both of weight growth and of electric power. The basic requirement for the Gerald R. Ford was to restore the capacity for the ship to grow in capability over its expected 50 year lifetime. At the same time, the Navy badly wanted to reduce the high cost of

Left: An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23) flies over USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78). The Gerald R. Ford class is the newest class of U.S. Navy supercarrier, embodying updates to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

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ownership – of operating the ship. Half of that cost is associated with the ship’s crew and the personnel of her air wing. For a nuclear ship, there is also the considerable cost in the refit undertaken when the ship is refueled. The Navy estimated that it would cost $4 billion less in 2017 dollars to operate USS Gerald R. Ford than a Nimitzclass carrier. The new carrier is expected to require 800 fewer personnel in its crew, and 400 fewer in its air wing.

USS Gerald R. Ford is described as more survivable than earlier carriers, which suggests that she has been rearranged internally to incorporate new types of armor and also new types of underwater protection. Hers seems to be the first U.S. carrier design to take fully into account the reality of torpedoes designed to explode under her hull rather than in contact with her side. Large-scale experiments, including the controlled sinking of the discarded carrier USS America, have presumably provided the basis for this redesign. Typically the degree of underwater protection is associated with its volume. A demand for greater protection would therefore increase pressure to make the innards of the carrier as compact as possible. On the other hand, the demand for a greater sortie rate is associated with greater quantities of air weapons, and therefore probably with more voluminous magazines.

From an engineering point of view, one of the basic factors in future growth margin is power available for the ship’s auxiliaries. In a Nimitz-class carrier, that is a combination of electric and hydraulic power and steam to operate catapults.

Over the life of a ship, additional electric generators can be added (with difficulty), but it is almost impossible to add hydraulic power or to increase the capacity of the ship’s steam catapults. In the Gerald R. Ford class, the solution has been twofold.

First, all auxiliary power is now electric.

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST SEAMAN ANGEL THUY JASKULOSKI

Second, electric-generating capacity is almost three times as great as that in a Nimitz.

Making all auxiliary power electric has the important virtue that power can be switched between various functions, some of them not yet envisaged. For example, it can be concentrated to power future selfdefense weapons such as lasers – which seem to be nearly at the point where they can replace conventional close-in antimissile defenses – or railguns. Electric power is also much more delicately controllable – by computer – than hydraulic or steam power. For example,

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electric catapults can be controlled to provide a power profile that imposes less stress on an airplane being launched.

Electric power can also be associated with a more automated approach to damage control (hence greater survivability) based on sensors in the ship’s compartments.

The shift to all-electric auxiliaries helps explain the requirement that Ford’s power plant generate three times as much electric power as that of the earlier Nimitz class.

The reactors are a fixed element in a ship’s design, so whatever growth margin (in power) is desired has to be designed in at the outset. Ford has a pair of A1B (originally designated S9G) reactors that are smaller than those of her predecessors

but generate about 25 percent more power. They require about half as many personnel for operation and maintenance, which is probably a major contribution to overall ship personnel savings (moreover, nuclear-trained personnel are particularly expensive).

Until lasers and their ilk enter service, Ford has the standard carrier defensive battery of a pair of octuple launchers for RIM-162 ESSMs (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles), shorter-range Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAMs), and Phalanx close-in guns. ESSM is supported by the ship’s CEC (Cooperative Engagement Capability), a link among ships that provides targeting data on incoming missiles and other

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS CATHRINE MAE O. CAMPBELL

Above: An F/A-18E/F Super Hornet of Strike Fighter Squadron 97 (VFA-97) Warhawks launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) during flight operations May 30, 2020. After decades of employing steam catapults, the U.S. Navy is employing the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) to launch aircraft from Fordclass aircraft carriers, notable for the lack of steam streaming from the catapult track. Right: An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23) piloted

by Lt. Cmdr. Jamie “Coach” Struck, performs an arrested landing aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78). The Ford-class carriers also employ an Advanced Arresting Gear that generates electric power with each trap of an aircraft.

U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST SEAMAN ISAAC ESPOSITO

threats while they are still beyond the ship’s horizon. ESSM can be launched on that basis, considerably extending the ship’s defensive bubble.

The original design requirement to work within the Nimitz-class hull envelope made it essential to save space inside the ship. That made elimination of steam catapults, whose piping and steam chests have always taken up considerable volume, extremely desirable. Ford has electromagnetic catapults, a system called EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System), that are considerably more compact than steam catapults. She also has arresting gear that absorbs the energy of a landing airplane and converts it to electrical power. That also saves space, but it is not as essential to the success of the ship as EMALS. The demand to make the best possible use of the ship’s limited internal space has been met in part by allowing for rearrangement of non-structural partitions to create or eliminate spaces as needed.

That is practicable because all power for these spaces is electrical, available from outlets built into the ship.

As might be imagined, the main change in the way the carrier operates will probably come from the way in which aircraft are used. In the past, the U.S. Navy conducted mass strikes (“alpha strikes”) against single

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The Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), foreground, and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transit the Atlantic Ocean, June 4, 2020, marking the first time a Nimitz-class and Ford-class aircraft carrier operated together underway. While superficially similar, the Ford-class carriers incorporate improvements in everything from flight deck layout to electric catapults and arresting systems, as well as a new radar, a new nuclear reactor design, and a transition away from hydraulic and steam power to electric power.

chosen targets on land. Mass was needed to confuse enemy defenses, and also because it took many bombs to ensure a few hits. The carrier flight deck was designed to support the quick and nearly simultaneous launch of many of the ship’s attack aircraft after they had been loaded en masse. There were also single-airplane attacks, and some aircraft did not fly off en masse, but the emphasis was on preparing a flight deck full of aircraft and launching them together. Turnarounds did not have to be very fast. Even with the advent of smart bombs, the need to saturate enemy defenses remained.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated a very different sort of carrier operation. It proved possible to destroy enemy national air defenses at the outset. GPS-guided weapons could

be dropped from outside the range of the remaining enemy defenses. Unlike the smart bombs of the past, they did not require the airplane to keep a laser fixed on the target until the bomb hit.

One airplane could hit multiple targets on a single flight. Guided bombs were so precise that masses of airplanes attacking together no longer seemed very important. Instead, what mattered seemed to be how many different targets a carrier’s aircraft could hit in a day. Instead of being launched in a mass and recovered together, a carrier’s aircraft would be launched one by one. It would matter enormously how quickly an airplane could be turned around upon landing, because that would largely determine how many flights that airplane could make each day – how many separate sorties the carrier could generate each day. This point was reinforced in Afghanistan, when the key value of carrier aircraft was that they could be maintained continuously over the battle area to provide troops with air support. This sort of continuous operation requires that some aircraft be serviced and rearmed while others are launched and recovered.

Carriers always had this capability, but it was limited because their flight decks were arranged for an earlier idea of combat. For example, ships had magazines located

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forward so that weapons (originally, nuclear weapons) could be fed to aircraft on the bow catapults, before they were launched. They could not feed airplanes being serviced or fuelled after having landed further aft.

USS Gerald R. Ford has her island farther aft, leaving more open space, including parking and rearming space, forward. Ford is the latest in a long series of attempts to place the island in the best position for air operations, keeping in mind that the ship is navigated from it, hence those inside it need good visibility.

She has three rather than the previous four elevators (two forward of the island, one right aft to port). These elevators are larger than those of the earlier ships. The last previous major flight deck redesign came in the late 1950s, when the island was moved aft, exchanging position with one of the two elevators formerly abaft it.

At the same time, the elevator formerly at the fore end of the angled deck was moved aft. These changes were intended to simplify flight deck operation. For example, the elevator at the forward end of the angled deck blocked the two waist catapults. It was a survival of an earlier

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The USS Gerald R. Ford’s compact island structure, incorporating the fixed arrays of the SPY-3 radar, is less than two-thirds the length of a Nimitz-class island.

flight deck arrangement adopted at the start of World War II, when carriers had only bow catapults. The number of elevators and their location reflect the fact that the hangar deck is split into bays (so that, among other things, no weapon or fire can sweep the whole hangar deck).

Each bay has to have independent access to the flight deck. Moreover, elevators are spread out fore and aft and to each side so that the ship is harder to put out of action.

The change in Ford means that no hangar deck bay will have access on both sides.

Presumably that is acceptable because doors between the bays allow such access unless the carrier has been damaged.

Much the same goes for catapults, which are paired forward and amidships.

Catapult operation is further complicated by the fact that each catapult requires a slot cut into the flight deck – which is the ship’s strength deck, hence cannot be cut

crosswise (because the waist catapults are angled, they do reduce deck strength somewhat).

Reducing the number of elevators and moving the island to the after corner of the flight deck frees space for aircraft parking, servicing, and rearming. The Ford’s flight deck is about 8,000 square feet larger than the final Nimitzclass USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77).

Rearrangement also entails changing the positions of weapons elevators relative to the parking areas. Given the redesigned flight deck, Gerald R. Ford is expected to be able to hit about a third more targets than her predecessor (the numbers are typically given as numbers of sorties per day: 160 to 220 rather than 120 on a sustained 30-day basis, or 270-310 in a four-day surge). It is also argued that future U.S. Navy unmanned aircraft may be somewhat cumbersome as they are maneuvered around the flight deck. More flight deck area will make them easier to operate.

Moving the island eliminates possible interference with No. 4 (starboard waist) catapult, which launches aircraft at an angle to the two bow catapults. That

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS KRISTOPHER RUIZ

TOMORROW’S CARRIERS

U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY CHIEF MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST RJ STRATCHKO

improves the ship’s ability to launch two aircraft at the same time, a factor in increasing the sortie rate.

A related factor is a rethought weapons area using high-speed elevators. The new weapons elevators will carry more than twice the weight of those aboard the Nimitz class, and there are two more than formerly. The weapons magazine has also been dramatically enlarged (to two deck heights) so that weapons can be stowed fully assembled (“full-up”) rather than broken down. Again, this is a means of increasing sortie rate, as weapon assembly can be a major delaying factor in rearming airplanes for new strikes.

Aircraft rearming has been centralized to make it more efficient and to require fewer personnel.

Carrier designers once considered a wider variety of flight deck arrangements, and perhaps their ideas will return. For example, one early, abortive proposal for the America-class LHA was to place her island on the centerline, with angled decks on either side meeting at the bow. One deck (“tramway”) would have operated helicopters, the other STOVL aircraft. The ship would have been about the size of the

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Aviation ordnancemen assigned to USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) Weapons Department bring inert training bombs up to the flight deck during flight operations on May 30, 2020. The new high-speed weapons elevators aboard the Ford class carry twice the weight of those aboard the Nimitz class, and larger magazine spaces allow weapons to be stowed fully assembled.

old Forrestal. The idea was rejected because of its cost, but the concept of multiple launch (and recovery) decks remains interesting, particularly if the point of the design is rapid cycling of individual aircraft. Note that this configuration was considered and rejected when the first U.S. nuclear carrier, Enterprise, was built – but her designers envisaged a very different kind of flight deck cycle. The Enterprise designers also considered a multi-level flight deck (i.e., launching aircraft from hangar deck level), which would have been a throwback to some foreign carrier designs of the 1920s. They probably also remembered that a few U.S. carriers built during World War II had cross-deck hangar deck catapults. In those ships, the idea was to be able to launch aircraft even

with a full air group parked at the forward end (the flying-off end) of the flight deck.

The hangar deck catapults were used, albeit rarely; they were eliminated to provide space for more light anti-aircraft guns, hardly a consideration in the post1945 jet age. The idea in the 1950s was to increase the rate at which aircraft could be launched.

The size of the island (and of accompanying masts) is set largely by the radars the carrier needs, both to detect enemy aircraft and to control its own.

The more separate radars, the larger the island/mast footprint. Since the 1970s, electronically scanned radars, like the one used aboard Aegis ships, have become inexpensive and reliable. They add valuable capability, but they replace earlier radars on a one-for-one basis, and often take up more space. Proposals to install Aegistype radars on carriers failed because of cost. Now the next step in technology, the active array, is entering service on board the Gerald R. Ford class.

In contrast to the rotating radars on board past carriers, Gerald R. Ford has the fixed arrays of the SPY-3 radar built into her more compact island. She has no

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radar masts at all. The SPY-3 is an active electronically steered array radar (the SPY-1 of Aegis ships is a passive array). In an active array, each element is a miniature radar capable of transmitting and receiving signals. A computer instructs the elements to work together to form transmitting and receiving beams. In contrast to a passive array, an active array is much better suited to dealing with jammers, as it can rearrange its beams to null them out. An active array may also be able to create its own jamming beam(s) while it continues to conduct radar searches. The published list of electronic equipment on board Ford does not include the usual SLQ-32(V)4 carrier jammer, or any other jammer.

The earlier ships carry radars operating at several frequencies (L-, S-, and X-band).

Ford was conceived to use a dual-band active-array radar (SPY-3/4) to operate in both X- and S-band, combining the SPY3, operating at X-band, with the S-band, volume-search radar for all-weather search capabilities.

Overall, the island of the Ford is less than two-thirds the length of the island on a Nimitz; too, there is no separate radar mast, as there is in a Nimitz. Both the island and the radar mast of the earlier ships contribute heavily to the ship’s radar cross-section, which is why the last two Nimitz-class carriers had their islands extended and their separate radar masts eliminated.

Many predict that manned attack aircraft will give way to unmanned ones; the F-35 is often described as the last manned fighter. This transition would not change the basic carrier mission, which would still be to project air power from the sea. However, it might dramatically change carrier operating practices, and hence the shape of carriers.

Northrop Grumman’s X-47B Pegasus demonstrated that it could operate from a carrier, and with the development of the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned tanker, it seems that unmanned aircraft will be an integral part of any future air wing.

The MQ-25 will become the Navy’s first carrier-based unmanned aerial system.

It is somewhat smaller than an E-2D Hawkeye, but larger than an F/A-18F, and is planned to relieve the Super Hornets of their aerial refueling task. Along with some intelligence, surveillance, and reconnissance (ISR) capability, the MQ-

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Right: An MQ-25 Stingray test asset conducts deck-handling maneuvers, including connecting to the catapult and clearing the landing area, while underway aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77).

This unmanned carrier aviation demonstration marked the first time the Navy conducted testing with the MQ-25 at sea. Improvements to the deck layout of U.S. Navy carriers will enable the handling of unmanned aircraft on deck.

25 could extend the range and reach of the carrier’s manned aircraft. The Navy hopes that the MQ-25 will be able to deliver a total of 15,000 pounds of fuel to four to six aircraft at a range of 500 nautical miles (nm). It comprises an initial step in the U.S. Navy’s Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) concept.

The carrier flight deck would operate with a different tempo, with much longer intervals between launching and, usually, servicing aircraft. If most of the unmanned strike aircraft spent most of their airborne time orbiting, servicing would be intermittent rather than, as now, nearly hourly. Drones would return either when they were about to run out of time between failures, or to reload or refuel. They would be fed one by one into the orbiting mass.

Tanker flights to keep the unmanned vehicles in the sky might be more frequent than any others supported by the carrier.

It is not clear how fleet air defense would fit into this picture; it might or might not become an unmanned function.

On the other hand, handling unmanned aircraft on the flight deck would be a very different proposition, because there would be no pilot onboard to maneuver the airplane in response to the hand signals from the handlers, or for that matter to avoid obvious obstacles. Unmanned aircraft may be provided with their own flight deck sensors, or they may be remotely controlled by the handlers.

There may be particular challenges in handling both manned and unmanned aircraft together, but they may be eased if the unmanned aircraft have such long effective endurance that they only occasionally affect the flight deck.

Unmanned aircraft could have profound impacts on the carrier. Pilots have to fly daily to maintain their proficiency, e.g. in difficult skills like carrier landing.

Unmanned aircraft would fly only when needed. Such a pattern would dramatically

reduce the carrier’s need to take on jet fuel, which currently entails an operating cycle as short as three to five days. The carrier might still fuel her escorts, but she would spend much less time in the vulnerable process of taking on fuel.

Merely operating at higher average speed would give her considerable protection against non-nuclear submarines, which have low average speeds when submerged.

Dramatically reducing aircraft operating hours would also reduce the carrier’s maintenance workload and would probably require far fewer spares for the aircraft. All of these changes would be attractive in a navy trying, as ours is, to reduce the number of sailors.

Moreover, if unmanned aircraft

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BOEING PHOTO BY TIM REINHART

replaced many manned ones, the economics of the carrier would change, perhaps dramatically. The cost of aircraft is now comparable to the cost of the carrier herself; over her lifetime, aircraft may cost twice as much as the carrier. An unmanned strike airplane would not cost any less than a manned one, but there would no longer be a need to buy nearly as many – none would be needed for pilot proficiency training, for example. Fewer air wing personnel would be needed, too, if the unmanned aircraft flew less frequently (because pilots would not be flying them every day to maintain their skills). Critics of carriers often describe them as too expensive, but a dramatic change in their economics might make carriers far

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more affordable. Right now, the United States does not have as many carriers as it needs to deal with a very unstable world.

Anything that made the same carrier capability much less expensive on a shipfor-ship basis would be very welcome.

Stealth is another issue. About 2000, a U.S. Navy design team sketched a truly stealthy carrier, observing that stealth would have carried a high cost (which proved excessive) in aircraft capability.

However, signature control might be a more reasonable proposition. A carrier generally operates with escorting destroyers. An attacker must distinguish the high-value target from the others. If the carrier’s signature could be reduced to the point where she might be difficult

to distinguish from her escorts (or their signatures turned up to match hers), she might gain considerably.

Stealth would include changing radar (and communication) usage so that the carrier could not be identified by the special radars she has. For that matter, any ocean surveillance system that detected the carrier in the first place would probably rely on the carrier’s electronic emissions to distinguish her among the mass of large ships at sea at any one time.

Previous carriers use a characteristic set of radars to control airplanes waiting to land. In the Ford, these radars, which might well identify the ship to an enemy, are replaced by a system based on GPS: A returning airplane reports its position

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to the carrier (via a stealthy link) and the carrier commands it to land based on the series of reported three-dimensional positions. None of this broadcasts the carrier’s identity the way the earlier specialized air traffic control radars did.

As in earlier carriers, the main air search radar – in this case SPY-3 – is a fallback for air traffic control. The difference is that the active array radar of the Ford class can carry out that function more effectively while searching for air targets that might threaten the ship.

For the U.S. Navy, an important objective in the Ford-class design was interoperability – the new ships should use as many standard components as possible.

The shift to greater reliance on electric power contributed to that objective, because it dramatically reduced the number of specialized power converters on the ship.

For example, on board previous carriers, and most other ships, pumps driven by the main engines powered a hydraulic system that drove major auxiliaries. The details of the hydraulic system varied from ship to ship, and so did the details of many of the auxiliaries. Electric power means a much greater degree of standardization. The ship’s generators certainly are specially designed, but electric motors throughout the ship can be standardized. Electrically powered pumps need not be specially designed to work with the carrier’s specialized hydraulic system; they can be the same standard pumps that other electric ships have.

The U.S. Navy plans at least 10 Fordclass carriers, to replace the 10 Nimitzclass. While there is also current interest in increasing the carrier force back to its previous strength of 12 ships, others have suggested a “hi-low” carrier mix. The question is generally whether there is some less expensive way to provide sustained striking power at sea. Since about 1970, the answer, in numerous studies, has been no: Big carriers are the most efficient and most survivable way to go.

Critics of expensive large-deck carriers like the Ford class have often suggested that the appropriate reaction to high carrier cost is to build much smaller ships operating fewer aircraft, like ones in foreign navies. Smaller carriers are inherently less survivable, and they keep the sea less effectively. That drives up the accident rate and limits the carrier’s ability

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An unmanned Boeing MQ-25 Stingray test aircraft, left, refuels a manned F-35 Lightning II, Sept. 13, 2021, in formation flight with an F/A-18F Super Hornet. The MQ-25A Stingray will be the world’s first operational carrier-based unmanned aircraft, providing critical aerial refueling and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that greatly expand the global reach, operational flexibility, and lethality of the carrier air wing and carrier strike group.

to launch aircraft. The smaller the carrier, moreover, the more she costs per airplane and also per sortie. If the ultimate value of the carrier lies in its ability to project power – to attack the largest possible number of shore targets – then anything that makes that more expensive is unlikely to be attractive. Under some circumstances, too, a less numerous air wing is far less effective tactically. Below a certain size, moreover, a carrier will be incapable of operating modern catapult-launched aircraft. A review of foreign programs shows that navies that hope to operate such aircraft have been compelled to contemplate building much larger carriers. Conversely, STOVL technology can allow aircraft operations by a small ship, but it is not enough to operate a very few aircraft. For example, the British found that their light Invincible-class carriers could cram about 20 STOVL Sea Harriers on board. That was too few to be effective. The British jumped up to 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth-class ships mainly in order to accommodate 40 larger F-35Bs, which they considered the minimum effective size for an air wing.

Some critics have suggested that somehow adopting unmanned aircraft can cut minimum acceptable carrier size.

That seems unlikely. It takes an airplane of a given size to deliver strikes at useful ranges using weapons capable of destroying typical targets. If the airplane has no pilot, it may be able to handle somewhat higher accelerations and decelerations, in which case the catapult need not be so long, and the arrester gear pull-out allowance can be shorter. The flight deck as a whole can be shortened slightly, but not very much.

However, the number of aircraft is set not by the number of pilots but rather by the damage the ship is intended to impose on an enemy – which is the reason for buying it in the first place. Of course, if the carrier has to accommodate both manned and unmanned aircraft (as seems likely) no such economy of flight deck length is possible.

Another issue is survivability. In a world of numerous satellites and unmanned aircraft, how difficult can it be to find a huge ship? Once found, surely it can always be destroyed. The reality is that the ocean is still vast. An enemy’s surveillance systems can still be decoyed, particularly if the carrier’s aircraft can operate from the greatest possible range (allowing her the maximum possible sea room). Too, the carrier and her consorts can beat off many kinds of attack. There is, however, a deeper reality: The point of maintaining a navy is to make it possible to use the sea freely. Free use must entail the protection of surface ships, such as merchant ships, in the face of an enemy’s attempt to deny the use of the sea. If a heavily defended survivable ship like a supercarrier cannot survive, no surface ship can, and the sea can be denied successfully. That is why the future of ships like the Ford-class supercarriers is so deeply bound up with that of the U.S. Navy. CV100

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U.S. NAVY PHOTO COURTESY OF BOEING

TOMORROW’S CARRIERS