Aircraft carriers are warships that evolved from balloon-carrying wooden vessels into nuclear-powered vessels carrying many dozens of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. Since their introduction they have allowed naval forces to project air power great distances without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations.
Balloon carriers were the first ships to deploy manned aircraft, used during the 19th and early 20th century, mainly for observation purposes. The advent of fixed-wing aircraft in 1903 was followed in 1910 by the first flight from the deck of a US Navy cruiser. Seaplanes and seaplane tender support ships, such as , followed. The development of flat top vessels produced the first large fleet ships. This evolution was well underway by the early to mid-1920s, resulting in the commissioning of ships such as Hōshō (1922), (1924), Béarn (1927), and the s (1927).
Most early aircraft carriers were conversions of ships that were laid down (or had even served) as different ship types: cargo ships, cruisers, battlecruisers, or battleships. During the 1920s, several navies started ordering and building aircraft carriers that were specifically designed as such. This allowed the design to be specialized to their future role, and resulted in superior ships. During the Second World War, these ships would become the backbone of the carrier forces of the US, British, and Japanese navies, known as fleet carriers.
World War II saw the first large-scale use of aircraft carriers and induced further refinement of their launch and recovery cycle leading to several design variants. The USA built small escort carriers, such as , as a stop-gap measure to provide air support for convoys and amphibious invasions. Subsequent light aircraft carriers, such as , represented a larger, more "militarized" version of the escort carrier concept. Although the light carriers usually carried the same size air groups as escort carriers, they had the advantage of higher speed as they had been converted from cruisers under construction.
Early history - balloon and seaplane carriers
The earliest recorded instance of using a ship for airborne operations occurred in 1806, when Lord Cochrane of the Royal Navy launched kites from the 32-gun frigate in order to drop propaganda leaflets. Military Ballooning During the Early Civil War, p 96, F. Stansbury Haydon, JHU Press, 2000, The proclamations against Napoleon Bonaparte, written in French, were attached to kites, and the kite strings were set alight; when the strings had burned through, the leaflets landed on French soil.Chambers's Supplementary Reader, p 12, W. and R. Chambers, BiblioBazaar, 2008,
Balloon carriers Over 40 years later, on 12 July 1849, the Austrian Navy ship was used for launching incendiary balloons. A number of small Montgolfiere hot air ballons were launched with the intention of dropping bombs on Venice. Although the attempt largely failed due to contrary winds which drove the balloons back over the ship, one bomb did land on the city.Military Aircraft, Origins to 1918, p 10, Justin D. Murphy, ABC-CLIO, 2005,
Later, during the American Civil War, about the time of the Peninsula Campaign, gas-filled balloons were used to perform reconnaissance on Confederate positions. The battles soon turned inland into the heavily forested areas of the Peninsula, however, where balloons could not travel. A coal barge, , was cleared of all deck rigging to accommodate the gas generators and apparatus of balloons. From the barge Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps, made his first ascents over the Potomac River and telegraphed claims of the success of the first aerial venture ever made from a water-borne vessel. Other barges were converted to assist with the other military balloons transported about the eastern waterways, but none of these Civil War craft ever took to the high seas.
Balloons launched from ships led to the development of balloon carriers, or balloon tenders, during World War I, by the navies of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Sweden. About ten such "balloon tenders" were built, their main objective being aerial observation posts. These ships were either decommissioned or converted to seaplane tenders after the war.
Seaplane carriers
The invention of the seaplane in March 1910, with the French Fabre Hydravion, led to development of the earliest ship designed as an aircraft carrier, albeit limited to aircraft equipped with floats, in December 1911 with the French Navy Foudre, the first seaplane carrier. Commissioned as a seaplane tender, and carrying seaplanes under hangars on the main deck, from where they were lowered onto the sea with a crane, she participated in tactical exercises in the Mediterranean in 1912. Foudre was further modified in November 1913 with a 10-meter flat deck to launch her seaplanes.Description and photograph of Foudre
, temporarily converted as an experimental seaplane carrier in April–May 1913, was also one of the first seaplane carriers, and the first experimental seaplane carrier of the Royal Navy. She was originally laid down as a merchant ship, but was converted on the building stocks to be a seaplane carrier for a few trials in 1913, before being converted again to a cruiser, and back again to a seaplane carrier in 1914. She was sunk by a German submarine in October 1914. The first seaplane tender of the US Navy was the , converted to that role in December 1913.
In September 1914, during World War I, in the Battle of Tsingtao, the Imperial Japanese Navy seaplane carrier Wakamiya conducted the world's first successful naval-launched air raids.Wakamiya is "credited with conducting the first successful carrier air raid in history"Source:GlobalSecurity.org"Sabre et pinceau", Christian Polak, p. 92. It lowered four Maurice Farman seaplanes into the water using its crane. These seaplanes later took off in order to bombard German forces, and were retrieved from the surface afterwards.IJN Wakamiya Aircraft Carrier
On the Western front the first naval air raid occurred on 25 December 1914 when twelve seaplanes from , and (cross-channel steamers converted into seaplane carriers) attacked the Zeppelin base at Cuxhaven.Barry Watts and Williamson Murray, "Military Innovation in Peacetime," in The attack was not a complete success, although a German warship was damaged; nevertheless the raid demonstrated in the European theatre the feasibility of attack by ship-borne aircraft and showed the strategic importance of this new weapon.
The Russians also were quite innovative in their use of seaplane carriers in the Black Sea theatre of World War I.
Many cruisers and capital ships of the inter-war years often carried a catapult-launched seaplane for reconnaissance and spotting the fall of shot. Such seaplanes were launched by a catapult and recovered by crane from the water after landing. They were successful even during World War II. There were many notable successes early in the war, such as 's float-equipped Swordfish during the Second Battle of Narvik in 1940, which spotted for the guns of the British warships, helping to sink seven German destroyers, and sank the with bombs. The Japanese Nakajima A6M2-N "Rufe" floatplane, was derived from the Zero.
Genesis of the flat-deck carrier
As heavier-than-air aircraft developed in the early 20th century, various navies began to take an interest in their potential use as scouts for their big gun warships. In 1909 the French inventor Clément Ader published in his book L'Aviation Militaire the description of a ship to operate airplanes at sea, with a flat flight deck, an island superstructure, deck elevators and a hangar bay. That year the US Naval Attaché in Paris sent a report on his observations.
A number of experimental flights were made to test the concept. Eugene Ely was the first pilot to launch from a stationary ship in November 1910. He took off from a structure fixed over the forecastle of the US armored cruiser at Hampton Roads, Virginia and landed nearby on Willoughby Spit after some five minutes in the air.
On 18 January 1911, he became the first pilot to land on a stationary ship. He took off from the Tanforan racetrack and landed on a similar temporary structure on the aft of anchored at the San Francisco waterfront—the improvised braking system of sandbags and ropes led directly to the arrestor hook and wires described below. His aircraft was then turned around and he was able to take off again.
Commander Charles Rumney Samson, Royal Navy, became the first airman to take off from a moving warship, on 9 May 1912. He took off in a Short S.38 from the battleship while she steamed at during the Royal Fleet Review at Weymouth, England.
Flat-deck carriers in World War I was arguably the first active aircraft carrier, as she carried armed seaplanes for use in combat and military operations. She was originally laid down as a merchant ship, but was converted on the building stocks to be a hybrid airplane/seaplane carrier with a launch platform. Launched on 5 September 1914, she served in the Dardanelles campaign and throughout World War I. The ship proved to be too slow to work with the Grand Fleet and for operations in the North Sea in general, so Ark Royal was ordered to the Mediterranean in mid-January 1915 to support the Gallipoli campaign.Friedman, p. 28
was the first ship to be designed with the same basic features as modern aircraft carriers, as she was the first aircraft carrier to be equipped with a flight deck for airplanes, although her initial flight decks were in two portions and therefore were not continuously full-length with the ship. This ship was rebuilt in 1925 with a full-length flight deck, and served in combat operations during World War II. Since was a seaplane carrier, she had no actual flight deck; the planes that she carried would take off and land on the sea, and would then be hoisted aboard by shipboard cranes.
During World War I the Royal Navy used to experiment with the use of wheeled aircraft on ships. This ship was reconstructed three times between 1915 and 1925: first, while still under construction, she was modified to receive a flight deck on the fore-deck; in 1917 it was reconstructed with separate flight decks fore and aft of the superstructure; then finally, after the war, she was heavily reconstructed with a three-quarter length main flight deck, and a lower-level takeoff-only flight deck on the fore-deck.
On 2 August First attack using an air-launched torpedo, from a Short Type 184 seaplane flown by Flight Commander Charles H. K. Edmonds from seaplane carrier .Sturtivant (1990), p.215269 Squadron History: 1914–1923
On 2 August 1917, Squadron Commander E.H. Dunning, Royal Navy, landed his Sopwith Pup aircraft on in Scapa Flow, Orkney, becoming the first man to land a plane on a moving ship. He was killed five days later during another landing on Furious.
Of carrier operations mounted during the war, one of the most successful took place on 19 July 1918 during the Tondern raid, when seven Sopwith Camels launched from HMS Furious attacked the German Zeppelin base at Tondern with two bombs each. Several airships and balloons were destroyed, but as the carrier had no method of recovering the aircraft, two of the pilots ditched their aircraft in the sea alongside the carrier while the others headed for neutral Denmark. This was the first ever carrier-launched airstrike.Probert, p. 46
Inter-war years