- For the flight deck of an aircraft, see cockpit
 Flight deck of USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) doing a high speed turn during her acceptance trials. The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is the surface from which its aircraft take off and land, essentially a miniature airfield at sea. On smaller naval ships which do not have aviation as a primary mission, the landing area for helicopters and other VTOL aircraft is also referred to as the flight deck. The official U.S. Navy term for these vessels is "aviation capable ships". A cockpit was a pit used for cockfighting, where owners would pit fighting birds against each other for the purpose of gambling. ...
Image File history File links Stennis_RudderSwing3. ...
Image File history File links Stennis_RudderSwing3. ...
USS (CVN-74) is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier in the United States Navy named for a Senator from Mississippi. ...
Four aircraft carriers, Principe-de-Asturias, USS Wasp, USS Forrestal and HMS Invincible (front-to-back), showing the difference in size between a supercarrier, light V/STOL carriers, and an amphibious carrier. ...
An Airbus A380, currently the worlds largest airliner An aircraft is any vehicle or craft capable of atmospheric flight. ...
Robinson Helicopter Company (USA) R44, a four seat development of the R22 A helicopter is an aircraft which is lifted and propelled by one or more horizontal rotors, each having two or more rotor blades. ...
Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) describes airplanes that can lift off vertically. ...
USN redirects here. ...
Evolution
Early flight decks The first flight decks were inclined wooden ramps built over the forecastle of naval warships. Eugene Ely made the first airplane take-off from a warship from USS Birmingham on 14 November 1910 and on 4 May 1912, Commander Charles Samson became the first man to take off from a ship which was underway when he flew his Shorts S27 off of HMS Hibernia, which was steaming at 10.5 knots. Because the take-off speed of early aircraft was so low, it was possible for an aircraft to make a very short take off when the launching ship was steaming into the wind. Later, removable "flying-off platforms" appeared on the gun turrets of battleships and battlecruisers, allowing aircraft to be flown off for scouting purposes, although there was no chance of recovery. forecastle with figurehead Grand Turk Focsle of the Prince William, a modern square rigged ship, in the North Sea. ...
Eugene Burton Ely (October 21, 1886 - October 19, 1911) was an aviation pioneer, credited with the first shipboard aircraft take off and landing. ...
Naval aviation is the application of manned military air power by the navies of the world such as those operated by the United States Navy. ...
USS Birmingham (CL-2), named for the city of Birmingham in Alabama, was a Chester class light cruiser laid down by the Fore River Shipbuilding Company at Quincy in Massachusetts on 14 August 1905, launched on 29 May 1907 by Mrs L. Underwood and commissioned on 11 April 1908, Commander...
November 14 is the 318th day of the year (319th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 47 days remaining until the end of the year. ...
1910 (MCMX) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Sunday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ...
May 4 is the 124th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (125th in leap years). ...
1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
Air-Commodore Charles Rumney Samson (8 July 1883 - 5 February 1931) was a naval aviation pioneer. ...
Short Brothers plc is a British aerospace company now based in Belfast. ...
HMS Hibernia was a King Edward VII-class battleship of Britains Royal Navy, the last generation of British pre-dreadnoughts. ...
A knot is a unit of speed, abbreviated kt or kn. ...
For other uses, see Battleship (disambiguation). ...
HMS Hood (left) and the battleship HMS Barham (right), in Malta, 1937. ...
On 3 August 1917, while performing trials, Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning landed a Sopwith Pup successfully on board the flying-off platform of HMS Furious, becoming the first person to land an aircraft on a moving ship. However, on his second attempt, a tyre burst as he attempted to land, causing the aircraft to go over the side, killing him (gaining the dubious distinction of being the first person to die in an aircraft carrier landing accident). The landing arrangements on Furious were highly unsatisfactory, however; in order to land, aircraft had to manoeuvre around the superstructure. Furious was therefore returned to dockyard hands have a 300 foot (91 m) deck added aft for landing, on top of a new hangar. However, the central superstructure remained, and turbulence caused by this badly affected the landing deck. August 3 is the 215th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (216th in leap years), with 150 days remaining. ...
Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ...
// Origins Lieutenant-General David Henderson originally proposed that Royal Air Force officers use a combination of British Army and Royal Navy ranks. ...
Squadron Commander Ernest Harris Dunning DSC (17th July 1892 - 7th August 1917) was the first pilot to land his aircraft on a ship when he landed his Sopwith Pup on HMS Furious in Scapa Flow, Orkney on 2nd August 1917. ...
Sqn Cdr E. H. Dunning landing on HMS Furious in a Sopwith Pup. ...
HMS Furious was a modified Courageous class large light cruiser (an extreme form of battlecruiser) converted into an early aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy. ...
Full length decks The first aircraft carrier that began to show the configuration of the modern vessel was the converted liner HMS Argus, which had a large flat wooden deck added over the entire length of the hull, giving a combined landing and take-off deck unobstructed by superstructure turbulence. Because of her unobstructed flight deck, Argus had no fixed conning superstructure and no funnel. Rather, exhaust gasses were trunked down the side of the ship and ejected under the fantail of the flight deck (which, despite arrangements to disperse the gasses, gave an unwelcome "lift" to aircraft immediately prior to landing). The lack of a command position and funnel was unsatisfactory, and Argus was used to experiment with various ideas to remedy the solution. A photograph in 1917 shows her with a canvas mock-up of a starboard "island" superstructure and funnel. This was to starboard as the rotary engines of early aircraft caused a force to the left, meaning an aircraft naturally yawed to port on take-off, therefore it was desirable that they turned away from the fixed superstructure. This became the typical aircraft carrier arrangement and was used in the next British carriers, HMS Hermes and Eagle. Argus in harbour in 1918, painted in dazzle camouflage, with a Renown class battlecruiser. ...
This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
The word yaw can refer to: Yaw, the name for the Levantine god of chaos, rivers, the sea, and tempests; Yaw, an aeronautical and nautical term which indicates how far a craft is pointing away from its direction of travel due to rotation about its vertical axis. ...
For other ships with the same name, see HMS Hermes. ...
HMS Eagle was an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy sunk during World War II. The Eagle was laid down at the Armstrong yards at Newcastle-on-Tyne on February 20, 1913. ...
After World War I, many battlecruisers that otherwise would have had to have been discarded under the Washington Naval Treaty were converted to carriers on the above lines. Being large, and fast, they were perfectly suited to this role; the heavy armouring and scantlings and low speed of the converted battleship Eagle served to be something of a handicap. Because the military effectiveness of aircraft carriers was then unknown, early ships were typically equipped with cruiser-sized guns to aid in their defence if surprised by enemy warships. These guns were generally removed during World War II and substituted for anti-aircraft guns, as carrier doctrine developed the "task force" (later called "battle group") model, where the carrier's defence against surface ships would be a combination of escorting warships and its own aircraft. Combatants Allied Powers: Russian Empire France British Empire Italy United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary German Empire Ottoman Empire Bulgaria Commanders Nicholas II Aleksei Brusilov Georges Clemenceau Joseph Joffre Ferdinand Foch Herbert Henry Asquith Douglas Haig John Jellicoe Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Franz...
HMS Hood (left) and the battleship HMS Barham (right), in Malta, 1937. ...
The Washington Naval Treaty limited the naval armaments of its five signatories: the United States, the British Empire, the Empire of Japan, the French Third Republic, and Italy. ...
Scantling, measurement of prescribed size, dimensions, particularly used of timber and stone and also of vessels. ...
Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom France Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Charles de Gaulle Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian...
American troops man an anti-aircraft gun near the Algerian coastline in 1943 Anti-aircraft, or air defense, is any method of combating military aircraft from the ground. ...
In ships of this configuration, the hangar deck was the strength deck, and part of the hull, and the hangar and wooden flight deck were considered to be part of the superstructure. Such ships were still being built into the late 40s, classic examples being the US Navy's Essex and Ticonderoga class carriers. However, in 1936, the Royal Navy began construction of the Illustrious class "armoured carriers". In these ships, the flight deck was now the strength deck, an integral part of the hull, and was heavily armoured to protect the ship and her air complement. Although the armoured carrier concept in this form remained something of a dead end, the flight deck as the strength deck was adopted for later construction. This was necessitated by the ever-increasing size of the ships, from the 13,000 ton USS Langley (CV-1) in 1922 to over a hundred thousand tons in the latest Nimitz-class carriers. The United States Navy (USN) is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for naval operations. ...
The United States Navys Essex-class aircraft carriers constituted the Twentieth Centurys largest class of heavy warships, with 24 ships built. ...
The United States Navys Essex class aircraft carriers constituted the industrial ages largest class of heavy warships. ...
The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of the British armed services (and is therefore the Senior Service). ...
The Illustrious-class aircraft carriers were some of the most important ships to the United Kingdom in World War II. They were laid down in the late 1930s as part of the rearmament of the Royal Navy in response to the threats of Hitler, Mussolini and militarist Japan. ...
Tonnage is a measure of the size or cargo capacity of a ship. ...
The USS Langley (CV-1/AV-3) was the United States Navys first aircraft carrier. ...
The Nimitz-class supercarriers are a line of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in service with the US Navy, and are the largest capital ships in the world. ...
An important British innovation, introduced in the unarmored HMS Ark Royal, was the "hurricane bow", where the bow was sealed up to the flight deck level, making the hangar deck much drier, especially in heavy weather. This feature would be incorporated into later American carriers. It proved to be by far the most useful configuration for the bow of the ship among the many that were tried, including a second flying-off deck and an antiaircraft battery (the most common American configuration during World War II). HMS Ark Royal (91), was the third ship of the Royal Navy to carry the name and the second to be an aircraft carrier. ...
Armored decks The carriers that were built with armored decks fall into two distinct types - those with the armor at flight deck level protecting everything below (typified by British ships) and those that had the armor between the hangar and the rest of the ship as in American and Japanese carriers. The two approaches had different effects on the ships though US carriers of World War II had similar thicknesses of armor as their British counterparts.
In ships that carried their armor at the hangar deck level, the flight deck and anything above it was superstructure. This allowed for larger, open-sided hangar bays (improving ventilation) and the installation of deck-edge elevators. Carriers with wooden flight decks were vulnerable to fire on deck, particularly during refuelling. After refuelling, fuel lines in the deck would be purged with exhaust gasses to reduce the vulnerability to fire. The armoured carrier concept had a sealed hangar with excellent fire-prevention arrangements, but suffered from an inability to run-up aircraft engines under cover; any work requiring engines to be running had to be carried out on the flight deck.
The Royal Navy's armoured carriers carried their armor at the flight deck level. Within the confines of the ship design this resulted in lower hangar heights and a detrimental effect on the number and size of the aircraft that could be carried. No British carrier other than the early HMS Argus had a hangar to match the 20 ft in hangar height of the American Lexington class or 17'6" hangars of the Yorktown and Wasp. Indeed, with her capacious hangar, Argus was the only British aircraft carrier of the Second World War capable of striking down aircraft without folded wings. The operation of larger late-war fighters like the Blackburn Firebrand and F8F Bearcat and ever larger post-war jets would prove problematic, compounded by the fact that there were fewer and smaller elevators, as these had to be cut into the armor and armored themselves. The Lexington class aircraft carriers were the first operational aircraft carriers in the United States Navy (USS Langley was a strictly developmental ship which only served for a short time as an active fleet unit before being converted to a seaplane tender AV-3). ...
The Yorktown class aircraft carriers consisted of three carriers built by the USA not long before World War II. They bore the brunt of early action in that war, and the sole survivor of the class was to become the most accomplished ship in the history of the U.S...
The eighth USS Wasp (CV-7) was a United States Navy aircraft carrier. ...
The B-37 Firebrand was a single-engine fighter aircraft designed to Air Ministry Specification N.11/40 by Blackburn Aircraft. ...
The Grumman F8F Bearcat (affectionately called Bear) was the companys final piston engined fighter aircraft. ...
Carrying the armor at the flight deck level would protect the hangar deck and the aircraft stored there from light bombs (the Illustrious class was protected, for example, against only 200 pound bombs and were very poorly protected against the heavy 500 pound bombs that became common during the war) that struck the deck. Carrying it lower meant that if a bomb struck the flight deck there was more likelihood of it penetrating to the hangar deck and causing damage there, but that the armor would still protect the rest of the ship including the engine spaces and fuel storage (the flight deck also tended to initiate heavy bombs, keeping the explosion out of the hull proper). The lower deck armor improved stability (by putting the heavy weight of the armor lower in the ship) and damage control (by moving the large void space represented by the hangar out of the hull and into the superstructure).
The differences in doctrine were largely driven by the different circumstances of the two services. The United States Navy had its own aircraft procurement budget and procedures, independent of the Army Air Corps, and thus had plenty of aircraft and envisioned deck parks and massive strikes, keeping damage away by keeping the enemy on the defensive, or by defensively intercepting enemy aircraft before they could attack the carriers on their own. The Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm was constrained by the Royal Air Force and the inter-war emphasis on developing a strategic bomber force. At the outset of the war it had fewer, smaller and older planes and its carriers had to be built under the assumption that they would take damage from operating under the umbrella of land-based enemy air forces in Europe (though the RN's eyes roved as much over the vast spaces of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and never fixed solely on the operating environment of continental Europe), due to the RAF's constriction of the FAA's aircraft procurement. The Royal Air Force maxim that "the bomber will always get through" applied as much to ships as to targets in the UK. When the US Air Force became a separate and equal service in 1947, it would attempt to place similar pressures on US Naval Aviation (and indeed, on the size and composition of the whole Navy); the result of this was an inter-service conflict which became known as the Revolt of the Admirals. USN redirects here. ...
It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ...
The Fleet Air Arm is the operational group of the Royal Navy responsible for the operation of the aircraft on board their ships. ...
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the air force branch of the British Armed Forces. ...
Aircraft of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and coalition counterparts stationed together at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, in southwest Asia, fly over the desert. ...
The Revolt of the Admirals was a late 1940s episode during which several high-ranking officers of the United States Navy publicly disagreed with the United States governments plans for the military forces. ...
The British approach of armoured flight decks was an effective form of passive defence from bombs and kamikaze attacks that actually struck their carriers, but the American system proved more effective in preventing the carriers from being hit in the first place. The larger air groups (90-100 planes, vs. 45-55 for British ships) allowed a far more effective combat air patrol (CAP), improving the protection of the whole battle group and lessening the workload of the carrier escorts. Carrier fighters were able to shoot down far more kamikaze aircraft than any amount of deck armor would have protected against. Many kamikaze hits also missed the deck armor entirely and bounced off the decks anyway, as they frequently did against American carriers as well, or did no more damage than they would have against an American ship (the only fleet carrier lost to kamikaze attack was an American light carrier of the Independence class, USS Princeton (CVL-23), which had no deck armor at all; many escort carriers, also unarmored and with much smaller air groups, were also lost to kamikazes). The primary variable appeared to be deck parks; if a carrier was hit while aircraft were parked on the flight deck, it was in trouble, no matter where the armor was located. By the end of the war veteran American fighter pilots in superior F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair fighters were able to defeat the young, inexperienced and ill-trained kamikaze pilots with ease. More importantly, as was found after the war, the lower deck armor made certain that the bombs and kamikaze craft which did hit, tended to do their damage outside of the ship's structure, and one American carrier of the Essex class (Bonhomme Richard) survived some of the worst kamikaze hits of the war. USS Franklin, commonly believed to have been hit by a kamikaze, was actually struck by two 250-pound armor-piercing bombs, one of which penetrated her armored hangar floor. While British carriers could take direct hits from bombs then clear the decks and resume operations again the impacts proved to have a long term effect on the structural integrity of the ship and their post war life was shortened. HMS Formidable (R67) was an excellent example of this; while she weathered a severe kamikaze hit in 1945 which cratered her deck armor, the hit caused severe internal damage and permanently warped the hull; she was written off during the 1947 survey of the postwar fleet as beyond economical repair and lingered in reserve until 1956 before being towed off to the breakers. Two of her sisters fared just as poorly. Illustrious suffered a similar battering and after the war was limited to 22 knots because of accumulated war damage; she spent five years as a training and trials carrier (1948-53) and was disposed of in 1954. Indomitable was completely refit to like-new condition, only to suffer a severe gasoline explosion onboard, which warped her hull. The explosion occurred on the hangar deck, and while severe, would have been shrugged off by an Essex-class carrier, which returned to service after far worse explosions. She was patched with concrete for Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Review, then immediately afterward towed to the breakers. It has been suggested that Personnel involved in the development of World War II suicide attacks be merged into this article or section. ...
The fourth USS Princeton (CVL-23) was a United States Navy light aircraft carrier lost at the battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944. ...
Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat in tri-color camouflage The Grumman F6F Hellcat started development as an improved F4F Wildcat, but turned into a completely new design sharing a family resemblance to the Wildcat but with no shared parts. ...
The Chance Vought F4U Corsair was an American fighter aircraft that saw service in World War II and the Korean War (and in isolated local conflicts). ...
HMS Formidable was an Illustrious class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy during World War II. She was constructed by Harland & Wolff, Belfast and commissioned on 24 November 1940. ...
Elizabeth II in an official portrait as Queen of Canada (on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee in 2002, wearing the Sovereigns badges of the Order of Canada and the Order of Military Merit) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary) (born 21 April 1926), styled HM The...
Many of the American carriers that fought in the Pacific and absorbed a great number of hits later served long careers into the 1960s and 70s. Again, an important difference in American versus British naval doctrine showed itself. The Royal Navy concentrated on getting as many carriers in the water as possible, without concern to their viability as postwar fleet units, while the United States Navy, with its very large and capacious shipyards on the East and West Coasts, was able to require a very high standard of construction from its yards while still maintaining a rapid rate of production. Light carriers and escort carriers, on the other hand, were built entirely with a view to short-term availability over long-term utility, and their brief careers showed this fact.
British naval historian D.K. Brown put the practical difference between American and British design philosophies in no uncertain terms: "More fighters would have been better protection than armour." The benefits of flight deck armor proved chiefly ironic in nature: Fewer aircraft meant a lower priority to attack than the more heavily-armed American carriers (American warships suffered ten massed suicide attacks, under Operation Kikusui, during the Okinawa campaign to none suffered by British ships), and less ammunition and aviation fuel meant less kindling in the event of a fire. US carriers and their fighters shot down more than 1,900 suicide aircraft during Operation Kikusui, versus a mere 75 for the British, yet both forces suffered the same number of serious hits (four). The prospects for the survival of the British carriers had they come under the same volume of attack as their American counterparts are sobering. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
For other uses, see Armour (disambiguation). ...
While flight deck level armor was eventually adopted by the Americans for the Midway design, the strength deck remained on the hangar level. Midway had originally been planned to have a very heavy gun armament (8" weapons). The removal of these weapons freed up enough tonnage to add 3 inches of armor at the flight deck level. While this made a great deal of sense from an air group perspective, the Midway ships sat very low in the water for carriers (due to their much greater displacement), certainly much lower than the smaller Essex-class carriers, and had a great deal of difficulty operating in high seas. Late-life refits to Midway to bulge her hull and improve freeboard instead gave her a dangerously sharp roll, and make flight operations impossible even in moderate seas. The supercarriers of the postwar era, starting with the Forrestal class - nearly 200 feet longer and 100 feet beamier than their World War II counterparts - would eventually be forced to move the strength deck up to the flight deck level as a result of their great size; a shallow hull of those dimensions became too impractical to continue. As before, however, the USN continued to design its ships for large air groups, continuing to reason that the best defence was a good offence. The Forrestal-class aircraft carriers were a four-ship class designed and built for the United States Navy in the 1950s. ...
Landing on flight decks Landing arrangements were originally primitive, with aircraft simply being "caught" by a team of deck-hands who would run out from the wings of the flight deck and grab a part of the aircraft to slow it down. This dangerous procedure was only possible with early aircraft of low weight and landing speed. Arrangements of nets served to catch the aircraft should the latter fail, although this was likely to cause structural damage. Landing larger and faster aircraft on a flight deck was made possible through the use of arresting cables installed on the flight deck and a tailhook installed on the aircraft. Early carriers had a very large number of arresting cables or "wires". Current U.S. Navy carriers have three or four steel cables stretched across the deck at 20-foot (6 meter) intervals which bring a plane, travelling at 150 miles per hour (240 kilometres per hour), to a complete stop in about 320 feet (98 meters). The cables are set to stop each aircraft at the same place on the deck, regardless of the size or weight of the plane. During World War 2, large net barriers would be erected across the flight deck in order that aircraft could be parked on the forward part of the deck and recovered on the after part. This allowed increased complements, but resulted in lengthened turn-around times as aircraft were shuffled around the carrier to allow take-off or landing operations. Many aircraft that land on aircraft carriers are equipped with a simple piece of equipment called a tailhook. ...
An aircraft about to catch the wire An aircraft coming to a stop, with the arrestor cable housing in the foreground Arrestor cables or arrestor wires are thick steel cables fitted to the aft end of the flight deck on CATOBAR and STOBAR aircraft carriers. ...
Aircraft are given extra speed to assist take-offs by catapults. Any system for helping aircraft into the air (as opposed to strictly under its own power), is known as assisted take off. ...
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Modern innovations
Angled flight deck A British innovation was the angled flight deck (or simply, the "angle"), in which the aft part of the deck is widened and a separate runway positioned at an angle. It was tested on the American aircraft carrier USS Antietam (CVA-36), and subsequently adapted as the SCB-125 upgrade for the Essex class and SCB-110/110A for the Midway class. The design of the Forrestal class was modified immediately upon the success of the Antietam configuration, with Forrestal and Saratoga modified while under construction to incorporate the angled deck. This increases the safety of landings by allowing a plane that "bolters", or misses the arresting gear, to become airborne again without concern for aircraft parked forward. The angled deck also allows the ship to conduct concurrent launch and recovery operations. The development of the angle provides several advantages, as they improved flight operations, allowed a larger island to be mounted (improving both ship-handling and flight control), drastically simplified aircraft recovery and deck movement (aircraft now launched from the bow and re-embarked on the angle, leaving a large open area amidships for arming and fuelling), damage control and a host of other functional improvements. Because of its utility in flight operations, the angled deck is now a defining feature of STOBAR and CATOBAR equipped aircraft carriers. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1977x823, 167 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Aircraft carrier F/A-18 Hornet Flight deck Aircraft catapult Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/September-2006 Wikipedia:Featured...
Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1977x823, 167 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Aircraft carrier F/A-18 Hornet Flight deck Aircraft catapult Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates/September-2006 Wikipedia:Featured...
The Nimitz class supercarriers are the largest warships in the world. ...
USS Enterprise, a supercarrier, and the conventionally-sized aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle A Supercarrier is a ship belonging to the largest class of aircraft carrier. ...
USS (CVN-75) is the eighth Nimitz-class supercarrier of the United States Navy, named after the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman. ...
The second Antietam (CV-36) was laid down on 15 March 1943 by the Philadelphia Navy Yard; launched on 20 August 1944 sponsored by Mrs. ...
The United States Navys Essex-class aircraft carriers constituted the Twentieth Centurys largest class of heavy warships, with 24 ships built. ...
The Midway class aircraft carrier was one of the longest lived carrier designs in history. ...
The Forrestal-class aircraft carriers were a four-ship class designed and built for the United States Navy in the 1950s. ...
STOBAR (Short Take Off But Arrested Recovery) is a system used for the launch and recovery of aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier, combining elements of both STOVL and CATOBAR. Aircraft launch under their own power using a ski-jump to assist take-off (rather than using a...
CATOBAR (Catapult Assisted Take Off But Arrested Recovery) is a system used for the launch and recovery of aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier. ...
Ski-jump Another British innovation is the ski-jump, which came about as means of improving take off for the VSTOL BAe Sea Harrier "jump jet" on the small aircraft carriers also known as "through deck cruisers". These ships replaced the Royal Navy's full size carriers. The ski jump is a ramp which is curved upwards at its forward end. This converts the short run up available into vertical motion and reduces the fuel used at take off compared to a vertical take off. A disadvantage of the ski jump compared to catapults is it limits a carrier to tactical roles and makes resupply more difficult, as large aircraft and fully-laden fighter-bombers do not have enough of a thrust-weight ratio to take off unassisted from the limited area of a carrier deck. V/STOL is an acronym for Vertical/Short Take-Off and Landing. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Flexible decks An idea tested but never taken to completion was the "flexible deck". In the early jet age it was seen that by eliminating the landing gear for carrier borne aircraft the inflight performance would be improved. This led to the concept of a deck that would absorb the energy of landing, the risk of damaging propellors no longer being an issue though take off would require some sort of launching cradle.
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