An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for staging aircraft operations. Carriers have evolved since their inception in the early twentieth century from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons to nuclear-powered warships that carry numerous fighters, strike aircraft, helicopters, and other types of aircraft. While heavier aircraft such as fixed-wing gunships and bombers have been launched from aircraft carriers, these aircraft have not landed on a carrier. By its diplomatic and tactical power, its mobility, its autonomy and the variety of its means, the aircraft carrier is often the centerpiece of modern combat fleets. Tactically or even strategically, it replaced the battleship in the role of flagship of a fleet. One of its great advantages is that, by sailing in international waters, it does not interfere with any territorial sovereignty and thus obviates the need for overflight authorizations from third-party countries, reduces the times and transit distances of aircraft and therefore significantly increases the time of availability on the combat zone.
USS Enterprise (CVN-65), formerly CVA(N)-65, is a decommissioned United States Navy aircraft carrier. In 1958, she was the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the eighth United States naval vessel to bear the name. Like her predecessor of World War II fame, she is nicknamed "Big E". At 1,123 feet (342 m), she is the longest naval vessel ever built and the only ship of a class that was originally planned to have five other ships. Her 93,284-long-ton (94,781 t) displacement ranks her class as the third largest carrier class, after the Nimitz class and the Gerald R. Ford class. Enterprise had a crew of some 4,600 service members.
USS Forrestal (CVA-59), was a supercarrier named after the first United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. Commissioned in 1955, she was the United States' first completed supercarrier, and was the lead ship of her class. The other carriers of her class were USS Saratoga, USS Ranger and USS Independence. She surpassed the World War II Japanese carrier Shinano as the largest carrier yet built, and was the first designed to support jet aircraft.
USS Randolph (CV/CVA/CVS-15) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II for the United States Navy. The second US Navy ship to bear the name, she was named for Founding Father Peyton Randolph, president of the First Continental Congress. Randolph was commissioned in October 1944, and served in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning three battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier (CVA), and then eventually became an antisubmarine carrier (CVS).
USS America (CVA/CV-66) was one of three Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1960s. Commissioned in 1965, she spent most of her career in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, but did make three Pacific deployments serving in the Vietnam War. She also served in the Persian Gulf War's operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
The fifth USS Independence (CV/CVA-62) was an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. She was the fourth and final member of the Forrestal class of conventionally powered supercarriers. She entered service in 1959, with much of her early years spent in the Mediterranean Fleet.
CAM ships were World War II-era British merchant ships used in convoys as an emergency stop-gap until sufficient escort carriers became available. CAM ship is an acronym for catapult aircraft merchant ship.
HMS Eagle was an Audacious-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, in service 1951–1972. Until the arrival of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers in the 21st century, she and her sister Ark Royal were the two largest Royal Navy aircraft carriers ever built.
The Centaur class aircraft carrier was the final iteration of the 1942 Design Light Fleet Carrier developed by the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy during the Second World War. They were designed in 1943 to operate higher-performance aircraft than the preceding Majestic-class aircraft carrier. Four ships were laid down in 1944-1945 and completed in 1953-1959. Rapid developments in carrier warfare and technology overtook the ships even as they were under construction, and the associated costs of modernization led to ships being completed to different specifications. Only the last ship, HMS Hermes (R12), was fitted as a modern fixed-wing carrier; she was also the last of the class to retire in 2017 as INS Viraat.
The Dornier Do J Wal ("whale") is a twin-engine German flying boat of the 1920s designed by Dornier Flugzeugwerke. The Do J was designated the Do 16 by the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) under its aircraft designation system of 1933.
Richard Noel "Dick" Richards, , is a retired American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, chemical engineer, and a former NASA astronaut. He flew aboard four Space Shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Dornier Do 18 was a development of the Do 16 flying boat. It was developed for the Luftwaffe, but Luft Hansa received five aircraft and used these for tests between the Azores and the North American continent in 1936 and on their mail route over the South Atlantic from 1937 to 1939.
The Aichi M6A Seiran is a submarine-launched attack floatplane designed for the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. It was intended to operate from I-400 class submarines whose original mission was to conduct aerial attacks against the United States.
HMS Avenger was a Royal Navy escort aircraft carrier during the Second World War. In 1939 she was laid down as the merchant ship Rio-Hudson at the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Company yard in Chester, Pennsylvania. Launched on 27 November 1940, she was converted to an escort carrier and transferred under the lend lease agreement to the Royal Navy. She was commissioned on 2 March 1942.
Modern United States Navy aircraft carrier air operations include the operation of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft on and around an aircraft carrier for performance of combat or noncombat missions. The flight operations are highly evolved, based on experiences dating back to 1922 with USS Langley.
HMS M2 was a Royal Navy submarine monitor completed in 1919, converted in 1927 into a submarine aircraft carrier. She was wrecked in Lyme Bay, Dorset, Britain, on 26 January 1932. She was one of three M-class boats completed.
In the armed forces, most often in military aviation and in land-based missile forces, an alert crew is a group of members of units and formations that maintains a group level of combat readiness. Although it sometimes encompasses the entire unit, today the term is more used for a set group of individuals.
Aircraft carrier air operations include a launch and recovery cycle of embarked aircraft. Launch and recovery cycles are scheduled to support efficient use of naval aircraft for searching, defensive patrols, and offensive airstrikes. The relative importance of these three missions varies with time and location. Through the first quarter-century of aircraft carrier operations, launch and recovery cycles attempted to optimize mission performance for ships with a straight flight deck above an aircraft storage hangar deck. Carrier air operations evolved rapidly from experimental ships of the early 1920s through the combat experience of World War II.
The Essex class was a class of aircraft carriers of the United States Navy. The 20th century's most numerous class of capital ship, the class consisted of 24 vessels, which came in "short-hull" and "long-hull" versions. Thirty-two ships were ordered, but as World War II wound down, six were canceled before construction, and two were canceled after construction had begun. Fourteen saw combat during World War II. None were lost to enemy action, though several sustained crippling damage. Essex-class carriers were the backbone of the U.S. Navy from mid-1943 and, with the three Midway-class carriers added just after the war, continued to be the heart of U.S. naval strength until supercarriers joined the fleet in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Several of the carriers were rebuilt to handle heavier and faster aircraft of the early jet age, and some served until well after the Vietnam War.
Fujian, named after Fujian province, is the third aircraft carrier of the Chinese aircraft carrier programme and the first of the Type 003 class. Built by the Jiangnan Shipyard for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), Fujian was launched on June 17, 2022 and is currently fitting out as of January 2024. It is China's first CATOBAR aircraft carrier with a fully indigenous design, an integrated propulsion system and three electromagnetic catapults, unlike the ski-jump flight decks of the previous Chinese aircraft carriers.
