Aircraft Carriers

Aircraft Carriers. Invented by the British during World War I, the aircraft carrier was adopted by the United States and Japan as an experimental weapon to augment the battle line. In contrast to the Japanese, whose fleet and carriers were designed for defensive operations in the western Pacific, the U.S. Navy planned for an offensive, transpacific war all the way to Japan and created the long‐legged “fast” (33‐knot) carrier to operate over those great distances. The navy first converted a collier (coaling ship) into the 11,050‐ton carrier Langley (CV‐1 “V” being the symbol for heavier‐than‐air craft), commissioned in 1922. Then it converted two battle‐cruiser hulls, as allowed by the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty, into 36,000‐ton fast carriers of the Lexington class. While the 542‐foot Langley experimented with fighter and scout planes in fleet maneuvers during the 1920s, the navy developed dive‐bombers and torpedo planes for the new 888‐foot‐long carriers. As soon as the Lexington and the Saratoga joined the fleet, Adm. Joseph Mason Reeves placed squadrons of all four plane types aboard them, a total of eighty planes per carrier. With the Saratoga, he launched a successful surprise mock attack on the Panama Canal during Fleet Problem IX in 1929. This demonstration of offensive carrier air power established the foundation of U.S. carrier aviation for the rest of the century.

During the war games of the 1930s, similar aggressive attacks struck the Hawaiian Islands, including Pearl Harbor; West Coast seaports; and defending fleets and land‐based air forces. Traditional battleship admirals often minimized these achievements and argued for using the carriers with the battle line, but this only inhibited their mobility and made them vulnerable to air, ship, and submarine attacks. The Lexington‐class carriers mounted a defensive battery of eight 8‐inch and twelve 5‐inch guns. In fact, their own fighter planes and escorting gunships provided the surest defense. So newer carriers, built from the keel up as carriers, mounted only eight 5‐inch guns. Flight decks were made of wood so that bombs would not explode until they struck the hangar deck, enabling planes to keep operating during battle.

The stunning Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by planes from six Japanese carriers on 7 December 1941 proved decisively the offensive power of fast carriers. It was, however, uncharacteristic of Japanese warships to operate so far from home waters. Adm. Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, therefore instituted wide‐ranging offensive hit‐and‐run raids with the six available carriers to keep the Japanese off balance. Their most aggressive leader was Adm. William F. Halsey, who even launched James Doolittle's army bombers from the Hornet to strike Tokyo in April 1942. U.S. carriers won naval victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, the Battle of Midway in June, and the battles around Guadalcanal between August and November, sinking several Japanese carriers—four at Midway alone. But one by one all U.S. carriers were sunk except for the Saratoga and the Enterprise, and even these two were heavily damaged. The reasons included imperfect tactics and damage control, inferior aircraft, inadequate numbers of fighter planes, ships, and antiaircraft guns, and insufficient reconnaissance.

These lessons were applied to the construction of two dozen new fast carriers of the Essex class, which entered the fleet in 1943. At 27,100 tons, the 872‐foot Essexes each embarked an air group of three squadrons: thirty‐six fighters, the superior F6F Hellcat; thirty‐six dive‐bombers, first the SBD Dauntless and later the SB2C Helldiver; and eighteen torpedo bombers, the TBF/TBM Avenger. All three types performed scouting functions too, but the greatest innovation for detecting enemy planes was the installation of shipboard search radar, enabling fighter director officers to coordinate their fighters out to 100 miles from the carrier. In addition, antiaircraft defenses included twelve 5‐inch/.38‐caliber guns and numerous 40mm and 20mm batteries on each carrier. Nine 11,000‐ton light carriers (CVL) of the 31‐knot Independence class, converted from cruiser hulls between 1941 and 1943, added additional offensive punch; each operated twenty‐four fighters and nine torpedo bombers. Circular screens of new escorting fast battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, all bristling with antiaircraft guns, surrounded the carriers in each tactical formation.

Organized in the Fast Carrier Task Force of some fifteen carriers and 1,000 planes, these carriers provided the overwhelming firepower that spearheaded the Central Pacific offensive of 1943–45. Their optimum effectiveness occurred under the sagacious leadership of Adm. Marc A. Mitscher as the fast carriers overcame virtually all enemy opposition. The only major changes were the introduction of four‐plane night fighter teams aboard each Essex, three carriers equipped primarily for night operations, and an increase of fighters, including the F4U Corsair, over bombing planes to counter the kamikazes, Japanese suicide planes. Only one of the new fast carriers was sunk, the light carrier Princeton, off Leyte.

In the Atlantic, to defeat Germany's U‐boats, the navy depended on small, slow 18‐knot escort carriers (CVE), eighty‐four of which were commissioned. There were four major classes of CVEs, some converted from oilers but most mass‐produced; they varied in size between 7,800 and 11,400 tons, and each carried a composite air group of nine fighters and twelve torpedo bombers. Operating primarily as an independent hunter‐killer group, each escort carrier worked in concert with its five destroyers and destroyer escorts to track down and sink most of the U‐boats destroyed between 1943 and 1945. Many of them also operated in the Pacific, where fighters outnumbered torpedo bombers in providing close air support during amphibious assaults. Light construction made the escort carriers especially vulnerable, and several were sunk by bombs, gunfire, submarine torpedoes, or kamikazes.

Three large (CVB) 45,000‐ton, Midway‐class carriers, commissioned after the war ended, featured armored flight decks in order to nullify bomb hits. Each had a 986‐foot flight deck and a 137‐plane air group of fighters and dive‐bombers. The future of the carrier and its vulnerability to nuclear weapons became a cause of bitter controversy in the late 1940s, a controversy complicated by interservice rivalry. The navy depended upon the older Essexes in the Korean War (1950–53). Their air groups were comprised of F4U fighter bombers, F9F jet fighters, and piston‐engine AD (later A‐1) Skyraider attack planes. Atomic bombs were first deployed aboard carriers in the early 1950s.

The Korean War and the menace of the Soviet Union served to stimulate new carrier construction. During the 1950s and 1960s eight attack carriers (CVA, later CV again) belonging to the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk/America classes were built. Each displaced 56,000 to 61,000 tons and had 1,046‐foot flight decks to accommodate new and heavier planes. Air groups (later air wings) were comprised of up to 100 fighters and attack planes, mostly jets. The major fighters were F‐8 Crusaders and F‐4 Phantoms IIs, the bombers A‐1s, A‐3 Skywarriors, A‐4 Skyhawks, A‐6 Intruders, and A‐7 Corsair IIs. Cruising endurance was greatly increased with the commissioning in 1961 of the first nuclear‐powered carrier (CVN), the 75,700‐ton Enterprise, which did not require refueling at sea. To deal with the large Soviet submarine force, thirteen Essexes were redesignated as antisubmarine carriers (CVS) between 1954 and 1973; these operated S‐2 Tracker pison‐engine search planes and H‐34 Seabat and H‐3 Sea King antisub helicopters. All of these carrier types and planes supported ground operations during the Vietnam War (1965–73). In addition, three converted Essexes acted as amphibious‐assault helicopter personnel carriers (LPH) during the 1960s, until superseded by the Iwo Jima (LPH) and Tarawa (LPA) classes (landing platform, helicopter or assault) built specifically for that purpose.

During the 1970s, doctrinal confusion and criticism over retention of the large and seemingly vulnerable attack carriers continued. They were retained because of repeated crises in the Middle East and the growing Soviet surface fleet, which though basically defensive, included a few carriers. Eight 81,600‐ton nuclear‐powered carriers of the Nimitz class with 1,089‐foot flight decks were added between the late 1960s and late 1990s to begin replacing older oil‐fueled ships. Each was accompanied by a protective screen of missile‐bearing escort ships and formed a carrier battle group. They provided the core of the offensive power projection that effectively deterred the Soviet Navy. F‐14 Tomcat fighters and F/A‐18 Hornet fighter attack planes joined the carriers during the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, along with S‐3 Viking antisub jet search planes to augment E‐2 long‐range early warning radar carrier aircraft.

Throughout the Cold War, attack carrier strength remained fairly constant between twelve and fifteen, but even the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–90 did not diminish the need for carriers to help deter and quell global tensions. Thus, six carriers participated during 1990–91 in the Persian Gulf War. The continuing requirement for such large numbers of these extremely versatile carriers has been governed by the fact that, generally, for every carrier operating on station, one is home‐ported undergoing refit and overhaul, and another is in transit to or from the operating area. In this way, the United States has maintained the long‐legged global reach of its naval power.
[See also Fighter Aircraft; Navy Combat Branches: Surface Forces; Navy Combat Branches: Naval Air Forces.]

Bibliography

Stefan Terzibaschitsch , Aircraft Carriers of the U.S. Navy, 1980.
Norman Friedman , Carrier Air Power, 1981.
Stefan Terzibaschitsch , Escort Carriers and Aviation Support Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1981.
Norman Friedman , U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History, 1983.
Clark G. Reynolds , The Fighting Lady: The New Yorktown in the Pacific War, 1986.
George C. Wilson , Supercarrier, 1986.
Edward P. Stafford , The Big E, 1988 repr.
Clark G. Reynolds , The U.S. Fleet‐in‐Being Strategy of 1942, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 58 (1994), pp. 103–118.
Theodore Taylor , The Magnificent Mitscher, 1991 repr.

Clark G. Reynolds