EVOLUof

AIRCRAFT CARRIERSBy Scot MacDonald

FOREWORD

S i n c e F e b r u a r y , 1 9 6 2 , a s e r i e s o f a r t i c l e s h a s a p -p e a r e d i n N a v a l A v i a t i o n N e w s u n d e r t h e t i t l e “ E v o l u t i o n o fA i r c r a f t C a r r i e r s . ” T h e y m e a s u r e u p a s a n a u t h e n t i c , e a r n e s ta t t e m p t t o c h r o n i c l e a h i s t o r y o f c a r r i e r s s i n c e t h e m o b i l ea i r f i e l d i d e a w a s i n i t i a l l y c o n c e i v e d .

H e r e , u n d e r t h e s e c o v e r s , a r e t h e e n t i r e c o n t e n t s o ft h o s e a r t i c l e s . T h i s d o e s n o t c o m p r i s e a c o m p l e t e h i s t o r yo f c a r r i e r s - - t h a t h i s t o r y i s s t i l l b e i n g w r i t t e n i n s e a s a -r o u n d t h e w o r l d .

T h i s c o l l e c t i o n , b a s e d o n i n f o r m a t i o n g a t h e r e d f r o mm a n y o f f i c i a l s o u r c e s , p r o v i d e s a n i n t e r e s t i n g a c c o u n t o fh o w a n d w h y t h e c a r r i e r d e v e l o p e d a s i t d i d . I t i s t h e s t o r yb e h i n d t h e p e r h a p s b e t t e r k n o w n t a l e o f c a r r i e r o p e r a t i o n s .

I t i s t h e s t o r y o f c h a n g e - - c h a n g e d i c t a t e d b y o p e r a t i o n a ln e c e s s i t y a n d b y t e c h n o l o g i c a l p r o g r e s s . I t i s a l s o t h e s t o r yo f h o w n a v a l c o n s t r u c t o r s t o o k f u l l a d v a n t a g e o f t e c h n o l o g i c a lp r o g r e s s , a n d t h e l e s s o n s l e a r n e d o f o p e r a t i o n a l e x p e r i e n c et o s o l v e t h e N a v y ' s u n i q u e p r o b l e m o f t a k i n g a v i a t i o n t o s e a .A s a r e s u l t o f t h e i r e f f o r t s a n d t h e c o n s t a n t i m p r o v e m e n t o ft a c t i c s n e c e s s a r y t o w e l d s e a a n d a i r p o w e r t o g e t h e r , t h e a i r -c r a f t c a r r i e r s t a n d s t o d a y a t t h e f o r e f r o n t o f N a v a l p o w e r ,r e a d y a n d a b l e t o d e f e n d t h e n a t i o n a n d t o p r o j e c t n a t i o n a li n t e r e s t s t o a l l p a r t s o f t h e w o r l d .

V i c e A d m i r a l , U S ND e p u t y C h i e f o f N a v a l O p e r a t i o n s ( A i r )

F e b r u a r y 1 , 1 9 6 4

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing OfficeWashington, D. C., 20402 - Price 55 cents

AT GUANTANAMO 1913 fleet games, early Naval Aviators, in dark USMC (6), Alfred A. Cunningham, USMC (5), John H. Towers (3),uniforms, are (L) Victor D. Herbster (NO. 4), Bernard L. Smith, P.N.L. Bellinger (8), W.D. Billingsley (9), and G. deC. Chevalicr (7).

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

THE AEROPLANE GOES TO SEABy Scot MacDonald

‘The striking successes of carrier warfare in the Second World War areimportant in its own right, is the story of the evolution of sea-air powerlishment. The formative years began almost with the birth of the aircraftvalue of the newest weapon in its arsenal.’—James V. Forrestal, SecNav,

First Article in a Series

well known. Not so well known, but equallyas a dominant segment in our military estab-itself, for the Navy was prompt to assess the1944-1947; SecDef, 1947-1949.

J U L E S V E R N E , author of startling desk of Capt. W. Irving Chambers in between the Navy and the swellingscience-fiction during the last half 1910. Capt. Chambers had recently number of letter-writers who were

of the 19th century, would have rel- been assigned as Assistant to the Sec- eager to advance their own schemes orished some of the sketches, plans, and retary’s Aid for Material, and was designs involving aviation.ideas for “aeroplanes” that crossed the given the collateral duty of liaison Less than seven years earlier, the

E L Y ’ S A I R C R A F T i s l o a d e d a b o a r d a s p e c i a l p l a t f o r m i n U S SBirmingham at Norfo lk for f i rst take-o f f f rom ships , in 1910.

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.

Wright brothers had launched theirpusher biplane into a brief but im-pressive flight. In the interveningyears, advocates of aviation fought forrecognition—and money.

At first, the Navy’s interest in avi-ation was skeptical, if not openly dis-couraging. Twelve years before Cham-bers entered the picture, “The JointArmy Navy Board to Examine Lang-ley’s Flying Machine” was formed atthe urging of Assistant Secretary ofthe Navy Theodore Roosevelt. A Navymember reported favorably on it tothe General Board. But the Secretary,upon the advice of another Bureau inthe Department, decided “the appar-atus as [it] is referred to pertains

decide the destiny of nations.” Andhe added, “Encumbered as [our bigwar vessels] are within their turretsand military masts, they cannot launchair fighters , and without these to de-fend them, they would be blown apartin case of war.”

The “battleship controversy” wason, puffed by publicity in a competi-tive press. Curtiss added weight to hisargument by a series of tests in whichhe lobbed 15 out of 22 “bombs” intotargets as large as and shaped likebattleships near Hammondsport, N.Y.

There was a rumor that France wasbuilding an aircraft carrier. More tothe point, a growing group of enthusi-asts, the U.S. Aeronautic Reserve,

hers and two other officers were sent;for the Navy, Chambers, and NavalAviation, it was a fortunate decision.There he met Curtiss and the Curtiss-trained pilot, Eugene Ely. At that time,the Navy had neither an aircraft nora designated pilot. In a series of start-ling tests, Chambers, Curtiss and Elydemonstrated that this situation mustchange, and soon.

Several problems nagged Chambers.There was not conclusive proof, forinstance, that it was feasible to launchand land aircraft at sea. And if therewas to be any future for aviation inthe Navy, it had to be demonstratedaircraft could be operated in, and wereimportant to, the Fleet. Navy officials,

CAPT. W. I. CHAMBERS was O-in-C of NavalAviation jrom 26 Sept. 1910 until 17 Dec. 1913.

strictly to the land service and not tothe Navy.”

On at least two important occasionsbetween then and 1910, the Navyparticipated in or observed the fledg-ling "apparatus” in flight-in the 1907Jamestown Exposition and the 1908tests by the Wright brothers at FortMyer, Va. But the Navy Board heldto the attitude that “aeronautics” had“not yet achieved sufficient importancein its relation to naval warfare” towarrant Navy support.

It was not until 1910 that specificaction was taken to alert the Navyto the potentials of aviation. In oneincident, pioneer Glenn H. Curtisssuccessfully flew a prize-winning flightbetween Albany and New York. Atits conclusion, he prophesied publicly:

“The battles of the future will befought in the air. The aeroplane will

FEBRUARY 1962

CAPT. M.L. BRISTOL relieved Chambers, serveduntil March 1916, led aviation in Gitmo games.

asked the Navy to appoint a represen-tative who would handle aviation mat-ters. Since this civilian organizationenjoyed semi-official status, Capt.Chambers was assigned to handle allcorrespondence on the subject.

Chambers’ j ob proved far f romeasy. He was given no space to workin, no clerical help, no operatingmoney, no authority, and preciouslittle encouragement. Despite this, helater wrote to Lt. T. G. Ellyson, “Iam endeavoring to start an office ofaeronautics here in such a way thatthings will run smoothly without hav-ing them all get into one Bureau andmade a mess of as was the submarinequestion.”

In October 1910, the Navy was in-vited to send the corps of midshipmento Halethorpe, Md., where an aviationmeet was to be held. Instead, Cham-

CAPT. NOBLE E. IRWIN was next leader, heldtitle, Director U.S. Naval Aviation in WW I.

military and civilian, were still apa-thetic about the program and gave ittoken and grudging cognizance—whenthey treated it with any degree of seri-ousness at all.

The first test was prompted by plansof a German merchant line to launcha plane from one of its ships in orderto speed up its mail service. Chamberswas appalled that such an advancemight be made by a foreign powerwhen the aircraft had been, in fact,developed by this country. He ob-tained permission to make a similarattempt at launching from the deck ofthe cruiser Birmingham. The Wrightbrothers were contacted, but they de-murred; Ely was eager.

A temporary wooden platform waserected on Birmingham at the NorfolkNavy Yard. The German line, mind-ful of the Navy’s experiment, moved

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AT VERA CRUZ aviation camp, Mexico, pilotBellinger, r ight , poses with ground crew.

up its target date in an effort to bethe first to launch, and thereafter baskin the honors of claiming a significantaeronautical first. Luck was not withthem, however. An accident aboard,caused by a careless workman, forceda delay of the experiment.

Chambers’ plan went ahead withouta hitch. On Monday, 14 November1910, Birmingham pulled into thewaters off Hampton Roads, in com-pany with three torpedo destroyers.Aboard was pilot Ely and his biplane.Weather was unsatisfactory; visibilitywas dropped by a low cloud cover andthere were light showers mixed withhail.

Ely was not discouraged. He slippedinto the seat of his aircraft near threein the afternoon and signalled his han-dlers to let loose. The plane roared offthe platform, took a dangerous dipwhen it left the platform, then swunginto the air. In the take-off, the skidframing and wing pontoons of hisplane struck the water, nearly abort-ing the flight. The prop tips weresplintered and water splashed over hisgoggles. This brief baptism, and asteady rain, blanketed his vision andfor a moment he swung dizzily in theair. Finally, he spotted the sandybeaches of Willoughby Spit and touch-down, ending a 2 1/2-mile flight.

The flight was an extraordinary suc-cess, but Chambers tempered his jubil-ance with native conservatism. Saidhe: “After [Ely] had demonstratedhis ability to leave the ship so readily,without assistance from the ship’sspeed, or from any special starting de-vice, such as that formerly used bythe Wright brothers, my satisfactionwith the results of the experiment wasincreased.”

He admitted to pre-experiment per-turbation: “The point of greatest con-cern in my mind, carrying out the

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original program, was the uncertaintyof stopping the ship or changing thecourse in time to prevent runningover the aviator in case he should landin the water.

“His demonstration, that an aero-plane of comparatively old design andmoderate power can leave a ship inflight while the ship is not under way,points clearly to the conclusion thatthe proper place for the platform isaft. An after platform can be madelonger, will not require a lessening ofthe stays of any mast and its essentialsupports can be so rigged as a perman-ent structure of a scout cruiser as tocause no inconvenience in arrangingthe other military essentials of theship’s design.”

News of the feat inspired a NewYork Navy Yard worker to design alight movable platform for installationabove the turrets in battleships for thepurpose of launching aircraft at sea.Some Navy officials were enthusiastic,but Chambers was not quite so readyfor this innovation. “Recognizing thepracticability of Quarterman Joiner[E. C.] Keithley’s idea,” he wrote, hecould “not contemplate the use ofaeroplanes from turret ships in theimmediate future.”

Chambers’ reasoning was cautious.As a result of the Birmingham flight,he did not think it necessary to launchaircraft into the wind. He had alreadygone on record as supporting the place-

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ment of the platform in the aft sec-tion of the ship and saw no reason totake a different stand. The safety ofpilots was another determining factor:he feared they would be run over bythe ship if the plane, forced to ditch,landed forward of the carrier.

Though Ely’s flight opened a fewNavy eyes, it did not loosen theNavy’s purse strings. Glenn Curtiss,at this time, offered to teach a Navalofficer the mechanics of flying, absorb-ing the expense himself. Chambersrecommended the immediate approvalof the plan and Lt. T’. G. Ellyson wasordered to Curtiss’ San Diego camp.A series of experiments followed, inconjunction with the pilot’s training.

Chambers, immensely pleased withthe Birmingham launching, was nowinterested in proving it practical toland a plane aboard a Naval warship.Another platform was constructed atMare Island and permission was ob-tained to install it on the armoredcruiser USS Pennsylvania. While thevessel was anchored at San Franciscoon 18 January 1911, Ely launchedfrom a shore airdrome.

“There was never a doubt in mymind that I would effect a successfullanding,” Ely is quoted in a March1911 Naval Institute Proceedings arti-cle. “I knew what a Curtiss biplanecould do, and I felt certain that if theweather conditions were good therewould be no slip.”

PLANE LAUNCHES from catapult on cruiser Huntington. After U.S. intervention in WW I,catapult was removed from all U.S. ships. Huntington spent war years in convoy escort duty.

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

A simple arresting gear had beeninstalled on the ship’s platform. Itconsisted of 22 weighted lines stretch-ed across the deck. On Ely’s plane, anumber of special hooks were fitted,designed to catch the lines as the planemade its rollout. In event the jury-rigged experimental arresting gearfailed, a canvas screen was fitted tothe end of the platform as an emer-gency stop.

The landing was, of course, a com-plete success, and Chambers was nowarmed with more ammunition in hisbattle to prove the feasibility of em-ploying aircraft at sea. He vowed totake every opportunity to emphasizethis fact to officers in the Fleet.

Just 31 days after the Pennsylvanialanding, Curtiss taxied a seaplane from

as “auxiliary ships.” He stated, “I donot believe that we need such a vessel,even if we could get it,” consideringit “superfluous and inefficient.”

With the hydro-aeroplane, Cham-bers hoped to find a method of gettinga plane in the air from a fast-movingvessel without being forced to slowdown the ship or stop. His solutionwas to devise a catapult system. Lang-ley, the Wright brothers, and Chanutehad pioneered in this field, but noneof the systems developed quite metthe needs of Naval Aviation.

The catapult was a challenge. Cham-bers proposed a device using com-pressed air for thrust. The first testof it was made at Annapolis, withEllyson at the plane’s controls. Theexperiment was a failure operationally,

missions and exercises in spotting minesand submerged submarines. Under

specific instructions from SecNav andChambers, the unit, led by Lt. J. H.Towers, demonstrated the operationalcapabilities of the aircraft to stimulateinterest in aviation among fleet per-sonnel. More than a hundred “train-ing” flights were made, carrying in-terested line officers on local hops todemonstrate the safety and maneuver-ability of aircraft, as well as to pointout the superiority of aircraft in scout-ing and reconnaissance tactics.

Other nations, especially in Europe,were moving faster in the develop-ment of aviation for their navies, al-locating more money than the U.S. forexperiments. In the same month thatChambers was officially retired, in

TO PROVE IT POSSIBLE, Glenn H. Curtiss taxies his Seaplane to USSPennsylvania, is hosted aboard, then returns to water and his base.

EARLY CATAPULT in USS North Carolina viewcd from crane. N O v .1915, LCdr. H. C. Mustin was first to launch from curlier model.

his North Island base to the same ship,then in San Diego Harbor. The planewas hoisted aboard, returned to thewater, and taxied back to its base.This experiment indicated the eventualliberation of aircraft from being an-chored to shore bases, a necessary ad-vancement if the aeroplane was ever tojoin the Fleet.

The Navy ordered its first aircraftthe following May. SecNav GeorgevonL. Meyer had earlier supported ap-propriations for Naval Aviation. In ameeting of the House Naval AffairsCommittee he requested and received$25,000 for aeronautics.

Chambers was against the develop-ment of the true aircraft carrier by theU.S. Navy at this time. He vehement-ly opposed the seaplane carrier orhangar ship concept, classifying them

FEBRUARY 1962

but Chambers learned much from it.He turned the project over to NavalConstructor H. C. Richardson who,with suggestions from Ellyson andChambers, developed it further.

Three months later, they were readyto try again. On 12 November 1912,Ellyson launched in a hydroplane, theA-3, from a catapult installed in abarge off Washington Navy Yard.This time, they met with success.Curtiss, who witnessed the demonstra-tion, cons idered i t a significantachievement.

The following January, aviationjoined the Fleet. Chambers sent theentire aviation unit to GuantanamoBay, Cuba, to participate in Fleet op-erations for the first time. During theeight-week period beginning 6 January1913, the unit conducted scouting

June 1913, the British reconfigured thecruiser Hermes by placing a launch-ing platform on it and using this shipactively in maneuvers that followed.The nations vied with each other inbuilding up their air arms; in theoffing were the faint rumblings thatsoon would swell to a roar, eventuallyerupting into the outrage of war.

In April 1914, Naval Aviation wentinto action for the first time. A crisisdeveloped in Mexico when a U.S. navalparty was placed under arrest by Mexi-can police. Pilots and planes were em-barked in Birmingham and Mississippi.Those in the former were dispatched toTampico and saw no action. But Lt.Patrick N. L. Bellinger, leading theMississippi detachment, continueddown the coast to Vera Cruz and con-ducted daily reconnaissance flights.

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PRIMITIVE ARRESTING GEAR comprised of 22 taut ropes weighted by vania for Eugene Ely’s historic landing. Plane had three hooks beneath5O-pound sandbags were strung four inches off the deck of USS Pennsyl- i t to catch ropes . DFC was awarded Ely posthumously in 1933.

On 5 November 1915, RAdm. W.S.Benson, the Navy’s first Chief of Na-val Operations, visited the N o r t hCarolina and a decision was made tolaunch the A B-2 aircraft from a newand temporary catapult installedaboard. LCdr. H. C. Mustin, whoheaded the Naval Aeronautic Stationat Pensacola, was also aboard. Heclimbed into the aircraft and a suc-cessful launch was made. ThoughMustin’s launching was satisfactory,obvious improvements in the systemwere necessary. Other pilots tested thecatapult, changes were made in theunit’s mechanism, and finally, thecatapult was removed altogether. Latera permanent catapult was installed.

Great Britain was the undisputedleader in number and operation of air-craft from ships at this time. As theU.S. was experimenting with NorthCarolina, the Royal Navy already hadfive vessels from which aircraft oper-ated. First of these were Hermes, acruiser converted to carry three sea-planes. Three others, formerly used ascross-channel turbine steamers, wereoutfitted with hangars and partialflight decks. These were Engadine ,Empress, and Riviera, pre- Langley“carriers.” The fifth was a convertedtanker, Ark Royal.

Capt. Mark L. Bristol relievedChambers in the winter of 1913.Mindful of Great Britain’s progress incarrier experiments, he shot off a mem-orandum to SecNav:

“I desire to suggest the taking upof this question at once,” he wrote,“along the line of purchasing a mer-chant ship and converting her into anaircraft ship, and at the same timeconsidering the plans for a special shipof this type, developing these plans asmore information is received from

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abroad. It is strongly recommendedthat the bureaus consider the questionof including in the estimates for thecoming year money for the purchaseand fitting up of such a ship with anidea of recommending to Congress theappropriations with the provision thatit become immediately available with-out waiting until [1 July 1916].“

The memo went through the Chiefof Naval Operations who sensibly feltsuch a venture premature. In his en-dorsement, he wrote: “It appears tothe Department that the more immedi-ate need of the Aeronautic Service isto determine by experience with theUSS North Carolina, now fitted tocarry aeroplanes, the details of suchservice upon which the characteristicsof special aircraft ships, if needed,could be used.” RAdm. Benson con-curred with Chambers: it was not wiseto spend large sums of money on car-riers when the aircraft itself had notreached an acceptable state of develop-ment. There was still much to learn.

Undeterred, Bristol asked for fundsfor two three-million dollar carriers inhis estimates for fiscal year 1917. Itwas a futile try. Next, he requestedpermission to take the command ofnaval air to sea and, upon receivingit, moved aboard North Carolina. H eretained command over the Navy’saircraft, their development, the shoreestablishments connected with avia-tion, and the shaping of the air serv-ice.

Shortly after he assumed commandof North Carolina, Bristol sailed forGuantanamo Bay to participate in wargames with the Fleet. This 1916 ex-ercise proved the most important par-ticipation of naval aircraft in anyFleet problems to date. By end of theexercise, the four planes aboard had

logged more than 3890 miles in aseries of tests that proved instructiveand, at the same time, emphasized thelack of equipment available and thatcoordination and planning left muchto be desired.

In the summer of 1916, the organ-ization, morale, equipment and pros-pects of Naval Aviation reached theebb tide mark. The status of navalair so exasperated the normally reticentBellinger that he wrote to SecNav adetailed, realistic summation of equip-ment available and experiments con-ducted. “Aeroplanes now owned bythe Navy,” he noted, “are very poorexcuses for whatever work may beassigned them.” Viewing current cata-pults, he continued, they are “by nomeans the finished mechanism desiredin some of [their] essential features.”The letter was frequently quoted byofficers in the Aviation department.

With war imminent, the Appropri-ations Act of 29 August 1916 helpedpull Naval Aviation out of the dol-drums. Granted a million dollars theyear before, this Act now allotted anadditional $3½ million to the develop-ment of naval air.

In October, Towers completed atour in London as assistant naval at-taché and reported to the ExecutiveCommittee of the General Board toinform it of European progress in avi-ation. He spoke glowingly of zep-pelins, advocated the assignment ofland planes on capital ships, and dis-couraged the direction of attentiontoward aircraft carriers.

“Aeroplane ships cannot keep upwith the Fleet,” he reported, echoinga widely held conviction. “If [the Brit-ish] build a ship big enough and pow-erful enough to keep up with the Fleet,its cost is so high that they do not

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

consider it worthwhile. They arerather giving up the idea.”

Towers’ recommendations weighedheavily with the Board. In its subse-quent recommendations, it requestedover 500 planes, in addition to kiteballoons, non-rigid dirigibles, and anexperimental zeppelin. No recommen-dation was made for the fitting out ofa major ship of the line for the opera-tion of aircraft on the scope of anaircraft carrier.

The U.S. entered WW I in April1917. In the years prior to this, NavalAviation concerned itself with thedevelopment of aeronautical designand a continuing series of studies wasimplemented to determine the adapt-ability of planes on ships. The warinterrupted these studies. Instead, em-phasis was on expansion in aircraftinventory, increase in the number oftrained pilots and ground crew men,and anti-submarine warfare.

In April 1917, RAdm. W. S. Sims,heading the European naval forces,recommended to SecNav that, sinceGerman U-boats were sinking tre-mendous tonnages, attention be di-rected toward acquiring large num-bers of seaplanes for anti-submarinereconnaissance. He also asked for thedevelopment of seaplane carriers forsmall seaplanes. Going a step further,he advocated the development of ves-sels from which seaplanes could belaunched directly from their decks.

This emphasis on ASW was a reflec-tion of the experiences of the Alliednations. Expectations of the Britishwere high. Sims, in answering Sec-Nav’s request for information on whatAllied nations’ requirements for navalair support were, revealed the Britishpreoccupation with ASW problems.Through Sims, they requested fourseaplane carriers, with a capacity ofsix two-seater planes, six single-seat-ers, and a speed of at least 18 knots.They also requested four or more sea-plane tenders, 100 kite balloons withnecessary manpower to operate andmaintain them, “any number of train-ed pilots,” and a good 300-hp engine.

But Sims appended a note of cau-tion to these requests. He did not ad-vise the U.S. Navy to develop this lineof aeronautics if it would interferewith the completion of anti-sub pro-grams already in progress.

Though the British pioneered in air-craft carriers, their emphasis in WW I—and that of U.S. Naval Aviation—

was on the development of seaplanes.Throughout this war, seaplanes andtheir tenders achieved far greater at-tention than any other weapon in thenaval air arm arsenal.

The U.S. looked for the super sea-plane, one that would be large enoughto carry enough fuel aboard to make atrans-ocean hop feasible. This was anattempt to circumvent the worrisomenumber of sinkings of cargo ships byGerman U-boats; with the strickenships went a large number of aircraftbuilt for flight against the enemy inEurope. This plane was given thedesignation NC and was later to provesuch a flight possible.

In the summer of 1918, the Gen-eral Board showed considerable inter-est in the future of aircraft carriers.It called before it most of the leadingNaval Aviators of the day in an effortto determine how much importanceto attach to this development. Testi-monies presented offered a wide rangeof thought on the subject. Severalwanted carriers for ASW work. Tow-ers suggested the conversion of a mer-chant ship—for experimental purposes.Others pointed out that aircraftaboard Huntington were smashed byconcussion when that ship fired apractice salvo. Only a ship with themajor mission of launching and land-ing aircraft at sea would do.

The Board deliberated and in Sep-tember recommended a six-year pro-gram of expansion in all branches ofthe fleet. For Naval Aviation, it rec-ommended that six carriers be builtwithin that time span, each having a700-foot flight deck, with an 80-footbeam “absolutely clear of obstruc-tions.” Designed top speed was to be

35 knots, with a cruising range of10,000 miles.

The bright future darkened swiftlyon 2 October when SecNav JosephusDaniels temporarily put an end to theproject. “The question of building air-craft carriers of special constructionis held in abeyance,” he wrote, “andno action will be taken until the mili-tary characteristics considered advis-able by the General Board are submit-ted, and no action will then be takenof a positive character unless it appearsprobable that these vessels can be com-pleted and made serviceable during thepresent war.” This did not put a periodto the program, simply a series of sus-pension dots . . . until the Armistice.

The British had been mulling overthe problem of ASW and in October1918 proposed a possible solution to it.The proposal, at the same time, gave akeen revelation of the effectiveness ofits carrier operations. Since most sub-marine sightings and sinkings (therewere few of the latter) made by air-craft were from shore-based seaplanes,the Royal Navy suggested planes begiven a much wider range than theyenjoyed. They proposed a plan to towthe planes on lighters or barges to with-in striking distance of the targets se-lected. A rear compartment in thebarge would be flooded sufficiently tofloat the plane. The aircraft wouldthen take off, bomb its target and re-turn to home base.

Surprisingly, the plan met withfavor. The British volunteered tocontribute 50 of the lighter units andasked the U.S. to provide 30, alongwith 40 planes. By the end of July1918, the towed-lighter project sawthe commissioning of a base at Kill-

DURING W W I, British developed a towed lighter from which planes were launched. Rearcompartment was f l o o d e d f o r s e a p l a n e s . H e r e l a n d p l a n e i s t o w e d , l a t e r l a u n c h e d .

FEBRUARY 1962 7

A MUSTIN SEA SLED holds a Caproni bomber in post-WW I tests atHampton Roads. Sled was designed to add launching power to planes.

ingholme, Ireland, with an Americandetachment in command. In a dressrehearsal for the scheduled bombard-ment of the submarine base at Helgo-land, a German zeppelin appeared onthe scene and photographed the entireoperation. The secret type of attackno longer secret, the British called offthe campaign in August.

The first draft for Naval Aviation’srequest for appropriations after thewar contained no provision for theconstruction of aircraft carriers northe conversion of a current ship of theline to carrier characteristics. But onreturn from Europe of Capt. NobleE. Irwin, who then had the aviationdesk in the Office of the Chief of Na-val Operations, the entire budget wasrevamped, new estimates were made,and the Navy was subsequently auth-orized to convert the collier USS Jupi-ter into the first experimental carrier.

The British, at that time, had threeoperating carriers, two training carriersand two under construction.

In 1919, the General Board metagain, this time centering its attentionon Naval Aviation. It was an exhaus-tive inquiry from which was produceda report on “Future Policy GoverningDevelopment of Air Service for theUnited States Navy.” In it the Boardstated, “The development of Fleet Av-iation is of paramount importance andmust be undertaken immediately ifthe United States is to take its properplace as a naval power.”

At the close of the war, the evolu-tion of thought on carrier designs cen-tered on the development of two types,one a fast vessel with large radius forscouting operations with scout cruisers,and the other a larger, slower vessel tooperate with battleship units as a base

for launching torpedo plane attacks.The experiments and experiences of

the British Navy in operating aircraftcarriers influenced American thinkingwhen design and performance wereconsidered. Their carrier Argusweighed 18,000 tons and flew 20 Sop-with planes carrying 1000-lb. torpe-does. Its speed was 21 knots. Twoother British carriers, Furious a n dCavendish, were designed for scoutingmissions, travelled at 32 knots, andcarried reconnaissance planes.

Arguments continued during theBoard meetings. One faction wantedto convert battleships instead of col-liers, but were out-argued by Irwinwho pointed out the lack of stowagespace below decks, the smoke menaceamidships, the small headroom betweendecks, and the additional personnelneeded for the fire room. One admiralprotested the conversion. “l believethe development is going to be so rapidthat by the time you get your carriersyou will find you have to make allyour ships carriers.” But another voice

FIRST SUCCESSFUL launch of a flying boat wasmade at Washington Navy Yard in Dec. 1912.

was heard, that of LCdr. E. O. Mc-Donnell: “A plane carrier would carry15 torpedo planes and, in my opinion,would be a menace to a whole divisionof battleships and in the same way afleet of carriers could attack a placelike Hawaii.”

Congress considered convertingcruisers. Merchant ship possibilitieswere renewed, but the Board prevailed;the collier Jupiter was selected.

Even at this late date, a new threatdeveloped. After Congress authorizedthe carrier, RAdm. Benson shelved theproject. Capt. Thomas T. Craven,who had by then relieved Irwin, foundhimself in the awkward position offacing a Congressional hearing and ad-mitting that the appropriated moneywould not be used. He consultedDaniels who at once reversed theCNO’s decision and ordered work toproceed immediately. In January 1920,Daniels allocated $500,000 for theconversion and the future of Jupiter-Langley was assured.

Several years later, LCdr. B. G.Leighton commented on the contro-versy surrounding the selection ofJupiter for the first conversion to acarrier design. “There is no goodreason,” he said, “why a battleshipmight not become an aircraft carrier,or an aircraft carrier a cruiser.

“The Langley, 14 knots, no guns,400 officers and men—a convertedcollier—is an aircraft carrier. TheSaratoga, 33 knots, eight-inch guns,three times the size of the Langleywith three times as many men—aconverted battle cruiser—is an air-craft carrier. The British Argus— aconverted passenger ship—is an air-craft carrier. ‘Aircraft carrier’ may‘mean almost anything!”

8 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

DECISIONS OUT OF JUTLANDBy Scot MacDonald

‘It is impossible to resist the admiral’s claim that he must have complete control of, and confidence in, the aircraftof the battle fleet, whether used in reconnaissance, gun-fire or air attack on a hostile fleet. These are his very eyes.Therefore the Admiralty view must prevail in all that is required to secure this result.’—Winston S. Churchill.

T HOUGH THESE WORDS were writ-ten in 1936 as a private citizen,

Winston Churchill earlier, as FirstLord of the Admiralty, advocated thedevelopment of aviation in the navywhile the aeroplane was still young.He was partially responsible for plac-ing the new machines aboard Britishships shortly after the first decade ofthis century. As a result, duringWorld War I Great Britain developedthe aircraft carrier and built a smallnumber of them before any othercountry had a single ship designedfor the operation of planes at sea.

Heavier-than-air craft had its startin Great Britain four-and-a-half yearsafter Orville Wright launched theworld’s first successful aircraft atKitty Hawk. Mr. Alliott Verdon-Roe completed constructing his planeat Broadside, England. Modeled aftera Wright brothers’ aeroplane, it wassuccessfully flown on 8 June 1908.

On 2 March 1911, three RoyalNavy officers and one Marine officerbegan taking flying instruction givenby a civilian enthusiast. The first ofthe four to solo was Lt. Charles R.Samson who, in the next ten years,built a distinguished reputation forbeing a flamboyant man of action.

In 1912, Horace Short producedBritain’s first seaplane (Churchill hasbeen credited with coining this one-word description of the aircraft) andit was successfully flown by Samson.Only months earlier, Samson demon-strated the potentials of naval avia-tion when in December 1911, he test-launched a Short S.27 biplane fromrail platforms on the foredeck ofHMS Africa while the warship was atanchor at Chatham. He made a safelanding alongside, using flotation bagsstrapped to the wheels of his plane.

Four months later, in May 1912,the first British flight from a movingship was effected when Lt. R. Greg-ory, one of the “original four,” tookoff from a temporary flight deck ofthe battleship Hibernia. The ship wassteaming in Weymouth Bay at a speedof 10 to 12 knots.

By this time, France already hadan Air Corps, consisting mostly oflandplanes. Between 1912 and 1914,she experimented with seaplanes aboardthe converted cruiser Foudre, previ-ously used as a mine ship, but appar-ently lost interest before any notableadvancement could be made. Theship could not house an effective num-ber of aircraft aboard; the rest were

hangared on the beach at Frejus. Butin number of landbased craft in themilitary inventory, and in pilots train-ed, France was the undisputed leaderin pre-WW I years.

Germany believed her future layin the development of lighter-than-aircraft, eschewing experiments in send-ing heavier-than-air craft to sea. Heranswer to war at sea was the U-boat,supplementing the High Seas Fleet,and she used it effectively in the tur-bulent years ahead. She did developlandplanes, some with extraordinaryachievement, but it was with CountFerdinand von Zeppelin and his air-ship designs that Germany placed hernational trust.

Italy, at that time (and for manyyears after), did not believe carrierswere necessary for her defense. Theprevailing opinion was that the coun-try was so centrally located it wasvirtually a land base from which theMediterranean could be controlled.

Japan developed aircraft carrierdesigns, but details of constructionwere not revealed to the rest of theworld for decades.

The United States, after originallyinventing the aeroplane, did not dur-ing WW I aggressively push their op-

CONSIDERED BY MOST H ISTORIANS t O be the world’s first true air- the end of the war, she never saw action. Tests conducted duringcraft carrier, HMS Argus had flush deck installed. Completed toward construction and post-war operations influenced design of later carriers.

MARCH 1962 9

ON HMS BEN-MY-CHREE during the Dardanelles campaign, a Shortseaplane is lifted over the side. Double-acting ailerons on both wings.

A SOPWITH CAMEL launches from converted HMS Pegasus in 1918.Note machine gun mounted on wing. Camels were used extensively.

eration at sea. True, the Navy hadequipped at least three ships to operateaircraft by installing catapults onthem, but the catapults were re-moved during the war. On the whole,the military was not encouraged andseldom financed; civilians had littlemotivation for building carriers.

With France the undisputed masterof the landplane, Germany the ac-knowledged expert in lighter-than-aircraft, and the whole of Europe feelingthe faint stirrings of unrest as earlyas 1912, Great Britain was intent oncatching up with and overtaking, ifpossible, France and Germany in theirrespective aeronautic specialties.

As war years approached and theGerman submarine force grew in po-tential, Britain, as the major seapower, instinctively sought ways ofadapting aeroplanes for operationswith the fleet while out of flying rangefrom home bases. Her success event-ually gave her a weapon more power-ful than those developed by compet-ing powers.

The genesis of the British aircraftcarrier can be plotted with simplicity.At first, attention was directed to thelaunching of aircraft from water.Both hydroplanes and flying boatswere studied, tested, and developed.

Later, experiments were made inlaunching planes from ships, followedalmost immediately with efforts tosuccessfully retrieve them at sea.

Eventually, the performing advan-tages of the light landplanes over theawkward hydroplanes led to effortsto develop vessels which could takethe landplane to sea. When theseachieved success, the forerunner ofmodern aircraft carriers was born.The gestation period was surprisingly

10

short for such a complicated ship, butits parturition was forced by the pres-sures of wartime and an instinctivefight for survival.

Britain’s first step toward carryingaeroplanes to sea was to establish anofficial air arm. On 13 April 1912,the Royal Flying Corps was consti-tuted by Royal Warrant and, on 19June, a Central Flying School wasopened at Upavon Downs. Both theCorps and the School were plannedfor the centralization of aviation ac-tivities in the Royal Navy and the“Military.”

Between 1912 and the outbreak ofhostilities in August 1914, Europe be-came increasingly restless. In October1912, following the establishment ofthe Corps, Britain commissioned anumber of naval air stations for coastguard duty. One was placed at Crom-arty, Scotland, and the remainingthree in England, by the Channelcoast at Calshot, Yarmouth, andFelixstowe. Two others were alreadyin operation, one at Eastchurch andthe other on the Isle of Grain. Thesites were selected to form a chain sothat planes could fly from one stationto the next without requiring an in-terstop for refueling.

British naval aviation moved moreclosely toward the carrier conceptwhen a wheeled launching platformwas installed in the cruiser Hermes inJune 1913. At first, two seaplanes op-erated from the ship. Later, she wascapable of carrying a third. By Oc-tober 1914, Hermes had been fittedto handle ten.

In the summer months of 1914,Prime Minister Lloyd George ap-pointed Winston Churchill First Lordof the Admiralty, comparable to the

Secretary of the Navy in the U.S.In a series of sudden decisions,

Churchill immediately called out ofretirement brilliant Lord Fisher, a can-tankerous admiral who advocatedgreat changes in the Royal Navy. Hewas made First Sea Lord (i.e., CNO).Almost at the same time, Churchillelevated the bellicose Sir John Jellicoeto command the Home Fleet, bypass-ing several senior officers en route.

Aviation fascinated Churchill. Heflew at every opportunity and encour-aged the development of aircraft forthe Navy’s use. In this respect, he wasmilitant. In the words of Sir SeftonBrancker, then Deputy of MilitaryAeronautics, "The first sign ofChurchill’s policy was his sudden an-nouncement that the Naval Wing ofthe Royal Flying Corps had becomethe Royal Naval Air Service—thiswithout any reason or warning to theWar Office.”

His most startling decision wasmade shortly before war was declared.On his own initiative, Churchill calledup full mobilization of the Navy,risking a veto by the Cabinet and notwaiting for a signature from KingGeorge V. The entire reserve strengthwent on active duty; the ranks ofnaval aviation broadened with otherunits of the fleet. It was one of thefew times in history that a defendingnation’s navy was adequately preparedupon the declaration of war.

Events moved swiftly. On 28 June1914, the Austrian Archduke, FranzFerdinand, was assassinated by Serbianstudents at Sarajevo. On 17 JulyChurchill concentrated the fleet atSpithead for review and maneuvers.All available naval aircraft took tothe air: 17 seaplanes and two flights

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

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of aeroplanes. On 28 July Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.Russia sided with the Serbs and Ger-many mobilized. On 1 August, theBritish planes at Eastchurch weretuned up. August 4th, England de-clared war on Germany, and Germanydeclared war on Belgium.

At that time, Great Britain hadonly one vessel that could even re-motely be referred to as an aircraftcarrier, the Hermes. Her wartimeactivity was cut short, however. Onthe evening of 30 October 1914, shewas torpedoed and sunk. Fortunately,most of her crew survived.

In short order, an old merchantmanwas placed in a shipyard and her su-perstructure converted to carry andlaunch seaplanes from wheeled trol-leys. It was the same type installationused in the Hermes. The merchant-man displaced 7450 tons, was slightlylonger than 350 feet, and had a speedof about 11 knots. This ship, HMSArk Royal, was to prove valuable tothe Royal Navy in future years.

In quick succession, other vesselswere converted. The former fastcross-Channel packers, Empress, Enga-dine, and Riviera, were fitted withhangars for seaplanes and equippedwith cranes for hoisting aircraft intoand out of water. Later, an Isle ofMan packet, Ben-my-Chree, was re-fitted for seaplane operations.

Except for submarine activities—which proved deadly in the early yearsof the war-the German Navy seem-ed tenaciously timid. The Kaiser ad-amantly refused to permit the HighSeas Fleet to engage the British, soit hung reluctantly to safe ports.There were, therefore, few demonstra-tions of German belligerence by sur-face ships at sea. But in the earlymonths, two engagements are notable,for they eventually affected some fu-ture designs of Royal Navy ships.

I N S E P T E M B E R 1914, the Germancruiser Konigsberg, skulking in the

Indian Ocean, attacked and sank theBritish cruiser Pegasus in port at Zan-zibar. She then hid in a maze ofchannels in the Rufiji Delta on theeast coast of Africa. The Admiraltyknew her whereabouts, but not exactlocation. Charts indicated five possi-ble exits for Konigsberg, but therewas only one ship in the area able tooffer chase, Kinfauns Castle.

Not far away, on the island ofNiororo, a civilian stunt pilot, H. D.Cutler, suddenly found himself com-missioned in the Royal Naval AirService and his two weathered Curtissflying boats in the Air Service’s inven-tory. He was immediately assignedto locate the cruiser. Only those famil-iar with the vagaries of war can ap-preciate the actions that followed.

On his first flight, Cutler had nocompass, got lost, was forced to beachon a deserted island and awaited rescue.Kinfauns Castle found him. Two dayslater, his leaky boat repaired, he foundthe German cruiser deep up a tideway.He returned to the ship and reported.Charts at the home office indicatedthe water too shallow to support aship of the Konigsberg draft; anotherrecon was ordered by the Admiralty,this time with an observer aboard.

Ten days were lost while Cutlerawaited shipment of his second Cur-tiss; the first now leaked so badly itwas unusable. The ship’s command-ing officer observed during the nextflight and confirmed the Konigsberg’slocation.

Sinking of the German cruiser nowbecame an idee fixe with the Admiral-ty. The nearest ship of sufficient sizeand firepower to do the job was toofar away. Days passed, while K i n -fauns Castle awaited help. Cutlerlaunched again to ascertain Konigs-berg’s continued presence, but shortly

after reaching the tideway, his enginefailed. Forced down, he was capturedby the Germans. Aerial reconnaissanceno longer a threat, Konigsberg saw noreason for leaving her safe anchorage.

It was not until April that Shortseaplanes arrived on the scene to take

up Cutler's recon missions. One ofthe planes was shot down on its initialflight before completing a photo run.Use of the others was limited: theycould not reach sufficient altitude forbombing.

Two more months went by beforehelp finally came—in the monitorsSevern and Mersey. They were equip-ped with Henri Farmans for spotting,but even then their job was not easy.A spirited fight ensued between theships, interrupted by a five-day inter-im for necessary repairs to the Far-mans. The battle then resumed andeventually, under persistent Britishgunfire directed effectively by the air-craft, the German cruiser fell.

The third German-British naval en-gagement of WW I has been enteredin history books as the Battle of theFalkland Islands.

Over on the China Station, Ger-many had eight cruisers operating inthese and nearby waters. When Japandeclared war against the CentralPowers, the German squadron, com-manded by Adm. Count von Spee,sailed for South America, bombardingPapeete and Fanning Island en route.He was joined by two more cruisersat Easter Island and, in company, theyproceeded to the coast of Chile. TheAdmiralty, intent on destroying thisenemy force, assembled as many shipsas possible off the southeast coast ofSouth America, and even dispatchedthree from the Grand Fleet to joinin the hunt.

Von Spee, still eager for battle, de-cided to attack the Falkland Islands.It was a fatal decision: the British

THE FELIXSTOWE F-3, called “Large America,” was a British improve-ment of Curtiss’ flying boat built before U.S. entered World War I.

MARCH 1962

SILHOUETTE of Sopwith Camel shows machine gunu installed on enginecowling. Synchronizer developed by Germans permitted this system.

11

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squadron came upon him unexpect-edly and sank all the German ships,save one, which managed to escape.

These two incidents—the spottingand sinking of the Konigsberg and theBattle of the Falkland Islands—ledto the later development of gun-turretlaunching experiments in HMS R e -pulse, and the construction of LordFisher’s “Hush! Hush!” ships, Cour-ageous, Glorious, and Furious.

The British turret-launching sys-tem was designed and developed in1917. By early 1918, nine battlecruisers and two light cruisers wereequipped to launch seaplanes fromsystems installed over ships’ gun tur-rets.

Though developed by the Britishunder the pressures of wartime urgen-cy, the idea was first recorded as earlyas November 1910 when New YorkNavy Yard quartermaster joiner E.C.Keithley proposed a design shortlyafter Ely’s successful take-off fromthe Birmingham. Keithley’s idea wasrejected—too advanced for its time-tossed into Navy files and forgotten.

But Fisher’s “Hush! Hush!” shipshave fascinated naval architects andhistorians since they were uncovered.Originally, they were built as cruisersof a sort under the war emergencyprogram.

Ships of the Royal Navy describesthem as white elephants. “In design,”it states, “they suffer from being toostrong and too weak. For light cruiserwork, they are ludicrously overgun-ned, while the absence of armour pre-cludes their being employed as battle-cruisers.”

Apparently, the First Sea Lordwanted powerfully armed ships ofhigh speed, capable of navigating veryshallow waters. Officially described aslight cruisers, they were orderedshortly after the sinking of Konigs -berg. Subsequently, all three wereconverted into carriers, Courageousand Glorious after the war. BeforeFurious was commissioned in July1917, she underwent the first of sev-eral conversions and emerged from theshipyard initially as an awkward-look-ing aircraft carrier.

Britain, in the first months of thewar, realized the danger of zeppelinraids on home shores when the Ger-mans became entrenched in Belgium.A series of air patrols in the Channelwas immediately established, costingthe Royal Naval Air Service in casual-

WW I AVRO 504 series biplanes were used ex-tensively by the Royal Naval Air Service.

ties a number of seaplanes and pilots.In December 1914, the British plan-

ned a raid on zeppelin bases at Cux-haven. This time, they tried a newtactic, launching the attack with sea-planes based aboard ships. The con-verted Engadine, Riviera, and Empresswere pressed into service, accompaniedby a screen of destroyers and sub-marines. The mission was not restric-ted to the bombing of the airshipsheds, but broadened to obtain asmuch information as possible on thestrength of the German Navy in thearea.

On Christmas morning, the shipsconverged at a point some 12 milesnorth of Heligoland. An hour later,seven planes took off. En route, theywere attacked ineffectively bv two. .zeppelins, and, as they neared the ene-my’s main naval base, by seaplanes.

Three hours after launching, threeof the seaplanes returned to theirships, the mission only partly accom-plished. The remaining four wereforced to ditch. The crews of threewere rescued by a friendly submarine;the fourth was captured by a Dutchtrawler.

The seaplanes did not succeed infinding the zeppelin sheds, thus fail-ing that aspect of the mission. Butthey did bring back valuable infor-mation on harbors and the numberof German ships in them. The Ad-miralty was not disappointed.

If any single action gave birth tothe concept of aircraft carrier opera-, .tions, says one noted U.S. naval his-torian, this raid would qualify. Sev-eral similar raids were made in lateryears of the war, but attention wasdirected first at the development ofseaplanes and then of flying boats.It was not until the last months ofthe war that Britain fully realizedthe limitations of seaplane characteris-tics and the superioritv of landplanes.She then began various experimentswith true aircraft carrier design.

M E A N W H I L E , Turkey refused toremain neutral. Influenced by

Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, thecountry was pro-German. On 29 Oc-tober 1914, Turkish warships, in com-pany with two German cruisers, open-ed fire on Odessa, Theodosia and Sev-astopol on the coast of the RussianBlack Sea. Russia declared war on 2November, and England and Francefollowed three days later. The Otto-man Front was opened.

Churchill soon conceived a brilliantstrategy. Had it been successfullycarried out, the war could easily havebeen ended in 1915. Instead, the com-paign ended disastrously, and the wardragged on bloodily until November1918.

He proposed to concentrate BritishForces in the Dardanelles, defeat Tur-key, and force the Germans and Aus-trians to deploy troops and machinesto that area. The Balkan states wouldprobably join the Allies. And Russiawould make a devastating victory inthe east; the Central Powers wouldcrumble. It nearly worked.

Though opposed at home and inFrance, Churchill ordered the Navyinto action. As soon as a force ofships was gathered, including A r kRoyal, the British armada headed to-ward the Dardanelles to force an en-trance.

In Ark Royal were six two-seaterseaplanes and two single-seater land-planes. Of these, only a Short sea-plane, equipped with a good engine,was efficient. The rest could barelyget high enough for effective spottingand could launch only when waterswere calm.

On 5 March 1915, a Sopwith sea-plane, manned by a pilot and observer,took to the air. The plane was todirect fire on a Turkish fort for theguns of the new superdreadnought,Queen Elizabeth. It climbed tortur-ously to 3000 feet and, as the observerreadied to call the shots, the propellerfell off. The Sopwith plunged to thesea, under furious fire from the fort.Miraculously, both men were saved.

More catastrophes followed. Theassault force, entering the straits, raninto a mine field and lost three battle-ships. Action was broken off abruptlyby the admiral—although other shipshad managed to toss the Turkish andGerman troops into confusion.

Churchill composed a telegram in-sisting the battle be resumed immedi-

12 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

ately, but was dissuaded by the Ad-miralty on the ground that the officercommanding the situation should beallowed to make his own decisions.For the prospect of a shortened war,later events proved this decision wasunfortunate.

At war’s end, German GeneralLiman von Sanders, in charge of theDardanelles during the battle, wrote,“If the orders given at that momenthad been carried out, the course ofthe war would have been changedafter the spring of 1915, and Ger-many and Austria would have beenconstrained to continue the fightalone.”

The attack on the Ottoman Frontnext centered on Gallipoli, but thisproved a worse disaster. The enemylearned of the next tactic and but-tressed their defenses. The campaign—doomed to drag on till the followingJanuary—was lost.

Samson arrived on the scene, viabrisk battles at Dunkirk and Belgium,commanding No. 3 Aeroplane Squad-ron. Ark Royal moved to the Gulfsof Enos, Smyrna and Xeros, providingeffective spotting, and returned to herbase at Mudros. Fighting was sporadic,both a success and a failure—in aboutequal measure . The Turks wereworthy adversaries.

By late June the threat of Germansubmarines in these waters was real,and Ark Royal was retired to thesafety of Imbros where she functionedas a depot ship. Barely a week earlier,Ben-my-Chree was added to the force.Reconnaissance and spotting flights

were frequent, but the Dardanellescampaign was now a stalemate.

In early August, a major landingwas effected by the British at nightwithout opposition. With the enemyforces nearly all routed and running,the general in charge failed to pressthe attack, In the meantime, rein-forcements came up and the battleraged anew, continuing until theBritish realized the hopelessness of thesituation and evacuated, ending thecampaign.

Great Britain recognized the dead-liness of the German U-boats early inthe war. Lusitania was torpedoed 7May 1915 with 1200 lives lost; 139Americans were among them. Britainsearched for a long-range seaplane thatwas capable of carrying heavy bomb-Ioads. In 1914, Sopwith developed aflying boat he called a Bat, but it wasinadequate.

A year later, Cdr. J.C. Porte wasgiven command of the Felixstowenaval air station. He took up the prob-lem, started with Curtiss flying boatdesigns, added improvements, and fi-nally produced an operational craftthat weighed between four-and-one-half and six-and-one-half tons. AsPorte described them, they “carriedsufficient petrol for work far out fromland and big enough bombs to damageor destroy a submarine otherwise thanby a direct hit.” Called Large Amer-icas, they were operational by thespring of 1917.

Until 1915, vessels converted foraviation at sea were designed as sea-plane tenders. This year, a new ex-

FIRST LANDING of a British plane aboard a British ship is made in a Sopwith Pup. Deck handlershelp bring the plane to a stop. A few days later, pilot was killed in a second landing attempt.

MARCH 1962

periment was tried and proved sucesss-ful. The Isle of Man packet, Vindex,was refitted to launch landplanes aswell as seaplanes. A 64-foot-long deckwas mounted on the ship, and a suc-cessful flight from it was made on 3November by a Bristol Scout. T h eScout seaplane was equipped withwheels which dropped off as the air-craft took to the air. It made a waterlanding, taxied alongside the ship, andwas hoisted aboard again. Refittedwith wheels and refueled, the planewas once more ready to fly.

Two other experiments were madein attempts to launch aircraft at seato provide wider range. In the first,British Navymen designed a floatingbarge upon which seaplanes were tow-ed. Nearing target, the aft compart-ments of the lighter were flooded, per-mitting the plane to slide easily intothe water and take off. A variation ofthis was a larger platform from whichsmall landplanes were launched. Theyenjoyed a brief popularity and opera-ted in the North Sea early in the war.In the closing months of hostilities, aSopwith Camel was launched in thesame area, engaged and downed a zep-pelin. The towed lighter was not re-fined further and saw comparativelylittle action.

The second experiment made by theBritish in 1916 tried a new approachtoward launching aircraft at sea. Ontheir own initiative, two naval officersmade a design that was a departurefrom the standard envelope-gondolaairship. The envelope they used wascomparatively small, but they hoped,capable of lifting an F .E. 2C airplane.Once aloft and sufficient power giventhe plane, the envelope was to bedetached.

Bizarre? Perhaps. At any rate, atrial launching was made of the con-traption on 21 February. The planelifted off successfully and was gainingaltitude when the envelope detachedprematurely. One of the officers wasspilled from the plane and the othercrashed with it.

I N MID-1916, the war’s major seabattle was fought, the Battle of

Jutland. Earlier in the year, the 20,-000-ton Cunarder Campania was con-verted by the British to carry sea-planes and was assigned to Adm.Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet.

May approached and nearly endedbefore the German High Seas Fleet,

13

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now under Adm. Reinhard Scheer,made a definite move to encounter theRoyal Navy. Jellicoe was ready. Ad-vised in advance that a squadron ofGerman battle-cruisers had been or-dered to Norwegian shores for a showof force, he ordered Adm. Sir DavidBeatty, leading a similar but largerBritish squadron, to intercept.

HMS Engadine, operating withBeatty’s squadron, launched a seaplane

even though outnumbered, the Ger-man ships under Adm. Franz vonHipper, sank two of Beatty’s vessels.Scheer’s High Seas Fleet crested thehorizon, and Beatty led his remainingships on a strategic retreat, north to-ward Jellicoe.

On the day before, Campania hadconducted a series of successful gun-spotting training flights, returned toher Scapa Flow anchorage about five

Jellicoe assumed his aircraft “carrier,”Campania, was in company. ThusJellicoe at Jutland fought withoutbenefit of aerial observation.

Briefly, about 1800 on the 31st, theHigh Seas Fleet met with the GrandFleet. Jellicoe made a thrust to cutoff Scheer’s retreat, but the Germanadmiral ordered his ships first southand then east. By this maneuver, hecame up in pursuit along the flank

HMS EAGLE became Britain’s second aircraft carr ier . Original ly at end of WW I.planned as a Chilean dreadnought battleship, the ship was converted HMS Argus were

Lessons learned from construction and operation ofapplied to this ship, and further tests were made.

for reconnaissance at 1530 on the 31st.The pilot reported three enemy cruis-ers and ten destroyers taking a north-westerly course. Fifteen minutes later,the German ships changed course tothe south. The pilot tried to flash thissignaI by searchlight, but his messagewas not received. One of the ships ofthe squadron noted the alteration,however, and the ships shifted in time.Thereafter, poor visibility and roughwater kept Beatty’s plane on deck.

The two squadrons clashed and,

miles from the main fleet, and awaitedorders.

At 1735, a signal was flashed to allships of Jellicoe’s fleet to stand by toget under way. At 1900 the order toraise full steam was given and two-and-a-half hours later, Campania wasready. At 2254, the “proceed” signalwas flashed—but the Campania didnot receive it. Several hours passedbefore her C.O. realized that the restof the fleet had gone.

Until 0200 the following morning,

of the British ships, turned again andlaunched torpedoes, forcing Jellicoeto retreat.

Scheer then ordered Hipper to en-gage Jellicoe’s attention while theHigh Seas Fleet maneuvered for anescape route. Scheer found it by 2100,cutting east across the southerly-mov-ing British ships, and dashed to safety.

At battle’s end, each fleet had lostseveral ships, but the British sufferedmore heavily in tonnage—by almostdouble. In post-battle retrospect, the

14 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

Battle of Jutland could easily haveended in a triumphant victory for theAllies, had Jellicoe had the advantageof Capania’s plane to report move-ments of Scheer’s ships. The Germanfleet had no seagoing aircraft. This,combined with lessons already learnedin previous sea encounters with theenemy—especially in countering U-boats—strengthened more than everthe British Navy’s dedication to theperfecting of the aircraft carrier.

In February 1917, the pacifism ofa patient president broke when, onthe last day of January, Kaiser Wil-helm notified Woodrow Wilson andthe American people that unrestrictedsubmarine warfare would be com-menced on the following day. Diplo-matic relations were severed on 3 Feb-ruary, but the President decided towait until the next overt act beforeasking Congress to declare war.

He did not have long to wait. InFebruary and March, several U.S. shipswere sunk and in March, the BritishSecret Service obtained the famousZimmerman note, detailing Germanplans against the U.S. The note wasdeciphered and passed on to the Amer-icans. Wilson sent his war message tothe Senate on 2 April and war wasdeclared four days later.

Advances in British naval aviationwere rapid in the closing years of thewar. Furious joined the fleet, and ex-periments on landing aircraft aboardwere conducted. The first attemptwas successful, though unorthodox;no mechanical arresting gear was used.

On 2 August 1917, a Sopwith P u planded aboard. On deck, handlersgrasped hold of lines from the plane’swingtips as soon as the motor was cutand the plane was skidding to a stop.

In the next attempt two days later,a tire burst upon touchdown, theplane folded over the side, and the

pilot was killed. Further studies wereconducted and a primitive arrestingarrangement was installed, along withnetting to protect the ship’s bridge.

Other conversions followed prompt-ly. A cruiser of the Hawkinsclass was fitted with a flight deck andcommissioned the HMS Vindictive.This deck was removed after the war.

In 1917, three ships were plannedfor conversion to carriers, but workwas delayed intentionally on two ofthem. All three figured prominentlyin Britain’s post-war development.

The first of these was the Argus ,originally designed as the Italian linerConte Rosso, and is generally consid-ered the first true aircraft carrier.Argus had a flight deck 558 feet longby 60 wide and displaced 14,450 tons.She was the first “island” carrier. hersuperstructure moved to a tight loca-tion on the starboard side of the ship.

The second was commissioned HMSEagle, but was originally laid down asthe dreadnought battleship AlmiranteCochrane under a contract with Chile.War interrupted completion of theship, contracts were renegotiated, andshe was converted to an “island” car-rier. She was the only aircraft carrierto have two funnels.

HMS Hermes, the second carrier tobear that name, was designed fromthe keel up to operate as a carrier, thefirst such vessel constructed.

Argus was the first completed, but

saw no action in the war. Convincednow that the progress of seapower layin the future of aircraft carriers.Great Britain suspended construction.on the Eagle and Hermes until testswere made on the first carrier. Thelessons learned were incorporated inthe Eagle —and this carrier was fur-ther tested. Results from experimentson both her predecessors contributedheavily to the eventual constructionof the Hermes.

The formative, experimental yearsof carrier warfare drew to a closewhen, on 11 November 1918, hostili-ties ceased and the Armistice wassigned. Out of the costly, bitter fightfor survival a potent new ship-of-the-line developed. Great Britain pioneer-ed in the creation of the modern air-craft carrier.

But at war’s end, the U.S. had novessel specifically built to carry air-craft to sea. Primarily, U.S. NavalAviation launched patrol flights fromshore bases. During the expansion ofmilitary forces. the Navy's GeneralBoard made concrete recommenda-tions in favor of carrier developments.After the Armistice, it listened toexhaustive testimony concerning therole of aviation in the Navy. Actingon the Board’s findings, Congressauthorized a small amount of moneyfor conversion of the collier USSJupiter.

When the refitting was completed,the ex-collier was renamed USS Lang-ley and commissioned on 20 March1922 at Norfolk, Va. Surrounded bymodern vessels of her day. she ap-peared to be the strangest-lookingship to join the fleet since the Federalironclad Monitor squatted heavily inthe water during the Civil War. Smalland gangling as she was, USS Lang-ley was the first-born of a large fight-ing family of powerful Navy ships.

HMS FURIOUS was originally a light cruiser, refitted to operate air- long, 50 wide. Hangars beneath held seaplanes and landplanes. Later,craft, and recommissioned in July 1917. Flying deck was 228 feet she was provided a landing deck a f t , f i t ted with arrest ing gear .

MARCH 1962 15

ANCHORED IN SAN DIEGO harbor January 1933, U.S. Navy’s first the recent past. At right is USS Constitution. “Old Ironsides” wasaircraft carrier, USS Langley, provides a startlinq contrast against then on her last major voyage, a tour of important U.S. seaports.

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

LANGLEY, LEX AND SARABy Scot MacDonald

‘It is the Navy's mission to protect our coasts, our seaborne commerce, and far-flung possessions. Once war isforced upon us we must take the offensive to win it. The Navy is the first line of offense, and Naval Aviation as anadvance guard of this line must deliver the brunt of the attack. Naval Aviation cannot take the offensive from shore;

it must go to sea on the back of the fleet. I do not believe aircraft on shore can ward off a bombing attack launched,

perhaps, from carriers by night from an unknown point for an unknown objective. On the other hand, a fleet with

adequate aviation of its own can drive the carriers back out of effective range. Both for offense and defense the fleet

and Naval Aviation are one and inseparable.’—R.Adm. William A. Moffett, USN, October 1925, in the U.S. Naval Institute Proccedings

ONE DAY," said Capt. Thomas T.Craven, who had relieved Capt.

Noble E. Irwin as Director of NavalAviation in May 1919, "one day, whensomeone suggested that shoveling coalwas becoming unpopular, we proceededto angle for the colliers Jupiter a n d

EXPERIMENTAL autogiro takes off from Lang-ley in September 1931 during tests underway.

16

Jason. Although some conservativeseniors frowned on the plan, in timeand with the Secretary o f theNavy’s approval, we persuaded Con-gressional committees of the wisdomof converting one ship, the Jupiter,into an aircraft carrier. Having anentirely inadequate speed, the vesselcould not possibly fulfill all Servicerequirements, but she could serve as alaboratory for determining navalneeds. Naval Aviation took heart.”

At war’s end, Great Britain had theHermes, Eagle and Argus in operation,while Germany successfully convertedthe merchantman Stuttgart into a car-rier. Capt. Craven was in France atthe time, assigned as Aide for Avia-tion to Commander U.S. Naval Forces,and Commander Naval Aviat ionForces (“I was deeply involved in thecomplicated business of closing out theNavy’s aeronautical account”). Hewas approached by the Chief of NavalOperations—and later, by Secretary ofthe Navy, Josephus Daniels—andasked to assume the Office of Directorof Naval Aviation.

Returning to America, he immedi-ately studied the problems of strength-ening the Navy’s complement of pilotsand support personnel, obtaining "ap-paratus suitable for their use,” anddeveloping tactics.

Cdr. Kenneth Whiting, in a mem-

A 1928 VIEW of Langley at Pearl Harborshows Vought O2U Corsairs, UO's, Boeing F2B’s.

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

orandum to the Committee on Na-val Affairs, sized up the situation:

“When the sear ended those whohad chosen the Navy as a life work,and especially those of the Navy whohad taken up Naval Aviation, revivedthe question of ‘carriers’ and ‘fleetaviation.’ They found the sleddingnot quite so hard as formerly, but thegoing was still a bit rough.

“The naval officers who had notactually seen Naval Aviation workingretained their ultra conservatism;some of those who had seen it work-ing were still conservative, but notultra; they were in the class ‘fromMissouri’ and wished to be ‘shown.’Others, among the ranking officerswho had seen, had conquered theirconservatism and were convinced.

“This latter group, headed by theGeneral Board of the Navy, and in-cluding Adm. Henry T. Mayo, Adm.N.C. Twining, Capt. Ernest J. Kingand Capt. W.S. Pye, both on the staffof the commander in chief duringthe war, Capt. H.I. Cone and Capt.Thomas T. Craven, incontinently de-manded that ‘carriers’ be added toour fleets.

“The net result of these demandswas the recommendation that thecollier Jupiter be converted into a‘carrier’ in order that the claims ofthe naval aviators might be given ademonstration.”

Jupiter did not possess all the char-acteristics that would have made heran ideal aircraft carrier, but she didhave many advantages. CommissionedApril 7, 1913 as fleet collier No. 3,she, with the Neptune, carried thefirst Naval Aviation detachments toFrance in World War I. At war’s end,she was scheduled for retirement.

“At the time she was selected [forconversion to an aircraft carrier],”Cdr. Whiting pointed out, “her advan-

CAPT. THOMAS T. CRAVEN, Director of NavalAviation, pressed hard in Congressional hear-ings for conversion of the collier Jupiter.

RADM. WILLIAM A. MOFFETT was first Chiefof Bureau of Aeronautics and was an ardentadvocate o f the development o f carr iers .

A VE-7 AIRCRAFT lands on USS Langley in May 1927, using longitudinal wires on fiddle bridgesfor an arresting arrangement. Note tail hook on plane and masts of sailing ship under wings.

tages outweighed her disadvantages.”The ship was slow and might prove

a drogue to a fast-moving fleet. Butshe did have the necessary length topermit planes to fly off from a special-ly prepared deck. Her hold spaceswere very large, “with high head roomin them, a difficult thing to find in anyship. She had larger hatches leadingto these holds than most ships, a fac-tor permitting the stowing of thelargest number of planes.”

Jupiter was electricly-driven, thefirst of a few ships in the current fleetto be so powered. Her top speed wasa comparatively slow 14 knots. Oneof the clinching arguments for herconversion was her small crew require-ment. With hostilities over, non-regu-lar Navy men were eager to continuecivilian activities and were leavingservice in large numbers.

Jupiter sailed to Norfolk NavyYard where the conversion work wasaccomplished. “We thought she couldbe converted cheaply,” Cdr. Whitingsaid, “— that was a mistake, however.In any event, she will have cost lesswhen completely converted than anyother ship we might have selected.We thought she could be convertedquickly—that was another mistake.The war is over and labor, contractorsand material men are taking a breath-ing spell. The recommendation forher conversion was made by the Gen-eral Board of the Navy early in 1919;Congress appropriated the money [on11 July] 1919; she was promised forJanuary 1921; she may be ready byJuly 1921." She was not. Jupiter’sdesignation was changed to CV onJuly 11, 1919; she went into the yardfor conversion March 1920, and wascommissiond USS Langley (CV-1)on March 20, 1922, at Norfolk, Va.

DOUGLAS TORPEDO bomber, DT-2, launchesfrom Langley’s deck while carrier is berthed.

MAY 1962 17

In the yards, all the coal-handlinggear was removed from the collier anda flight deck, 534 feet long and 64feet wide, was installed. At first, itwas planned that this deck would becompletely free of obstruction, andso it was in the Langley. But inthe Sara and Lex, this v iew waschanged in favor of an islandplaced on the starboard side. Thisside was selected for the island’slocation because it provided a betterview of buoy markers in narrow chan-nels. It also facilitated left-hand turnswhich pilots preferred, owing to thetorque of the turning propeller. Theisland design offered the only practicalsolution to problems predicated bysmoke discharge, navigation, fire con-trol, and communications.

An elevator was installed to liftplanes from the assembly and storagedeck to the flight deck. A palisadewas built around this elevator to pro-vide a windbreak, protecting theplanes and men while the aircraft werebeing assembled.

For the hoisting of seaplanes, twocranes with large outreach were instal-led on the hangar deck, one on eitherside of the ship. Traveling craneswere installed beneath the flight deckfor hoisting planes from the hold andfor transferring them fore and aft tothe ship spaces and elevator.

The collier’s firerooms were locatedwell aft. This permitted an easierhandling of gasses to guarantee aminimum interference with planeswhen they touched down on her deck.“She had ample space for machine,

carpenter, metal and wing repairstowage; spare parts, spare engines, andshops; for gasoline and lubricating oilaircraft ammunition. Her living quar-ters appeared to be a bit crowded, butsufficient for the work to be under-taken. ”

Smoke pipe plans called for theprovisions of a short smoke pipe oneach side of the ship, clear of theflight deck. They were interconnectedso that smoke could be discharged onthe lee side. One of the smoke pipeswas designed to hinge downward whenconsidered necessary to discharge nearthe water; the second, to dischargesmoke downward through water spray.

F ROM M AY 1919 to March 1921,during his tour as Director of

Naval Aviation, Capt. Craven directedmuch attention to the training of pi-lots. “Pending the completion of fa-cilities that would enable the Navyto train pilots to fly landplanes fromthe deck of a carrier,” he wrote, “ar-rangements were effected to havenaval flyers instructed in the Armyschool at Arcadia, Fla. The entirenaval contingent[s] quickly and easi-ly completed the Army’s course.”They also received Army training atMitchel Field on Long Island and atLangley Field, Va.

Earlier, LCdr. Godfrey de Cour-celles Chevalier led a team of 15 pilotswho were put into training with land-planes, practicing touch-and-go flightdeck landings on a 100-foot long plat-form constructed on a coal barge atWashington Navy Yard. The barge

was moved to Anacostia where land-ing tests were conducted.

Experiments were conducted atHampton Roads in which Lt. AlfredM. Pride participated. A turntableplatform was used, similar to the typethe British developed in WW I—inturn, an improvement of Ely’s ar-rangement used on the Pennsylvania.A BUA ER letter dated November 19,1923, described the Langley and Britishsystems. The Langley gear, the letterstates, “depends on an athwartship re-tarding force while the [British] geardepends on air resistance together withthe resistance set up by fore and aftcables.” The Langley wires were sus-pended about ten inches above thedeck. They were not entirely satis-factory, but were used, with somemodifications, in the Lcxington a n dSaratoga until 1929.

When Langley eventually went tosea in September 1922, she had an ar-resting gear installed.

A copy of an order dated February1, 1923, signed by Executive OfficerKenneth Whiting, gives a clue toLangley’s shipboard routine:

“The weather permitting, the shipwill get underway a t 9 : 0 0 A . M .tomorrow February 2, 1923, and willproceed out of the harbor for thepurpose of flying planes off and onthe ship.

“The tug Alleghany will accpnpanythe ship and take station one hundredyards out and 200 yards astern ofthe starboard quarter, steaming atsame ratio of speed as the Langley—about 6 knots.

“When [pilots are] flying off and

CREW OF USS LEXINGTON (CV-2) line up for admiral's inspection coast. Total accommadtions on board berthed 195 officers and 1927while the carrier is at anchor in Coronado Roads off the California enlisted men. She was fourth U.S. Navy ship to be named Lexington.

18 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

on, both life boats will be lowered torail and manned; the first or secondmotor sailing launch, depending uponwhich stack is in use will be loweredto the level of the poop deck, mannedand equipped with grapnels, crashkits and six men in addition to thecrew. The Boatswain will be in chargeof this boat and will go in the boat.

“The Flight Surgeon will fly overthe ship in a flying boat piloted byO.M. Darling, ACR, USN. This planewill maintain station 200 yards behindand 200 feet above the plane which isflying off and on.

“This seaplane will start from theNaval Air Station upon a radio signalfrom the ship: Boatswain Fehrer willgo in the tug accompanied by threemen from the Fourth Division and acrash kit.

“In case of fog tomorrow the shipwill not get underway, but will standby until noon; in the event that thefog is cleared up by that time, willproceed.

“Steam will be kept on threeboilers and engines in maneuveringcondition. In case plane goes into thewater, the first boat to get to it shallat once attempt to rescue the aviator,at the same time making a line fastto same strong part of the plane, inorder to hold the cockpit above water.This line if possible should be passedaround one of the ‘A’ frames or en-gine section, or a longeron in thevicinity of the cockpit.”

T HE FIRST take-off from the deckof the Langley was piloted

October 17, 1922 by Lt. Virgil C.Griffin in a VE-7-SF. On October 26th,the first landing was made by LCdr.Chevalier in an Aeromarine aircraftwhile the ship was underway. He hadcontributed significantly to perfectingthe arresting gear installed aboard—still in an experimental stage. Hisplane nosed over. Cdr. Whiting, onNovember 18, became the first to cata-pult from the deck of the Langley; h eflew a PT torpedo bomber.

These aircraft—and other typesused at the time—were of standarddesign. The Bureau of Aeronauticsdecided to delay introducing newtypes, although studies of planes builtfor carrier operations started with theconversion of the collier. Vought andAeromarine service types were first tobe modified for operations aboard; ar-resting hooks were installed and thelanding gear strengthened.

For the first three years followingher commissioning, USS Langley hadno regularly assigned squadrons. She

was used as an experimental ship, test-ing gear and aircraft, and trainingpilots and support personnel. For thefirst five years of her operations, shewas the only aircraft carrier in theU.S. Navy. Because of the flight deckinstalled, she was quickly dubbed “theCovered Wagon,” and this was re-flected in her official insignia.

Principal purpose of the Langleywas to teach Naval Aviators aboutcarrier operations, but the early dayswere certainly tough on pilots, ac-cording to Our Flying Navy, a bookpublished in 1944. “‘Instrument face’was the distinguishing mark of theLangley’s pilots, who loosened teethand flattened noses against their in-strument panels while negotiating thehazards of landing on the Langley’ssmall flight deck and crude arrestinggear. Planes went overboard, piled upin the crash barrier, stood on theirnoses and came apart. [There were fewfatalities.] But the science of carrieroperations was developed as a monu-ment to these pilots’ perseverance.”The “small flight deck” was as longas later-day “baby flattops.”

Arresting gear and catapult sys-tems were tried, modified, improvedupon; pilots qualified for carrier land-ings and take-offs. In March 1925,she entered her first fleet exercise, FleetProblem No. Five, off the lower coast

of California. Scouting flights fromthe carrier now became standard pro-cedure and so impressed official ob-servers that they recommended thecompletion of USS Saratoga and USSLexington be speeded up.

There was an urgency related tothese tests. Already in the ways werethe keels of two battle cruisers des-tined for the scrap heap as a result ofthe Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.A clause within this treaty permittedtheir conversion to aircraft carriers.Tests aboard the Langley were to in-influence greatly the final designs ofthe two ships under conversion. Theseconverted battle cruisers were to be-come USS Lexington (CV-2) and USSSaratoga (CV-3).

At first, the U.S. Navy contem-plated the construction of a 39,000-ton aircraft carrier and initial designof it was started February 24, 1921.These plans were laid aside the follow-ing November. Because of the 135,-000-ton limitation in aircraft carriers,the General Board recommended theconversion of the two battle cruisersto carriers. Each was limited to 33,000tons, with an additional 3000 tonspermissible if protecting armor wereadded.

The Board considered building a 30-knot carrier to operate with theScouting Force, and a smaller, 24-

MAY 1962 19

AVIATOR’S READY ROOM in Saratoga is photographed in August 1929. LONGITUDINAL Wires still use on Jan. 11, 1928 for first landing on

Device on fore-table is Morse radio key for practice code transmission. Sara; UO-1 plane flown by Marc Mitscher, S.B. Spangler, passenger.

knot carrier for the Battle Force. Italso weighed the possibility of con-structing three separate carriers with-in the tonnage limitations: one at 10,-000 tons and 15 knots, another at 20,-000 tons and 29.5 knots, and a thirdat 35,000 tons at 33 or 34 knots. In-stead, it returned to the battle cruisersand went ahead with plans to convertthem. The Langley was not an in-fluencing factor in carrier tonnagelimitations since it was officially listedas an experimental ship.

Before Langley was commissioned,Craven became Commandant of theNinth Naval District, relieved March7, 1921 by Capt. William A. Moffett,who became the last Director of NavalAviation. On July 26, 1921 that officewas abolished, replaced by the newlyauthorized Chief of the Bureau ofAeronautics, which Moffett assumed.

M U C H O F T H E W O R K t h a t w e n tinto the design of the abandoned

39,000-ton carrier was adapted in thedesign of the battle cruiser conver-sions. These plans were worked up bythe New Design Section of the Bu-reau of Construction and Repair.Draftsman Ernest A. Perham gave adetailed report on the progress of con-struction:

“During February 1921, the firstscheme for the stowage of planes inthe hangar was begun and to date,October 1922, we have drawn up 18schemes and not even the latest hasprogressed beyond the pencil stage.

“There had been a feel ing , notdefinite enough to be called a require-ment, that the ship should carry 100planes, two-thirds in the hangar ready

20

/or use, and one-third completely as-sembled in the reserve stowage.

“The first few schemes were asfragmentary as the data on whichthey were based. It was necessary tostart as early as possible as there wasabsolutely neither data nor precedentto work on, and every scheme made,however poor, gave us so much moretraining.

“Scheme #7 was the first that wasbased on a hangar of the island typeof ship, and even then we were con-sidering a land plane of 70-foot wingspread for a large plane.

“When scheme #8 was worked up,the sizes of the elevators had beensettled and we worked on the basis ofa plane of maximum size, 60-footwing spread.

“Scheme #11 was the first in whichwe used planes that Aeronautics con-sidered would meet their requirements.The small plane, a flying boat of 30-foot wing spread, had appeared sever-al schemes earlier and the large orbombing plane was the Davis Douglastype, of 50-foot wing spread. Thewings of the small plane were arrangedto take off bodily and those of thelarger were designed so that the endswould fold back.”

Armor considerations were the sub-ject of brisk correspondence betweenvarious Bureaus. Preliminary studiesoffered a long, sloping, protective deckat the sides, beginning six feet belowthe water line and rising to about sixfeet above, to the flat third deck. Thearmor was five or six inches thick atthe slopes and three inches on the flat.

Further studies by the New DesignSection produced a change in theseplans, shrinking the flat deck platingto 2¾ inches, with a side belt 12½

feet deep, seven inches thick at thetop and four at the bottom. The Bu-reau of Ordnance raised “serious ob-jection.” The General Board reviewedthe problem and recommended the in-clined deck armor. A new contractplan narrowed the belt to 8½ feet,seven inches thick at the top, fourinches at the bottom, a deck 4½inches thick on the slopes and 2¼inches on the flat.

The matter of battery was alsoproblematical. Under the treaty, eight-inch guns were allowed for this typevessel. Also scheduled for installationwere anti-aircraft guns and torpedotubes.

The Bureau of Aeronautics believedin January 1922 that anti-aircraftguns were not necessary. In a letterwritten on the 16th of that month,B U A ER stated: “The necessary de-fense of an airplane carrier against air-craft should be the aircraft carried onthe carrier. It should therefore not benecessary to install anti-aircraft gunson board an airplane carrier.” BUAER

also advocated six-inch guns insteadof eight.

But the General Board took excep-tion to these objections the followingApril:

“The after eight-inch guns are animportant part of the airplane car-rier’s armament; six-inch guns wouldcomplicate the battery and would notbe as efficient . . . .

“The carrier may be able undermany conditions to defend itself withsome success with its own aircraft.The primary mission, however, ofthose aircraft is not the defense oftheir carrier, so it may well happen

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

that they will not be available for de-fense when most needed for that pur-pose. Aircraft will, of course, be use-less as defensive weapons at nightand under certain conditions o fweather.

“Having these points in mind, theGeneral Board considered it necessaryto provide a strong anti-torpedo, anti-aircraft battery in spite of the en-croachment of that battery on theclear deck space forward.

“Should experience in service andthe development of tactics justify theremoval of any or all of the guns,they can be removed with almost noexpense or delay, while it would bea long and expensive job to installthese guns after the ship is com-pleted, should such installation thenappear necessary.”

The draftsman Perham discussedelevator machinery. In a report, hewrote as follows:

“The topic of elevator machinerywas actively taken in hand February1921. Some consideration was givento wire rope hoist, but the obviousdifficulties caused its rejection.

"Screw actuated elevators appealedgreatly because of the feature of ab-solute control . . . . AS the investiga-tion progressed, practical objectionsarose, such as the wear on the screw,methods of aligning and especiallythe impracticabiIity of obtaining thenecessary speed.

“The Otis Elevator Company thenrecommended hydraulic plunger ele-vators, and as the locations could beobtained for the plungers, the Bureaureadily consented to the adoption ofthis type.

‘As finally worked out, the speedof the large elevator, 20 x 60 feet insize, is to be 60 feet per minute andthat of the smaller one, 30 x 36 feet,is to be 120 feet per minute. Whenboth are run at the same time, theywill be capable of making round tripsevery four minutes.”

Fire protection came into consider-ation and a fire foam protective systemwas adopted, supplemented by a com-plete sprinkling system in the hangarand reserve plane stowage.

In original designs, a flight deckclear of obstructions was consideredbasic. Wind tunnel tests were conduc-ted and on July 6, 1921, the islandtype was approved. On June 27, theGeneral Board reported: “The adop-tion of the smoke pipe type (islandtype) [is recommended] as the ex-periments in the wind tunnel showthat in the flush deck type the gassesare drawn in against the ship’s side

MAY 1962

and across the deck even with a slightcross wind. As no attempt has everbeen made to dispose of such an enor-mous volume of gasses without theuse of a smoke pipe, the success wouldbe doubtful.”

T URNTABLE catapults were consid-ered necessary for a long period for

the launching of small planes. But inJanuary 1922, BUAER knocked themout of the design as being “not re-quired.” The Bureau did, however,recommend the installation of cata-pults in the flight deck. In a letterdated January 18, 1922, it stated byway of explanation.

“The preliminary mission of thecarrier is to get planes in the airquickly, both torpedo planes and com-bat [fighter] planes. Due to lack ofoperating experience, it is impossibleto tell at this time whether this canbe accomplished without the use ofcatapults and, if not, how many cata-pults will be necessary; hence, it isdeemed imperative that at least twocatapults be provided—one forwardand one aft—with structural provi-sions to increase this number to threeforward and three aft, should oper-ating experience prove this to be nec-essary.”

The compressed air catapult wasinstalled in the Langley. Though sel-dom used, launchings from it con-tributed to future design. The Sara-toga and Lexington were equippedwith fly-wheel type catapults whenthe two carriers were commissioned.

On October 3, 1925, USS Lexing-

ton slid down the ways of the ForeRiver yards of the Bethlehem Ship-building Corp., at Quincy, Mass.There were 30,000 people cheering asaircraft swept low overhead. Threehours after the launching, she wastowed to a pier in the shipyards forthe installation of machinery and thecompletion of her inner structure. OnDecember 14, 1927, she was formallycommissioned. Nearly a month ear-lier, on November 16, USS Saratogahad been commissioned CV-3. It hadbeen constructed by the New YorkShipbuilding Corporation, Camden,New Jersey.

Standard displacement of both car-riers was 33,000 tons. Each had a901-foot overall length, a beam of 111feet, 9 inches, a mean draft of 32 feet,and 16 boilers, as opposed to the eightaboard most current carriers. Theirengines produced 180,000 hp, andtheir speed was 33¼ knots. Armamentincluded eight eight-inch and 12 five-inch guns. The cost of building theSaratoga, according to an August 1952article in BUSHIPS ]ournal, was $43,-856,492.59, while the Lexington wasslightly more expensive, $45,952, -644.83.

Earlier, upon the occasion of thef i rs t take-o f f f rom the Langley ,RAdm. Moffett declared: “The airfleet of an enemy will never get withinstriking distance of our coast as longas our aircraft carriers are able tocarry the preponderance of air powerto sea. ” In Lexington and Saratoga,the U.S. Navy had two of the strong-est aircraft carriers in all the world.

A SOLID STRIPE painted down center of Saratoga's stack distinguished her from her sister ship,USS Lexington. Saraatoga was commissioned November 16, 1927, Lexington on Dec. 14, 1927.

21

of Aircraft Carriers

RIERS FROM THE KEELBy Scot MacDonald

‘Such remarks as I may have to make as to the nature and extent of the air force required by the Navy will be basedupon the assumption that the airplane is now a major force, and is becoming daily more efficient and its weapons moredeadly, . . . that therefore even a small, high-speed carrier alone can destroy or disable a battleship alone, that afleet whose carriers give it command of the air over the enemy fleet can defeat the latter, that the fast carrier is thecapital ship of the future. Based upon these assumptions, it is evident that our policy in regard to the Navy air forceshould be command of the air over the fleet of any possible enemy.’—Adm. William S. Sims, USN, October 14, 1925

P LENIPOTENTIARIES of the UnitedStates, the British Empire, France,

Italy and Japan met in Washingtonin the early Twent ies to reach anagreement on the limitation of na-val armament. The treaty they signedon February 6, 1922 had a profoundeffect on the evolution of aircraft car-riers. From the time the U.S. Navyfirst embarked upon a carrier-buildingprogram, it was faced with tonnagelimitations established by this treaty.

The total tonnage for aircraft car-riers of each of the contracting powerspermitted the U.S. and Great Britain131,000 tons each, France and Italy60,000 tons each, and Japan 81,000tons. Of its allotted tonnage, theUnited States had already consumed66,000 in the Lexington and Saratoga.Only 69,000 tons remained for futureconstruction. The Navy gave muchthought and study to the means ofbest utilizing this remainder, and, in1927, when drawing up a five-yearshipbuilding program, the GeneralBoard recommended construction of a13,800-ton carrier each year.

The program involving this plan waspromptly submitted to the Presidentwho approved it on December 31,1927. It was subsequently submittedto Congress which, by act of Febru-ary 13, 1929, authorized constructionof one 13,800-ton carrier. The Navyattempted in the following years toobtain authorization for constructionof the visualized sister ships, but with-out success. Indeed, before anothercarrier was to be authorized, the Navyhad become more interested in largerships of about 20,000 tons.

In addition to the legal reasonswhich led the Navy to seek a 13,800-ton carrier, there was a body of think-ing on the part of some Naval Avia-

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

——.

OPERATING WITH THE FLEET, USS Ranger had 14,500-ton displace- stern. On deck are parked Vought scout bombers, Grumman fighters,ment. Unusual features were bow arresting gear, small island, stacks at Martin dive bombers in 1937 view. Capt. A.L. Bristol was first C.O.

tors which recognized the utility ofsmall carriers. This was evident asearly as 1925 when the General Boardbriefly considered but rejected the con-version of 10,000-ton cruisers to lightcarriers.

Two years later, LCdr. Bruce G.Leighton, then aide to the Secretaryof the Navy, prepared a study on pos-sible uses of small carriers. In additionto protection of the battle line, he sug-gested their suitability for anti-sub-marine warfare, reconnaissance, and re-duction of enemy shore bases.

At about the same time, RAdm.William A. Moffett argued that Brit-ish and Japanese experience with smallcarriers had made it clear that suchships could keep more aircraft in op-eration than could an equal tonnagedevoted to larger ships.

Fleet commanders, who might beexpected to have had a more conserva-tive view of the military utility ofaircraft than did Moffett and Leighton,expounded concepts that provided fur-ther justification for smaller carriers.

For example, the Commander inChief, U.S. Fleet, noted in his 1927annual report that the Fleet was seri-ously handicapped by the absence ofa carrier with the battle line uponwhich spotting planes could land.Thus, both the aviation protagonistsand the surface commanders recog-nized the need for carriers whichwould perform important roles, evenif they were not of a size approachingthat of the giants, USS Lexington andUSS Saratoga.

Such considerations were in thegenesis of CV-4. When it came toreducing them to detailed plans for

JUNE 1962

construction of a new ship, very littlehad been done. Studies made in 1923and 1924 had been concerned withisland-type vessels, such as the Lex-ington and Saratoga, and were not di-rectly applicable to a new design—which was to be of the flush-deckvariety. In addition, the basic conceptfor CV-4 was embodied in the GeneralBoard recommendations of 1927 andpredated the commissioning of L e xand Sara. Hence, the concept couldnot incorporate any lessons learned

TWO-SEATER Vought O3U-3 Corsairs , suchas the one above, operated from USS Ranger.

FIRST LANDING on CV-4 was made June ’34by LCdr. A.C. Davis; H.E. Wallace, ACMM.

during their early fleet operations.This concept, as outlined by the

General Board, included a speed of29.4 knots, a clear flying deck, 12five-inch anti-aircraft guns and asmany machine guns as possible. OnJuly 26, 1928, BU A ER elaborated onthis proposed design in a letter toCommander Aircraft Squadrons, BattleFleet. The flight deck was to be about86 feet by 750 feet and fitted witharresting gear. The navigating andsignal bridge were to be under theflight deck, well forward, with exten-sions beyond the ships side, port andstarboard.

As for the anti-aircraft battery, ithad been reduced to eight 5-inch 25-caliber guns located two on each quar-ter. Anti-aircraft battery directorswere to be provided, but BU A E R

thought that range finders should beomitted.

Secondary conning stations were tobe located on the starboard side ofthe upper deck and combined with theaviation control station. A plottingstation consisting of flag plot andaviation intelligence office was also tobe provided.

Despite the fact that the generalconcept could not benefit from ex-periences of the Lexington and Sara-toga, the two ships did comment onplans for the Ranger on the basis ofsuch experience as they had obtainedduring the first year’s operation.

For example, they felt that bothelevators and shop provisions shouldreceive special consideration above andbeyond that which had already beengiven.

“Experience during the present con-

23

CURTISS HELLDIVERS fly over the USS Ranger during WW II. Spotted OUTRIGGER PARKING, here on the USS Ranger’s starboard side, sup-on the deck forward are Vought Corsairs and Grumman Hellcats, ported a Boeing F4B-4 in August 1934. This system saved deck space.

centration on both carriers has em-phasized the importance of the afterelevator in addition to the two nowcontemplated ( for CV-4) , ” wroteSaratoga’s comanding officer.

“There is required a great deal ofre-spotting of planes in flight opera-tions, and an after elevator will con-siderably expedite this process. Afterplanes have landed on deck, it is some-times necessary to send below a planefrom the after part of the flight deck,which is now difficult with the flightdeck filled with planes and the eleva-tors forward.”

o FFICERS ABOARD both Lex and Saraheld informal conferences, the

results of which were passed to BUAER.Speed was most desirable in aircraftcarriers, but speed also had its draw-backs, as these officers were quick topoint out to their superiors.

“The location of the A&R and gen-eral work shops aft is decidedly unde-sirable,” BUAER informed the Bureauof Construction and Repair, “and it isstrongly recommended that they berelocated further forward, if there isany possible way of doing so. Experi-ence on CV-2 and CV-3 has shownthat it is impossible to do any workrequiring precision or accuracy, suchas cutting a thread, when the ship issteaming at about 22 knots or more.”

Early in the planning stage, BUAER

encountered head-on the problem oflighting and night landings. A mem-orandum written for BU A ER f i lespointed out: “The primary difficultyinvolved in night operations for air-plane carriers is the provision of ade-

24

quate illumination to enable the pilotsto make safe landings and at the sametime to enable the ship to maintaindarkened ship conditions that will pre-vent disclosure of the carrier’s provi-sion to surface craft and enemy air-craft. . . . The technical difficultiesin this project are so great that comp-lete success can scarcely be hoped forfor several years and then not withoutthe expenditure of much more timeand effort than appears desirable atpresent.

“Night flying experiments were con-ducted on the Langley to determinethe type of illuminating equipmentfor the Saratoga and Lexington. Al-though the number of landings madewere not very great, enough informa-tion was obtained to determine uponequipment that would at least providefor a point of departure for future ex-periments in an effort to further solvethe basic problem. No carrier nightflying has been conducted since 1925.”The memorandum was dated June 14,1929.

This sparked an intensive series ofexperiments which caused the intro-duction of several lighting systemsaboard various carriers. At best, mostof these provided safe illumination fornight landing but were less successfulin maintaining darkened ship. Incan-descent lights of low wattage weretested in various arrangements and in-tensities. Neon tubes were tried, somecolored green, red, blue or amber. Ofthese, plain white was considered thebest—but was not a solution. Evenluminous paint was investigated. Theproblem of night deck illumination

was to plague Navy for years to come.How the problem was handled in

USS Ranger is indicated by a Novem-ber 1934 report her commanding offi-cer made to BUAER:

“In anything but bright moonlightwhen the ship’s outline can be madeout at a reasonable approach distance,it is very difficult, definitely too dif-ficult, to get in the groove when onlylanding deck lights are used. AlthoughRanger’s landing deck lights extendthe length of the ship and are welllined up on each side, which it washoped would improve the difficultydescribed by Saratoga and Lexingtonpilots, the pilot is frequently too nearthe ship before he can find out whichway to swerve. If he happens to hitthe groove early, he is well fixed. Ifhe doesn’t, he sees a jumble of landingdeck lights and can only guess whetherto change course to right or to left.

“With ramp lights turned on inaddition to the landing deck lights,there is unanimous agreement thatgetting in the groove is very easy. Ex-actly why this is true is not clear, butthe string of lights across the rampappears not only definitely to locatethe end of the deck, but also to givethe pilot sufficient basis for settinghis course normal to the lights and upto the centerline of the deck.

“Athwartship landing deck lightsat bow and stern are no use and wouldbe hazardous if opened when planesare landing. (Confusion in getting inthe groove existed whether or notthese lights were opened, worse whenopened.)”

Other problems were of concern toB U A ER during the design stage ofCV-4. Relatively minor, but illustra-tive of the care devoted to carrier de-

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

sign, was the question of paint colorfor interior surfaces. A flurry of corre-spondence between BU A E R andB UC&R concerned the color of paintto use on the deck, overhead, andbulkheads of the hangar.

This was not so much a problem ofhabitability as it was one of weightlimitation and maximum reflectivepower. White paint, light gray andaluminum were considered. Misinfor-mation supplied the Bureau of Engi-neering caused it to advocate lightgray, but BUAER objected. Tests wereconducted and aluminum provedlighter and more reflective of the threepaints considered.

Finally, in early December 1929,plans for CV-4 received approval.Copies were sent to the Fleet, notingthat major changes could not be madein them, but that the Bureau would“be glad to have comment or sugges-tion with regard to minor points,should such comment appear desir-able.”

By February 1930, active work onthe design of the 13,800-ton carrierhad stopped. Shortly after BritishPrime Minister Mr. MacDonald visitedthe United States, the President gaveinstructions to suspend all work onthis ship, pending the outcome of thethen projected London conference onnaval armament. Months went by, thePresident was consulted again, andagain the Navy was told to do nothingabout the ship until the treaty hadbeen ratified.

The treaty was signed in Londonon April 22, 1930. Ratification ofthe treaty was advised by the Senateon July 21, 1930, and by the Presidenton the following day.

In the meantime, the Navy Depart-

ment, Office of the Judge AdvocateGeneral, drafted an advertisementwhich was published when the ratifi-cation restriction was lifted. The ad-vertisement invited bids for the con-struction of CV-4. The bids were

opened September 3—and proved tobe “bombs.”

All bids submitted far exceeded theappropriation given the Navy for con-struction of the ship, the lowest bid(by Newport News Shipbuilding andDry Dock Co.) exceeding the limitby an estimated $2,160,000.

The four Navy Department bureausinvolved in the construction plans—B U C&R, BU A E R, BU O R D, BU E N G—forwarded a joint memorandum to theSecretary of the Navy requesting a 60-day extension of the period before exe-cution of the contract in order to con-sider necessary changes in character-istics which would permit constructionof the carrier within the cost of thelowest bid.

Permission was obtained and thevarious departments reviewed their re-quirements. Panels of officer-expertsin each were formed to submit recom-mendations. Out went considerationof an extra elevator. Out went thepossibility—at this time—of movingthe shops forward, as Sara and Lex hadsuggested. Submitting its list of rec-ommended savings, BUAER listed theelimination of catapults, smokestackson one side, sliding doors for thehangars, securing tracks, and airplanebooms and nets, and requested thatnecessary eliminations be made in thatorder.

“This bureau feels,” wrote Cdr.R. K. Turner for BUA ER , "that elim-ination or reduction in the balance ofitems considered, namely, arresting

gear, elevators, or gasoline capacitywould seriously affect the character-istics of the ship as an aircraft carrier,and, therefore, urgently recommendsagainst any sacrifice in these items.”

By October 2, the Bureaus hadsigned another joint letter, addressedto the General Board, listing their rec-ommendations on how to cope with theproblem of the elimination of designfeatures. Among other things, Rang-er's fire control was to be simplified,ammunition storage space was to bereduced, bombing planes were to besubstituted for torpedo planes (thiseliminated the purchase of torpedoes),deck catapults were to go by theboards, as were plane booms andnets. Twenty percent of the flightdeck securing tracks were to be elim-inated, as well as housing palisades, andthe voice tube system. Finally, thearresting gear system was to be re-duced. On November 1, 1930, thecontract was s igned by NewportNews.

Throughout official correspondence,the 13,800-ton carrier was referred tosimply as CV-4. On December 10,1930, the Bureau of Navigation in-formed a long list of addressees that“The Secretary of the Navy has as-signed the name Ranger to AircraftCarrier No. 4, authorized by Act ofCongress dated February 13, 1929. Theassignment of the name Ranger is inaccordance with the Department’spolicy of giving names formerly as-signed to those battle cruisers scrappedby terms of the Washington Treaty.”

On September 26, 1931, Ranger’skeel was laid. Seventeen months later,the ship was launched, and on June4, 1934, she was commissioned.Though planned originally as a 13,800-

USS YORKTOWN (CV-5) was launched in April 1936 and commis- botb the Atlantic and Pacific before WW II, participating in Fleetsioned in September 1937. The 19,800-ton aircraft carrier operated in problems and training activities. First C.O. was Capt. E.D. McWhorter.

JUNE 1962 25

ton aircraft carrier, she exceeded thistonnage by 700 tons. Original plansalso called for a severe flush deck, but,upon commissioning, she had a small

. . .

island.USS Ranger had eight 5-inch 25-

caliber AA guns, other AA guns ingallery. She could operate 75 aircraftand had a complement of 1788, ofwhom 162 were commissioned officers.Her aircraft consisted of four squad-rons of bombers and fighters and a fewamphibians. CV-4 also was equippedwith a box arresting gear—a featureincluded in other fast carriers untilearly 1943.

The General Board had become con-

2 6

vinced—even before the Ranger waslaunched—that the minimum effectivesize of aircraft carriers was 20,000tons. A request for two of theseheavier ships was made in the Build-ing Program for 1934, which wasissued in September 1932. In May thefollowing year, the Board again sub-mitted this recommendation. As a re-sult, the Secretary of the Navy askedthe President for Public Works Ad-ministration funds to build two car-riers of this tonnage, in addition toother ships. USS Yorktown (CV-5)and USS Enterpr i se (CV-6) wereauthorized.

Files of the Bureau of Aeronautics

housed in the National Archives reveala memorandum dated May 15, 1931,which was to affect the two new car-riers:

“The Department has approved anew building program with two air-craft carriers similar to the R a n g e r ,but before embarking on this newconstruction, it is suggested that acareful examination may show manydesign changes are desirable.

“The particular improvements inthe R a n g e r design that should beconsidered are: speed increase to 32.5knots; addition of underwater sub-division to resist torpedo and bombexplosions; horizontal protective deckover machinery magazines, and air-craf t fue l tanks ; improvement inoperational facility (this includeshangar deck devoted exclusively toplane stowage, four fast elevators,complete bomb handling facilities,possible use of two flying-off decks,and improved machine gun anti-air-craft defense).”

The Yorktown was launched April4, 1936, sponsored by Mrs. FranklinD. Roosevelt. When the carrier wascommissioned September 30, 1937, herover-all length was 827 feet, fourinches; extreme beam was 95 feet, fourinches; and standard displacement, 19,-800 tons. Her trial speed was 33.6knots.

USS Enterprise (CV-6) was theseventh Navy ship to bear this name.Her keel was laid July 16, 1934 andshe was launched October 3, 1936,sponsored by Mrs. Claude A. Swanson,wife of the Secretary of the Navy.She was placed in commission at Nor-folk on May 12, 1938. Her specifica-tions were similar to Yorktown’s. Shehad accommodations for 82 ship’s com-pany officers and 1447 enlisted men.

As soon as CV-5 and CV-6 wereauthorized, the General Board did notrequest additional carriers of suchtonnage. It did, however, vainly pleadfor a 15,200-ton replacement for theobsolete Langley. The Langley h a dbeen classed as an experimental shipand did not figure in the U.S. Navy’saircraft carrier tonnage limitations. Toreplace her with another carrier wouldhave been to violate the treaty. TheNavy did plan, however, to requestnew aircraft carriers when the Lexing-ton and Saratoga reached retirementage.

Tightening of world tensions in1938 caused the Navy Department toreconsider its carrier-building program,

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

and USS Hornet (CV-8) was author-ized on May 17 that year. She waslaunched December 14, 1940 and com-missioned October 21, 1941, withCapt. Marc A. Mitscher, her first com-manding officer.

USS Wasp (CV-7) had been order-ed earlier, on March 27, 1934. Herkeel was laid April 1, 1936, she waslaunched April 4, 1939, and commis-sioned April 25, 1940. This carrierhad to be built within what was leftof the 135,000-ton limit set by thetreaty. She was commissioned at 14,-700 tons. Thus there were left only afew hundred tons remaining of thetreaty-authorized carrier strength.

Already in the mill, during con-struction of Yorktown and Enterprise,were plans for a new class of aircraftcarrier, the first of which would beknown as USS Essex (CV-9).

War clouds were gathering overEurope and the Pacific. Fleet exer-cises and war games were stepped upas international tensions mounted. Thetreaties of 1922 and 1930 terminatedDecember 31, 1936 when Japan abro-gated.

In its provisions for Naval Aviation,the Naval Expansion Act of May 17,1938 authorized an increase in totaltonnage of under-age naval vesselsamounting to 40,000 tons for aircraft

carriers, and also Authorized the Presi-dent to increase the number of navalaircraft to “not less than” 3000. Car-riers built as a result of this authoriza-tion were the Hornet and Essex.

On September 8, 1939, PresidentRoosevelt proclaimed the existence ofa limited national emergency and di-rected measures for strengthening na-tional defenses within the limits ofpeacetime authorization. In May 1941,an unlimited national emergency wasdeclared. Seven months later Japa-nese aircraft, launched from carriers,attacked Pearl Harbor, and within24 hours, the President went beforeCongress and the nation was at war.

USS HORNET (CV-8) was authorized in 1938 when world tensionsmounted, launched in December 1940, commissioned in October 1941.

JUNE 1962

SISTER SHIP to Yorktown and Enterprise, Hornet had a standard dis-placement of 19,800 tons. First C.O. was Capt. Marc A. Mitscher.

27

AS SHE APPEARED in March 1925 when the first aircraft carrier ap- carrier capability that the first four games lacked. Fleet Problempeared in the annual war games, USS Langley (CV-1) provided actual V was conducted off California. It provided “valuable experience.”

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

FLATTOPS IN THE WAR GAMESBy Scot MacDonald

‘If the mind’s eye is always directed upon the series of engagements, so far as it can be perceived beforehand, thenit is fixed upon the direct road to its goal, and thereby the movement of our strength acquires that rapidity, that is to say,our volition and action acquire that energy which the occasion demands and which is not disturbed by extraneous influences.’

O NE OF THOSE whose untiring ef-forts helped shape the evolution

of the “all big gun battleship,” Adm.William S. Sims, did not immediatelyendorse Naval Aviation—especiallyships carrying naval aircraft—uponits introduction as a weapon in thecountry’s arsenal. In 1909, for in-stance, he wrote: “According to thepapers, one of the Wright brothers hasstated that it would be impracticableto hit anything by dropping a projec-tile from his flying [machine]. ThatWright man is right, all right.”

Sims had a deep appreciation andunderstanding of the merits of thebattleship as a weapon system whoseevolution he had fought to promoteand he was not about to write it off,except on the basis of sound evidence.During WW I and the years immedi-ately preceding it, aircraft design im-proved spectacularly. By the end ofthe war the U.S. Navy still did nothave an aircraft carrier. His observa-tion of the limited use of such shipspermitted him to state with justifica-tion, “All the aeroplane-carrying ships

28

in the world could not make an attackupon a foreign country unless theywere supported by a battleship forcethat was superior to that of theenemy.”

Not until the end of the war, whenAdm. Sims assumed leadership of theNaval War College at Newport, didhis thinking undergo a profoundchange. At the game board there in1921, he recognized not only the ad-vantages and potentials of airpower butalso the brevity of the future of battle-ships. “If I had my way,” he said,“I would arrest the building of greatbattleships and put money into the de-velopment of the new devices and notwait to see what other countries aredoing.”

By March 1922, after witnessingbombing tests off the Virginia Capes(in 1921), he had written, “The bat-tleship is dead.”

During Sims’ tenure at the War Col-lege, the Navy Department inaugu-rated a series of war games, fleet exer-cises, that were conducted during thenext two decades. Through these prob-

—Karl von Clausewitz, On War

lems, the Navy obtained practical ex-perience in testing the “new devices”under simulated combat conditions.

Naval Aviation had entered fleetmaneuvers as early as the winter of1912-13 when the entire aviation ele-ment—pilots, student pilots, enlistedmen and aircraft inventory (whichthen totalled five planes)—was trans-ported to Guantanamo Bay to take partin planned exercises. From their campat Fisherman’s Point where the presentair station is located, they worked toachieve three goals: first, to prove theutility of the airplane as a scout undersimulated war conditions; second, totest its usefulness in detecting minesand submerged submarines; and third,to stimulate interest in aviation amongofficers in the Fleet.

Naval Aviation next joined the Fleetin 1914, in connection with actual hos-tilities in Mexico. At that time, anA-3 and a c-3, put aboard the Missis-sippi, saw action at Vera Cruz. Dailyreconnaissance flights kept landingforces informed of the enemy disposi-tions inshore. (Three planes placed

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

aboard the Birmingham were taken toTampico but did not see action.)

As a result of the experience at VeraCruz, Naval Aviators judged the hy-droaeroplane more efficient than theflying boat type then in use. Recom-mendations were also made on the de-sign of aircraft.

The Navy’s air arm was still verysmall when the United States enteredWW I. In the next year, seven monthsand four days, while war raged, itsgrowth was extraordinary. By the timethe Armistice was signed, the Navyhad 2107 planes, 570 of which wereoverseas, 15 dirigibles, 205 kite bal-loons, and 10 free balloons.

Thirteen bases were established inthe U.S. and the Canal Zone, only oneof which, at Galveston, was not yet inoperation. In Ireland, the Navy hadfour seaplane stations, one kite balloonstation, a receiving station and a supplystation. Two stations, including amajor assembly and repair base, wereestablished at Eastleigh, England. Twomore stations and a training schoolwere built in Italy. There were 18 sta-tions in France, including an assemblyand repair base at Pauillac and a schoolat Moutchic. Additionally, the Navyhad a base operating in the Azores, onein Canada, and a rest station in theBritish West Indies. There were lessthan 300 officers and men in NavalAviation when the war started in April1917. At war’s end, in November1918, there were 39,871, of whom19,455 were abroad.

Naval air operations in this war werepredominantly in support of allied shiP-ping, launching aircraft from landbases for anti-submarine patrols. Itwas not until the years immediatelyfollowing the war that the U.S. Navyreturned to the theory of integratingaviation with the Fleet. Although avi-ation had proven itself, there was stillresistance within the Fleet toward theimminent merger. A CNO newsletterof July 30, 1919 carried a report onFleet Air Operations:

“Early in January 1919, it was decidedto send a Detachmeent of six H-16 flyingboats to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to oper-ate with the U.S. Fleet for the purpose ofproving to it the use of aircraft in actualnaval operations and of demonstrating thepracticability of maintaining an Air De-tachment with the Fleet. It was accord-ingly decided to operate these flying boatsfrom moorings and to quarter the aviation

personnel on a ship carrying necessary re-pair personnel, necessary spare material,etc., for the upkeep of the squadron.

“In addition to the six flying boats there

was also an airplane division consisting oftwo Sopwitb Camels and [a Sopwith] 1½Strutter on board the USS Texas underthe command of LCdr. E. O. McConnell,USN.” The Air Detachment also bad aKite Balloon Division.

At conclusion of the exercise, the news-letter continues, “Not once when the Air

Detachment was called upon to sendmachines for operations with the Fleet hasit failed to send them, and not once whenmachines have been sent on a certain mis-sion has he Air Detachment failed toaccomplish that mission. This has re-quired flying in all sorts and conditions ofweather, high winds, rain, fog, and lowvisibility. It has required duty in spot-ting, bombing, scouting, passenger carry-ing, mail carrying, and all types of workwhich aircraft with the Navy can be calledupon to do.”

The report ends with an optimistic,though probably inaccurate, note: “Theresult has been that the officers of the sea-going Navy have been converted to thebelief that aircraft are practicable andessential to a well rounded Fleet.”

Numerous training periods and exer-cises were conducted subsequently, inwhich aviation participated with theFleet, but it was with the annual FleetProblem of the Twenties and Thirtiesthat these maneuvers were conductedon the largest scale.

“Taking an ever increasing role inthese problems,” says historian LCdr.James M. Grimes, USNR, in a mono-graph on the subject, “Naval Aviationgradually developed and came of age.The Fleet Problem, therefore, serves asthe measuring rod for this growth tomaturity. It provides an annual checkon what Naval Aviation was accom-plishing and the reports and recom-mendations which grew out of eachproblem show how important the prob-lems and their results were in develop-ment of aviation in the Navy.”

A study of these problems can bemade successfully by breaking themdown into five groups, studying eachto determine tactics employed and les-sons learned. Basically, these groupsare: (1) the days of the “constructive”carriers, when other ship types weredesignated aircraft carriers because ofunavailability of the real thing; (2)the period when the USS Langley, aconverted collier, joined the games asthe only aircraft carrier in the U.S.Fleet; (3) the profound effects ontactical thought precipitated by entryof the USS Saratoga and USS Lexing-ton into the games; (4) addition of theUSS Ranger; and (5) the years imme-diately prior to WW II when the U.S.Navy operated five aircraft carriers.

The first of the Fleet Problems oc-curred in 1923, in the Panama-Pacificarea. It was a resounding success for

SOPWITH 1½ STRUTTERS, equipped with hydrovanes in the event of a forced landing in the water,were used by the air detachments in exercises with the Fleet immediately after World War I

AUGUST 1962 29

FLYING BOATS, such as this World War I Curtiss H-16, made up the principal portion of theaviation units operating with the Fleet in the early post World War II naval exercises.

the Black Fleet, given the mission of Blue, assigned the defense of the Canal.attacking the defenses of the Panama Blue’s air forces consisted of theCanal, and a shattering failure for the tenders Wright, Sandpiper and Teal,

and the 18 patrol planes of ScoutingPlane Squadron One (half the planeswere based at Ballena Bay with theSandpiper and Teal, the remaining atBahia Honda with the Wright), t h epatrol planes based at Coco Solo, andall the available Army planes.

The Back Fleet was assigned the bat-tleships New York and Oklahoma a s“constructive” carriers.

Approaching the Canal, one of thebattleship “carriers,” the Oklahoma,launched a seaplane by catapult toscout ahead of the force. Early thenext morning, a single plane represent-ing an air group took o f f f romNaranyas Cays, approached the Canalfrom seaward, flew over Gatun Spill-way, and dropped ten miniature bombs.This plane completed its mission unde-tected and theoretically destroyed theSpillway.

An official report submitted after theproblem pointed up the susceptibilityof vital parts of the Canal to destruc-tion by air. The report urged, amongother things, that air defenses of theCanal be strengthened and that rapidcompletion of aircraft carriers be ef-fected for offensive and scouting pur-poses.

Naval Aviation played little part inthe next three exercises. It was notuntil Fleet Problem V in March 1925that USS Langley entered exercises offthe California coast. The second phase

of the problems began; a new elementwas introduced.

Basically, the supposition for thisproblem was that strained relations ex-isted between Blue (the U.S.) andBlack, an imaginary country in thearea of the Hawaiian Islands. WhenBlack declared war, its Commander-in-Chief was ordered to Guadalupe Islandwhere he was to occupy an unfortifiedanchorage from which he was to oper-ate against Blue in the Eastern Pacific.

Black was given the Langley and thetenders Aroostook and Gannet, a swell as planes based aboard battleshipsand cruisers. The Blue force was con-siderably smaller, having only 15cruiser-based planes and two other air-craft based on the Wyoming. Planesaboard the Wyoming were useless, how-ever , for the batt leship was notequipped with a catapult. Grimesrecords:

“The Black War Diary shows that thegreatest part of the air activity duringFleet Problem V was centered around theLangley. Scouting flights were conductedeach day as the Black Fleet proceededtowards Guadalupe. The largest numberof planes used at any one time was ten.The duration of these flights ranged from30 minutes to two hours.

“On the last day before the arrival atGuadalupe, the Langley received a ‘welldone’ for the feat of launching ten planesin 13 minutes! None of these flights re-sulted in contacts.

“On March 10, the Langley was ordered

to have her planes ready for an 0530 take-off the next morning. These planes were tomake an aerial reconnaissance flight overthe anchorage before the Black Fleet en-tered. This operation never took place,the problem being terminated at 0508March 11 by the Chief 0bserver.”

Introduction of the Langley t oFleet operations was considered a valu-able experience. As a result of thisproblem, the Commander-in-Chief,U.S. Fleet, recommended that the Sara-toga and Lexington be completed asquickly as possible. He also urged thatsteps be taken to insure the develop-ment of planes of greater durability,dependability and radius, and that cata-pult and recovery gear aboard cruisersand battleships be further improved.

Details concerning Fleet Problem VI,conducted in 1926, are unavailable.Pertinent documents on orders, in-structions and operation reports arelost. It is known, however, through

AUGUST 1962

the Annual Report of the Secretary ofthe Navy, 1926, that a combined U.S.Fleet participated in a joint Army-Navy minor problem and conducted“strategical and tactical exercises inthe vicinity of the Canal Zone untilthe middle of March 1926. Fleet Prob-lem VI was conducted during thisperiod.”

Just before Fleet Problem VII gotunderway in 1927, a joint Army-Navyexercise was conducted, again testingdefenses of the Panama Canal. USSLangley provided defense against at-tacks on ships by land-based Armyplanes and was also used for spottingsubmarines. This exercise marks thefirst time an aircraft carrier was usedto protect ships of the line. Battleship-

enemy opposition. This Fleet was thento oppose the Black Naval Force fromthat base. Black’s mission was to pro-vide search and contact scouting, tracksubmarines, and attack a large convoyaccompanied by a strong escort. TheLangley was assigned to the Blue force.Again, the converted collier-made-car-rier was to provide protection for shipsof the line.

On the last day of the game, Blackconducted a surprise air attack—de-livered by 25 land-based aircraft (MoleSt. Nicholas)—against the Blue force.Shortly before this, Langley maintaineda protective air patrol over the convoy,but discontinued it hours before theattack was pressed home. Caught un-awares, Langley’s planes were no help.

TYPICAL OF THE EARLY air-cooled engine carrier fighter, scout, and dive bomber types whichflew from the Lex and Sara in Fleet Problem IX were the Boeing F2B-1’s of Bomber Squadron 2.

based planes were used for spottingduring bombardment of the Canal in-stallations.

Canal defenses were again foundweak, but again, “constructive” planeswere used in the attacks. In each of thetwo attacks on Miraflores Locks, onlyone plane was launched; it representedthe attacking forces. This was notconsidered an effective test. Grimesnoted: “In later problems when car-riers were available from which at-tacks in force could be launched andgreater reality could be introduced intomaneuvers, the vital necessity for airdefense of the Canal was to becomeeven more apparent.”

The seventh Fleet Problem providedmore experience in carrier operations.Conducted in the Caribbean in March,Blue Fleet was given the task of es-corting a large, slow, overseas convoyand was then to establish a base under

Even though the problem had officiallyterminated by the time Black’s aircraftreached Blue’s ships, observers con-sidered the attack successful, thoughthe Commander-in-Chief scored theclumsy formation of the attackingplanes.

One of the most revealing outcomesof this problem was the need to allowaircraft carriers greater latitude inmaneuvering, as dictated by weatherand the position of the enemy forces.Commander, Air Squadrons, also feltthat he should have complete freedomof action in employing carrier-basedaircraft in order to get maximum effi-ciency in air operations.

Fleet Problem VIII, conducted in theHawaiian-Pacific area in April 1928,provided further experience in air-craft carrier operations and scoutingpatrols, Langley, Aroostook and Gan-net again participated and again air

31

A SIKORSKY AMPHIBIAN, similar to this RS-3, based on the Aroostook, pilot “bombed” the Atlantic side of the Canal without opposition,represented al l the Langley’s squadrons in Fleet Problem IX. I ts landed, and informed the “enemy” of what he had just accomplished.

operations were limited to scouting.Bad weather and heavy seas effectivelylimited air operations, but despite un-cooperative weather, Commander-in-Chief, Battle Fleet, noted that a suf-ficient number o f aircraft werelaunched from the Langley “to showthat the use of planes from carriers forall contemplated operations is bothpracticable and feasible.”

Of all the Fleet Problems conductedbefore 1940, the next, Fleet ProblemIX, undoubtedly received the mostpublicity. Conducted in 1929, it sawthe introduction of the world’s largestaircraft carriers, the Saratoga and Lex-ington. The problems entered theirthird phase. “The experience gainedand the conclusions drawn,” says his-torian Grimes of this problem, “had amarked influence on the developmentof fleet tactics and strategy in general,and on Naval Aviation in particular.”

The Panama Canal was again chosenfor the critical area under hypotheticalattack. Previous exercises indicated amajor weakness in defense of the Canal,protection from air attack, but thisproblem was to test the conclusionsreached in the past by providing actualaircraft carriers and full strengths ofaircraft.

The problem assumed that a war hadexisted between Blue (the U.S.) andtwo enemy nations, Black (in thePacific) and Brown (in the Atlantic).In airpower, Blue was assigned the Lex-ington, 145 naval aircraft, and the co-

operation of the U.S. Army in the

32

Canal Zone and 37 planes based there.Black was given the Saratoga and theLangley. When it became evident thatLangley would not complete overhaulin time for the games, the tenderAroostook was substituted, the singleamphibian aboard representing Lang-ley’s 18 fighters and six scouts, thoughthese aircraft were actually transferredto the Sara. The Brown force provedto be a paper power; neither ships,planes, nor personnel were assigned;other than in initial planning and esti-mates of the situation by Blue a n dBlack, Brown ceased to be a factor inthe game.

A detachment from the Blue force,including the Lexington, transited tothe Pacific side before Black f o r c ecould launch a surprise attack. On thesame day, the remainder of the Blueforce was to have left Hampton Roadsfor the Canal. It was Black’s intent todestroy the Canal before this seconddetachment could complete the pas-sage.

Blue's intelligence indicated thatBlack would attempt an attack on thePacific side. Actually, Black planneda surprising two-pronged attack. The“squadron” aboard the Aroostook wasto make a long-range flight, far beyondcapability of return. Its attack was tobe made on the Atlantic side, at theconclusion of which, the “planes” wereto land and surrender. Simultaneously,Saratoga, accompanied by Omaha, wasto attempt a daring tactic: take a wide,two-day swing to the south and then

launch carrier-based planes for the Pa-cific attack. This latter demonstra-tion was to make a profound impres-sion on naval tacticians.

On the morning of January 25,1929, two days before the problem wasto end, the main Blue force, includingthe Lexington , came upon Black’sStriking force. Black’s Battleship Di-vision Five was steaming down windwhile the carrier was steaming up,preparatory to launching her planes foran air attack. The battleships openedfire and, because of the close range,would surely have sunk the Lexingtonin actual battle. For this carrier, itwas a disastrous ending to her first im-portant activity in the problem.

Umpires ruled the carrier “dam-aged,” however, for the loss of the car-rier at this early stage of the gamewould have had a profound restrictionon Blue’s capability during the coming“interesting” part of the problem. Lex-ington was instead penalized in speed;she was permitted only 18 knots.

The carrier had already launchedsome planes. After the attack by thebattleships, the carrier, running intorain and reduced visibility, was forcedto recover these aircraft under veryadverse conditions. Noted the Com-mander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet: “Flightdeck personnel and flying personnelalike are deserving of great credit forthe manner in which squadrons cameaboard on this occasion.”

The Saratoga, in the meantime, wassteaming south. She was detected by

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an enemy destroyer upon which sheopened her eight-inch guns. This hadunfortunate results. The destroyer was“sunk,” but in the process, one ofSara’s planes, a T3M , was destroyed.Spotted in the hangar deck just aft ofthe forward elevator and 68 feet fromthe muzzle of the gun, the plane suf-fered 36 crushed ribs and some tornfabric, directly attributable to the blastfrom the heavy gun. The eight-incherswere destined to be removed from theSaratoga, but not before WW II.

Later that day, the carrier en-countered another Blue ship, the De-troit, which continued to track herthrough the night, supplying the Bluecommander with vital information.The Lexington was ordered to givechase, but because of her reducedspeed could not close during the night.At 0525 the next day, the Chief Ob-server canceled this penalty.

The 26th was an active day for theSaratoga, and not an altogether luckyone. Near five that morning, whileabout 145 miles from Panama, shelaunched an initial attack of 70 planes

against the Canal. Her aircraft in theair, the good times were over for theSara. Because of navigational dis-crepancies, the carrier and the Omahacontacted Blue’s Battleship DivisionTwo instead of her own Battleship Di-vision Five. The carrier was underheavy fire at short range from three ofthe enemy battleships and was scored a“sinking.” Had she escaped this dis-aster, four torpedoes “fired” from anenemy submarine at 1200 yards wouldhave hurt her heavily and possibly sunkher. At 0656, Sara launched two more

squadrons, at the completion of which,she had 83 aircraft in the air.

At 0600 the same day, the Aroostookstopped near Jicaron Island and 17minutes later her single plane—a Si-korsky amphibian, theoretically repre-senting Langley’s squadrons—took offto bomb Gatun Locks, Gatun Spill-way and Coco Solo. The commander ofthe Blue force, though, had commit-ted a blunder by not advising eitherCoco Solo or the Army of the substitu-tion. The Sikorsky went about its mis-sion of bombing the Atlantic side ofthe Canal, encountering no opposition.When he completed the job, he landedat the Atlantic terminal of the Canal,surrendered to a stunned “enemy” andconfessed his accomplishment.

Saratoga’s problems were not yetover. Shortly after the Chief Observerlifted the speed limitation from theLexington, Lex launched her aircraftagainst her sister ship. The Sara- basedplanes, returning from a successful raidon Miraflores and Pedro Miguel locksand the airfields at Fort Clayton andAlbright, were in the process of land-ing when the Lexington- launchedplanes arrived on the scene. S a r a“went down” for the third time.

Men in the Lexington had little tocheer about, though, on the morning ofJanuary 27. Friendly planes of VT-9took off from their moorings at Balboaand stood out to attack the Black car-rier and bombarding forces. About0700 they reached a carrier and startedbombing. Later, they learned it wastheir own ship, the Lexington.

“This error was understandable,”said Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet,

“in view of the fact that Saratoga andLexington were operating within 12miles of each other at that time and itwas not possible to distinguish mark-ings, owing to the presence of a largenumber of men on turret tops. Forpurposes of identification, each turrettop of the Saratoga bore two paintedwhite stripes parallel to the axis of theguns. The turret tops of the Lexing-ton were painted conventional warcolor.” In later years, Saratoga wasmade more easily recognizable by thepainting of a large stripe down thecenter of her stack.

Fleet Problem IX marked an out-standing achievement in Naval Avia-tion. It marked the first appearance ofmodern large carriers with the Fleetin a fleet problem. But the most sig-nificant event of this problem, and pos-sibly in any before WW II, was theemployment of Saratoga as a separatestriking force. Its effect on the futureuse of carriers was immediate. In the1930 maneuvers, a tactical unit, builtaround the aircraft carrier, appeared inforce organization for the first time.

For many historians of naval war-fare, Fleet Problem IX marked theintroduction of the fast carrier taskforce. Regardless of its genesis, thistactical weapon was tested and refinedduring the war games of the Thirties.Addition of the carriers Ranger, Lex-ington, and Saratoga was to providemore flexibility and realism in futuregames. A discussion of them, as well asthe results of the fleet problems, will bepresented in the following chapterdescribing in detail the evolution ofaircraft carriers. * * *

USS LEXINGTON (CV-2) as she appeared in January 1928, a month after that year , she entered the next enthusiast ica l ly . Pi lots aboardshe was commissioned. Too late to participate in the war games of learned much from the experiences of their colleagues in the Langley.

AUGUST 1962 33

A FAMILIAR VIEW of USS Ranger (CV-4) shows forward palisade placed from wind, spray and water. She entered the Fleet Problems in 1935aboard carriers with cross-deck tie-downs to protect planes and men and with comparatively light tonnage indicated role of small carriers.

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

LAST OF THE FLEET PROBLEMS‘The culmination of the year’s operations arrives when the carriers with their squadrons participate in the annual

cruise of the Fleets. On these cruises, the year's efforts to perfect the detail of aircraft operations are given the test ofsimulated major campaigns against possible enemies. Our efforts in the past have been crowned with a certain amountof success, but every success has only indicated new possibilities of the employment of aircraft in fleet operations andhas emphasized the vital importance of continuously operating with the Fleet the maximum number of aircraft that canbe carried on our surface vessels.’—RAdm. J. M. Reeves, USN, Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, 1929

RADM. R EEVES described the year-long training schedule of Naval

Aviators as the Twenties came to anend:

“Concurrently with . . . gunneryexercises, the squadrons are embarkedon the aircraft carriers and they par-ticipate in the monthly exercises withthe Fleet. These fleet exercises are ar-ranged to present new and increasinglydifficult problems to all arms of theFleet and to insure the effective coordi-nation of these arms in major fleetoperations and engagements.

"It is not sufficient for one officer,Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, to beproficient in effectively employingaircraft. This knowledge must be pos-sessed by all flag officers. To this end,aircraft on the various carriers, and thecarriers themselves, are assigned fromtime to time in fleet exercises to thevarious subdivisions of the Fleet. Inpart of a problem, the aircraft will co-operate with destroyers; in anotherpint, they operate offensively against

34

By Scot MacDonald

destroyers; in another part, they oper-ate with and against submarines; theyoperate continually with battleshipsand these battleship planes must con-tinue their activities during the attackof ‘hostile’ aircraft. This employmentof aircraft on widely differing missionsreacts not only to the vast improve-ment of the air arm, but also andequally important, it acquaints theofficers of command rank with thepossibilities and effective means of em-ploying aircraft to further the mainmission of the Fleet, the destruction ofthe enemy.”

Fleet Problem Nine, conducted in1929, created a profound impressionon the tacticians of the day. In Marchand again in April of 1930 two moreproblems were presented the Fleet,both conducted in the Caribbean, andboth concerned with the versatility ofaircraft carriers as naval weapons.They were Fleet Problems X and XI.

Fleet Problem X investigated themaneuvers necessary to gain a tacticalsuperiority over a force of approxi-mately the same strength and in the useof light forces and aircraft in searchoperations. Carriers were here definedas a complete tactical unit, operatingwith cruisers and destroyers as a high-speed striking force.

The Blue force, representing theU. S., was assigned both Saratoga andLangley, while the Black force, a coali-tion of enemy nations, operated theLexington. Earliest control of theCaribbean was crucial to solving theproblem.

At the outset, neither force knewexactly where his opponent was, thoughBlack, through intelligence reports,had enough information available toassume the Blue ships would transit thePanama Canal to the Atlantic side.The ships already had.

Blue’s commander considered thewater too rough for the safe operationof seaplanes on the first day of the

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VOUGHT CORSAIR attached to Ranger’s utility unit was typical of Cor-sairs used for scouting observation duties during the later war games.

MONOPLANE TYPES, such as this Vought SB2U-1 of VB-3 on the Sara-toga, were employed in the Fleet Problems conducted in the late Thirties.

problcm and was reluctant to send hiscarrier-based planes, for he expected tocontact the Black carrier force beforedark. The Black ships were in a posi-tion just north of the island of Haiti.By dawn next morning, they hadmoved to the west side of the island.

On the second day of the problem,the Blue commander again called off airoperations because of bad weather andrough seas. Black, on the other hand,conducted extensive scouting opera-tions while advancing to the west.Haitian-based planes scouted from day-light to dark, while Lexington- basedfighters and scouts launched everythree hours for a 12-hour period.

Weather improved on the third dayand the Blue commander ordered hiscarrier planes launched. Still neitherside had any idea where the opponentwas. This status continued throughthe fourth day, and it was not until thefifth that contact finally was made.

Saratoga was spotted by Lexingtonaircraft and as a result of the attackthat followed, Sara’s flight deck wasdamaged. Before her planes could be

respotted for launching off the usableend of her deck, Sara suffered anotherand finishing attack. Lexington nextturned her attention to the Langley andin two flights of first 15 and then 12planes successfully placed the con-verted collier’s flight deck out of com-mission.

Next, USS Litchfield, one of Sara-toga’s plane guards, was dive-bombedand placed out of action. Blue’s battle-ships then felt the effects of Lexing-ton’s planes with the result that theWest Virginia suffered the destructionof two anti-aircraft guns, the Cali -fornia lost an observation plane ondeck, injury or death to personnel,foretop material damaged, and a 15per cent reduction in main battery fire;and the New Mexico, lost four AAguns as well as an observation planestill on one of the ship’s turrets.Neither Saratoga nor Langley took partin the main action that followed thedestruction of their flight decks.

At its conclusion, Fleet Problem Xdemonstrated the suddenness withwhich on engagement could be com-

pletely reversed by the use of air power.Scouting planes and scouting opera-tions were also scored, the planes foundwanting in range and the scout pilotsunable to bomb carrier decks whencontact was made.

A month later, Fleet Problem XI in-vestigated further the limitations ofscouting planes as well as their most ef-fective use. After the game, it wasrecommended that scouting squadronsbe increased to 18 planes and that amore suitable scouting plane be de-veloped. It was felt that better flotationwas needed for amphibians and that agreatly increased range for carrier-based scouts, as well as the ability totake off with a short run were neces-sary. Among desirable secondary char-acteristics were small size, foldingwings, and high speed, even at the costof ceiling and armament.

It was also recommended that semi-permanent task groups be organized,each consisting of one large aircraftcarrier, a division of cruisers, and adivision of destroyers. These ships wereto be trained as a unit in frequentexercises.

The 1931 Fleet Problem (XII ) ,conducted in the Pacific-Panama Bayarea, had among its tasks exercises instrategic scouting, in the employmentof carriers and light cruisers, and re-fueling at sea.

Primarily, this problem dealt withactions between a fleet strong in air-craft and weak in battleships, and in areverse situation where the fleet wasweak in aircraft. At its conclusion, itwas considered that two cruisers andtwo destroyers were minimum protec-tion for an aircraft carrier in a carriergroup. Further, the commander of thatgroup should be stationed in the air-

35

craft carrier, rather than in a cruiseror destroyer, so that he could fullyunderstand the mission of that groupand obtain its quickest cooperation.Also, it was pointed out, escorting ves-sels must maintain the speed and pro-portionate fuel capacity of the carrier.

At the end of the problem, the threecarriers transited the Canal and headed

C A N A L Z O N E - based aircraft, such as thisear ly Corsatr , part ic ipated in the games.

for Cuban waters and more exercises.On the last day of March, Capt. ErnestJ. King, commanding Lexington, wasordered to assist Navy and Marine unitsin relief operations in Nicaragua. Anearthquake had destroyed most of thecity of Managua. When L e x i n g t o nlaunched five aircraft with medicalpersonnel and supplies aboard, in addi-tion to provisions, she inaugurated car-rier aircraft relief operations in the U.S.Navy. This was to become a frequentpeacetime mission.

During Fleet Problem XIII, held inthe Pacific-West Coast area in 1932.the vulnerability of submarines to airdetection and attack, at that time, wasclearly demonstrated. Four out of fivesubmarines o f one f orce , assignedscouting missions, were detected byland and carrier-based planes and“sunk.” C.O.’s of these submarinesreported their own vulnerability whenoperating in an aircraft-screened area.

Aircraft carriers assigned to theproblem were forced to exercise inwidely separated areas of the Pacific.RAdm. H. E. Yarnel l , who com-manded the “U. S.” aircraft during theexercise, noted that in event of actualwar in the Pacific, the number of air-craft carriers on hand would be totallyinadequate to meet the needs.

Also, the admiral pointed out, thisproblem was not greatly dissimilarfrom all other problems conducted inthe past, in that when one aircraft car-rier was assigned to each of the forcesin the war games, each of the forcesinvariably made the destruction of theother’s carrier the prime tactic. This

BOEING F3B-1 was typical of the light fighterbombers which used dive bombing tact ics .

abling her flight deck, and attackedCrissy Field, San Francisco docks, SanAndreas reservoir, and the drydock atHunter’s Point.

This exercise underscored the urgentrequirement for the development ofbetter planes, particularly carrier

WITH THE PBY’s, VP squadrons made the change bomber and torpedo planes. Adm.to monoplanes. This one was a target tow-er. Yarnell again pleaded for three addi-

36 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

tional 18,000-ton carriers which werepermitted under existing treaties.

In the period 1933-34, the Fleetconducted a series of 20 tactical exer-cises. The last three of these comprisedFleet Problem XV, which also provedthe last of the war games of the three-carrier period.

In his official monograph “Aviationin the Fleet Exercises, 1911-1939,”historian LCdr. James M. Grimes,USNR, described the war games: “Theprimary effort of the Commander-in-Chief when drawing them up had beento introduce realism into fleet tacticsand to simulate as nearly as possibleactual wartime operations. For thisreason, the opposing fleets representedactual navies of the period. Carrieroperations were extensive throughoutthe problem. . . .

“There were several important re-sults of Fleet Problem XV as regardsthe development of Naval Aviation. Themost important, perhaps, was the reali-zation brought out by air operationsduring the problem, that if the carrierwas to be the offensive weapon it wasconsidered to be, carrier-based planeswould have to be so armed that theycould carry the offensive to the enemy.

"It was seen that planes carrying100-lb. bombs were obsolete and oflittle use against an enemy forceequipped with planes capable of carry-ing 500- and 1000 - lb . bombs . TheCommander-in-Chief, in his remarks atthe critique held on Fleet Problem XV,stated that at least three-fourths of thecarrier-based planes s h o u l d b e s oequipped. ”

USS Ranger joined the Fleet for thenext war game, Fleet Problem XVI,conducted in 1935. Actually, thisgame consisted of five separate exer-cises, none of them related, spread over

BOEING F4B-4’s were famous carrier fighters.One is now in National Air Museum collection.

the Pacific from the Aleutians to Mid-way, to Hawaii. Both the Army andCoast Guard participated.

The major air operations took placeduring the third phase of the problem.Unfortunately, these were marred by aseries of plane and personnel casualtiesthat, unfortunate in themselves, alsoseriously affected later air and sea op-eration. Athough valuable experiencewas obtained in mass flight of patrolsquadrons, nothing of significance de-veloped in the operation of aircraftcarriers.

Fleet Problem XVII was conductedin the Panama-Pacific area in 1936.The exercises (again five) saw exten-sive use of patrol planes and the effec-tive use of automatic pilot, but therewas no major contribution to, or effecton, the evolution of carriers, either indesign or tactics.

The question of proper employmentof aircraft carriers was brought upagain in Fleet Problem XVIII of 1937:Should they operate with the mainbody of a fleet or should they operateat a distance?

Black’s aircraft commander heldthat a carrier tied down to a slow mainbody formation was certain to be de-stroyed. “Once an enemy carrier iswithin striking distance of our Fleet,”

he said, “no security remains until it,its squadrons, or both, are destroyed,and our carriers, if with the main body,are at a tremendous initial disadvantagein conducting necessary operations.”

But his force commander took a dif-ferent view. He felt that carriersshould be an integral part of the mainbody and defended his decision to em-

VOUGHT SBU-I's, last fixed gear biplane divebombers , f lew in late Thirt ies war games.

ploy them in such a way, as he did inthis problem. He suggested thatRanger, because of her small size couldprovide scouting and spotting with lesschance of being detected. He hopedthat when Yorktown and Enterprisejoined the Fleet, such an employmentof Ranger might be possible.

Fleet problem XIX was the last ofthe Ranger phase of the war games. Itwas conducted in 1938 and consistedof Parts II, V, and XI of the AnnualFleet Exercises.

In the first phase, the outstandingperformance was a long-range SanDiego-based patrol plane bomber at-tack which successfully eliminatedLexington as a carrier unit in the game.

The notable development of the sec-ond phase of the war game, Part V,was an attack on Pearl Harbor,launched from Saratoga some 1000miles off the coast of Oahu. Sara’s

town (CV-5) into the war games in 1939, the Fleet problems entered the tense years immediately prior to the United States’ entry in WW II

SEPTEMBER 1962 37

recon group flew over Lahaina area,photographing beaches and reportingthe enemy’s strength there.

At the same time, Sara sent an at-tack group which bombed Fleet AirBase, Hickam Field, Wheeler Field,Wailupe Radio Station, and returnedto the carrier. This tactic was to beemployed by the Japanese some threeyears later, in December 1941.

In phase three (Part XI), the out-standing air operation was an unop-posed air attack by Lexington- a n dSaratoga- based planes launched againstMare Island and Alameda.

“Excellent experience was providedin planning and executing a fast car-rier task force attack against shoreobjective,” says Grimes. “The problemof defending a coast line, or even anisolated portion thereof, against fastenemy raiding forces equipped withlarge carriers and protected by power-ful surface ships was seen to be onedifficult of solution.”

Yorktown and Enterprise enteredinto the 1939 exercises of Fleet Prob-lem XX, which were conducted in theCaribbean area and off the northeastcoast of South America. The wargames entered their final phase.Neither Langley nor Saratoga partici-pated.

As a result of this game, reportsindicated that carrier operationsreached a new peak of efficiency; par-ticular credit was given the two newcarriers which, despite inexperience,

contributed significantly to the successof the problem. These exercises studiedemployment of planes and carriers inconnection with convoy escort, de-velopment of coordinating measuresbetween aircraft and destroyers foranti-submarine defense, attack on mo-bile patrol plane bases, scouting andattack by patrol planes, defense ofsurface ships against aircraft attack,and trial of various forms of evasiontactics against attacking aircraft andsubmarines.

The last war game, XXI, was played.in 1940 in the Hawaiian-Pacific area.It consisted of two separate exercises.Historian Grimes describes them:

“The first exercise was designed toafford training in making estimatesand plans; in scouting and screening;in tke coordination of various types offighting units; in employing standardand fleet dispositions; and finally totrain the opposing forces in decisiveengagement.

“The second major exercise of theproblem was designed to afford train-ing in scouting, screening, communi-cations, coordination of types, protec-tion of a convoy, seizure of advancedbases and finally, decisive engage-ment."

Between the two major parts of theproblem were two minor exercises inwhich air operations played a majorpart: Fleet Joint Air Exercise 114Aand Fleet Exercise 114. Exercise 114Aunderscored the need for greater coop-

DURING COMMISSIONING ceremonies at the Naval Operating Base, Norfolk, in 1937, men linedup on the flight deck of USS Yorktown (CV-5). It entered the war games two years later.

38

eration between the Army and Navy inorganizing the defense of the Hawaiianarea. Exercise 114 compared patrolplane attacks on surface units withuse of planes in high altitude tracking.The former proved the planes vulner-able, while the latter met with greatsuccess.

Few new difficulties emerged fromthis war game. Reiterated was the ques-tion of latitude given carrier com-manders by force commanders. York-town’s commanding officer stated hisbelief that success could best beachieved when aircraft personnel incarriers operated under a broad direc-tive. The exercise proved again—as itdid in Fleet Exercise 114—that low-level horizontal bombing attacks hadlittle chance of success— especiallyagainst a ship that was not otherwiseengaged.

By 1940, the war games were halted.Although one was planned for the nextyear, worsening of world tensionscaused their cessation. Various tacticalexercises were held instead.

Naval Aviation grew with the wargames. The first phase—the pre-air-craft carrier years-employed “con-structive” carriers and merely indicatedto the Navy the potentials of this newweapon. The Langley phase was an

GRUMMAN F3F biplanes were mainstay of car-r ier f ighters unti l short ly before WW II .

informative one, but this was more anexperimental ship than an aircraft car-rier. The games reached fruition withthe addition of the Lexington a n dSaratoga in Fleet Problem IX. It sawthe employment of an aircraft carrieras a separate striking force and intro-duced a new tactic in the book of navalstrategy. The Ranger phase showed thepotentials of small aircraft carriers, em-ployed with telling effect in WW II.And the final phase, the addition ofYorktown and Enterprise, increasedand refined carrier operations inthe critical years prior to WW II.

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Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

THE JAPANESE DEVELOPMENTS‘In the last analysis, the success or failure of our entire strategy in the Pacific will be determined by whether or not

we succeed in destroying the U.S. Fleet, more particularly, its carrier task forces.’—Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, IJN, 1942.‘I think our principal teacher in respect to the necessity of emphasizing aircraft carriers was the American Navy. We hadno teachers to speak of besides the United States in respect to the aircraft themselves and to the method of their employ-ment. . . . We were doing our utmost all the time to catch up with the United States.’—FAdm. Osami Nagano, IJN, 1945.

B Y C HRISTMAS E VE 1921, the Wash-ington Disarmament Conference

had already been going on for a monthand a half. Participating were GreatBritain, Japan, France, Italy, and theUnited States. It was on this day thatGreat Britain refused any limitation onauxiliary vessels, in view of France’sdemand for 90,000 tons in submarines.The delegates then began to considerconfining the treaty to capital shipsand aircraft carriers.

The Washington Naval Treaty,signed February 6, 1922, established atonnage ratio of 5-5-3 for the capitalships of Great Britain, the UnitedStates, and Japan, respectively, assign-ing a smaller tonnage to France andItaly. The same ratio for aircraft car-riers was set, with an overall limits-tion of 135,000 tons each for GreatBritain and the U. S., and 81,000 tonsfor Japan. It also limited any new

OCTOBER 1962

By Scot MacDonald

carrier to 27,000 tons, with a provisionthat, if total carrier tonnage were notthereby exceeded, nations could buildtwo carriers of not more than 33,000tons each, or obtain them by convert-ing existing or partially constructedships which would otherwise bescrapped by the treaty.

December 27 that year, Japan com-missioned its first aircraft carrier, theHosho (“Flying Phoenix”). This wasa remarkable hoku bokan (literally,mother ship for aircraft). Though theBritish were the first to operate aircraftonto and off a ship especially designedfor that use, their first aircraft carrierswere conversions. Hosho was a carrierfrom the keel, the first of its kind com-pleted in any navy of the world.

Laid down in 1919 at the AsanoShipbuilding Co. of Tsurumi, the ship

was fitted out at Yokosuka Navy Yardat a standard displacement of 7470tons, a speed of 25 knots, with thecapability of handling six bombers(plus four reserve), five fighters (inaddition to two in reserve), and fourreconnaissance planes, a total of 21aircraft.

Hosho was indeed a strange lookingcraft. She was all flying deck. Origi-nally, she had an island structure and atripod mast, but either because of thesmall width of her flying deck (and itsattending hazards) or because someturbulence might have been caused byit, the island was taken off.

The carrier sported three funnels onthe starboard side. These were of thehinged type, held upright when not inuse, and swung outboard to provideadditional safety from stack gas. Later,they were placed in a fixed position,bending aft and slightly downward.

39

I

.

I

UNDER THE WASHINGTON Naval Treaty, Japan converted a battle cruiser to aircraft carrier char-acteristics. In 1928, that country’s 2nd carrier was completed and named Akagi, after a mountain.

Hosho’s original armament consistedof from 14cm single mount guns andtwo 8cm single mount high angleguns. At the outbreak of WW II,her high angle guns were replaced byfour 25mm twin mount machine guns.Later, the 14cm guns were removedand 25mm double or single mountmachine guns were added.

Before continuing with Japanese de-velopment, an explanation of the nam-ing of their aircraft carriers is in order.

“Transliteration of the names ofJapanese aircraft carriers into Ameri-can equivalents is a pretty risky busi-ness,” said Mr. Roger Pineau, a fre-quently published writer on the Japa-nese Navy after World War II. “Itbecomes misleading. The names shouldbe treated as such and should not betaken too literally. For instance, whenwe speak of astronaut Carpenter, wedon’t visualize a man walking aroundwith hammer and saw in hand.”

Mr. Chris Beilstein, another experton Japanese aircraft carriers, concurs.“The Shokaku becomes ‘Flying Crane,’for that is the closest we can translatethe original Japanese. The first Japa-nese CV’s carried names of mountainsand provinces. These, in turn, werefrequently named after mythologicalcharacters. Shokaku, for example,could have been a flying crane in anage-old story, a crane that was namedShokaku. This is very much like ourreal life Misty, the wild horse. Cer-tainly, to translate ‘Misty’ to literalJapanese would be meaningless tothem, or at best, misleading. It wouldbe more accurate to translate it ‘WildHorse.’ Thus, ‘Misty,’ to the Japanese,would mean ‘Wild Horse,’ just as wewould erroneously translate Shokaku

as ‘Flying Crane.’“Think of the problem in trans-

literating Shangri La into Japanese,”said Mr. Pineau. “To paint the pictureaccurately, it would be necessary to de-scribe Hilton’s book and then go intoPresident Roosevelt’s fascination withit. That would be rather difficult to doin one or two words. Perhaps theclosest would be ‘Paradise of the Age-less’—and this would, in the Japanesemind, seem a pretty silly thing to namean aircraft carrier.

“But transliteration has a very realvalue—especially to those who havedifficulty in pronouncing Japanesewords. Many competent researchersdon’t even speak the language. Thetransliteration is a handy referencepoint, but should not be taken seri-ously, at face value.”

Japanese Naval Aviation dates backto 1912 when the Navy sent officertrainees to the U.S., Great Britain, andFrance. They returned from Francewith two Farman seaplanes, and fromthe U.S. with two Curtiss seaplanes.A beach on the west side of Tokyo Bay,Oppama, was selected as a site for aseadrome in the fall of that year andplaced into commission. The first classat Oppama consisted of four officersand 100 men.

From 1912 to 1917, ¥3-400,000(about $150-200,000) was allotted tothe fledgling air arm. In 1918, thissum was increased to ¥1 million(about $500,000), and the next yearto ¥2 million.

The first landing on the Hosho wasmade by a British civilian, a Mr. Jour-dan, on February 22, 1923. States the

Japanese Y e a r B o o k o f 1 9 2 4 - 2 5 :“ . . . our Naval flight officers aremaking similar experiments with goodresults.”

(In chronological comparison, Eu-gene Ely landed on a platform on thearmored cruiser USS Pennsylvania Jan-uary 18, 1911; USS Langley, the U.S.Navy’s first aircraft carrier, a con-verted collier, was commissioned March20, 1922; the first U.S. aircraft carrier

LATER CODE-NAMED Claude, Mitsubishi Type96 fighters replaced Japanese Navy’s 90's.

ALSO OPERAT ING from carriers in the Sino-Japanese War were Type 96 attack aircraft.

built as such, from the keel, USSRanger, was not commissioned untilJune 4, 1934.)

A naval expansion program, decidedupon in 1920, was completed by March1923. Under the limitations set by theWashington Naval Treaty, Japanturned her attention to the conversionof the battle cruiser (then eightmonths under construction at the KureNaval Arsenal). This, in 1928, be-came Japan’s second aircraft carrier,the Akagi (“Red Castle,” actuallythe name of a Japanese mountain).

40 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

Akagi displaced over 30,000 tonsstandard when completed, had a speedof 31 knots, and carried 60 aircraft.She was armed with ten eight-inch and12 4.7-inch guns.

A sister ship, the Amagi (“HeavenlyCastle”), was also scheduled for con-version at that time, but sustainedsevere damage in the earthquake ofSeptember 1, 1923. She was scrappedin July 1924 at Yokosuka. In herplace, Japan converted the Kaga (thename of an old Japanese province) toan aircraft carrier. Originally, she waslaid down as a 39,000-ton battleship,but was scheduled for the scrap pile asa result of agreed disarmament limita-tions. Conversion was completed in1928 and she was commissioned thefollowing year. The 1929 Japanese

in power. Final decision on the size ofthe Navy lay in the competence of thecivilian government. Most career of-ficers were hostile to the treaty; thoseofficers, who supported the civiliangovernment in the bitter fight thatensued concerning ratification of the1930 London Treaty, were eitherforced to resign within the next fewyears or were placed in unimportantposts. Militarists, ascending in power,referred contemptuously to the rati-fication as “the May 15th Affair.”

The London Treaty carried forwardthe general limitations of the earlierWashington agreement and providedfor further reductions of naval arma-ment. Under terms applicable to NavalAviation, the definition of an aircraftcarrier was broadened to include ships

United States Navy’s fourth carrier.In 1932, naval authorities referred a

second naval replenishment plan to theMinistry of Finance for study. Theplan called for a total expenditure of¥460,000,000 (about $230 million),covering the construction of one air-craft carrier of 8000 tons, other capi-tal and auxiliary ships, and the estab-lishment of eight flying corps on land:all this to be completed by the end of1936. This aircraft carrier was neverbuilt.

In 1934, preliminary disarmamentconferences were held in London. Con-gress had already passed and PresidentRoosevelt authorized an act that popu-larly became known as the Vinson-Trammell Act. This permitted theU.S. to construct naval ships to the

SISTER SHIP to Akagi, the Kaga, is shown here shortly after her com-missioning in December 1928. Note the unusual stack arrangement.

AN AERIAL VIEW oj Kaga shows the chopped-ofl bow configurationand the starboard stack. Kaga, even after refitting, bad no island.

Year Book states of Akagi and Kaga:

“They are the pride of the JapaneseNavy, and though slightly inferior tothe Saratoga of the U.S. Navy in re-spect of speed, the Akagi surpasses theother in point of the range of her highangle guns, of which she carries 124.7-inchers. The Hosho . . . [is] by farsmaller than the Akagi, but in themode of construction [it possesses]special features of [its] own. The com-pletion of the Kaga, only second to theAkagi, is a powerful addition to theJapanese Navy.”

Kaga w a s reported as displacing26,900 tons standard, but actually dis-placed over 30,000 tons, had a speed of27 knots and carried 60 aircraft.

As the signatories of the WashingtonNaval Treaty reconvened in London in1930, Japanese naval officers began tochafe under the ship construction re-strictions imposed upon their nation.At that time, the armed forces wereunpopular with the liberal government

OCTOBER 1962

of any tonnage designed primarily foraircraft operations. It was agreed thatinstallation of a landing-on or flying-off platform on a warship designed andused primarily for other purposeswould not make that ship an aircraftcarrier. It also stipulated that no capi-tal ship in existence on April 1, 1930would be fitted with such a platformor deck.

The Japanese Navy expanded rapidlyafter 1930, at such a rate that it be-came necessary to conscript men. In1931, a replenishment plan was author-ized the Navy, permitting it to com-plete construction of the Ryujo (“Gal-loping Dragon”), a small aircraft car-rier of about 10,000 tons laid down in1929. It was completed in 1933, itslimited deck free of an obstructiveisland. Ryujo had a speed of 29 knots,carried 36 aircraft, and was armedwith 12 five-inch guns. She wasJapan’s fourth aircraft carrier. In June1934, U S S R a n g e r b e c a m e t h e

tonnage limitations prescribed by theprevious Washington and LondonNaval Treaties. Under this authoriza-tion, USS Wasp (CV-7) was laid downin 1936.

Japanese militarists were not eagerto continue in the disarmament pacts.Wrote U.S. Ambassador to Japan,Joseph C. Grew, “Japanese attitudetoward the coming Naval Conferencein 1935 London Treaty is intenselyunpopular among the Japanese Navalofficers high and low;” and in sepa-rate correspondence, “The situation isentirely different from that in 1930.. . . Under present conditions the Navyalone will have the final say [as to thesize of the Imperial Japanese Navy].”

It boiled down to this: Japan wantedquantitative as well as qualitative par-ity in ship power, equal to the UnitedStates and Great Britain. The 5-5-3ratio was no longer acceptable. Neitherthe U.S. nor Britain favored such anincrease in Japanese strength, for,

41

THE SHOKAKU CLASS consisted of two carriers, Shokaku (shown here) gram of 1937, displacing 25,675 tons standard. Zuikaku was first toand Zuikaku. They were authorized under the Fleet Replenishment Pro- have a bulbous bow

granted equality in armored ships,Japan would be the major power in thePacific, greater than the U.S. and GreatBritain combined; their Fleets weredivided geographically.

Japan persisted. The Japanese YearBook of 1935 enumerated that coun-try’s “official” reasoning:

“(1) The progress and developmentmade recently in battleships, aero-planes, etc., have made it extremelydifficult to effectuate defence opera-tions.

“(2) The remarkable increases inthe air forces of the U.S.S.R. andChina, and the revival of the Far East-ern naval forces of the former.

“(3) The establishment of the navalport of Singapore by Great Britain,and the extension and strengthening ofthe naval port of Hawaii by the U.S.A.have had a great effect on the navalplan of operations in Far Easternwaters.

“ (4 ) The birth of Manchoukuo[independence of Manchuria, February18 , 1932 ] has brought for th vastchanges in Far Eastern policies. It hasincreased the responsibility of theJapanese Empire as the stabilizingpower in the Far East.”

These were political arguments theworld’s two top naval powers couldnot buy. But Japan was adamant, re-fused compromise and, on December29, 1934, gave the required two years’formal notice that after December 31,1936, she would no longer be bound by

the terms of the Washington and Lon-don Naval Treaties. Her act of abro-gation unleashed the restraints oninternational shipbuilding.

Two more aircraft carriers were laiddown in Japanese ways in 1934 and1936, the Soryu (“Blue Dragon”) andHiryu (“Flying Dragon”). Soryu dis-placed about 18,000 tons standard, hada speed of 34.5 knots, and handled 63aircraft. Hiryu was heavier, 18,500tons standard, and had a speed of 34.3knots. Officially, both ships were car-ried on the books as of 10,050 tonsstandard; the true tonnage was notrevealed until after WW II. Both shipscarried the same number of planes andhad the same armament, 12 five-inchguns.

It was sometime between 1935 and1937 that naval ship designers config-ured carriers to provide a surprisingtechnical innovation. Akagi and Kagaunderwent major modernization at thistime. The lower flight decks were sup-pressed, the upper flight decks wereextended forward, and the eight-inchgun turrets and mountings were re-duced in Akagi from ten to six, whileKaga replaced her 12 4.7-inch gunswith 16 five-inchers. Kaga’s unwieldlyfunnels were also reduced. The mod-ernization of Kaga, which includednew machinery, added about 1½ knotsto her speed, giving her 28.3, butAkagi’s modernization cost her severalknots, bringing her down to 28.

configuration. Both were completed in 1941.

But the startling innovation was theintroduction of small islands on theport side of the carriers Akagi a n dHiryu. The remaining carriers hadislands on the starboard (standard)side—of those that had them at all.Strategists planned to use these carriersin a formation that was unique. Thelead carriers in the basic formationwere to be the port-islanded Hiryu andAkagi, followed by the Soryu a n dKaga. This would supposedly allow fora more compact formation with non-conflicting aircraft traffic patterns.This formation was used in the Battleof Midway.

Japan’s next venture into aircraftcarrier construction was the Shokuku( “Fly ing Crane” ) and Z u i k a k u(“Lucky Crane”). These carriers werekept fairly well under wraps, insofaras specifications are concerned. Theywere authorized under the very ambi-tious Fleet Replenishment Program of1937, the same program under whichthe famed super battleships Yamatoand Musashi were built.

Shokaku was laid down December12, 1937 at the Yokosuka Navy Yard,while Zuikaku was started at KawasakiDockyard May 25, 1938. Basically,the ships had similar specifications.They displaced 25,675 tons standard,had a designed speed of 34.2 knots,carried 16 five-inch guns in twinmounts, and could carry up to 84 air-craft, although a normal complement

“

THE SORYU CLASS was first laid down in 1934 and 1936, displacing island on the starboard (conventional) side. She, with other IJN air-about 18,000 tons standard, at a speed of 34 knots. The Soryu had her craft carriers, participated in the Dec. 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor raid.

42 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

was 73. There were no major differ-ences between the ships. Zuikaku,however, was fitted with a bulbousbow, the first Japanese warship so de-signed. Shokuku was launched June 1,1939, and completed August 8, 1941;Zuikuku was launched November 27,

CAPTURED ZERO, Mitsubishi Type O, has U.S.markings here, for U.S. tests early in war.

1939, and completed September 25,1941.

Completion of both carriers was de-layed when the original funnel arrange-ment was changed in mid-constructionby the Aeronautical Headquarters. Asdesigned, the funnels were to appearone on each side of the island bridge,fore and aft on the starboard side. Thiswas changed by placing the two fun-nels immediately aft of the island.

The Japanese did not give either shipmuch publicity. Both ships, Zuikakuand Shokaku, were to figure promi-nently in most sea battles of WW IIinvolving naval air. Their design wasbased on the best material gatheredfrom experiences in Akagi, Kaga, andthe Soryu types. Later Japanese car-r iers ( i .e . , mult ip le ship des ignclasses) were constructed in twogroups: the large to be like T a i h o(with armored flight deck) , and themedium to be repeats of the S o r y uclass. Zuikaku and Shokaku comprisedan entire class.

Japan’s next aircraft carrier was aconversion. In 1936 the submarinedepot ship Takasaki was under con-struction. While she was still in theways, the decision was made to com-

F IRST USN m o n o p l a n e e f i g h t e r s , B r e w s t e rF2A-1’s, did badly against Japanese Zeroes.

plete the ship as a carrier. Work onthis project was not started until Jan-uary 1940, but was completed in De-cember that year. The carrier was re-named Zuiho ( “Happy Phoenix” ) .She displaced 11,200 tons standard,sailed at 28 knots, and carried 30 air-craft. She was armed with eight five-inch guns.

A sister ship, S h o h o ( “ L u c k yPhoenix”), converted between January1941 and January 1942, was originallynamed Tsurugisaki, launched as a sub-marine depot ship in 1934. Zuiho andShoho particulars were similar.

Other aircraft carriers were underconstruction or conversion. At least15 more would be commissioned dur-ing the war years, produced in growingrestrictions of limited materials, and,after the Battle of Midway in 1942,in desperation.

IN THE FIVE-YEAR period precedingDecember 7, 1941, the military of

Japan grew stronger in power. March1936 the cabinet was dominated bymen in uniform and the developmentof heavy industry was pushed. Anextraordinarily ambitious and success-ful expansion of the Navy waslaunched in 1937, the same year hos-tilities broke between Japan and China.That same year, the Panay was sunk.In 1938, the National MobilizationBill was passed. In September 1940,Germany, Italy and Japan concludeda three-power pact. November 1941,Japanese Prime minister, Gen. Hideki

Tojo, stated that British and Americaninfluence must be eliminated from theOrient.

The Japanese Navy had been con-ducting intensive training of its officersand men during this period. Most ofthe training, including war games, was

MITSUBISHI TYPE 97 carrier attack aircraftis typical o f ear ly Japanese monoplanes.

conducted in out-of-the-way gulfs andin the stormy northern reaches of thePacific. The men were hardened by theelements and drilled continuously. Toavoid antagonizing the Japanese, theU.S. Navy at the same time was in-structed to hold all of its fleet problemsin the less satisfactory areas west ofthe International Date Line.

By 1941, Japan was determined towage war. On November 10, VAdm.Chuichi Naguma, placed in charge ofthe initial attack, issued his first opera-tion order on the mission. The StrikingForce of Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu,Shokaku and Zuikaku, as well as othercapital ships, sortied from Kure navybase between November 10 and 18,rendezvousing on the 22nd in TankanBay in the Kuriles. Adm. Yamamotoordered the force to sortie on Novem-ber 26. On December 2, he broadcast a prearranged signal that would launchthe attack on Pearl Harbor: NiitakaYama Nobore (“Climb Mount Nii-taka”). Five days later, December 7,the Japanese Navy launched its sur-prise attack by aircraft, launched fromcarriers, at Pearl Harbor and the Phil-ippines. The next day, the UnitedStates and Japan were officially at war.

OCTOBER 1962 43

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

THE EARLY ATTACK CARRIERS‘We have hit the Japanese very hard in the Solomon Islands. We have probably broken the backbone of the power of

their Fleet. They have still too many aircraft carriers to suit me, but soon we may well sink some more of them. . . . We are going to press our advantages in the Southwest pacific and I am sure that we are destroying far more Japanese air. planes and sinking far more of their ships than they can build.’—Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of United States, 1942.

AT THE OUTBREAK of World War II,the United States had in com-

mission seven aircraft carriers and oneescort carrier. USS Langley, the ex-perimental ship officially classed asCV-1, had been assigned to duty as aseaplane tender on September 15, 1936.

After the abrogation by Japan fromdisarmament treaties, the U.S. took arealistic look at its naval strength. ByAct of Congress on May 17, 1938, anincrease of 40,000 tons in aircraftcarriers was authorized. This per-mitted the building of USS H o r n e t(CV-8) and USS Essex (CV-9). OnJune 14, 1940, another increase intonnage was authorized. Among theships built under this program werethe Intrepid and the new Yorktown.On July 19, an additional 200,000tons for carriers was authorized.

Adm. H. R. Stark, then Chief ofNaval Operations, reported to theSecretary of the Navy: “In June 1940,the Congress granted the Navy an11% increase in combat strength and,in July, a further increase of approxi-mately 70%. When these ships andaircraft are completed, the U.S. Navyin underage and overage ships will in-clude 32 battleships, 18 aircraft car-riers, 91 cruisers, 325 destroyers, 185submarines, and 15,000 airplanes. . . .

B y S c o t M a c D o n a l d

“From 1921 to 1933, the UnitedStates tried the experiment of dis-armament in fact and by example.This experiment failed. It cost usdearly in relative naval strength—butthe greatest loss is TIME . Dollars can-not buy yesterday. Our present Fleetis strong, but it is not strong enough.”

Additional tonnage was authorizedDecember 23, 1941 and July 9, 1942.

USS ESSEX (CV-9) was f irst o f a ser ies o fearly attack aircraft carriers of World War II.

CV-9 was to be the prototype of anespecialy designed 27,000-ton (stand-ard displacement) aircraft carrier,considerably larger than the Enterpiseand smaller than the Saratoga. Thesewere to become known as the Essexclass carrier, although this classifi-cation was dropped in the '50’s.

On September 9, 1940, eight moreof these carriers were ordered andwere to become the Hornet, Franklin,Ticonderoga, Randolph, Lexington,Bunker Hill, Wasp and H a n c o c k ,CV-12 through -19, respectively. Re-use of the Lexington , Wasp a n dHornet names was in line with theNavy’s intent to carry on the tradi-tions of the fighting predecessors:Lcxington (CV-2) was lost in theBattle of the Coral Sea in May 1942;Wasp (CV-7) was sunk Septemberthat year in the South Pacific whileescorting a troop convoy to Guadal-canal; Hornet (CV-8) was lost thefollowing month in the Battle ofSanta Cruz Islands.

It is appropriate to comment herethat the ships’ names at commission-ing date did not all bear the same nameat the date of their programming.Names were changed during construc-tion. Hornet (CV-12) was originallyKearsarge, Ticonderoga (CV-14) was

F IGHTER A IRCRAFT of Air Group 9 are parked aboard the aircraft During WW II, U.S. sbipyards built and Navy commissioned 16 sistercarrier Essex during her shakedown cruise in the Caribbean in 1943. ships. Including post-war production 24 Essex class were commissioned.

44 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

USS RANDOLPH (CV-15) was the 13th Essex class carrier to be commis- ing to the builder for post-shakedown work. She participated in the Iwosioned. She was the first of these carriers to enter combat without return- Jima, Okinawa, and Third Fleet operations against Japan in 1945.

the Hancock , Lex ington ( C V - 1 6 )w a s C a b o t , W a s p ( C V - 1 8 ) w a sOriskany, and Hancock (CV-19) wasoriginally Ticonderoga.

Last two of the 13 originally pro-grammed CV-9 class aircraft carriers,Bennington (CV-20) and Boxer (CV-21), were ordered on Dec. 15, 1941.

In drawing up the preliminary de-sign for USS Essex, particular atten-tion was directed at the size of bothher flight and hangar decks. Aircraftdesign had come a long way from thecomparatively light planes used incarriers during the Thirties. Flightdecks now required more takeoff spacefor the heavier fighters and bombersbeing developed. Most of the first-linecarriers of the pre-war years wereequipped with flush deck catapults,but owing to the speed and size ofthese ships very little catapulting wasdone—except for experimental pur-poses. With the advent of war, air-plane weights began to go up as armorand armament got heavier; crewsize aboard the planes also increased.It was inevitable, noted the Bureau ofAeronautics toward the war’s end in1945, that catapult launchings wouldbecome more common under thesecircumstances. Some carrier com-manding officers reported that asmuch as 40 per cent of launchings

NOVEMBER 1962

were effected by the ships’ catapults.The hangar area design came in for

many conferences between Bureausand much more official correspondence.Not only were the supporting struc-tures to the flight deck to carry theincreased weight of the landing andparked aircraft, but they were to havesufficient strength to support the tric-ing up of spare fuselages and parts(50 per cent of each plane typeaboard) under the flight deck and stillprovide adequate working space forthe men using the area below.

“At present,” noted the Bureau ofConstruction and Repair in Apri l1940, “it appears that a few of thesmaller fuselages can be triced upoverhead in locations where encroach-ment on head-room is acceptable, andthat the larger fuselages will have tobe stowed on deck in the after end ofthe hangar. The number to be stowedwill depend upon the amount of reduc-tion in operating space in the hangarwhich can be accepted.”

Capt. Marc A. Mitscher, then As-sistant Chief BUAE R, answered: “Thequestion of spare airplanes is nowunder reconsideration in correspond-ence with the Fleet and the resultsdecided upon will have a bearing inthe case of CV-9.”

A startling innovation in CV-9 was

a port side deck edge elevator in addi-tion to two inboard elevators. Earlier,B U A ER experimented with a ramparrangement between the hangar andflight decks, up which aircraft werehauled by crane. This proved tooslow. BUSHIPS and the Chief Engineerof A.B.C. Elevator Co., designed theengine for the side elevator. Essen-tially, it was a standard elevator, 60feet by 34 in platform surface, whichtravelled vertically on the port side ofthe ship. Capt. Donald B. Duncan,Essex’s first commanding officer, wasenthusiastic. After the f i rst fourmonths of operation after commission-ing, he wrote to BUA E R:

“The elevator has functioned mostsatisfactorily in all respects and it isdesired to point out some of the oper-ational advantages realized with thistype of elevator.

“Since there is no large hole in theflight deck when the elevator is in the‘down’ position, it is easier to continuenormal operations on deck, irrespec-tive of the position of the elevator.The elevator increases the effectivedeck space when it is in the ‘up’ posi-tion by providing additional parkingroom outside the normal contours ofthe flight deck, and increases the effec-tive area on the hangar deck by theabsence of elevator pits.”

45

The elevator performed well, itsmachinery less complex than the twoinboard elevators, requiring about 20per cent fewer man-hours of mainte-nance. Capt. Duncan recommendedthat consideration be given using twodeck edge elevators, one on each side.B U A E R, in forwarding the recom-mendation to BUSHIPS, offered anotheradvantage for consideration: a con-ventional elevator suffering a casualtywhile in the “down” position “wouldleave a large hole in the flight deckwhile the deck edge type would causeonly minor and non-critical loss offlight deck area.”

BUSHIPS, obviously pleased with theoperational performance of the newelevator—the first of its kind—re-luctantly turned down the recom-mendation, however. The Bureaunoted that the addition of a star-board deck-edge elevator would notpermit an Essex class aircraft carrierto transit the Panama Canal. Anyother location for a second such ele-vator would involve structural andarrangement changes too extensive tobe considered.

On April 28, 1941, keel for the USSEssex was laid at Newport News Ship-b u i l d i n g a n d D r y D o c k C o . O nOctober 2, the following year, herprospective commanding officer filedhis first weekly progress- and readinessreport to the Chief of Naval Oper-ations. He noted that there wasmarked speed-up of work on the shipduring the preceding month and esti-mated that the ship would probablybe delivered on February 1, 1942.

“There are certain items that havebeen authorized for installation on theCV-9-19 class carrier,” he said, “butwill not be accomplished on this vessel

USS YORKTOWN (CV-10) was third Essex com-missioned, sponsored by Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt.

prior to delivery.” The ship waslaunched July 31, 1942.

RAdm. Walter S. Anderson, presi-dent of the dock trials and inspectionteam of CV-9 on December 23, 1942,noted a few of these discrepancies inhis report:

“Due to late authorization of anumber of changes arising out ofrecent war experiences, the volume ofuncompleted hull work was greaterthan normal. . . . The Board regretsthat the catapults for this vessel werenot delivered in time for installation,as military value of the vessel wouldbe much improved thereby. . . . Onlythe starboard flight deck track wasinstalled . . . . This class of carriers isdesigned to include cruising turbinesas part of the main drive turbine in-stallation. However, due to produc-

tion difficulties and as a result ofefforts to expedite delivery, cruisingturbines were omitted. Space and con-nections for their future installationare provided and this can be accom-plished with very little alteration . . . .”

Nevertheless, the Board was pleasedand impressed with progress on con-struction of the Essex. Adm. Ander-son recommended acceptance of theship. “On 31 December 1942,” hesaid, “only slightly over 20 monthswill have elapsed since keel-laying,which is, in the opinion of the Board,a record worthy of commendation.This indicates a high degree of cooper-ation between the Supervisor of Ship-building, the Newport News Ship-building and Dry Dock Co., and repre-sentatives of the officers and men ofthe ship’s company.” On the last dayof 1942, USS Essex was commissioned.

Capt. Duncan was proud of his newcommand, but not so impressed as toignore certain discrepancies that stillexisted. The ventilation system, forinstance, was less than satisfactory.B US HIPS sent representatives to theship to assist in correcting discrep-ancies, during sea trials March 1 inthe North Atlantic and, a month anda half later, when the ship was againat Norfolk and still had complaints.

A s o t h e r C V - 9 c a r r i e r s w e r elaunched, the complaints continued tobe registered. BUSHIPS investigatedthe ventilation system as installed inUSS Intrepid (CV-11) and outlinedcorrective measures in future carriersof the class.

Requested to comment on the ade-quacy and operation of the trashburner installed in the Essex, Capt .Duncan started off quietly enough. “Itis most unsatisfactory,” he said. Then

he warmed to his subject. “It is doubt-ful if it could be worse. It is in thevery center of the office spaces. Thereis no satisfactory place for collectionof trash waiting its turn to be burned.All of it has to be carried through thepassageways in the vicinity of the de-partmental offices. The heat from thetrash burner when it is operating(which is not often because it is usu-ally broken down) is such as tomake the surrounding spaces almostuntenable.

“The design of the trash burner ispoor. Its construction is worse. Theship had not been in commission amonth before it practically fell apart.The brick work fell down, the doorfell off and it suffered other casualtiestoo numerous to mention. It has takenconstant attention from the Engineer’sforce to keep it operating at all andthe heat generated in the compartmentin which it is located is such that itis physically impossible for men to stayin it for continuous operation.”

The trash burner was redesigned.Lexington w a s commissioned on

February 17, 1943, followed by York-town on April 15, Bunker Hill on May25, Intrepid on August 16, Wasp o nNovember 24, and Hornet on Novem-ber 29 that year. In 1944, Franklinwas commissioned on January 31,Hancock on April 15, Ticonderoga o nMay 8, Bennington on August 6, andRandolph on October 9. The last ofthe programmed 13 CV-9’s, Boxer ,was commissioned on April 16, 1945.

The lighting system installed in theLexington came under the scrutiny ofBUSHIPS. Generally, it was consideredinadequate—“in intensity and qual-ity’’—in many passageways and com-partments, in addition to the running,signal, and anchor lights. A survey ofthe system produced the followingaction on the outside lights: the aheadmasthead light was relocated to theforward edge of the foretruck (frame92), the ahead range light was movedforward and shielded from illuminat-ing the deck below, the astern mast-head light was moved higher, so asnot to interfere with gunnery, and theastern range light was removed.

Nineteen more Essex-class shipswere ordered or scheduled, startingwith ten of them on August 7, 1942.They were Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) Kearsarge (CV-33) , O r i s k a n y(CV-34), Reprisal (CV-35), An-

T H E U S S C O W P E N S ( C V L - 2 5 ) , w a s o n e o fnine ccruiser-to-aircraft carrier conversions.

tietam (CV-36), Princeton (CV-37) ,Shangri La (CV-38), Lake Champlain( C V - 3 9 ) , T a r a w a ( C V - 4 0 ) , a n dCrown Point (CV-32)—later re-named Leyte. The last three orderedwere Valley Forge (CV-45), Iwo Jima(CV-46), and Philippine Sea ( C V -47). The keels were laid for Reprisaland Iwo Jima on July 1, 1944 andJanuary 29, 1945, but both were can-celled on August 11, 1945. Six addi-tional 27,000-tonners, CV's 50 through55, were canceled on March 27, 1945.

In recap, after WW II erupted and

USS INDEPENDENCE (CVL-22) has SBD’s andTBF Avengers on deck in July 1943 in Pacific.

until its successful conclusion byAllied forces, the U.S. Navy ordered32 aircraft carriers of the CV-9 class,of which the keels of 25 were laiddown. A total of 17 were actuallycommissioned during the war years.The total number of CV-9’s com-missioned—including those commis-sioned after the war—was 24.

Several characteristics marked theEssex class carriers upon their intro-duction to the Fleet. The pyramidalisland structure, for instance, rosecleanly from the starboard side, toppedby a short stack and a light tripodmast. The port elevator was also adistinguishing feature, along with thetwo inboard elevators. Ticonderoga,Randolph, Hancock, Bennington andBoxer, as well as hull numbers fromCV-31 on, had rounded bows extend-ing beyond the flight deck.

Overall lengths varied within thisclass; they were either 872 feet longor 888. It is interesting to note thatthey had a uniform water line lengthof 820 feet. All were armed with 12five-inch .38 caliber dual purposeguns, but some had 17 quadruple40mm anti-aircraft mounts whileothers had 18. A few also had 20mmAA armament. Generally, there wereaccommodations aboard each for 360officers and 3088 enlisted men.

Except for CV-2 and CV-3, L e x -ington and Saratoga, the power plantswere increased over other aircraftcarriers in the Fleet. The machinerywas “entirely modern in design andarranged so as to gain the maximumresistance to derangement and battledamage. There are eight controlsuperheat boilers arranged in four fire-rooms. Steam lines are such that theboilers in each fireroom can be con-nected to one main machinery unit sothat the plant can be operated as fourseparate units.” They had four screws.

These carriers had better protectingarmor than their predecessors (againexcepting Lex and Sara), better facili-ties for handling ammunition, saferand greater fueling capacity, and moreeffective damage control equipment.

THE T ACTICAL employment Of U.S.carriers changed as the war pro-

gressed. In early operations, through1942, the doctrine was to operatesingly or in pairs, joining together forthe offense and separating when on thedefense—the theory being that a

NOVEMBER 1962 47

separation of carriers under attack notonly provided a protective screen foreach, but also dispersed the targetsand divided the enemy’s attack. Com-bat experience in those early oper-ations did not bear out the theory andnew proposals for tactical deploymentwere the subject of much discussion.As the new Essex and Independenceclass carriers became available, thesenew ideas were put to the test.

The Independence class carriers—light carriers, designated CVL’s—were products of an effort to increasethis country’s sea-going air strengthin the early days of the war. Ninekeels to light cruisers of the Clevelandclass were laid down at the New YorkShipbuilding Corp. yard at Camden,

name was changed to USS Langleyand she was given the designationCVL. (Actually, all these cruiser-to-carrier conversions were originallydesignated CV’s when the decision toconvert was made; all were redesig-nated CVL’s on the same day.)

The N e w a r k ( C L - 1 0 0 ) h a d arougher time of it. On June 2, 1942,she was changed to CV-30; on June23, her name was changed to Reprisal,which she kept for a little over sixmonths. On Jan. 6, 1943, her namewas again changed, to San Jacinto.

The light carriers displaced 11,000tons standard. In design, the bridgewas box-like in appearance, with asmall crane forward. They had fourstacks, paired off in twos, on the star-

Japanese-held island of Marcus. TaskForce 15, which conducted the raid,cons is ted o f Y o r k t o w n ( C V - 1 0 ) ,Essex (CV-9) and I n d e p e n d e n c e(CVL-22), the cruisers Nashville andMobile, the battleship Indiana, and tendestroyers. Aircraft were launchedfrom the carriers at a point approxi-mately 130 miles north of the island.

On October 5 -6 , 1943, RAdm.Alfred E. Montgomery led Task Force14 on a second raid on Wake Island.The task force was comprised of twotask groups, operating a total of sixaircraft carriers— Essex, Yorktown(CV-10), Lexington (CV-16), I n d e -pendence, Belleau Wood, and Cowpens—seven cruisers and 24 DD’s, thelargest carrier task force yet assembled.

FAST CARRIER task forces included both Essex and Independence C lasS

carriers, shown above, and viewed from USS Lexington in January 1945.ON A PHOTO mission, a TBM passes USS Shangri La (CV-38), namedin honor of the Doolittle raid on Japan and paid in full by War Bonds.

N. J., three of them before the warstarted. They were to have been theAmsterdam (CL-59), Tallahasee (CL-61), New Haven (CL-76), Hunting-ton (CL-77), Dayton (CL-78), Fargo(CL-85), Wilmington (CL-79), B u f -falo (CL-99), and the Newark ( C L -100). They eventually became theIndependence, Princeton, Belleau Wood,Cowpens, Monterey, Langley, Cabot,Bataan, and the San Jacinto, CVL’s 22through 30, respectively.

Naming and designating these lastfour sometimes went through a rigor-ous and confusing metamorphosis,Neither Cabot nor Bataan encounteredany difficulty. The names and desig-nations were reached in June and July1943 without attending problemsBut Fargo was named Crown Point(CV-27) when the dec is ion wasreached to convert her to an aircraftcarrier. Then, on July 15, 1943, her

48

board side, aft of the island. Thesestacks angled out from the hangardeck and rose vertically above theflight deck level.

As the Essex and Independence classcarriers joined the Fleet in increasingnumbers, it was possible to operateseveral carriers together, on a con-tinuing basis, forming a carrier taskgroup. Tactics changed. Experiencetaught the wisdom of combinedstrength. Under attack, the combinedanti-aircraft fire of the task groupcarriers and their screen provided amore effective umbrella of protection

against marauding enemy aircraft thanwas possible when the carriers sepa-rated. When two or more of thesetask groups supported each other, theyconstituted a fast carrier task force.

The first attempt to operate amulti-carrier group occurred on Au-gust 31, 1943, during a raid on the

In the course of the two-day strikes,ship handling techniques for a multi-carrier force, devised by RAdm.Frederick C. Sherman’s staff, weretested under combat conditions.

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, thenCommander in Chief, Pacific Fleet,dispatched his congratulations. “Thethorough job done on Wake by planesand ships of your task force will haveresults reaching far beyond the heavydamage inflicted.”

The words were prophetic. Lessonslearned from operating the carriers asa single group of six, as two groupsof three, and three groups of two,provided the basis for many tacticswhich later characterized carrier taskforce operations. With the evolutionof the fast carrier task force andits successful employment in futureoperations, the rising sun of theeast began slowly to sink in the west.

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

ESCORT CARRIERS file in formation during World War II. Viewed from (CVE-57), later renamed USS Anzio, Corregidor (CVE-58), and Na-

the Manila Bay (CVE-61) are sister Casablanca class carriers Coral Sea toma Bay (CVE-62), followed by Bogue class carrier Nassau (CVE-16)

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

EMERGENCE OF THE ESCORT CARRIERS‘The story of the escort aircraft carriers is like a story with a surprise ending. When the United States began to build

them, there was a definite purpose in view—fighting off submarines and escorting convoys. But as the war progressed, thesmall carrier demonstrated surprising versatility. It became a great deal more than its name implies. From a purely defensive

FAdm. Chester W. Nimitz, USN, CinCPacFlt/CinCPOA, 1945measure, the escort carrier emerged as an offensive weapon.’—

TOWARD THE END of World War I,Great Britain experimented in con-

verting light cruisers to airplane car-riers—notably in HMS Cavendish o f32 knots and about 10,000 tons dis-placement. But with the signing ofthe Armistice, the project was aban-doned. Despite this, it was a subjectof interest in the following years.

In 1925, the General Board seriouslyconsidered the conversion of cruiserhulls to aircraft carriers. Althoughtreaty limitations restricted the build-ing up of carrier strength, there wassufficient uncommitted constructiontonnage to permit the building of morecarriers than the U.S. Fleet had. Couldthis uncommitted tonnage be best em-ployed in building small carriers? TheBoard’s answer can best be summed upin this excerpt from its report:

“Incomplete studies of the subjectby the Bureau of Construction andRepair and the meagre informationavailable concerning the performanceof airplanes from carriers of approxi-mately 10,000 tons displacement doesnot justify building them at this time.”

But the subject of “light” carriers

DECEMBER 1962

By Scot MacDonald

was of recurrent interest to the U.S.Fleet. In May 1927, LCdr. Bruce G.Leighton prepared a paper in which heanalyzed the problem. He titled it,“Light Aircraft Carriers, A Study oftheir Possible Uses in So-Called ‘CruiserOperations,’ Comparison with LightCruisers as Fleet Units.” Though thetitle may have been cumbersome, thedocument was impressive. He forecastevery fundamental combat require-ment of the later-day CVL’s andCVE’s, including the bombing of capi-tal ships, support of fleet operations,anti-submarine work, scouting and re-connaissance, and the reduction ofenemy shore bases. He concluded that“all things considered, it might well beconsidered as a worthy substitute forthe light cruiser, or even distinctlypreferable to the cruiser.”

For the next dozen years, the subjectinterjected itself spasmodically and un-successfully into Navy thinking. Butin March 1939, Capt. John S. McCain,Sr., then commanding the Ranger ,wrote to the Secretary of the Navy

advocating the building of at leasteight "pocket-size” carriers of cruiserspeed. These were not meant to replacethe CV’s, but to supplement them,giving force commanders much moreflexibility in the use of ship-based air-craft at sea, without jeopardizing themuch more costly heavy carriers.RAdm. Ernest J. King, in his endorse-ment to the letter, was not at all en-thusiastic about this scheme. He sug-gested that existing aircraft carrierscarry the maximum number of planespermissible as a better solution than theconstruction of smaller carriers.

The matter was not entirely dropped,however, for the Bureau of Construc-tion and Repair was considering, andeven drawing plans for the conversionof 20- or 21-knot passenger ships,creating experimental carriers withshort flight decks. By November 1940,the Chief of Naval Operations broughtthese considerations to an abrupt halt,basing his decision on a letter fromSecNav to the Chairman of the U.S.Maritime Commission. SecNav wrote:

“The characteristics of aircraft havechanged, placing more exacting de-

49

mands upon the carrier. These de-mands are such that a converted mer-chant vessel will no longer make assatisfactory an aircraft carrier as wasthe case when the plans for those ves-sels were being drawn.”

In commenting on the beginning ofescort carriers, historian Lt. WilliamG. Land, USNR (Functional Develop-ment of the Small Carrier [ C V E ] )says, “The escort carrier was forcedupon the Navy by the President.”

Indeed, President Franklin D. Roose-velt did actively enter the “light” car-rier controversy. Great Britain hadbeen at war with Germany since Sep-tember 1939. Since that time and be-fore the U.S. entered the war, largenumbers of U.S.-built military aircraftwere sold to the British. The U.S. hadneed for an aircraft-carrying ship tospeed delivery. By mid-February 1941,RAdm. W. F. Halsey (later Fleet Ad-miral) had written to Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet:

“A previously stated expectation,that the Navy would be called upon toprovide transport for Army aircraft,has now materialized in the currentdiversion of Enterprise and Lexingtonto transport 80 pursuit planes from theWest Coast to Hawaii. To continue withprimary reliance on aircraft carriersfor such work, as is our present neces-sity, seriously endangers the availabilityof air-offensive power in the Fleet.”

Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, in en-dorsing this letter from his CommanderAircraft Battle Force to the Chief ofNaval Operations, fully concurred andpointed out that on five separate occa-sions in the past he had himself urgedsuch action.

Earlier, on October 21, 1940, CNOhad received a memorandum from thePresident’s Naval Aide advising himthat President Roosevelt proposed theNavy acquire a merchant ship and con-vert it to an aircraft carrier, accom-modating 8 to 12 helicopters (not yetoperated by the Navy) or airplanescapable of landing or taking off in asmall space. The purpose of this typecarrier was to “provide quick conver-sions for carrying small planes whichcould hover ahead of convoys, detectsubmarines and drop smoke bombs toindicate their locations to an attackingsurface escort craft.”

CNO decided on the last day of 1940that the Chairman of the MaritimeCommission would be consulted to de-

termine the availability of ships forthis purpose. On January 2nd, it wasfound that two Danish ships mightpermit conversion, but later investiga-tion proved this would not be possible.The results of this January 2 confer-ence determined that the ships (two—one was to be sold to Great Britain)selected “should be of the same or verysimilar design in order that the plansmade for one could be applicable toboth; that the airplanes should be fur-ther investigated to determine the typeand availability; that an armament offour AA pom-poms and one 5” surfacegun should be such as to insure stabilityat all stages of loading.” These con-verted merchant ships were to fill theneed later expressed by Adm. Halsey,the transport of aircraft, as well as toprovide protection to Allied convoys.

On January 6, 1941, Adm. HaroldR. Stark, CNO, convened a conferencein his Washington office to discussmerchant-conversion. The autogirotype aircraft was considered of dubioususefulness because of its inability tocarry any load other than smokebombs; an aircraft, to meet the pur-pose designed, must have some offen-sive characteristics. An abbreviateddeck was ruled out. The convertedship should be diesel-driven in order toeliminate smokestacks. The decisionwas made to obtain from the MaritimeCommission, if possible, C-3 cargo ships.

On the following day, CNO was in-formed that two diesel-driven C-3 typeships, the Mormacmail and the Mor-macland, would be suitable for conver-sion and were available. He was toldby President Roosevelt that any planwhich would take more than aboutthree months to complete conversionwould be unacceptable. This, in effect,placed pressure on the project. Theidea of substituting “blimps” for auto-giros or heavier-than-air craft wasflirted with but, by January 15, was“out of the picture.”

The Mormacmail was acquired onMarch 6, 1941. On June 2—justwithin the three-month limitation setby the President—she emerged fromconversion and was placed in commis-sion as the aircraft escort vessel USSLong Island (AVG-1), commanded byCdr. Donald B. Duncan who, on De-cember 31, 1942, was to be the firstcommanding officer of USS Essex.

Early plans for the conversion calledfor the installation of a 305-foot flight

deck on the Mormacmail, but the Bu-reau of Aeronautics required at least350 feet to safely land SOC Sea Gullsaboard. Upon commissioning, L o n gIsland had a deck length of 362 feet.She had one elevator, handled 16planes, had a trial run speed of 17.6knots, and berthed 190 officers and780 men.

The Mormacland, acquired at thesame time, was similarly converted andwas turned over to the British as HMSArcher (BAVG-1) when it was com-pleted the following November. Ex-perience with the BAVG and the twoBritish conversions led the British tobelieve that the diesel-driven ships weretoo slow for their purpose as specialescort vessels—although they were noslower than the later Bogue carriers.

Long Island was used primarily as atraining ship during the remainingpeacetime months of 1941. She wassubjected to tests and experiments—much the way USS Langley had beenin her early days—to obtain dataneeded for the construction of laterescort carriers. As a result of theNavy’s experiences with this ship,other CVE’s were outfitted with twoelevators instead of one, the flightdecks were lengthened, and the anti-aircraft power was increased.

On December 26, 1941, SecNav ap-proved the conversion of 24 merchanthulls for the 1942 shipbuilding pro-gram and, in March, ordered the con-version of cruiser hulls which becamethe CVL’s. Cdr. Leighton’s 1927 paperwas proving its farsightedness.

Naval Aviation historian, Dr. HenryDater, traced the next developments ina paper published in Military Affairs:

“There were only 20 C-3 hulls avail-able for conversion, ten of which wereearmarked for the Royal Navy and tenfor the United States. The new shipswere improved by the substitution of asteam turbine power plant for thediesel engines employed in the LongIsland and Charger [the latter was re-designated CVE-30 and replaced CVE-1as a training ship when the Long Islandwas pressed into service, ferryingplanes and pilots at the outbreak ofwar], and by the addition of a slightlylarger flight deck (436 by 79 feet), asmall island, and a considerably largerhangar space.

“They were referred to either as theCVE-6 class, from the numerical desig-nation of HMS Battler, or as the Bogueclass, from the first ship to operatewith the U.S. Navy.

50 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

“The remaining four CVE’s author-ized for the 1942 program were con-verted from Cimarron class fast fleetoilers and were known as the Sanga-mon (CVE-26) class. These were con-siderably larger, having a flight deckof 503 feet by 85 feet, and were ableto accommodate two small squadronsof aircraft. Because of their size, workwas rushed on them during the summerof 1942 so that they would be availablefor the North African invasion in theautumn.”

Before the U.S. entered the war,German U-boats hovered near Britishcoastal ports and picked off merchantships with ease. Land-based RAF planesdrove the German submarines furtherout to sea. To make matters more diffi-cult for the enemy, convoys sailed

They left a double space in the middlein the center of which they placed theBogue. The other escorts were placedaround the convoy in a half circle. Theidea was, if possible, to use our cata-pults and to stay in our center positionwhen launching our planes so therewouldn’t be any wide separation. As ithappened, we had westerly winds onthe East-bound convoy so we had toturn around to launch planes and totake them aboard. Consequently, theseparation was fairly large due to thefact that it was what is called a highspeed convoy, ‘nine knots!’”

Though this tactic met with consid-erable success at first, it was primarilydefensive. A new technique was foundmore effective. A small task grouptook up a position where it could throw

length of 553 feet, a speed of 18.3knots, a trial displacement of 23,235tons, and carried 120 officers and 960men. They were armed with two five-inch, 38 calibre guns, two quad and tentwin 40mm AA mounts. They wereequipped with two hydraulic catapultsforward.

“With the CV’s, except Ranger, beingemployed in the Pacific,” wrote his-torian Land, “planning for the NorthAfrican landings depended on the com-pletion of the AO conversions of S u -wannee, Sangamon, Chenango, a n dSantee. For this reason, Suwannee hadto cut down on its pre-commissioningperiod, fitting out, and shakedown inorder to be substituted in the finalplans for the much smaller Charger,

BOGUE CLASS escort carriers were products of the 1942 shipbuilding USS SUWANEE was one of four escort carriers converted from Cim-program. They were converted from Maritime Commission C-3 hulls. maron class fleet oilers. They were rushed to completion for battle duty.

closer together, opening up larger areasof the North Atlantic for the Germansubs to search. The Germans solvedthis problem by developing the “wolfpack” technique of operat ing ingroups, then concentrating for the killwhen convoys were sighted.

“It was this technique which createdthe British desire for aircraft escortvessels in late 1940 and 1941,” wroteDr. Dater. “With the entry of theUnited States into the conflict the Ger-mans found easy picking off the Amer-ican coast, but it was only a matter oftime until land-based air on this side ofthe Atlantic drove them out to sea oncemore. There in mid-ocean was a vastarea in which the convoys did not havethe assistance of aircraft. By early1943 it became evident that the deci-sive campaign was to be fought in thatarea.”

The air officer of the Bogue d e -scribed escort procedures during Marchand April 1943:

“The ship was stationed inside theconvoy for this work. The convoys werein columns of five ships each withabout 700 yards between columns.

its support to either of two convoys ina general area. Escort carrier-basedaircraft scouted ahead, searching outGerman U-boats before the submarinescould make contact. This permittedthe carriers to be released from thedifficult maneuver necessary in thecentral slot of the convoy. Out ofthis technique emerged the successfulhunter-killer tactic that eventuallyfreed Allied shipping in the NorthAtlantic.

The Sangamon class escort carriers,built as fleet oilers under the MerchantMarine Act of 1936, were completed in1939, but in the 1942 shipbuildingprogram were slated for reconfigura-tion to aircraft carrier characteristics.Only four hulls were on hand. “Hadmore oiler hulls been available,” wroteLt. Land, “they would have become theprototype of the small carrier for theensuing year’s program. But the over-whelming need for fleet oilers—tomake possible our logistic advance—prevented this type of hull from beingagain used for carriers, until 1944.”

The Sangamons had an over-all

the ex-BAVG which had been doingregular duty as qualification carrier inChesapeake Bay. Santee, likewise, wasbarely completed in its essentials andhad had hardly any exercise with itsair group before its first combat oper-ation was to begin.”

Capt. William D. Sample, com-manding Santee, wrote of the hecticearly days aboard:

“Santee left Norfolk Navy Yard 13September 1942 with Yard workmenstill on board and her decks piled highwith stores. During that first month,the Santee returned to the yard twiceand was never free of the Yard work-men. The completion of the ship con-tinued while the fitting out and shake-down were proceeding together. At theend of the month, the air group hadoperated aboard only a day and a halfand guns had been fired only for struc-tural tests . . . .

“The Navy Yard had done an almostimpossible task in getting the ship outin time for the pending operations but,in so doing, only the essentials hadbeen completed, and it was then neces-sary for the ship to install, adjust, cali-brate and repair until the ship could

DECEMBER 1962 51

ARMY P-40 Warhawk fighter catapults from CASABLANCA (CVE-55) was first of 50 escort COMMENCEMENT BAY class was concerned tothe deck of a Sangamon class to North Africa. carriers mass-produced by Kaiser shipyard. provide trans-ocean convoys witb air cover.

use her battery and equipment . . . .The service experience necessary to testmany of the questionable features ofthe ship’s design was soon obtained ina wintry gale encountered en route toBermuda. The two forward boats werecarried away, the new upper decksproved to be sieves and the repair workof the ship’s force got underway inearnest.”

The carrier Chenango was used, inthe North African operation that fol-lowed, as a ferry carrier for ArmyP-40's on the outward trip, as a fuelsupply ship while moored at Casa-blanca, and as a fleet escort—with aborrowed air group furnishing aircover-on the return trip.

Her sister ships, however, launchedTBF-1 Avengers, SBD-3 Dauntless andF4F-4 Wildcat aircraft in support oflanding operations for the capture ofCasablanca and Port Lyautey. Theywere units of Task Force 34. As partof the Northern Attack Group, San-gamon and Chenango assisted troopslanding at Mehedia, not far fromPort Lyautey. Ranger and Suwaneeprovided air cover for the Center At-tack Group at Fedhala, northeast ofCasablanca. Santee was the only car-rier assigned to the Southern AttackGroup, providing combat air patroland anti-submarine patrol for the land-ing force at Safi—the only port inMorocco, other than Casablanca, thatwould permit the landing of 28-tonGeneral Sherman tanks. It was for thecapture of Casablanca that these tankswere needed.

Between November 8-11, 1942, Su-wanee launched 255 combat sorties;Santee, 144, and Sangamon, 183.

During Sangamon’s participation inthe Northern Attack Group operation,her planes were called upon to neutral-ize a Kasba or citadel, which guardedthe Port Lyautey airdrome. Several

SBD's delivered bombs on target. “Thegarrison then,” wrote Samuel EliotMorison, “came out with their hands

up and our infantry walked in.” BYNovember 15, Sangamon’s part in theinvasion of North Africa was com-pleted and she sailed for HamptonRoads.

Planes in the Suwanee joined thosebased in the Ranger in bombing mis-sions during the Battle of Casablanca.The Suwanee, like the Santee at Safi,encountered light winds. Many land-ings were made aboard with only 22-knot winds across the deck.

Despite the greenness of the crews inthe Sangamons, generally, they gave agood account of themselves. Com-mented CinCLant: “The CVE’s provedto be a valuable addition to the Fleet.They can handle a potent air groupand, while their speed is insufficient,thev can operate under most weather

L

conditions and are very useful ships.”Their missions in the invasion of

North Africa completed, Sangamon,Chenango, and Suwanee were dis-patched to the Pacific. By the end of1942, U.S. carrier strength in the Pa-cific had been reduced to the Enter-prise and the Saratoga.

In the meantime, President Roose-velt announced a need for more escortcarriers. Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiserhad impressed the President with themerits of a plan which would permitthe mass production of escort carriers,under a program to be supervised bythe Maritime Commission.

The first of these, USS Casablanca(CVE-55), was commissioned July 8,1943, and gave its name to the class—CVE-55 through CVE-104. Theywere also referred to as Kaiser classescort carriers. The Kaiser yard com-pleted its 50-ship program on July 8,1944. This was an impressive achieve-

ment in wartime production program.The Casablanca class had an over-all

length of 512 feet, 3 inches, a speedof 19.3 knots, a trial displacement of9570 tons, and carried 110 officers and750 men. They had one five-inch, 38calibre gun and eight twin 40mm AAmounts. The aircraft complement con-sisted of 12 TBM's and 16 FM-2's; inthe flight deck was a single hydrauliccatapult, forward.

Final details were worked out for anew class escort carrier during thetrials of the Sangamon and Santee andduring the planning for the 1944building program. These ships werethe first Navy-designed escort carriersfor which hull and propeller modeltests were carried out at the David W.Taylor Model Basin. The design wasformally approved by CNO on Decem-ber 10, 1942 and the contract was leton January 23, 1943. The first of thesecarriers was the Commencement Bay(CVE-105) from which the class gotits name. It had an over-all length of557 feet, a speed of 19 knots, and atrial displacement of 23,100 tons. Few.of these ships saw action in the war—the Commencement Bay was commis-sioned in November 1944. Only nineothers were commissioned before V-JDay the following September. Theyincorporated all lessons learned sincethe Long Island was commissioned.

As the escort carriers gained experi-ence, they earned the respect of theFleet by proving themselves versatilein anti-submarine warfare. The San-gamon class first demonstrated combatcapability in the support of the NorthAfrican invasion. The first major car-rier-supported amphibious landing inthe Pacific was the capture of the Gil-berts and Marshalls. Eight escort car-riers participated, two of the Bogueclass, three of the Sangamon class, and

52 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

three of the Casablanca class. Thechanging status of these vessels is re-flected in their redesignation. Origi-nally identified as aircraft escort ves-sels (AVG’s), they were redesignatedon August 20, 1942, auxiliary aircraftcarriers (ACV’s), and finally, on July15, 1943, a directive changed the escortcarrier symbol to CVE, reclassifyingthem as combatant ships.

At the end of the North Africaninvasion, RAdm. Calvin T. Durgin(then Capt.) evaluated the effective-ness of the escort carriers when he pre-sented his report:

“Due to their low speed, lack of pro-tection and light armament, it is con-sidered hazardous to employ a CVEgroup in operation where there is likelyto be an effective enemy opposition.Such a group can, however, be used toadvantage, and is capable of inflictingsubstantial damage to the enemy inassault where the enemy air and seaopposition is negligible or when it isbeing contained by other superiorforces. When this situation exists, theCVE is well equipped to provide allsupport until landing strips are estab-lished ashore, and it can be effectivelyemployed for bombardment spotting,combat air patrols over beaches andsurface forces, for all forms of airreconnaissance missions and for bomb-ing, rocket and strafing attacks.”

His experience with escort carrierswas to stand him in good stead. OnDecember 13, 1944, the functionaltype command, Escort Carrier Force,Pacific, was created; RAdm. Durginwas placed in command.

The establishment of this force was

made possible by the increasing num-ber of carriers—notably of escort de-sign—made available to the Fleet. Ex-perience at Palau and Morotai and thedifficulties encountered later at Leyteall pointed to the need for better plan-ning in advance of operations if theCVE’s were to perform efficiently theirenlarged responsibilities. Adm. Dur-gin’s command held administrativecontrol over all escort carriers oper-ating in the Pacific, except those as-signed to training and transport duty.

On December 15, 1944, the escortcarriers provided direct support forlandings on Mindoro, and in the assaultarea on the next two days. BetweenJanuary 3-22, 1945, 17 escort carrierscovered the approach of the LuzonAttack Force against serious enemy airopposition from Kamikaze pilots. Thisforce of ships, Task Group 77.4, con-ducted preliminary strikes in the assaultarea, covered the landings in LingayenGulf, and supported the inland advanceof troops ashore.

In 1945 the CVE’s saw a great dealof action. On the last three days ofJanuary, six escort carriers underRAdm. Sample (as Capt., first C.O. ofSantee) provided air cover and supportfor landings by Army troops at SanAntonio near Subic Bay, and at twoother nearby Philippine beaches. InFebruary, Adm. Durgin directed hiscarriers in the battle for the capture ofIwo Jima. In March, the Okinawacampaign began, the last, and, fornaval forces, the most violent majoramphibious campaign of World War II.As Task Group 52.1, Adm. Durgin,

with an original strength of 18 escortcarriers, conducted pre-assault strikesand supported the occupat ion o fKerama Retto, joined in the pre-assault strikes on Okinawa, and, froma fairly restricted operating area south-east of the island, supported the land-ings and flew daily close support foroperations ashore until the island wassecure on June 21.

The U.S. suffered few losses to theenemy in these ships. Five carriers ofthe Casablanca class were lost in thePacific; one Bogue class was torpedoedin the Atlantic. During the war years,76 CVE’s of various classes were com-missioned, in addition to the L o n gIsland, commissioned months earlier.Seven more Commencement Bay classwere commissioned during the post-war years. During the war, four sisterships to Long Island were transferredto the British, as were 34 additionalescort carriers of the Bogue class. Fourwere sunk; at the end of the war, therest were returned to the U.S. fromLend-Lease and were either sold orplaced in the reserve fleet.

Through fulfilling a basic need oftransporting large numbers of assem-bled aircraft to various theaters of war,the quickly conceived and executed es-cort carrier developed into an anti-sub-marine warfare weapon that defeatedthe German U-boat threat in the NorthAtlantic. They provided combat capa-bility in the support of fleet operationsin both the Atlantic and the Pacific.In short, they displayed a versatility,proved under the pressures and urgen-cies of a war that engulfed the world.

VADM. (THEN RADM.) Calvin T. Durgin wasthe Commander Escort Carrier Force, Pacific.

DECEMBER 1962

NINE ESCORT CARRIERS break formation in the Pacific to take up stations. Originally designedfor escort ASW work in the North Atlantic, they were designated combatant ships in July 1943.

53

design. Construction

Evolution

began during World War II. Toward the end of ery, the Midways were the mightiest aircraft carriers in the world.

of Aircraft Carriers

CVB'S: THE BATTLE CARRIERS‘The life of the Midway also demonstrates the progress of our Navy; the accommodation of our ships to aircraft of high

performance; the use of missiles; exploitation of electronics; the capability to employ a whole family of weapons unheardof when her keel was first laid. No other navy, no other service of any country, has a single military unit as powerful, asversatile and as mobile as this great ship.’—VAdm. George W. Anderson, Jr., Chief of Staff, U.S. Pacific Command, 1957.

LIKE THE CVE’s, the CVB’s were adirect product of World War II

needs and experience, though their mis-sions were different. The former wereto be most effective in providing close-in support of troop landings. The lat-ter was designed to pit against theenemy the most potent aircraft car-rier the world had yet seen.

The CVB’s were to provide a solu-tion to the problem of designing atough rugged ship which would havegood aircraft operating features aswell as every possible characteristicthat would enable it to both give andtake punishment. Our early war losseswere caused by our failure to ade-quately control damage sustained. Itwas obvious that we needed a muchsturdier aircraft carrier than we oper-ated in the early years of the war, onewith an armored flight deck and im-proved compartmentation. The result-ing design gave us a new breed of ship,battle-cruiser fast, battleship rugged,and with more aircraft operating ca-pacity than anything we had known.

At the same time, aircraft design-

54

By Scot MacDonald

ers were producing larger, heavier typesto be operated off sea-going carriers.These higher performance planes, heft-ier, faster, would place great demandson the flight decks of the proposedCVB’s. The planes would requiregreater room, and these considerationsadded to the over-all weight of theconstructed carrier.

On July 9, 1942, Congress author-ized their construction. Already, thetoll on both U.S. and Japanese carriershad been heavy. In January that year,the Saratoga was damaged by subma-rine torpedo and forced to a yard forrepairs. In the Battle of the Coral Seain May, the light carrier Shoho w a ssunk by U.S. carrier-based planeswhich, the next day, also damaged theShokaku. In this battle, the Yorktownwas damaged; the Lexington, ravagedby uncontrollable fires, sank. Duringthe decisive Battle of Midway, the Im-perial Japanese Navy lost the Akagi,the Kaga, the Hiryu, and the Soryu,Yorktown, already damaged at Coral

Sea, was hit again at Midway and onJune 7 was sunk.

Midway was a significant victoryfor the Allied forces. While provinga turning point in the war, it againconclusively demonstrated the warfarepotential and, in fact, superiority ofcarrier aviation. To commemorate theoccasion, the escort carrier CVE-63was named USS Midway, but on Sep-tember 15, 1944, her name was changedto USS St. Lo, relinquishing her nameto the first of a new class aircraft car-rier then being built, USS M i d w a y(CVB-41) . This battle carrier waslaid down on October 27, 1943. Asister ship, CVB-42, was laid down asUSS Coral Sea on December 1, 1943,but upon the death of the President,was renamed USS Franklin D. Roose-velt. The third large aircraft carrierbuilt, CVB-43, became USS Coral Sea.

Contracts for the new carriers weresigned August 7, 1942, and by Sep-tember 18, plans for them were wellunder way. On that date, the Chiefof the Bureau of Ships wrote to theCommander in Chief, U. S. Fleet, to

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the Vice Chief of Naval Operationsand to several Bureau chiefs, discuss-ing the proposed contract design:

“It will be noted that the island isshown offset from the side of theflight deck to the maximum extentpermitted by clearance for passage of. . . the Panama Canal,” he wrote.“This location of the island has theobvious advantage that a straight foreand aft flight deck runway for air-planes is interfered with to the leastpossible extent. It gives a flight deckwidth in way of the island of 107feet.”

This was one of the last times thePanama Canal was a limiting factorin the construction of aircraft carriers.The “Canal block” was broken whenit was later decided to construct acarrier not to go through it.

Concerning the island structure,BuShips continued: “Extensive windtunnel model tests of the CV-9 classisland with a large number of modifica-tions involving various degrees ofstreamlining and attempts to reducesmoke nuisance on the flight deckcaused by stack gases have been per-formed. These studies showed clearlythat the details of island contour wereof negligible importance in effect uponair-flow patterns as compared with thebulk of the ship and of the island itself.In view of these conclusions, attemptsto streamline the various essential pro-tuberances on the island and of theisland itself were discarded in the caseof the CV-9 class and, therefore, havenot been incorporated in the presentplans.”

The island structure was the sub-ject of considerable correspondence inthe months and years following. Therewas an obvious effort by most bureausto keep the island as small as possible.In this there was general agreement.Comment and discussion became ex-tensive when locations of specificspaces in the island were brought up,as well as uses to which they wouldbe put. Occasionally, proposed re-quirements threatened to bloat theisland structure, but as alternate loca-tions were found, it was possible tokeep it to a reasonable size. In Octo-ber 1942, for instance, the Chief ofthe Bureau of Aeronautics, RAdm.John S. McCain, noted:

“Location in the island of the fol-lowing space, the functions of whichdo not necessarily require island space

STERN VIEW of the FDR shows increased flightdeck space and small island arrangement.

is noted: Pilot balloon room, twosquadron lockers, repair I, flight deckcrew, flight deck control, flight deckequipment, and one unassigned space.

This bureau considers that effort. . .should be continued to reduce islandsize. ”

The original proposals called for theinstallation of two flushdeck type cata-pults capable of launching VT typeaircraft and one double action type inthe hangar, capable of launching fullyloaded VSB type aircraft. But by Oc-tober 1942, the General Board consid-ered the complications involved in the.installation of a hangar catapult anddecided against it. Within the year,the decision was reached to eliminatehangar catapults from Essex class car-riers, then either under construction orplanned..

Hangar fires resulting from combatdamage offered particular danger inboth Japanese and U. S. aircraft car-

. J L

riers during the early days of the war.In designing the CVB-41 class carriersthis danger was considerably lessenedby the introduction of four bulkheadsin the hangar, dividing it into threespaces connected by sliding doors.

Underwater subdivision of com-partments and spaces was given con-siderable attention, in event of torpedo

JATO TAKEOFF is made by a P2V Neptunefrom the deck of USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.

or mine hit, and was described as “ex-cellent.” To provide additional pro-tection, the flight deck was armoredwith 3½ inches of solid steel, and thedeck side belt armor at the waterlinetapered from 7½ inches to 3.

In 1943, the wave of war in thePacific turned against the Japanese asAllied forces made a concerted offen-sive, capturing Rendova Island in July.The Japanese-held airfield at Mundain New Georgia island was taken bythe Allies, who invaded Bougainvilleain October and landed on the Gilbertsin November.

That same year, U. S. shipyardslaunched and the Navy commissioned15 CV’s and 24 CVE’s.

In early 1944, the Marshalls weretaken. On the first day of this opera-tion, complete control of the air wasobtained and maintained by carrier-based aircraft. The Marianas were in-vaded in June and Guam recapturedin August. Leyte was occupied inOctober-November, the opening blowsstruck by Task Force 38 under VAdm.Marc Mitscher. American shipyards,mass product ion wel l organized ,launched 7 more CV’s, 33 more CVE’s.

March 18 to June 21, 1945, theOkinawa campaign raged. The des-perate Japanese had already turned tothe Kamikaze strikes and now intro-duced the Baka bomb, seriously dam-

aging the carrier Franklin. BetweenMay and August, carrier-based aircraftwere launched against the Japanesehome islands, destroying or immobiliz-ing the remnants of the JapaneseNavy. On September 2, the formalterms of surrender were signed andWorld War II was over. Eight dayslater, on September 10, USS Midwaywas commissioned, the first of theCVB’s, Capt. Joseph F. Bolger com-manding. In the following month, onOctober 27, 1945, USS Franklin D.Rooseve l t (CVB-42) was commis-sioned. Construction on USS CoralSea (CVB-43) was delayed, the shipfinally being commissioned on Octo-ber 1, 1947. Three additional CVB’s,the 44, 56 and 57, were cancelled.

The Midway was a giant among air-craft carriers. She had an over-alllength of 968 feet, an extreme beamof 136 feet at the flight deck, and hada standard displacement of 45,000tons. Midway had a trial speed of 33knots, four propellers and a shafthorsepower of 212,000. She was armed

JANUARY 1963 55

with 18 five-inch, 54 caliber singledouble-purpose guns, and 21 quad40mm A.A. mounts. Like the Essexclass carriers, CVB-41 had a deck-edgeelevator in addition to her forwardand aft elevators. She accommodated379 officers and 3725 enlisted.

These general characteristics heldtrue for her sister ships. But therewere subtle differences, especially inthe case of the Coral Sea. Commentsin correspondence during constructionof the Midway indicated that a large

C A M E R A M A N records the first takeoff fromUSS Coral Sea (CVB-43) December 11, 1947.

n u m b e r o f minor modifications,learned in the construction of theCV-9 class carriers, the Midway her-self, and from wartime experiences,would be incorporated in the finaldesign of CV-43.

Midway had her shakedown in No-vember 1945. Her aircraft aboardconsisted of 57 F4U-4 Corsairs, 5 9SB2C-4E Helldivers, and 4 F6F Hell-cats, totalling 120 aircraft, 17 fewerthan her full complement of 137.

The carrier’s nucleus crew camefrom a Carrier Aircraft Service Unit(CASU) under ComAirLant. Planehandlers were sent to Great Lakeswhere they boarded the training shipsSable and Wolverine for an approxi-mate six-week period during whichthey learned basic carrier work. TheFebruary Naval Aviation News o f1946 described their later training:

“The men then proceeded to aCASU, where they awaited shakedownof a carrier other than their own. Theirown still was building. Most of theMidway’s original crew leaders shookdown on the USS Antietam and theUSS Charger. On this shakedown,embryo plane handlers stood battle sta-tions, observed the regular crew at workand finally assisted. They were super-vised by a training officer from Com-AirLant who expedited their progress.

CORAL SEA is shown in Mediterranean watersduring last tour before modernization work.

“Following this shakedown, the Mid-way’s nucleus crew returned to a CASUnear where the ship was building. Herethey were groomed in taxiing, spottingand parking aircraft. The work [was]accomplished on a runway painted tosimulate a flight deck. Also, theyfamiliarized themselves with the air-craft they would be using.”

Midway conducted her shakedownin the Caribbean, devoting 51 out of57 days to air and gunnery operations,simulating all types of wartime condi-tions. Exercises included fueling escortships at sea, damage control drills andproblems, A.A. tracking and firing attowed spars and drones, emergencylube-oil drills for engineers, armingplanes, gassing, and use of inert gas.

Air operations involved all types offlying and battle exercises, climaxingthe tour with a two-day strike againstthe Caribbean island of Culebra—awell-pummeled three-mile tract ofland used by U. S. warships for shake-down training at that time.

USS Franklin D. Roosevelt also con-ducted her shakedown training in theCaribbean, under command of Capt.Apollo Soucek. After post-shakedownalterations in New York, she wasshifted to Norfolk, where she becameflagship of Adm. Marc Mitscher dur-ing the first large-scale training opera-tions since the end of World War II.These maneuvers of the Eighth Fleettook place in the western Atlantic be-tween April 19 and May 27, 1946.

In the following year, during Carib-bean maneuvers, Sikorsky H03S heli-copters were operated. Noted NavalAviation News in June 1947:

“It was not the first time a heli-copter had operated off a carrier deck.Four (of them) were with the ByrdAntarctic expedition. . . . But thehelicopter really proved its worth as autility and rescue plane off the FDR,a showing which may have an effecton fleet operations of the future.”

Activity of the FDR in the earlypost-war years was typical of that ofher sister ships. After an extendedyard period between March 1947 andJuly 1948, she completed refreshertraining in the Caribbean before leav-ing for her second tour in the Medi-terranean. At this time, the “Berlinblockade” was formed and the pres-ence of CVB-42 in that area provideda “show of strength.” This was hermission for the next five years, as theBerlin blockade was followed by crisesin eastern Mediterranean countries andarmed aggression in Korea.

In October 1952, the CVB’s werere-designated attack aircraft carriers(CVA’s). In 1953 the fleet moderniza-tion program was authorized. Firstaircraft carrier to undergo rework wasthe FDR. The ships were equipped withsteam catapults, hurricane bows, andthe angled-deck design of Project 110.

56

JAPAN’S SECOND aircraft carrier to be named Amagi was of the Unryuclass; the first was sunk at Midway. Sbe accommodated 65 planes.

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

THE END OF THE ‘BOKUBOKAN’ IN WW IIJapan is beaten, and carrier supremacy defeated her. Carrier supremacy destroyed her army and navy air forces.

Carrier supremacy destroyed her fleet. Carrier supremacy gave us bases adjacent to her home islands. . . . Carrier supremacydemolished the island air bases and eliminated the air force which was using them. Carrier supremacy made the island navalbases untenable for such shipping as escaped our subs. Carrier supremacy permitted us to give close, tactical air support tothe troops who stormed the island fortresses.’—VAdm. Marc A. Mitscher, USN, quoted in Naval Aviation News, October 1945

W HEN JAPAN struck Pearl Harboron December 7, 1941, she had

the strongest aircraft carrier force inthe Pacific. This supremacy lasteduntil June 1942, when the Battle ofMidway was fought and won by theU.S. Thereafter, the b o k u b o k a n(“mother ship for aircraft”), thoughan effective and dangerous fighter, wasan ever weakening force; ships sunkby U.S. planes and submarines werenot replaced in sufficient numbers andstrength. The study of the Japanesemaritime wartime construction is astudy of desperation in the face of aninevitable defeat.

At the outbreak of war, Japan hadsix fine bokubokan, the carriers Akagi,Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zui-kaku, in addition to three lighter car-riers, the Zuiho, Hosho and Ryujo. Thekeels were already laid for others andsome conversions were being made. Atthat time, the U.S. had only sevencarriers, widely dispersed. At the Bat-tle of Midway, Japan lost Kaga, Akagi,Hiryu and Soryu– and never fully re-covered from this decisive defeat.

Japan’s first wartime constructedcarrier was the Taiho (“Big LuckyBird”), a 29,300-ton ship authorizedunder the 1939 estimates. Built atKawasaki Dockyard, she was laid downin July 1941, launched in April 1943,

APRIL 1963

By Scot MacDonald

and delivered in March 1944. She hada cruising range of 10,000 miles at 18knots, but could reach 33 knots withease. Kawasaki claims her to have beenthe most heavily protected flattop inthe world at the time of her delivery.And well she might have been; herarmor was impressive.

Tahiho had 3¾ inches of plating onthe flight deck between her two ele-

vators, covering a distance of some 164yards. The platforms on these elevatorswere two inches thick and weighed 100tons. Such weight required a low cen-ter of gravity for the ship, resulting ina very short distance between the waterline and the flight deck, the sameheight as that of the Hiryu, a carriersome 12,000 tons lighter.

In designing and constructing thiscarrier, the slanting, low smokestacksof her predecessors were abandoned and

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CONVERTED TRANS-PACIFIC liner, the Junyo, was originally the Kashi- and accommodated 53 atrcraft. Sister ship, Hiyo, was ex-lzumo Maru.wara Maru, displaced over 24,000 tons standard, had 12 five-inchers Both were badly damaged by U.S. subs, Hiyo sunk by CVL-24 planes.

she returned to the “stack in island”type, the stack emerging high on theisland and inclining outwards at 26°.

Taiho was an excellent carrier, butshe had a short life: three months. OnJune 19, 1944, during the Battle ofthe Philippine Sea, she was hit by atorpedo from the U.S. submarine Alba-core, damaging gasoline pipes and crip-pling her bow elevator while it was inthe down position. Though her speedand maneuverability were not seriouslyaffected, she did lose the ability tolaunch aircraft because of the elevatordifficulty. Gas fumes spread throughthe ship. In a few hours she explodedand sank.

Five modifications of the Taiho classwere ordered in the 1942 program,but none was laid down, owing toshortages and crowded shipyards.

The U n r y u ( “ C l o u d y D r a g o n ” )class was next to enter the scene. Thisship was constructed under the 1941estimates. Seven sister ships wereordered in the 1942 program. Twowere never named and never laid down.

Unryu was a modification of theSoryu’s, the plans simplified for quickerconstruction. She displaced 17,150tons standard. Sister ships Katsuragiand Aso were slightly heavier, displac-ing 17,400 tons, while Ikoma, Kasagiand Amagi were heavier yet, 18,300tons. They had a speed of 34 knots,except for Katsuragi and Aso which,because of shortages, were equippedwith destroyer type engines and could

only reach a relatively slow 32 knots.Not one of these ships took an im-

portant part in any engagement. BothUnryu and Amagi were completed inAugust 1944 and were used for trans-port duty. Exactly 105 days after hercommissioning, Unryu was sunk by atorpedo from the submarine Redfish.Amagi suffered two attacks from U.S.carrier-based aircraft while the shipwas at Kure. The second attack, onJuly 24, 1945, capsized her.

Katsuragi also came under attack byU.S. carrier planes four days later, alsoat Kure. She suffered minor damagebecause she was protected by camou-flage. After the war, she was used forrepatriation and was scrapped in 1947.

Neither Aso, Kasagi nor Ikoma wascompleted by the end of the war. Asowas launched November 1, 1944,Ikoma on October 17, and Kasagi twodays later. They were 60% to 80%complete when work on them washalted because of material shortages.Aso was used as a target ship forKamikaze training attacks and did notsurvive this abuse. Ikoma was mooredat Shodo Jima where she sustainedbomb damage toward the end of thewar. She and Kasagi were scrapped.Seven more Unryu class ships wereadded to the 1942 program, but theynever got beyond the paper work.

The Japanese wartime carrier con-struction program, though ambitious,was not at all successful. What fewsuccesses they did enjoy were short

IN WAR PAINT here, the light carrier lkoma was laid down at Kawaaki dockyard in 1943 but wasnever completed. Work on her stopped January 1945. TF 38 planes damaged hull the next July.

58

lived. Since the pressure was on—especially after the Battle of Midway—it was natural that they would turnto quick conversions. In this area, too,the results were discouraging.

The submarine depot ships Taigei,Tsurugisaki, and Takasaki were thefirst to be converted. They became theRyuho, Shoho and Zuiho.

Ryuho’s structure was weak whenshe entered the yard for conversion.While being strengthened and givencarrier characteristics, she was hit byseveral bombs from one of the B-25bombers led by Jimmy Doolittle andlaunched from the USS Hornet. This,of course, delayed completion. Whenconversion was completed, she dis-placed over 15,000 tons standard. Shehad a speed of 26.5 knots, was armedwith eight five-inchers, and accommo-dated 31 aircraft. Ryuho saw muchaction, participating in the battles ofthe Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf in1944. In March 1945, she was mooredat Kure, bombed by carrier-based U.S.aircraft, and gutted by fires.

Shoho and Zuiho both displaced over13,000 tons standard upon completionof conversion. Zuiho was completedin December 1940, while Shoho w a scompleted nearly two years later. Bothhad a speed of 28 knots, were armedwith eight five-inchers, and accommo-dated 30 aircraft.

Shoho’s first battle was her last: shewas sunk by carrier-based aircraft ofthe Lexington and Yorktown on May7, 1942, during the Battle of the CoralSea. Zuiho was not much luckier. Hercontributions to the Battle of Midwayand the Aleutians campaign were neg-ligible. At the Battle for Leyte Gulf,she was sunk by carrier-based aircraft.

The conversions of the Ise a n dHyuga from battleships proved to beone of the most puzzling experimentsundertaken by the Japanese after the

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Battle of Midway. Their aft turretswere removed and abbreviated flightdecks were installed. A large hangar,an elevator, and two catapults wereadded, permitting the ships to launchall her aircraft in 20 minutes.

The planes scheduled for these shipswere sent to Formosa before the shipswere completed. The conversions wereemployed in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.By this time, Japan had run out ofaircraft to supply them, and the shipswere used solely in their capacity asbattleships. They were later sunk, inJuly 1945, by U.S. carrier-based planes,

Another conversion, that of theIbuki from an improved Mogami classcruiser, also had a rough time of it. Shewas authorized under the 1941 pro-gram, but shortly after her launchingin May 1943, work on her was haltedfor six months while authorities hag-gled with the possibility of reconvert-ing her into a fast oil tanker—muchneeded by the Japanese navy. The deci-sion made, work renewed, this time at afurious pace. Four of her eight boilerswere pulled out and this space used forthe storage of fuel oil. A hangar andtwo elevators were installed, and abridge was placed on her starboardside. She was capable of 29 knots andcould carry 27 aircraft. But workstopped again, this time when the con-struction of small submarines tookpriority in the shipyards. She wasnever finished; at the end of the warthe Ibuki was scrapped.

The most ambitious conversion andthe most disappointing career was thatof the Yamato class battleship Shinano.Laid down as a battleship but notcompleted when hostilities broke, thepossibility of converting her to a car-rier was entertained. This possibilitybecame a necessity after the Battle ofMidway. Survivors of this battlepointed out serious deficiencies in car-

rier construction and designers at theNaval Technical Bureau listened well.Heavier armored flight decks wereneeded to protect them from dive-bombing attacks. Fuel and ammuni-tion stowage spaces needed redesign.

Originally, plans for the conversionof the Shinano called for her to act asa “hotel ship,” supporting land- orother carrier-based planes; she was notto carry aircraft of her own. Thisplan was changed and by September1942 the new design was completedand construction began.

Shinano, basically, was to be a CVB.Heavy emphasis was placed on armor.Large bulges below the water line wereto minimize torpedo damage. At thewater line, an eight-inch thick belt ofarmor was retained. Four-inch thickarmored deck had already been in-stalled before conversion started andthis deck became the hangar deck.Rolling metal curtains opened up theforward two-thirds of this deck fornight operations and rough seas. Theremaining third was closed completelywhen the curtain was rolled into place.Her flight deck and elevators were de-signed to withstand 1000-lb. bombs.With this weight, Shinano displaced

68,000 tons during her trials at sea.The Battle of Midway also called

attention to the ship’s ventilation sys-tem. All ducts were protected with1½-inch armor. Wood was eliminatedfrom the ship wherever possible. Afire-resistant paint was introduced, anda bubble fire-extinguishing system wasinstalled.

The carrier was launched on Novem-ber 11, 1944 and commissioned No-vember 19th. On the 20th, yardworkers still aboard, crewed by greenhands, she got underway for Kurewhere the air complement was to board.

It was at this point that USS Archer-fish picked her out on radar while sur-faced. The submarine maneuvered forposition and waited until the carrierand her three-destroyer escort crossedher line of fire. Archerfish fired sixtorpedoes; four hit the carrier. Slowly,she flooded and listed; by 1018 the fol-lowing morning, all hands were orderedto abandon ship. A few minutes later,Shinano capsized and sank—with halfher crew still aboard.

For many in the Japanese Navy, thepowerful Shinano was the last hope.With her sinking, Japanese carrieraviation died, never to operate again.

HMS ARK ROYAL, a 22,000-tonner, had large hangars on two decks, Navy. In war, her fighters downed or damaged more than 100 enemy three elevators. She boasted the largest wardroom in the Royal aircraft, her bombers wrecked Sardinian airfields, hit Italian Navy.

Evolution of Aircraft Carriers

THE WARTIME EUROPEAN CARRIERS‘Experience with regard to the suitability of the present type of aircraft carrier must still be evaluated. Examination

of enemy naval strategy in ocean warfare leads, however, to the clear recognition of the fact that aircraft carriers or cruiserswith flight decks for use in warfare in the Atlantic definitely cannot be dispensed with.’—Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, Com-mander in Chief Kriegsmarine, during a mid-1940 conference with the Fuehrer on matters dealing with the German Navy

D URING W ORLD W AR II, four Euro-pean nations designed, con-

structed and/or operated aircraft car-riers, or attempted conversions of othertype ships to carrier characteristics:Great Britain, France, Germany, andItaly. Great Britain met with extra-ordinary success, especially in the de-sign of carriers. Among the advancesmade were the prototype of the WWII-produced CVE (structurally, USSLangley qualifies as the first unintendedCVE) and experiments that eventuallyled to the perfection of the “steamslingshot” catapult. Her experimentshave a continuing effect on the designof modern carriers. France operated aconverted battleship, the Béarne, andwas building two carriers, Joffre andPainléve, when war started. These twocarriers were never completed andFrance fell to the Axis too early in thewar for her Navy to make any ad-vancements in carrier aviation. At thesame time, Germany’s efforts were fit-

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By Scot MacDonald

ful, frustrated and fated to failure.And Italy, tardily entering carrier-conversion efforts, found the war endedwith her ships unfinished.

A starting point in the catalogue ofincredible events that launched the na-tions of the world into global war wasthe assumption as Chancellor of Ger-many by Adolph Hitler on January 30,1933. In the following October hewithdrew his country from the dis-armament conference and from theLeague of Nations. Nearly five yearslater, Germany invaded and annexedAustria. Next on his list was Czecho-slovakia in September 1938 which, byskilled “brinkmanship” on the part ofthe Fuehrer, ended in the Munichagreement. Overconfident now, Hitlerzeroed in on Poland. This was too muchfor both England and France and, onSeptember 3, 1939, they declared waron Germany, and World War II began.

When war began, Britain had six air-craft carriers in commission and sixmore under construction. Of those op-erating, the 22,000-ton Ark Royal(most recent addition to the Fleet,1938) and the converted large lightcruiser Courageous operated with theHome Fleet. The Furious, stationed atthe Firth of Forth, was used for car-rier deck training (but immediatelytook up convoy duty in the NorthAtlantic). Glorious, sistership to Cour-ageous, was assigned to the Mediter-ranean, while the Eagle, laid down asthe dreadnought battleship AlmiranteCochrane for Chile in 1913, convertedand commissioned an aircraft carrier in1924, covered the China Station.Hermes, the first ship in the worlddesigned from the keel up as an air-craft carrier, also completed in 1924(the Japanese Hosho was completedDecember 1922), was conducting anti-submarine warfare in home waters.

In addition to the tactical carriers,

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Britain had one other carrier of lesser,but still significant, capabilities: theArgus, worked on between 1916 and1918 from the Italian liner C o n t eRosso, was employed on convoy escortduty.

As the political climate changed inEurope and war clouds gathered,Britain made a substantial effort to re-inforce her modest and generally vener-able carrier fleet. She ordered six newcarriers. When the storm broke, thesesix were in various stages of construc-tion: Formidable, Illustrious, Implac-able, Indefatigable, Indomitable, andVictorious. In addition, the 14,500-tonaircraft depot ship, Unicorn, underconstruction in 1939, was to be com-pleted as a CVE.

The first years of World War IIwere expensive ones for Britain’s smallcarrier fleet. Courageous was the firstcarrier casualty of the war. Trackingdown a reported U-boat on September17, 1939, she turned to receive herreturning planes when the U-29 sub-marine plowed torpedoes into her.The carrier sank with more than halfher crew still aboard.

Loss of the Glorious was particularlyheartbreaking. In June 1940, she par-ticipated in the British withdrawalfrom Norway. Land-based RAF Gladi-ators and Hurricanes were embarked atNarvik. This was a particularly hairyoperation, for none of the planes wasconfigured for carrier landing and theAir Force pilots were not carqualled;all landed safely. Presumed low on fuel,she was ordered to proceed home inde-pendently. En route, the carrier wasspotted by the German battleshipsGneisenau and Scharnhorst on June 8,and attacked. “Chocked” with RAF

FAIREY FIREFLY was World War II two-placecarr ier f ighter used by the Brit ish Navy.

aircraft, she was in no condition tolaunch defending planes. Poundedmercilessly by enemy guns, the shipdeveloped a list and within an hourwent down.

These losses were balanced in 1940by the introduction of the Illustrious(first of her class) and Formidable .They displaced 23,000 tons each, had alength of 753 feet and a beam of 95feet. They were soon joined by Vic -torious, of the same class, and Indomit-able, a carrier in a class by herself. Thelatter had two hangar decks.

An early contribution to carrier op-erations by Illustrious came when shehad installed a search radar system forthe tracking of enemy aircraft. Shewas also the first carrier to have afighter-direction officer aboard. Withthis effective teaming of men and elec-tronics, Illustrious- based planes claimed75 enemy aircraft in a little over sixmonths of operation.

HMS Eagle was the first aircraft car-rier to launch planes against enemysurface warships in WW II. On July9, 1940, carrier-based Swordfish tor-pedo bombers attacked the Italian fleetin the Med. Defective torpedoes per-mitted only limited success: only oneof the Italian destroyers was sunk.

The first successful wartime carrierstrike in history occurred on the nightof November 11, 1940 when two strik-ing forces from the carrier Illustriousattacked the important Italian Navalbase at Taranto. Winston Churchillsaid of this successful raid:

“By this single stroke the balance ofnaval power in the Mediterranean wasdecisively altered. The air photographsshowed that three battleships, one ofthem a new Littorio, had been tor-pedoed, and in addition one cruiserwas reported hit and much damage in-flicted on the dockyard. Half the Ital-ian Fleet was disabled for at least sixmonths, and the Fleet Air Arm couldrejoice at having seized by their gallantexploit one of the rare opportunitiespresented to them.”

The defeats at Taranto and CapeMatapan (March 30, 1941) finallygave the Italian admirals, who had beenpleading for an aircraft carrier since1925, an effective argument in theirdealings with the Italian Air Forcewhich controlled military aircraft. Sev-eral plans were actually drawn up butthe progress of war did not permit thelaying down of keels. Material andmanpower shortages forced the Italiansto abandon the idea of building carriersfrom the keel up; instead, they at-tempted to convert merchant liners.

Early in the war, September 1939,Dr. Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry ofPropaganda jubilantly reported thesinking of Ark Royal by a Germanbomber. This widely publicized errorcaused the Third Reich considerableembarrassment, for the carrier escapedundamaged and operated effectivelyuntil November 11, 1941, when shefinally fell victim to U-boat torpedoes.

GRAF ZEPPEL IN, the only one of four aircraft carriers planned by Never completed, she fell to the Soviets at the end of the war. Seacocksthe German navy to be launched, is shown as she appeared in 1939. opened, she rested on the bottom of a shallow channel near Steffin.

MAY 1963 61

A month later, HMS Audacity met asimilar fate. This ship, converted fromthe German prize Hannover, becameBritain’s first escort carrier upon hercompletion in June 1941. She wassunk during a battle between U-boatsand a Gibraltar-U.K. convoy. Herplanes and surface escort destroyed fiveenemy subs and the decision was madeto press for the building of more escortcarriers.

Of the losses sustained by the British,Hermes was the only aircraft carriersunk by the Japanese. Fleeing fromTrincomalee just ahead of the expectedJapanese carrier strike, on April 8,1942, she was spotted by enemy car-rier-based planes. Hermes, hit by some40 bombs, sank in 20 minutes.

Five carriers of the Majestic classand seven of the Colossus were laiddown, but only the first five of theColossus were completed before V-Jday; each displaced 14,000 tons. Fourof eight of the new 18,300-ton Hermeswere produced. They were appreciablylonger and faster than the Colossusclass, comparable to the U.S. Navy’sfirst carrier named Enterprise. Theremaining Hermes class was canceled.

Two of the four ships of the new33,000-ton Ark Royal class were laiddown but none was completed untilwell after the end of hostilities.

In addition, the British planned three45,000-ton Gibraltar class carriers(others: New Zealand and Malta), butthe project was canceled at the end of

buffer between U.S. amphibious forcesand enemy air fields at SakishimaGunto during the invasion of Okinawa.

O THER European powers with car-rier aspirations were less success-

ful. France started the war with oneconverted carrier. The efforts of bothGermany and Italy to become carrierpowers were foredoomed to failure.

The French carrier Béarn was laiddown in January 1914 as a battleshipof the Normandie class. She was finallylaunched as a battleship in 1920, butthree years later entered the yards forconversion to a Bâtiment Porte-Avionsand was completed in May 1927.

Béarn displaced 25,000 tons, fullyloaded, had an over-all length of 599

AQUILA, an attempt by the Italian Navy to convert a liner into an Many of her parts were cannibalized from the Graf Zeppelin, butaircraft carrier, is shown as she appeared at LA Spezia in June 1951. repeated bombings by Allied aircraft never permitted her completion.

Other losses sustained by the RoyalNavy included the Avenger (Novem-ber 1942) and the Dasher ( M a r c h1943), both Archer (U.S. Long Is-land) class escort carriers, Nabob wasirreparably damaged by torpedo inAugust 1944 and Thane suffered thesame fate in January 1945; both wereof the S m i t e r (U.S . B o g u e ) c l a s sescorts.

Carrier construction of all types wasnot pushed in the United Kingdomduring WW II in any way comparableto U.S. efforts. Anti-submarine war-fare craft had the highest priority andthe U.K. depended upon U.S.-builtLend-Lease CVE’s (in all, 37) formost of its build-up. Completion oftwo of the 23,000-ton Implacable classwas delayed until 1944. Her sister shipwas the Indefatigable.

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the war. These were to be the Britishequivalent of the U.S. Midway class.

During the war, the U.K. operatedfive light fleet aircraft carriers (theColossus class, in 1945), six fleet car-riers of various tonnages, and threeescort carriers—all built in Britishyards—in addition to the ten carrierssunk and the CVE’s lend-leased fromthe U.S. Her carrier-based planesplayed a vital role in defeating theU-boat offensive. In the Pacific, Adm.Sir Bruce Fraser, RN, commanded thenewly established British Pacific Fleet.The 1st Carrier Squadron, comprisingthe Indomitable, Victorious, Illustriousand Indefatigable, was a unit of thisfleet. Both Indomitable and Victorioushad seen prior action in the Pacific.Formidable joined the squadron later.The British group acted as a flying

feet. She had a complement of 875 andcarried 36 to 42 aircraft, includingtorpedo, reconnaissance and fighterplanes. She was held in semi-intern-ment at Martinique from the fall ofFrance in 1940 until 1943. In early1944 she was taken to the U.S. for re-work and emerged as a transportd’aviation, operated by the French.

IN 1935, Adolph Hitler announcedthat his country would construct

aircraft carriers to strengthen theKriegsmarine, the German Navy. Thekeels of two were laid down in 1936.Two years later, Grand Admiral Raederpresented an ambitious shipbuildingprogram called the Z Plan, in whichfour carriers were to be built by 1945.In 1939, he revised the plan, reduc-ing the number to be built to two.

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The German Navy has always main-tained a policy of not assigning a nameto a ship until she is launched. Thefirst German carrier, laid down as Car-rier “A”, was named Graf Zeppelinwhen launched in 1939. The secondcarrier bore only the title Carrier “B”,since she was never launched. Variousnames, including Peter Strasser a n dDeutschland, were rumored, but noofficial decision was ever made.

A review of the Fuehrer’s confer-ences on matters dealing with the Ger-man Navy, the minutes of which werecaptured after the fall of the ThirdReich, reveals Hitler’s vacillating in-terest in the carriers. Marshall Her-mann Goering, Commander in Chiefof the Luftwaffe, was resentful of anyincursion on his authority as head ofthe country’s air power and he frus-trated Raeder at every opportunity.Within his own service, Raeder found

opposition in Adm. Karl Doenitz, asubmarine man.

By May 1941, the strain on man-power and raw materials was being feltin Germany. Raeder was still optimis-tic, however, and informed Hitler thatthe Graf Zeppelin, then about 85 percent complete, would be completed inabout a year and that another yearwould be required for sea trials andflight training.

Though Hitler continued to assureRaeder that the carriers would be built,the Admiral’s war with Goering hadno truce and became increasingly bit-ter. Goering showed his contempt forthe naval air arm by informing Hitlerand Raeder that the aircraft orderedfor the Graf Zeppelin could not beavailable until the end of 1944. Goer-

ing’s tactic was a delaying one—andit worked.

Construction on the carriers hadbeen fitful from the start. Carrier “B”was abandoned in 1940 and broken up.Manpower and material shortagesplagued the Graf Zeppelin.

Prodded by Raeder, Hitler orderedGoering to produce aircraft for thecarrier and under this pressure, the airmarshall offered redesigned versions ofthe JU 87B and the ME 109E-3 w h i c hwere at that time being phased out ofthe Luftwaffe first line squadrons.Raeder was unhappy, but he had toaccept them or none at all. This forcedanother delay in the construction ofthe carrier: the flight deck installationshad to be changed.

By 1943, Hitler had become disen-chanted with his Navy. Raeder was re-lieved at his own request and Doenitz,the submarine admiral, took the topnaval post. This effectively ended theGraf Zeppelin and work on her stopped.

Had the carrier been completed, shewould have displaced 23,000 tons, hada length of 920 feet and a beam of 88feet. Powered by geared turbines, shewas to have a speed of 33.8 knots. Heraircraft complement was to have been42, consisting of ME 109T fighters andJU 87C dive bombers (new designationsfor the redesigned aircraft). She was tohave four screws—unusual for thetriple-screw-minded Germany.

The fate of the Graf Zeppelin w a sas stormy as her conception and berthpangs. Scuttled by the Germans, shewas raised from the back-water chan-nel near Steffin, by the Soviets in1946-47. Loaded down with loot, shewas towed into the Baltic in 1947,

headed for Leningrad. East of Rügen,the ship sank.

With Germany’s abandonment ofaircraft carriers came Italy’s growinginterest in them. The liner Roma wasearmarked for conversion and manyparts of the Graf Zeppelin were trans-ported to Italy for use in the conver-sion. Of particular interest, accordingto eminent naval historian S. A. Smiley,were the new engines in the ship. Fourindependent sets of geared turbinesfrom the light cruisers Cornelio Sillaand Paolo Emilio were installed, givingher a designed speed of 30-31 knots.This, says Smiley, was “a unique ma-rine-engineering pearl.” The ship’sname was changed to Aquila and wasnearly ready for trials when Italy sur-rendered. Aquila was sabotaged to pre-vent the Germans from operating her.She was repaired later, but was dam-aged in two air raids, one in 1944 andthe other in 1945. Finally, in 1949, shewas towed to La Spezia and scrapped.

Another Italian effort to producean aircraft carrier by conversion wasmade when the liner Augustus, a run-ning-mate to the Roma, was put inhand for conversion in March 1944.She was first named Falco and thenSparviero, but was never completed.Her half-finished hull was bombed andsunk at Trieste at the close of the war.

A condition of the peace treatysigned in 1947 after a five-week meet-ing of the Big Four Foreign Ministers inNew York specified that no battleship,aircraft carrier, submarine or special-ized assault craft could be constructed,acquired, employed or experimentedwith by Italy, blocking her efforts tobe an aircraft carrier nation.

BEARN WAS the only carrier France had completed before the start 1923 and 1927, she had a speed of 21.5 knots, or a radius of 6000of WW II . Converted to a ircraft carr ier character ist ics between miles at 10 knots. She spent most of the war years at Martinique.

MAY 1963 63

CORAL SEA was the last WW II-built carriers to be reworked exten-sively in the modernization programs; shown here after Project 110A.

POST-WAR YEARS‘There has been a spectacular advance in aircraft design technology. The transition from propellor-driven aircraft to

jet power has been fast. We are now undergoing another evolution from subsonic to supersonic speeds at higher altitudes.. . . By modernization we have utilized our assets of World War II Essex class carriers to the maximum. This has been a mili-tary necessity in order to maintain an acceptable degree of combat readiness economically in about half the time requiredfor new construction. Carrier modernization has been pushed vigorously.’—Adm. Arleigh Burke, U.S. Navy, CNO, 1957.

THE POST-WAR ERA was one of dy-namic change. The aircraft carriers

reflected that change with many modi-fications designed to equip them to op-erate the most modern aircraft capableof delivering nuclear weapons andlaunching guided missiles.

Technological developments weremaking the Essex class obsolescent. OnJune 4, 1947, the Chief of Naval Op-erations approved new aircraft carriercharacteristics to be incorporated in animprovement program titled Project27A. This was the first of a series ofmodernization efforts to modify theEssex carriers to meet changing operat-ing requirements.

USS Oriskany (CV-34) was the firstof the Essex class carriers modernizedunder Project 27A. She entered NewYork Naval Shipyard in October 1947.At spaced intervals, she was followedby E s s e x (CV-9) , W a s p ( C V - 1 8 ) ,Kearsarge (CV-33), Lake Champlain( C V - 3 9 ) , B e n n i n g t o n ( C V - 2 0 ) ,Yorktown (CV-10), Randolph ( C V -15), and Hornet (CV-12). These pro-grams were conducted at Puget Sound

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By Scot MacDonald

and Newport News, in addition to theNew York Navy Yard. The Hornet ,last to be modernized under 27A, leftthe New York yard in October 1953.

The principal changes involved inthe 27A project were directed toward acapability of operating aircraft of upto 40,000 pounds gross weight. TheH4-1 catapults were removed and H-8’sinstalled, permitting the launching ofconsiderably heavier aircraft than thecarrier had been capable of during thewar years. The flight decks werestrengthened and the five-inch guns onthe flight deck were removed to de-crease topside weight, to provide moredeck space for parking planes, and toincrease safety aspects of the landingarea. A special weapon capability wasgiven the last six of the nine carriersmodernized under this project. Eleva-tor capacities and dimensions were in-creased to accommodate heavier planes.And special provisions for jet aircraftwere installed—such as jet blast de-flectors, increased fuel capacity, as

well as some modern jet fuel mixers.Three of the ready rooms for pilots

in these carriers were moved downbelow the hangar deck, relocating themfrom spaces directly under the flightdeck. This increased pilot comfort andprovided better protection. To get theequipment-laden pilots up to the flightdeck, an escalator was installed abreastof the island. This provided a singleroute for pilots manning their planes;it prevented confusion from ship’scompany rushing up the normal accessroutes to man battle stations.

In April 1947, Franklin D. Rooseveltentered the yards on Ship ImprovementProgram No. 1, which provided herwith a special weapon capability. Hersister ships, the battle carriers Midwayand Coral Sea, followed. This programwas also extended to the Oriskany ,Essex and Wasp, which had not re-ceived the capability under 27A.

Almost a year before the FDR en-tered the yards, the first U.S. testingof the adaptability of jets to shipboardoperations were conducted aboard, onJuly 21, 1946. Successful landings and

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takeoffs in an FD-1 Phantom were madeby LCdr. James J. Davidson. (Forbackground on the Navy’s first jetpilots, see NANE W S, March 1963, pp.6-13.)

The Navy continued to experimentwith heavier aircraft launchings fromcarrier decks. In March 1948, carriersuitability of the FJ-1 Fury jet fighterswas tested on board the Boxer (CV-21)off San Diego. A number of takeoffsand landings were made by Cdr. EvanAurand and LCdr. R. M. Elder ofFighter Squadron 5A. The followingmonth, Cdr. T. D. Davis and LCdr. J.P. Wheatley made JATO takeoffs inP2V Neptunes from the deck of theCoral Sea off Norfolk. This was thefirst carrier launching of planes of thissize and weight.

It was inevitable, then, that theNavy would introduce all-jet squad-rons to carrier operations. On May 5,1948, Fighter Squadron 17-A, equippedwith 16 F H-1 Phantoms, became thefirst carrier-qualified jet squadron inthe U.S. Navy. It took three days ofoperations to do it, but all squadronpilots, in addition to Commander AirGroup 17, qualified on the USS Saipan(CVL-48), with a minimum of eightlandings and takeoffs each.

Project 27A was originally intendedfor more than nine carriers, but devel-

opment of the steam catapult and theprospective employment of more ad-vanced types of aircraft made it appar-ent that this project had to be modifiedto meet future needs. Accordingly,Project 27C was initiated.

Hancock, Intrepid and Ticonderogawere slated for this program—lateridentified as Project 27C (axial deck).Most important of the changes was theintroduction of the steam catapult de-veloped by the British. In 1952, testsof the catapult installed in the RoyalNavy carrier HMS Perseus were con-ducted at the Naval Shipyard, Phila-delphia, at NOB Norfolk, and at seaduring the first quarter of the year.Reported NANE W S:

“The new catapult fared so well dur-ing the tests that the Navy has alreadybegun an investigation into the adapt-ability of it to their new flush deckcarrier USS Forrestal, which is nowunder construction.

“The new catapult, invented by aRoyal Navy volunteer reserve officer,Cdr. C. C. Mitchell, O. B. E., of Messrs.Brown Brothers & Co., Ltd., Edin-

OCTOBER 1963

HANCOCK WAS the first carrier to receive the C-11 steam catapult. Note the TACAN “bucket”atop mast for homing, enlarged elevator, and the distinctive bridle catchers at end of catapults.

burgh, uses the principle of the slottedcylinder, and has no rams or purchasecables. A hook on the aircraft to belaunched is connected directly to apiston which is driven along the cylin-der by high pressure steam from theship’s boilers. A novel sealing device isused to keep the slotted cylinder steamtight.

“While the amount of steam re-quired for sustained operation is large,tests have shown that the boilers canmeet the demand without interferingwith the ship operations.”

The Hancock was the first U.S. car-rier to receive the new “steam sling-shot,” designated C-11 by the U.S.Navy. On June 1, 1954, Cdr. H. J.Jackson, in an S2F-1, was catapultedfrom the Hancock in the initial U.S.

operational tests. Throughout themonth, testing continued. A total of254 launchings were made with the

S2F, AD-5, F2H-3, F2H-4, FJ-2, F7U-3,and F3D-2 aircraft.

In addition to the C-11 steamcat,Project 27C (axial deck) also providedfor a strengthening of the flight deck.The number three centerline elevatorwas replaced with a deck edge type ofgreater capacity. Other improvementswere made, in addition to those provedeffcient in 27A.

Even as these changes were beingbuilt in the Hancock, Intrepid a n dTiconderoga, the Bureau of Aeronauticsproposed, in mid-June 1952, that anew design flight deck be installed inthe Antietam. The previous May, bothjet and propeller type aircraft weretested on a simulated angled deckaboard the USS Midway. The idea wasoriginated by the British and provedvery effective for them. Antietam’sdeck was to extend outboard on theport side from the normal flight deck,

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ANTIETAM TESTS British-designed angled deck in the Virginia Capes e v a l u a t i o n p e r i o d . P i l o t s w e r e e n t h u s i a s t i c , f o r i t e l i m i n a t e darea in April 1953. Fifteen types of a ircraft were used during barriers, barricades, and danger of parked planes at runway’s end.

thus allowing aircraft landings to beangled 10° off the ship’s centerline.

Pushed through the guidance designstage by the Hull Design Branch ofBUSHIPS in early July, Antietam’s newdeck was completed in mid-Decemberat the New York Naval Shipyard. Atfirst called a canted deck, this termofficially gave way to the more familiarangled deck by OPN AV Notice 9020on February 24, 1955. It also outlawedthe use of “slanted” and “slewed” indescribing the deck design.

In December 1953, BUSHIPS Journalreported:

“The final detailed report on theevaluation of the canted flight deck in-stalled in USS Antietam (CVS-36) re-veals that the operational trials havemet with a high degree of success. Thecanted deck aircraft carrier appears toprovide the safest, most desirable, andmost suitable platform for all types ofaircraft—those currently in use as wellas those still on the design board—andis superior to the axial flight deckcarrier in these respects. . . .

“The canted flight deck on Antietamwas finally installed at an angle of10.5° to the centerline of the axialflight deck. The landing area of thecanted deck is 525 feet long with awidth at the landing ramp of 70 feetand narrowing to 32 feet, 8 inches, atthe extreme forward end of the takeoffarea. This gives the effect of ‘flyinginto a funnel,’ causing the pilot to headtoward the canted centerline. Thiseffect aids him in maintaining thef l ight and deck path which ful lyutilizes the complete length of the

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canted flight deck.“Fifteen types of aircraft, both pro-

peller and jet-propelled, participated inthe tests which were conducted in fourphases, extending from December 29,1952 to July 1, 1953. A total of 4107landings were made, including touch-and-go and arrested landings, duringday and night operations. During theentire evaluation period there was nomajor accident and only a total of eightminor accidents, none of which couldbe attributed to the canted deckprinciple.”

The advantages were immediatelymanifest. By eliminating the centerlineelevators and using one or more deckedge elevators (not installed in theAntietam), more elevators would beavailable for bringing up spares fromthe hangar and striking “dud” aircraftbelow. Once landed, the plane couldeasily taxi onto a starboard deck edgeelevator without impeding flight op-erations.

It was also possible to catapult air-craft and land them simultaneously,and to launch CAP and interceptors onshort notice. This gave the carrier im-proved combat readiness.

The pilots were impressed. An extramargin of safety was given them byremoving the danger of crashing intogassed and armed planes parked forwardof the landing area. The BUSHIPS Jour-nal commented:

“The clear deck ahead on every car-rier pass relieved the pressure on thepilot. Primarily for this reason, pilots

who have flown from the canted deckare unanimous in their favorable en-thusiasm. This was found to be espe-cially true when Antietam’s canted deckwas rigged to simulate a CVE typecarrier. Pilots flying AF type aircraftconfirmed that part of the mentalstrain of carrier landings is relievedwith removal of the barriers and thatlandings were much easier. . . .

“Fewer cross deck arresting pend-ants and arresting gear engines arerequired for the canted deck. It isconsidered desirable to keep the land-ing area as far aft as is practical andsafe, yet far enough forward to de-crease rates of descent. This can beaccomplished only by limiting thependants to a minimum commensuratewith safety and picking optimum pend-ant locations. Fewer pendants also re-sult in a decrease in topside weight.”

Project 27C (angled deck), whichresulted from the Antietam tests andmodified the original 27A, significantlychanged the silhouette of the aircraftcarriers. The canted or angled deckwas installed and the hurricane bowof the original Saratoga and Lexingtoncarriers reintroduced. The project alsoallowed for the improvement of theMark 7 arresting gear by reducing thenumber of deck pendants by one-halfand thereby cutting the ratio of ar-resting gear sheaves to two to one. Theforward centerline elevator was en-larged. Air conditioning and soundproofing made the island spaces morecomfortable and efficient. The latestadvancements in deck lighting werealso installed in these attack carriers.

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— . . —

Lexington, Shangri La, and B O nHomme Richard all received the im-provements of this project and theywere so successful that Hancock, In-trepid and Ticonderoga returned to theyards for this new conversion.

The trend extended, inevitably, tothe Midway class. In September 1953,the Navy announced new moderniza-tion plans for these carriers under anew program called Project 110. InMay 1954, the Franklin D. Rooseveltentered Puget Sound Naval Shipyardfor the conversion. Midway followedin September 1955. These carriers re-ceived the best features of the 27C(angled deck) conversion which wereincorporated in Project 110. Addition-ally, they had a modified steam catapultinstalled in the angled deck area; fullblisters were added for maximum pro-tection, liquid stowage, and stability,and the after starboard elevator wasrelocated to the starboard deck edge.

With the changes in carrier config-uration ran a parallel change in mis-sions and these changes were reflectedin the redesignation of certain carriersas they appeared in the Navy VesselsRegister.

On October 1, 1952, the very fa-miliar CV and CVB designations wentby the board. The ships were assignedthe designation CVA, reflecting theirreclassification as attack carriers. Priorto this, only the CV’s were known asattack carriers, in the Fleet, to dis-tinguish them from the CVB’s. Anti-submarine Support Aircraft Carriersbecame a new classification in July1953 and was applied to those attackcarriers assigned to ASW; the follow-

DECISION AND DISPLAY room in first installation of Modular CIC is viewed in Oriskany. Theconcept proved so successful that it was later installed in Coral Sea and other aircraft carriers.

ing August 8, five CVA’s were redesig-nated CVS’s, ASW support carriers.

There were no further changes indesignations over the next two years,but in July 1955, Thetis Bay ( C V E -90) became CVHA-1. This provedthe first move in the eventual disap-pearance of escort carriers from theoperational Fleet. The attempt to mod-ify CVE’s for a new role in helicoptervertical assault operations was aban-doned when the experiment proved toocostly. On May 7, 1959, the classifica-tion of 36 escort carriers, designatedCVE, CVU, and CVHE, was changedto AKV, for Cargo Ship and AircraftFerry. New hull numbers were as-signed. This ended the role of escort

carriers as combat ships of the Fleet.On December 30, 1957, USS Saipan

(CVL-48), last of the light carriers,was decommissioned. On May 15, 1959,that designation was stricken from theregister when the classification of foursupport carriers, CVS’s, and seven lightcarriers, CVL’s, was changed to Aux-iliary Aircraft Transport, AVT.

The modernization of individual car-riers reflected Navy thinking, Navyaccomplishment, and Navy planning.The programs were successive steps inwhat somebody once called “a scheduleof orderly retirement.” As the carriersaged (some aged “faster” because ofbattle damage in WW II), they weretransferred from the CVA designation

O R I S K A N Y was the first of the carriers to be reworked in the post-war modernization program. Angled deck was installed in Project 125A.

OCTOBER 1963

MIRROR LANDING SYSTEM, developed by British, was tested in Benning-ton by Cdr. R. G. Dosè, C.O., VX-3, Bennington’s C.O. congratulates.

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to the CVS, then to LPH and retire-ment, and it all was tied to new con-struction programs which made it pos-sible to keep the number of operatingCVA’s up to the prescribed limits. Aseach new ship was acquired, it tookthe top position among the CVA’s whilethe one in the bottom position movedto the top of the next lower class.

USS Coral Sea (CVA-43) was the

complete jet engine test facility; theyare now installed in all new carriers.She had twice as much stowage forJP-5 fuel as her sister ships, over amillion gallons, in addition to a 62,000-gallon capacity for avgas. And al-though Ranger was the first to havefuel centrifugal purifiers installed, shedid not rely on them exclusively. WhenCoral Sea deployed to WestPac, she had

last aircraft carrier of World War IIdesign to be extensively reworked dur-ing the post-war modernization pro-gram. She entered the Puget Soundshipyard on April 15, 1957, and wasrecommissioned January 25, 1960. Inthe interim, changes made in her con-figuration were contained in Project110A, a modification of the 110 ofher sister ships, FDR and Midway.

The basic changes were the same asthose in Project 110, but 110A addednew features. Of the three deck edgeelevators installed, for instance, onewas placed on the port side near theLSO platform. This eliminated thehazardous arrangement of having anelevator contiguous to the landingarea. It also simplified maintenanceproblems and provided the capabilityof operating all three elevators duringflight operations.

Existing arresting gear was replacedwith five Mk 7-2 pendant and barricadeengines with the new sheave and anchordampers. Coral Sea was the first tohave installed, in the fantail area, a

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four of them installed and did use themexclusively. During the f irst 8½months of operation, she burned ap-proximately seven million gallons ofJP-5, according to Air Officer Cdr. D.W. Houck, and did not experience onecase of contaminated jet fuel.

Modular CIC, a clock-like layout ofcommunications, radar, and other CICelements, had been tested in the Oris-kany and proved successful. It wasinstalled in Coral Sea, which became thesecond aircraft carrier to have such anarrangement.

The modernization program ex-tended the lifetime usefulness of theEssex- class carriers built during WWII and permitted them and other classcarriers to operate jet-powered aircraftof increasing designed power withoutcompromising combat readiness of theFleet. The important limiting charac-teristics of the planes operating fromcarriers are landing speed, landingweight and required end speed, and—inwooden deck ships—the wheel loading.

Many new developments have had a

profound effect on carrier aviation. InAugust 1955, for instance, the con-stant run-out method of controllingarrestment was used in the Mk. 5 ar-resting gear installed in USS Benning-ton. Its primary advantage was theability to arrest a plane with a mini-mum amount of hook loads. With theearlier pressure types of controls it wasnecessary to stop the aircraft in shorterrun-out in order to take care of inad-vertent overspeed of the aircraft. Thisput a considerable strain on the planes.The new system is set for the weight ofthe landing aircraft. so that a 60,000-pound plane would pull out no morewire than a 10,000-pounder.

Other pilot aids include TACAN(Tactical Air Navigation System)which gives pilots bearing and distancefrom a carrier, the British-developedmirror landing system (improved bythe use of Fresnel lenses), and PLAT(Pilot/LSO Landing Aid Television).

M I R R O R L A N D I N G system was f irst testedon the U.S. carr ier Bennington in 1955.

“We are limited by how far we cango in modernization programs by theage of the ship,” said Adm. ArleighBurke in 1957. “They are getting old.Their machinery is wearing out andthey are becoming progressively moreexpensive to maintain. Like an old car,they must be replaced.

“The modernization programs havebeen the proving ground for the ad-vances which have been made in car-rier operating techniques. But the fullcombat effectiveness of these develop-ments can be realized only in newconstruction.”

Two years earlier, in 1955, USS For-restal (CVA-59) was commissioned,the first of a new class aircraft carrier.It was a logical step in the evolutionof one of the Navv’s proven and pow-erful aircraft weapons systems—themodern ship-of-the-line in the Fleet.

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THE DRAMATIC EVENTS of October1962 to which President Kennedy

referred were the missile build-up inCuba and the immediate U.S. reactionto this threat. This was one of a seriesof incidents occurring since WorldWar II that endangered the democraticway of life, incidents effectively neu-tralized by the presence of powerfulU.S. carrier forces in the area.

The versatility of the current U.S.carrier fleet is largely due to the opera-tion of what the press has labeled“super-carriers,” heavy duty aircraftcarriers of the size, power, and potencyof the Forrestals and the nuclear-powered Enterprise. They had a diffi-cult birth.

In April 1945, owing to lessonslearned from their experience in com-

NOVEMBER 1963

By Scot MacDonald

bat, Carrier Task Force Commandersrequested heavier and larger aircraft toaccomplish war missions. An informalboard was appointed to consider thecarrier requirements of the U.S. Navy.The hulking CVB’s of the M i d w a yclass, which were readying for com-mission and combat duty, provided astopgap supply to the needs of theTask Force commanders. The ShipCharacteristics Board made variousstudies of the problem, and it was de-cided that the project should be madea design study for the 1948 shipbuild-ing and conversion program. Giventhe designation “6A Carrier Project,”one of the carriers was slated to bebuilt in the 1949 construction program.

Between 1945 and November 1948,some 78 different designs were madebefore final acceptance. On June 24,1948 Congress passed the Naval Ap-propriations Act of 1949. This pro-vided funds for construction of thecarrier. The contract was awardedNewport News Shipbuilding and DryDock Company.

In the planning stage, the new car-rier was to weigh 65,000 tons and havea 1030-foot flight deck, a 130-footwaterline beam, and four catapults.Architects went back to original Lang-ley, Ranger and Long Island designs bysweeping the flight deck clear of anisland structure. Instead, the carrierwas to have had a small island on anelevator apparatus, to be lowered dur-ing flight operations. This was one

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answer to a BUSHIPS objection to theflush deck design, predicated on thefact that a satisfactory method of dis-posing of stack gases had not beendeveloped.

All elevators were to be along thesides of the ship, with a large elevatorat the extreme after end of the flightdeck. Added strength of the flightdeck was to be made possible by reduc-ing the openings in the hangar sides,so that the ship, from the keel to theflight deck, could be considered as aunit, from the standpoint of strength.This would permit the operation ofaircraft well over 100,000 pounds.Adm. Marc Mitscher greatly influencedformation of the project, having been

aircraft carrier. At that time, criti-cism of the entire concept of carrierwarfare was again voiced by some mili-tary leaders. The carrier’s keel waslaid at Newport News on April 18.On April 23, the views of the JointChiefs were sent to SecDef and on thatsame morning Secretary Johnsonordered work on the carrier stopped.Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivanresigned in protest the next day.

There was no new carrier construc-tion in 1950. However, mid-yearevents caused Navy planners again torenew requests for heavy-duty carriers.On June 25, 1950, North Koreanforces invaded the Republic of Korea.Two days later, President Truman an-

of the new aircraft carrier known asthe United States, the construction ofwhich was discontinued April 23,1949, or the aircraft carrier authorizedin Public Law 3, Eighty-Second Con-gress, first session, it shall be namedthe Forrestal.”

At Newport News, the new carrierwas designated Hull Number 506.Her keel was laid on July 14, 1952.

Mr. Charles P. Roane, SupervisingNaval Architect, Aircraft CarrierType Branch, BUSHIPS, commented onthe Forrestal in the November 1952issue of BUSHIPS Journal:

“The Forrestal incorporates all ofthe developments from the other car-riers, plus those learned from the

THE FIRST of her class, Forrestal profited from lessons learnedfrom post-war des igns , part icular ly from the cancel led CVB-58.

A CRUSADER is launched by a powerful catapult system installedin Forrestal. Angled deck resulted from experiments in USS Antietam.

one of the Task Force commanderswho recommended heavier, more ver-satile carrier aircraft.

In July 1948, construction of thecarrier was approved by Congress andPresident Truman. In March the fol-lowing year, the President authorizedthe name for the new carrier; whencommissioned, she would become USSUnited States (CVB-58).

The events of April 1949 occurredwith stunning swiftness and to thisday are subject of discussion in somemilitary and political circles. On April13, funds were approved by the Houseof Representatives. Two days later,Secretary of Defense Louis Johnsonwrote to General Eisenhower, thentemporary presiding officer of the JointChiefs of Staff, requesting that theJoint Chiefs review the need for a new

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nounced he had ordered sea and airforces in the Far East to give supportand cover to Republic of Korea forcesand ordered the Seventh Fleet to takesteps to prevent an invasion of For-mosa. On July 3, carrier aircraft wentinto action in Korea. USS ValleyForge, with Air Group Five, and HMSTriumph, operating in the Yellow Sea,launched strikes on airfields, supplylines and transportation facilitiesaround Pyongyang, northeast of Seoul.

On July 12, 1951, the Navy Depart-ment announced a contract for a newlarge aircraft carrier (CVB-59), to bebuilt at Newport News. On July 30,Congressional action approved the con-tract. A joint resolution from CapitolHill proclaimed:

“Be it resolved that when and if theUnited States completes construction

United States. The increase in size ofthe Forrestal over the Midway classcomes about as a normal developmentin aircraft carrier design. With fourcatapults instead of the usual two andfour airplane elevators instead of theusual three, aircraft operations fromthis ship will be greatly improved.

“The new design was planned tomeet added requirements, such as theservicing and starting of jet aircraft,maintaining the electronic appliances onthe aircraft in a ready-to-go conditionwhile the plane is on the deck, blend-ing of aircraft fuels to get a fuel whichcan be used in jets without sacrificingthe gasoline capacity, and a flush deckwhere the navigating bridge can belowered or raised to suit operatingconditions. Stacks comparable to theRanger will be used. New type steels,the result of years of development, willgo into the construction.”

NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

The flush deck design barely leftthe drawing board before it waschanged. This design was advanced toprovide optimum landing area and toeliminate the hazard of island super-structure offered by the axial deck.At the end of W.W. II, however, theBritish developed the angled deck con-cept and operated lightly constructedtwin-engine attack planes from themarked-off deck of a British carrier.U.S. Navy pilots conducted similartest on the Franklin D. Roosevelt andthe decision to modify the flight deckof a U.S. carrier was made. Accord-ingly, the Antietam was reconfigured,landings and takeoffs were made usinga variety of aircraft, and a final de-tailed report on the evaluation of the“canted” or angled deck revealed thatthe operational trials met with a highdegree of success. As a result of theseexperiments, the Navy ordered a re-design of the deck and operating ar-rangements on the Forrestal and allfuture carriers, as well as reconfiguringmany of the existing carriers duringscheduled modernization periods.

When Secretary of the Navy Dan A.Kimball announced the awarding of acontract to Brooklyn Naval Shipyardfor the construction of USS Saratoga(CVA-60), he said it would be similarto the Forrestal. But design improve-ments in machinery since Forrestalinstallation were ordered to give Sara-toga a somewhat higher speed.

“The importance attached to thiscarrier [Saratoga] by the Navy Depart-ment,” Secretary Kimball said, “isemphasized by the Navy’s sacrifice ofother combatant ships in the 1953 pro-gram in order that a second large car-rier can be added to the Fleet.

“Although the ships sacrificed areurgently needed to augment the battlereadiness of the Fleet, the Navy de-cided that the need for the large air-craft carrier is even more urgent interms of national security.”

Forrestal was launched on December11, 1954, and christened by Mrs.James Forrestal. The ship was com-missioned at Norfolk Shipyard on Oc-tober 1, 1955. The carrier had anoverall length of 1036 feet, a width of252 feet, and nearly four acres of flightdeck. She displaced 59,650 tons andhad a horsepower rated over 200,000,and a speed over 30 knots. Four steamcatapults were installed. She had acomplement of 3500 officers and men,including the air group.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Air)James H. Smith, Jr., spoke at the com-missioning ceremonies. “If our way oflife is to survive,” he said, “we mustmaintain these two alternate militarypostures: the first is to maintain apowerful and relatively invulnerablereprisal force which will signal a poten-tial enemy to stop, look and listenbefore he risks an all-out atomic war.The second is to insure that we our-selves will not be forced to change thecharacter of a limited war because offear of ultimate defeat in a series ofthem. Fortunately, we need not main-tain a completely separate set of forcesfor each posture. In this ship and thevariety of aircraft she can service wecombine the two, and we add the multi-plier of the ability to appear quickly

at any one of the many far-flungtrouble spots. This is economy of force,achieved without sacrifice of our ob-jectives.”

USS Saratoga was christened at NewYork Naval Shipyard on October 8,1955. A few token feet of water weresplashed into the new ship’s dry-dockto “launch” her officially. She wasessentially similar to Forrestal but wasdesigned to develop considerably morehorsepower. She was commissionedApril 14, 1956.

Sister ship Ranger (CVA-61) hadone outstanding exception to distin-guish her when she was commissionedAugust 10, 1957. The angle of theafter flight deck was altered slightly,giving her an overall length of 1046feet, as compared to the 1039 of For-

USS INDEPENDENCE was commissioned at New York Naval Shipyard, the fourth aircraft carrierof the Forrestal class. This aircraft carrier had increased arresting gear capability installed.

NOVEMBER 1963 71

restal. Another innovation, an all-welded aluminum elevator, was in-stalled on the port side, replacing theconventional steel types used on otherForrestal- class carriers, To expediteher building, work was started in asmaller dock. About four monthslater, when the Forrestal was launched,the partially completed Ranger hullwas floated into the larger facility.

CVA-62, the USS Independence ,was constructed in Drydock 6 at NewYork Naval Shipyard, her stem at thehead of the drydock to facilitate mate-rial delivery over a truck ramp leadingfrom the head of the dock to thehangar deck at the stern. The islandand associated sponson “were not in-stalled in order to avoid blocking offthe large traveling crane. In August,the extraordinarily complex job oftransferring her to Drydock 5 wasaccomplished smoothly and efficiently.

Independence was commissioned atthe New York Naval Shipyard onJanuary 10, 1959, the fourth carrier ofthe Forrestal class to join the Fleet.

Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) and C o n -stellation (CVA-64) were essentiallydesigned along the Forrestal lines butdeveloped into a separate class, theKitty Hawk class. The major differ-ence is missile capability. Both CVA-63 and -64 are armed with Terriers.The fuel capacity in the Kitty Hawksis a little greater than the Forrestals,while avgas capacity is a little less.The angled part of the flight deck issome 40 feet longer and the catapults

USS KITTY HAWK, with Terrier missile capa-bility, became the first of a new class CVA.

and elevators have greater capacities.USS America (CVA-66), now beingbuilt at Newport News, will have aneven longer angled deck than any ofthe predecessors. Placed in the KittyHawk class, she is scheduled to becompleted in late 1964.

On February 4, 1958, Secretary ofthe Navy William B. Franke an-nounced that the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was to benamed USS Enterprise to perpetuatethe WW II carrier and her six prede-cessors. On that same day, the keel ofthe carrier was laid at Newport News.

On September 24 , 1960, Adm.

Arleigh Burke, then CNO, deliveredan address during launching ceremo-nies, in which he described the newcarrier.

“This new Enterprise, the largestship ever built, of any kind, by anynation, will be the eighth Navy ship toproudly bear that name. Her forbearshave left an enviable record, a recordof courageous, distinguished service.

“We are looking at a major advancein the art of nuclear engineering. . . .The problems which were solved, theknow-how that was developed in orderto build this ship, represent a tremen-dous contribution to our knowledge ofthe military and industrial uses ofnuclear energy.

“Her eight powerful nuclear reactorswould enable the Enterprise to cruise20 times around the world withoutrefueling. Her great endurance andher advanced hull design would allowthe ship to make this extraordinaryjourney at sustained high speed, ex-ploiting to its utmost the seagoing ad-vantage of mobility.”

From the very first, it was obviousthat designers and builders of New-port’s hull No. 546, the Enterprise,had hit the jackpot. For the first time,RAdm. F. S. Schultz, Assistant ChiefBUSHIPS , noted the customary builder’strials of a major combat ship wereeliminated, and the ship was presentedto the Navy for acceptance trials onher first trip to sea.

Enterprise returned to the shipyardafter her six-day Navy acceptancetrials in the Atlantic. A giant broom

USS CONSTELLAT ION (CVA-64), sister ship to Kitty Hawk, fires a class. The angled area of flight deck is some 40 feet longer than theTerrier missile. Basic design of the Kitty Hawks is of the Forrestal Forrestals, and catapults and elevators installed have greater capacity.

72 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS

was affixed to her masthead to signifya clean sweep of the trials. Capt. W. M.Ryan, President of the Naval Board ofInspection and Survey, stated:

“The ship generally performed in anexcellent manner. The cleanliness andupkeep were outstanding. The fineworkmanship throughout the ship re-flects great credit upon all hands con-cerned with its building. Like all newships there are bugs which must beworked out, but we feel that there isnothing that cannot be overcome.”

The plant for the nuclear-poweredaircraft carrier was designed under su-pervision of VAdm. Hyman Rickover.

Designated CVA(N)-65, Enterprisewas commissioned on November 25,1961, at Norfolk, with Capt. V. P.dePoix commanding. The world’s firstnuclear-powered carrier has a lengthof 1040 feet between perpendicularsand an extreme breadth of 252 on theflight deck. Each of the four deck-edge elevators cover about 4000 squarefeet. Enterpise is the first carrier tohave elevators for pilots in lieu of esca-lators. She displaces 85,350 tons.

The communications equipment onthe carrier is believed to be the largestassortment ever assembled on any ship.Besides more than 1800 telephones,there is the complexity of numerous

DOMINAT ING feature of Enterprise’s silhou-ette is her box-like island, prickling antennae.

radio circuits, teletypes, a pneumatictube arrangement to carry messagesfrom one station to another, and nu-merous announcing systems, several ofwhich have speakers throughout theship. She is the first ship of the U.S.Navy’s Atlantic Fleet to have theNavy Tactical Data System installed.

NOVEMBER 1963

The Enterprise is equipped with fourtype C-13 steam driven catapults withan energy potential of 60,000,000foot-pounds. With this power, an air-craft weighing 78,000 pounds can beaccelerated to 160 mph from a stand-ing start, in a distance of 250 feet.All of the aircraft aboard can belaunched at the rate of one every 15seconds while using all four cats.

The size of Enterprise’s island struc-ture was dictated by the size of thetwo radar screens that flank each of itsfour sides. This newly developed radarsystem is the most powerful to be in-stalled on a floating platform, accord-ing to Capt. de Poix. Its far-reaching,three-dimensional capability is en-hanced by its height above the waterline. The silhouette is distinctive.

“Propulsion and control characteris-tics of the ship offer great tacticalflexibility,” said Capt. de Poix in mid-1962. “There are four rudders, onealmost directly astern of each pro-peller. This provides excellent maneu-verability at all speeds as well as tacti-cal diameters in turns which comparewith much smaller ships. . . .

“Her ability to launch a strike onthe enemy from one position, recover,and launch another 24 hours laterfrom an unpredictable position morethan 800 miles away from her previousstrike position will constantly be afactor in causing the enemy to utilizeprotective forces that could be deployedelsewhere.

“If a show of force is required, En-terprise can be on distant station in ashorter period of time than any othership in the Fleet.”

73* U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1964 0—721-794