U.S. Aircraft Carriers In Action Part 1Warships #5 By Robert Stern

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Warships Number 5 Squadron/Signal Publications

Softbound 49 Pages

Introduction

The U.S. Navy had shown considerable interest in aviation as it emerged as a reliable technology at the end of the first and the beginning of the second decade of this century. But, in the U.S. Navy, as in other navies interested in aviation, there was a great deal of controversy over the best way to employ this new capability. There was disagreement even as to whether naval aviation should be considered an independent weapon, or simply an adjunct to the scouting forces in support of the battle line. The general success of aircraft in the land battles of the First World War very quickly led some Navy officials to push for experiments with combat aircraft at sea. Float planes were available, but these were too restricted by weather and sea conditions and were too encumbered by their floats to make effective combat aircraft. Shore-based naval aircraft were indistinguishable from their land-based counterparts, but they were too restricted in range to be an effective weapon over large areas of open water. Both the U.S. and British Royal Navy saw that the potential of this new weapon would be exploited only if the aircraft could be launched from and recovered on ships at sea.

The Royal Navy was the first to build one of this new breed of ship that would carry aircraft to sea. HMS FURIOUS had been launched as a light battlecruiser but was never completed as such. (Her two older sisters, COURAGEOUS and GLORIOUS were both later converted to aircraft carriers, similar to FURIOUS). She was converted prior to completion into a hybrid cruiser/aircraft carrier with a flight deck built up forward of her bridge. This stage of her conversion was completed during July of 1917. This configuration obviously provided the ability to launch aircraft off the bow, but made no provision for their recovery. It was proposed to attempt the recovery of aircraft by sided-slipping around the bridge structure while the ship steamed into the wind at high speed. This was tried only twice and on the second attempt the unfortunate pilot was killed and further attempts were forbidden.

Instead, the Royal Navy opted to modify FURIOUS with a large flying on deck aft of the funnel. This was completed in March of 1918. Narrow ramps on either side of the funnel and bridge allowed aircraft to be moved between the forward and aft flight decks. In this configuration, FURIOUS carried out the first naval air strike against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern. This pattern of flying on and flying off decks separated by a central superstructure proved dangerous, as well as inconvenient. Turbulence created by the superstructure, as well as hot gasses from the funnel, made recovery a dangerous exercise. The obvious solution was to delete the central superstructure and give FURIOUS a continuous flight deck. During 1922, she returned to the yard for yet another conversion.

The U.S. Navy was forced to follow suit. The theories of ADM Alfred Mahan, taken as gospel in the Navy of that time, stated that commercial rivalry led inevitably to naval conflict. By that standard, the British represented the major post-war threat to the US (of course, this thesis was offset by the sentiment of most officers that the two "Anglo-Saxon" powers would never go to war). To most officers in the U.S. Navy, the most likely enemy in the next war would be Japan, not Great Britain.

The U.S. had led early in the field of naval aviation, but had gotten seriously sidetracked during WWI into a reliance on float planes. At the end of the war, the U.S. found itself seriously behind the British. The Royal Navy had HMS FURIOUS and two other conversions nearing completion (ARGUS and EAGLE) and a purpose-built aircraft carrier under construction (HERMES). The General Board of the Navy met during early 1919, and recommended (in April) the conversion of the new collier USS JUPITER into a flush-decked aircraft carrier. On 20 March 1922, the first American aircraft carrier was commissioned as USS LANGLEY (CV-1). LANGLEY would remain with the fleet until 1936 when she was rebuilt as a seaplane carrier. Her slow speed (14 knots) and small size (13,000 tons) had left her incapable of handling the new generation of faster and heavier monoplanes under development (the Douglas TBD Devastator was accepted by the Navy during January of 1936). During the intervening years she served as the primary test bed for the tactics and technologies that led to the successful deployment of

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