oringo
Junior Member
Popeye, where is the sources for the third picture (enterprise)? It's a real nice picture and I'm wondering if I can use it for my desktop wallpaper.
Aircraft Carriers
- Thread starter bd popeye
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The first carriers were balloon (not fixed-wing aircraft) carriers. The Austrian ship Vulcano is credited as being the first ship to launch a balloon in 1849 on wikipedia, but purpose-built ballon-carriers did not appear until later in the 19th century, and operated until WW-I era.
Balloon-carriers, like sea plane tenders, didn't last very long and receive little notice. Even war-games rarely have balloon-carrier units/counters. The later balloon carriers were usually converted to sea plane tenders, so you could say that early sea plane tenders were baloon-tender/carrier conversions.
As for fixed-wing aircraft carriers, in the early days the British were more advanced in carrier construction and carrier-aircraft operations:
Some of the British inventions include, the ski-jump, angled flight deck, mirror projector landing sight (glide slope indicator?), steam catapult, hurricane bow, and others.
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That too is one of my favorite pictures;
It comes from this page on the CV-6 website. Great WWII pictures and the entire history of the USS Enterprise CV-6 year by year..
Ahh...but I would really like to know if anyone took off from an improvised carrier deck and landed on the same (which were built onto US Naval vessels specficially for this purpose) before Eugene Ely in Nov 1910, and Jan 1911 respectively?
I am not aware of anyone doing it before that...but I am also not sure. If in fact that was the first, it could be argued that the US did in fact invent the carrier, although they were not the first to launch a dedicated vessel.
Just wondering.
I wouldn't dream of denying Eugene Ely's place in history. Considering how underpowered and unreliable those early flying machines were his achievements cannot be underestimated. He proved that aircraft could be launched from and land safely back aboard a Warship, following which the US Navy promptly wasted no time in.... ignoring the whole subject of Naval Aviation (that's Battleship Admirals for you...). The RN then took the lead in the development of aircraft at sea simply because war was looming and that is often a strong driver of technological advances. America's neutral stance helped to stifle any moves to develop 'war technology', and when the USA finally joined the war the Army and the Navy had to play catch up with Britain and France. The US Navy's Battleships joined the RNs Grand Fleet in the North Sea with the obvious brief of learning as much as possible from a fleet that had seen combat. The USN was shown the results of experience with HMS Furious and other experiments (thus saving them from years of making the same mistakes) and allowing them to make the leap to the design of USS Langley.
I hope this bridges the gap between our two mammoth posts earlier. Now one of us is going to have to cover the Japanese, French, German and Italian angles of this story....
On this side of the pond, National Geographic channel is showing an episode of it's 'Seconds from Disaster' series next Tuesday at 9pm about the accidental explosions and fire aboard USS Forrestal in 1967.
Agreed 100%. Ely, along with the US Navy's help, showed it could be done and the Briitish were then first out of the making ready for that innovation for practical use in war time.
Again, agreed. I just wish the US would have been able to get the armored decks on its carriers earlier in WW II...i tmay have reduced losses considerably. OTOH, the added weight would have meant less fuel, arms, and aircraft...which itself may have led to more losses instead of less. Hard call there.
I believe it ddoes...most adequately. I did mention the 1st Japanese carrier in my 1st post.
You know, thinking about it, another critical metric in aircraft carrier experience is gauged by the carriers you have lost. It is a horrific metric for sure, but it comes about precisely because you are using them in somewhat large numbers in dangerous combat situations...and you learn from all of that experience, even the horrid kind. The US lost five fleet carriers, one light carrier, and six escort carriers during the war. The British lost five large/fleet carriers and three escort carriers. The UK and particularly the US lerned from this (as the victors) and went on to perfect carrier operations even more.
OTOH, the Japanese lost 24 carriers during the war...and have never built another true carrier since...although that may change soon.
If you are interested, I can give provide a list in this thread of each of those losses, when and where they occurred, and the tonnage of the carrier involved. By far the largest carriers lost were the Japanese, with several in 30,000 to 40,000 ton range, and, of course, the ill fated Shinano, super-carrier at 71,900 tons which was sunk by torpedoe while in transit for outfitting.
Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers
The IJN reigned over the Pacific with virtual impunity the first 6 months or so after the attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the US into WWII. Such adrious duty took a heavy toll on the IJN pilots whom were not rotated back to Japan for R & R, training and the like. This gave the US the chance to build up the largest force of carrier ever assembled in war or peace.
This link below will take you to an excellent page about the IJN CV's.
Jeff mentioned the Shinano the IJN super carrier. It was uncompleted when sunk. So incomplete in fact many watertight door were not installed. It was being move to finish it's outfitting when sunk by US aircraft.
The IJN reigned over the Pacific with virtual impunity the first 6 months or so after the attack on Pearl Harbor which brought the US into WWII. Such adrious duty took a heavy toll on the IJN pilots whom were not rotated back to Japan for R & R, training and the like. This gave the US the chance to build up the largest force of carrier ever assembled in war or peace.
This link below will take you to an excellent page about the IJN CV's.
Jeff mentioned the Shinano the IJN super carrier. It was uncompleted when sunk. So incomplete in fact many watertight door were not installed. It was being move to finish it's outfitting when sunk by US aircraft.
Midway in June 1942 turned the tides of the naval war in the Pacific when the Japanese lost four carriers in that single battle, although many hard fights still remained. Leyte Gulf in 1944 hammered the door shut in terms of US dominance on the seas. Although there were still battles to be fought, and the Kamikazis would reak terrible havoc (which my father experienced and observed fisrt hand), there were no serious carrier or surface action threats after that.
The large fleet carrier action surrounding Leyte Gulf was very one sided, but the surface action part was a very near thing, partiuclarly off Samar. We lost two of our escort carrier there as the big battleships and cruisers broke through and could have done horrible damage to the anchorage...but were turned back by the ferocious attacks of destroyers and destroyer escorts...who went up against heavy cruisers and battleships.
Amazing stuff.
Here's a great site regarding the Battle off Samar:
Re: US military news thread
I move this post to this thread because it is relavant to Cv's. The US defense bill will require the USN to retire CV-67. Totoro is commenting on that situation.
bd popeye moderator
So it is official, kennedy is to be retired. that was expected. But my question now is will USN will be left with 10 carriers at one time? If i am not mistaken, current plans call for kitty hawk to go in 2008, when bush goes online, so that's still 11. but then shorthly thereafter enterprise will go offline too, before first of next gen carriers gets into service. So there may be a few year long gap during which USN will operate 'just' 10 carriers. Also, even after that, at which rate will new carriers be built? It does seem quite likely that 10 carriers will slowly become the norm for USN in the coming decades. Not a big deal, of course, since new carriers will have higher sortie rates but still...
I move this post to this thread because it is relavant to Cv's. The US defense bill will require the USN to retire CV-67. Totoro is commenting on that situation.
bd popeye moderator
So it is official, kennedy is to be retired. that was expected. But my question now is will USN will be left with 10 carriers at one time? If i am not mistaken, current plans call for kitty hawk to go in 2008, when bush goes online, so that's still 11. but then shorthly thereafter enterprise will go offline too, before first of next gen carriers gets into service. So there may be a few year long gap during which USN will operate 'just' 10 carriers. Also, even after that, at which rate will new carriers be built? It does seem quite likely that 10 carriers will slowly become the norm for USN in the coming decades. Not a big deal, of course, since new carriers will have higher sortie rates but still...
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