Aircraft Carriers - From Kite Carriers to Conversions (1800-1928)

[Music] [Music] so this month's patreon special video request was a history of aircraft carriers all the way up to USS Nimitz now obviously I'm not gonna be able to do all of that at once but I guess this is therefore the start of a somewhat long burning series somewhat akin to the origins and development of destroyers which we've done two out of three sections of so far so with that said let's get on with the early part of the history of aircraft carriers the use of ships as platforms for aerial warfare or reconnaissance was not a new thing around the time of World War one which is when most people think about the aircraft carriers initially developing and the use of vessels for this purpose goes back quite a way with some efforts even made in the early 19th century with the use of kites to drop propaganda messages and then later on to launch various incendiary balloons which could technically be considered the world's first air raid in this respect therefore the world's first naval air strike could be considered to have been launched by the Austrian Navy ship SMS a volcano which launched a series of incendiary balloon attacks on Venice and managed to land one bomb in the city as balloons became more and more common for observation purposes in the latter half of the 19th century the use of ships for this purpose became more and more common with the Americans leading the way with a small barge used to tow Union Army observation balloons in the American Civil War as it was found that operating in the deep interior of the United States it was much easier to transport the balloon it's gas generators of ropes crew etc via a ship rather than try and haul everything over the rolla inhospitable terrain that still characterized rather large chunks of the American continent whilst these balloon carrying vessels would see their heyday towards the end of the 19th and into the early 20th century as mobile and immobile observation posts giving their ships that they were working with significantly greater line-of-sight they generally tended to be decommissioned or to other uses by the end of World War one although it would see a brief resurgence in World War two supporting blimps and balloons in anti-submarine and anti-aircraft roles these uses of shipping for aerial purposes aside the first ships designed to carry heavier than air aircraft showed up starting around about 1910 in this era most of the development was conducted by surprisingly enough the French Navy alongside the Royal Navy the Japanese Navy and the US Navy with some contributions from other navies these first ships were seaplane carriers rather than the more conventional flat-topped aircraft carrier that we might think of today and so as such they tended to resemble cargo ships sometimes with hangars on the deck and sometimes with big hatches leading to a hangar within the hull and the sea planes would be craned out onto the water where they would do their own takeoff and landing operations before being winched back aboard the ship these were brought about mainly because the reconnaissance value and to a small extent the strike value of aircraft had been recognized fairly early on but early aircraft were very short range and so for most powers that possessed navies that had to go anywhere beyond their own coastlines aircraft would not really part of the equation when it came to land-based units since the land-based unit would never be able to keep up with the fleet however the seaplane carrier offered an ability to take aircraft with you and thus utilize their greater reconnaissance capability wherever you happened to be in the world these first seaplane carriers were led by the French food through then HMS Hermes which was first protected Cruiser then converted into a seaplane carrier in the Royal Navy the USS Mississippi in the US Navy and the WAC amia in the Japanese Navy the outbreak of World War one shortly thereafter would see the first offensive use of aircraft launched from ships with the Japanese steep line carry out work amia conducting what's technically the world's first naval launched raid by heavier-than-air aircraft in september 1914 during the siege of Tsingtao this would be followed three months later by the Royal Navy sending three seaplane carriers they've converted from small cross channel steamers to launch a seaplane raid at the Zeppelin base at cooks Haven which like the Japanese efforts was something of a mixed success further operations by seaplane carriers were primarily undertaken by the British and surprisingly enough the Russians during World War one but again these are not the aircraft carrier that we all know and love this is merely the preliminary and so that brings us up to the genesis of the actual flat deck aircraft carrier which is the main subject of this video and indeed this video series again the first ideas for an aircraft carrier were published by the French similar to the French leading on the sea plane carrier front specifically in 1909 this rather farsighted comment was made by a French inventor in a book called lava sea on militare he said an airplane carrying vessel is indispensable these vessels will be constructed on the plan are very different from what is currently used first of all the deck will be cleared of all obstacles it will be flat as wide as possible without jeopardizing the nautical lines of the hull and it will look like a landing field whilst he was of course entirely correct and his findings were widely read in naval circles at the time the development of the heavier-than-air flat deck aircraft carrier would leave the French behind at this point for a considerable period instead a number of firsts would be achieved in the development of the ship with the first first if you won't like being undertaken by the US Navy specifically the u.s. armored cruiser USS Birmingham where pilot Eugene Eli would become the first man to launch an aircraft from a ship rather than have the ship put the aircraft in the water succeeding on the 14th of November 1910 with this a rather perilous take off from the downward sloping ramp on the prow of the ship which was designed to give him a bit more speed he did not however return to the ship and instead landed nearby on a conventional runway leaving the landing aboard ship for the next year when in January 1911 he would become the first pilot to land on a ship albeit that both takeoff and landing had been stationary this time there was a temporary landing structure on the aft of the USS Pennsylvania and having considered that if he didn't stop quickly enough he'd slam straight into the rear mast there was a simple braking system consisting of a number of ropes with heavy sandbags attached which the aircraft would hopefully grab onto which was a direct predecessor of the arrestor hook and wire system which is still in use by today's aircraft carriers having now established that you could in fact take off and land with a wheeled aircraft on a warship the next stage was to try and do so when the warship was underway ie a moving target the take off part of this was actually easier on a moving ship since although there was obviously pitch and roll to take account of the ship moving forward provided an additional bit of air flow over the aircraft's wings of thus making it easier to take off landing on a moving warship however was something of a greater challenge since obviously your runway kept moving away from you and there was also at this point the ship's funnel smoke and the rather interesting turbulence generated by the ship's superstructure to contend with nevertheless the first successful takeoff from a moving warship would take place in May 1912 launching from the battleship HMS Hibernia in the Royal Navy as she steamed merrily along at about 15 knots whilst the much easier to convert seaplane carrier remained the most common aircraft carrying vessel during the first world war what could arguably be said to be the first modern aircraft carrier in concept also came about in the First World War this was the first carrier HMS Ark Royal she was something of a hybrid being able to carry and launch both sea planes and a wheeled aircraft using both cranes and a small flight deck on the bow of the ship however she could not recover wheeled aircraft the sea planes of course could land alongside and be winched back on board but the wheeled aircraft once launched had to go and land on more conventional runways then be recovered back onto the ship via crane and barge for such an early vessel she'd have a surprisingly long career surviving in active service until the latter part of the Second World War in various roles however in this early developmental stage she would see out World War one developing a number of the mission profiles that aircraft carriers would later become fairly widely known for including aerial reconnaissance and he submarine patrols and even naval strike when she attempted to launch a bombing mission against the ex German battle cruiser go burn as well as making a number of raids against land targets during the war the British were pretty much the only Navy that were able to make significant advancements in aircraft carrier technology this was for a number of reasons whilst the Japanese had their seaplane carrier their overall involvement in the surface naval war was relatively small and with little to no aerial opposition in the areas that they were operating in the WAC amia was perfectly serviceable the German Navy in theory had support from a Zeppelin arm and in any case was operating at relatively short ranges and had much bigger problems to worry about than diverting money and a valuable hull into an experimental type of warship the French of course were mainly involved with the land war and so their Navy was largely neglected the Russians were in a similar situation and the American Navy was still incredibly strapped for cash by Congress and was more concerned with trying to build up some form of force to keep it itself up to date with the latest developments in battleship technology this left of Royal Navy as the only force with the requirement for such a vessel the money to afford it and the technology to implement it whilst Ark Royal was gaining valuable experience it was necessarily limited by its layout and its size but even the Royal Navy couldn't afford to pull a major hull offline at the conversion into a carrier which was still necessarily an experimental vessel but they were very lucky in as much as Fischer had managed to get HMS furious built and whatever questions you might have about HMS glorious and HMS courageous and they would be many and they would be valid there was an even bigger white elephant under construction the HMS furious whereas courageous and glorious had gone with a pair of twin 15-inch gun turrets furious had been designed with a pair of single monstrous 18-inch guns and if you've watched any of the videos covering the various failings of glorious and courageous you'd know that sticking an even heavier even more violent gun on a hull of that kind of design was a recipe for disaster the Royal Navy broadly agreed and furious would never be completed with its a fore and aft 18-inch gun armament instead it would be launched and brought into service with its aft single 18 inch gun in place but the forward part of the ship converted to have a large flying off deck thus incidentally making furious the most heavily armed aircraft carrier for surface gun engagements in the history of the world in this configuration the Furious would become the first ship to receive a successful landing by an aircraft whilst the ship was underway as squadron commander Dunning of the Royal Navy Air Service managed to pull off this feat on the 2nd of August in 1917 it was however fraught with risk as he had to fly alongside the ship through the turbulence generated by the superstructure and the funnel then sideslip his aircraft around the front of the ship going around the superstructure and then put down on a very short bit of deck just how dangerous this was became apparent 5 days later when Dunning attempted another landing except during the sideslip wind caught under his port wing and flipped the aircraft over the edge unfortunately he was knocked unconscious in the crash and drowned in his cockpit with it being evident that even a highly skilled pilot like Dunning would not be able to utilize the forward deck of the Furious the landing purposes the ship was taken back into the dockyards and reconstructed with the aft 18-inch gun removed and a separate landing deck installed on the back instead these two decks were connected by a pair of humped ramps that ran either side of the ship's superstructure and which could if you folded the wings of aircraft allow for aircraft be moved from the landing deck to the forward deck ready for takeoff however whilst this layout was nowhere near as dangerous as the first layout there will still a major issue with wind turbulence being created by air moving around the ship's superstructure and of course the stream of hot exhaust gasses coming from the ship's funnel which made landing an interesting experience to say the least as well as fact that both decks were relatively short and therefore could only operate light biplanes albeit that the rear deck was also found to be a relatively suitable landing spot for small airships as modeled here in this format furious was able to launch a number of air attacks including a relatively successful one at another German Zeppelin base this time in tanden when Sopwith camels launched from the ship would be able to destroy a number of airships and balloons as well as their hangars however the camel being a relatively heavy fighter for the day was not able to use the aft deck for landing and so the ship was not able to conduct the full spectrum of carrier operations with some of the aircraft diverting for Denmark and two of the others ditching their aircraft alongside the ship to be recovered sans camel as World War one drew to a close it was fairly obvious that the aircraft carrier was indeed a useful part of the future battle fleet and a number of different carriers were under construction none of these however were purpose-built carriers they were various conversions primary amongst them was HMS Argos at the first ship to have a full-length flat deck which was converted from Linna data gathered from this ship was used partly in the design for a conversion of the former Chilean battleship Alma Dante Cochran now HMS Eagle as she was converted into a carrier as well initially unlike Argos which had no superstructure whatsoever Eagle was designed to have two islands one on either side of the flight deck but upon revision of the data provided by flight trails from the argus the portside island was eliminated and so Eagle would have only a starboard Island setting something of a trend that would continue through to today this was a rather important innovation as based on data from HMS furious and HMS Argos it was noted that most of the time when pilots are bought at their landing they tended to turn left for various human reasons and this was the primary factor behind the removal of the port island as opposed to the starboard island also in 1918 work on the first purpose-built aircraft carrier as opposed to a conversion had begun with the laying down of the keel of HMS Hermes carriers in various nations now began to follow thick and fast with the following year the Japanese carrier hosho being laid down like was being at the Japanese Navy's first purpose-built carrier in 1920 the US would start off its carrier fleet with the conversion of the kolya USS Jupiter to the carrier USS Langley and finally the furious having given good service and data so far was taken in hand in 1921 for the removal of the superstructure and funnel and the installation of its own continuous flight deck at this point it looks like the Royal Navy was going to retain a substantial leading carrier technology as most of the carriers being built which to be fair included the Hermes hovered around the 10,000 ton displacement mark give or take a few thousand tons and with a length of between 550 and 600 feet generally the only exceptions to this being HMS Eagle converted as we said before from a battleship which loaded it in at just over 20,000 tons and 667 feet long which was a fair bit bigger and topping the table was of course hms furious which was slightly heavier at 22,500 tonnes and was well over 700 feet long thus giving the Royal Navy the two biggest carriers in the world by a considerable margin it's interesting to note that whilst these ships carried a variety of gun armaments every single one of them still carried a number of surface only weapons whether these be four five or six inch guns as it was still envisaged that a carrier might well have to defend itself from a surface attack this was to the extent that some of carriers at the time had surface action guns but didn't have any anti-aircraft guns which seems somewhat paradoxical given their role even though it must be said most of them did have some form of anti-aircraft defense various experiments were still ongoing to work out just exactly how a carrier should work with ships such as Langley Argus and furious once it'd been completed as a full deck carrier having no superstructure above the flight deck whereas other carriers such as Hermes Eagle and Howe show as completed all had starboard side Islands arrestor gear existed although with the full length carriers now available this wasn't necessary so much to make sure the aircraft stopped as aircraft landing speeds and weights were still quite low in this period it was more to do with making sure the aircraft in Tanvir off over the side a number of other features were also being tested such as open vowels versus enclosed hurricane bells whether or not it served any useful purpose to have the deck sloped as furious when commissioned had a deck that sloped gently up on the aft section and gently down for the forward section the idea being that an aircraft that was landing would be landing uphill and the slow down faster whilst an aircraft that was taking off would roll downhill and would therefore gather a bit more speed before going over the front on HMS furious the largest of the Prix Washington treaty carriers to additional features were being tested one was the secondary flight deck as the aircraft carrier was long enough that you could open up the hangar deck at the front to allow lighter aircraft such as fighters to take off straight from there which theoretically doubled your launch capability the main flight deck terminated in an unusual and distinctive elliptical shape with very rounded edges this was as a result of Windtunnel testing that suggested that this particular form would minimize turbulence compared to a flat edged deck or the more pointed decks which aligned with the shape of the ship's boughs that would appear in many other carriers at this period but as the 1920s dawned a major change was coming to the world of aircraft carriers in the form of the Washington Naval Treaty although the Washington Naval Treaty was primarily designed with regulating the surface gun based fleets of the various participant nations especially when it came to things like how big a battleship should be and how big its guns should be it also provided for regulations on aircraft carriers limiting their displacement excluding a number of negotiated possible conversions and also setting an upper limit on the overall displacement of each nation's aircraft carrier fleet within which of course they could build as many carriers as they like the displacement limit at 27,000 tons was however considerably larger than even HMS furious it also limited the carriers to no more than 10 heavy guns of a maximum calibre of 8 inches thus ruling out the battle carrier concept but also contained a number of telling clauses for example the carrier was also defined by a lower limit on displacement of 10,000 tons which meant that the 10,000 ton and below carriers that were currently in service didn't actually count towards the treaty and any aircraft carrier that was then in service or building was declared to be an experiment and not counted towards the total carrier displacement there was one further clause which would be the single biggest step change in carrier building at the time which was that each signatory would be allowed to take to existing capital ship holes in for convergent carriers and with these the displacement limit would be raised to 33,000 tons with various large warships building at the time and now having to be canceled this clause had been inserted mostly at the demand of the US delegation which had a number of Lexington class battle cruisers nearing completion supported by the Japanese who likewise had the large Amagi class battle cruisers under construction the British in theory could likewise have taken two of their g3 class battle cruisers in for conversion but as these ships had barely even begun whereas the AMARG ease and the lexington's were somewhat more advanced they didn't really feel like going through the expense of building these colossal ships hulls up whilst a margies hull would be damaged quite badly in an earthquake and therefore need to be scrapped her sister ship a car G would continue the conversion process with the Tosa class battleship hull carga being substituted for a marque in the carry conversion process this would give the Japanese two very different fleet carriers although both of them would be of considerable size as opposed to the Americans who were able to take the two most advanced Lexington class battle cruisers Lexington and Saratoga and begin work on cutting them down into a pair of sister ship carriers the British would instead take in fewer asses half-sisters glorious and courageous for conversion although individually these ships displaced considerably less than a Lexington or an Amagi they were still of a fairly considerable size the French also managed to get a carrier out of this with the Normandy class battleship hull burn being converted into a fleet carrier but to be perfectly honest the less said about that the better whilst these new larger carriers were of considerable size they didn't come anywhere close to using up the full displacement allotted to each nation in the Washington Naval Treaty and so designs would begin in the mid to late 1920s for further carriers to use this displacement but we'll look at those a little bit later but now the era of the full-size fleet carrier had arrived albeit I said they were all conversions the purpose-built carriers at this point now being second line units as they were smaller slower and had capacity for significantly less aircraft whilst this conversion work was going on the Japanese carrier hosho had its small starboard island removed becoming a flush deck carrier instead there is sometimes a little bit of disagreement as to what constitutes the first purpose-built aircraft carrier in the world with arguments between Hermes and hosho going back and forth to be honest the answer could be read either way hosho was the first purpose-built aircraft carrier commissioned coming into service in December 1922 however Hermes was the first to be designed and laid down as Hermes was laid down in 1918 and hoja in 1919 as we've already covered but the construction of HMS Hermes was repeatedly delayed by the Royal Navy wanting to see what the outcome of trials with HMS Argos and HMS Eagle would be and thus she would only commissioned in February 1924 anyway this spate of conversions pushed the United States from very much on the back burner and being the only one of the three Washington Naval Treaty powers to enter into said treaty without a purpose-built carrier either in service or under construction up to having arguably the most powerful carriers in the world although the Japanese ACOG he comes close second at the simple fact of the matter is that thanks to the sheer insanity of the Lexington class design as battle cruisers they actually made for pretty good aircraft carriers being incredibly long incredibly fast and the lightweight protection and other construction that would have probably doomed them to a short and farri and as battle cruisers was perfectly serviceable for a carrier indeed the only major negative you could point to on Lexington and Saratoga at this time was the fact that they had a significant 8-inch gun armament which was right at the edge of the Washington naval treaties allowances and I used up a awful lot of weight that could probably been put to better use elsewhere cargo suffered from being a converted battleship much like HMS Eagle and thus had a significantly lower speed than a car G Lexington Saratoga courageous glorious or furious due to their physically smaller size and the fact that the British didn't practice deck parking as a way of storing aircraft nor did they tie aircraft up as spares at the top of the hangar roof the courageous furious and glorious could take considerably fewer aircraft than the Japanese or American carriers but on the plus side furious was a useful fleet unit but the British had managed to get her classed as an experimental unit since she'd been under construction at the time of the Washington Naval Treaty and so in terms of the larger fast carriers they managed to get three out of the deal plus Eagle whilst the Americans had to Lexington and Saratoga and the Japanese likewise had to with a cog in cargo like HMS furious glorious and courageous came out of their conversions with an elliptical rounded front to their flight deck which was also somewhat shorter than the total length of the ship allowing for the upper hangar to sport a small secondary flying off deck this feature was even more pronounced in the two Japanese carriers as both of their hangar decks opened on two small flight decks resulting in a three tier stepped appearance when they first came out of dock the lexington's by contrast completed their conversion with the fully enclosed bow and a full-length flight deck like HMS Hermes and this perhaps also accounts for its larger aircraft compliment as there was a bit more space in the hangar deck forward so let's round out this first video with a look at some of the more important features of each of these first generation of fleet carriers if you want to know more about each of these carriers careers statistics etc etc most of them already have five-minute guides which hopefully will be showing up as cards at the moment in approximate order of usefulness going up towards the most useful ineffective ships we'll start off with HMS Eagle as we mentioned before she was a converted battleship and suffered from a maximum speed of about 24 to 25 knots as a result although initially in the 1920s this was not a massive hindrance considering the relatively low takeoff speed of biplanes at the time this would of course affect her operability as aircraft became heavier and needed for higher takeoff speeds as time went on it also limited her strategic usefulness because of course she couldn't proceed to her destination anywhere near as fast as and as other carriers could in an emergency on the other hand her bow was built up all the way to the flight deck which rendered her somewhat more seaworthy than many other carriers of this era thanks to the fact that she could work her way through heavy seas without significant amounts of water potentially risking ingress into the hangar deck or at least slowing the ship down with an overall length of 667 feet and six inches she was also the shortest of the full fleet carriers that were present in the 1920s and obviously this would also limit her ability to operate aircraft in the future her overall air group consisted of a couple of squadrons and a few loose aircraft next up was furious which of course had been through numerous iterations of layout as a carrier and as a result her capability suffered somewhat compared to her half sisters nevertheless in her post Washington form she was still relatively quick at 30 knots and could take more aircraft than Eagle with a total three squadron capacity although this was normally broken up into flights of six aircraft as opposed to whole squadrons since it was felt that certain types a of aircraft such as Scouts were not needed in full squadron strength she was a true flat top with no island and her funnels were trunked to either exhaust through grates in the rear of the flight deck or out the sides of the ship when landing with operations were underway this was however not particularly satisfactory as the amount of trunking needed the fact that it intruded onto the hangar decks attended to make the rear of the ship somewhat oven-like when the funnels were in full operation which wasn't very pleasant and in any case the smokin exhausts that were vented still caused problems with turbulence and visual distortion for aircraft that were coming in to land an issue that would have to be addressed in later refits her upper hangar possessed doors at the front which allowed access to a small secondary flying off deck which at this stage in carry development allowed her to continue to launch aircraft that were relative relatively light payloads such as fighters Scout aircraft and lightly loaded strike aircraft whilst landing procedures were underway on the upper flight deck she could also launch sea planes from this lower flight deck although they had to grease up the deck which I'm sure led to many hilarious occurrences as this lowered the friction coefficient which then allowed the wooden floats of the sea planes to skid relatively easy down and away into the air then you have courageous and glorious like furious they could make around 30 knots but unlike their half sister they could carry substantially more aircraft again this time with an overall force squadron capacity unlike furious both glorious and courageous would complete with starboard side islands which incorporated their funnels which meant relatively little trunking was needed to redirect the exhaust from the layout of the ship's original funnels which was largely responsible for the increase in hangar space which allowed for the carriage of more aircraft as just mentioned like their half sister they also had an opening up a hangar deck with a short flying off ramp which again allowed for the operation of light aircraft during landing operations the ship's pilots also had a much easier time of landing in general since the funnel arrangement incorporated into the island meant that the smoke and turbulence caused by said funnel was generally high enough away from the flight deck that aircraft could land without interference again in a manner similar to furious they had a theoretical for squadron capacity both courageous and glorious at this point would generally operate flights of aircraft with each flight consisting of six airframes rather than the four squadrons for the same reasons as Fury's mentioned earlier then we have the Japanese carrier kaga she was never intended as a carrier at the time of the Washington Naval Treaty instead the Japanese were supposed to convert the hulls of the battle cruisers Amagi and ACOG II unfortunately a massive earthquake can basically wrecked the incomplete hull of Amagi and so they were left with having to dragooon at the hull of the Tosa class battleship carga in instead this resulted in a number of limitations which is why Kagura is appearing in this list before Akagi II such as the fact that as an ex battleship hull despite the higher original speed of the Tosa class compared to the almiranta letour a class that had made gone into making HMS Eagle she was still limited to around 28 knots even after the lightining process that necessarily comes from removing heavily armored turrets bar bets and main armor belts of all the non British carriers cargo was most like furious upon completion with no island and massive trunking carrying her funnel smoke away from the original location of her planned funnels unlike furious systems she didn't have to switch between two different options but the two massive trunks running down either side of the ship were about as successful at getting smokin turbulence away from the aircraft themselves and this proved rather problematic in operations like glorious courageous and furious cargo also embraced the idea of launching aircraft from its hangar decks although it took it a step further than the British with both main hangar decks being able to launch aircraft in a three-tiered step system that included obviously the upper flight deck cargo also possessed a third auxilary hangar deck further down in the ship although this was of relatively limited size unlike the British ships however the front of her various flight decks were not elliptical and rare it off to decrease turbulence as it doesn't appear that this distinctive multi tier approach to the flight decks was in any way a former cross-pollination but rather a example of convergent evolution in ship design as completed she could carry 60 aircraft a figure even higher than courageous and glorious reflecting the greater size of the Tosa class battleship hull even compared to the large light cruisers that the British cares had been based on although her overall theoretical capacity was somewhat limited by the multi stepped approach to flight decks which of course used up a valuable volume that might have been used for aircraft storage something that would be addressed later down the line next we have the Japanese carrier a car key thanks to being a converted a Mark II class battle cruiser she was even longer than cargo and due to being a battle cruiser she had a lot more engine power in place to start with thus making her the fastest of all the carriers we've considered so far in her initial carrier form a corgi proved capable of just over 32 knots and since the swiveling funnel arrangement that had been trialed on hosho had proven unsuccessful a car key was given a different form of funnel system compared to both Russia and carga as this was still very much an experimental field in a car G's case this took the form of two funnels mounted on the starboard side near the front of the ship one was curved down quite significantly to direct its exhaust downwards into the ocean and the second one just behind it came up to the level of the flight deck although it wasn't an ideal arrangement compared to the funnel layout of courageous and glorious and as we'll see soon the American conversions it was significantly superior and used significantly less displacement and space compared to cargas system like carga a car he completed with a three tier flight deck system with the two lower flight decks being extensions of the upper and lower primary hangar decks and like kaga she had a small supplementary third hangar deck below the two main hangar decks which was used mainly for the storage of spare and reserve aircraft it should be noted of course that Akagi completed her trials before carga so when we say it was like kaga that's only in the context of this video where we've already talked about cargo in actuality it should really be said that cargo was like a car key since a car key trialed all these things first also in common with both cargo and furious a car G completed without any island superstructure as completed again thanks to the lost storage volume caused by the tiered flight deck system a car G could carry 60 aircraft although being a larger ship thanks to being a NEX battle cruiser these aircraft were carried with significantly more comfort and spacing and then they were on cargo unlike almost any other carrier of this period all of which carried some form of anti surface armament akagi's was not carried in just casements or just her 'its but a mixture of the two will be at most of her 8-inch guns were encasements but she also had a pair of twin gun turrets mounted on the flight deck that extruded from her upper hangar deck which meant that pilots taking off had to take off between the two gun turrets a feature only shared with cargo and then we come to the two carriers converted from battle cruisers that quite definitively take the top spots when it comes to this first generation fleet carrier USS Lexington and USS Saratoga now to be fair basing themselves on Lexington class battle cruisers did give them something of an advantage to start with as they were by far the largest base hulls used in conversions but they had a number of other features in them that contributed to them taking the top spot beyond simple size they were the fastest of any of the carrier's we've mentioned at just over 33 knots maximum speed thanks to the rather insane amounts of engine power that the Lexington class battle cruisers had been expected to carry they were also the only fleet carriers of this period with the exception of HMS Eagle to go with the multiple hangar deck multiple flight deck arrangement instead they had a single massive hangar running the entire length of the ship which along with the fully enclosed bow which gave them significant seakeeping meant that they could carry the largest air group of any of the carriers we've mentioned so far as designed these two carriers could carry 78 aircraft apiece although this would later be increased still further as a thanks to having the single massive hangar as opposed to the two or in some cases three hangars of other carriers there was a huge amount of overhead space and some enterprising officer very quickly figured out that spare aircraft could simply be lashed to the beams and girders that made up at the top of the hangar and the lower part of the flight deck which increased the theoretical carrying capacity of the carrier beyond this original 78 number although of course these spare aircraft it didn't count towards what the carry could actually put out as a strike package since they would have to be brought down only when aircraft were written off through combat damage accidents or never came back through losses nonetheless it provided the carrier's with a significant amount of reserve air power to supplement their standard service squadrons which would allow them to launch multiple full strength strikes assuming nothing went terribly wrong and only normal losses were encountered simply by winching down the aircraft that were stored overhead and sending them out to make up the numbers unlike everybody else who carried their anti-surface weapons either fully encasements or in a car keys case in a mixture of casements and turrets the lexingtons anti surface armament was carried exclusively in turrets with what was effectively a heavy cruisers worth of 8-inch guns mounted in four twin turrets in super firing pairs at either end of the superstructure which took the form of a starboard side island albeit that the island itself was a relatively small structure backed by a colossal single funnel that Truong the massive output of the ship's power plant up into the sky well away from the flight deck and making this class of carrier therefore the best and easiest to operate aircraft from both in takeoff and landing they also included a basic flywheel powered catapult system although as it turned out it was a relatively unnecessary feature thanks to the relatively light load and short takeoff distance of aircraft of the 1920s thanks to their unusually heavy anti surface armament almost as much of the island that wasn't funnel was taken up with the concerns of fire control and direction of the eight inch twin turrets as was taken up by space for flight operations when operating in northern waters one of the more favored spots for crew to operate on on these carriers was on an observation deck that was actually built into the forward casing of the funnel since the rising warm funnel gases kept this area nice and cozy in even the worst of weather although for rather obvious reasons it was a relatively unpopular posting when operating in these somewhat warmer climes of the Central Pacific also unlike practically every other fleet carrier that we've considered so far the lexington's didn't need to have their main armor belt significantly reduced in thickness you could argue this was a poor reflection on the original Lexington class battle cruiser as the armor belt was thoroughly inadequate for a main gun jewel but on the other hand it meant that all they had to do was shave a bit off the top to reduce overall weight and the Lexington's existing belt armor could stay in place thus reducing costs whereas on practically every other fleet carrier of the period the main armor plate had to be removed entirely and thinner armor plate installed instead overall then the fleet carrier forces left to the three major navies as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty were a somewhat eclectic bunch with a variety of capabilities Japan was left with the smallest overall Air Group with a combined total air group of 120 aircraft although this was not to be completely unexpected as Japan had of course been allocated less tonnage at the treaty compared to the Royal and United States Navy's of course it bears repeating we are only talking about fleet carriers in this comparison so we're not including hosho Hermes Langley and Argos in this calculation interestingly enough largely thanks to the fact they've managed to squeeze furious and Eagle into the experimental category that therefore didn't need to be counted the British actually had the largest overall aircraft carrier Strike Group available with a combined total of 162 aircraft available compared to the 156 aircraft available on the to American fleet carriers the British also had the largest number of hulls available as both the Japanese and the Americans had to fleet carries apiece whilst the British had made out with the two courageous class plus furious and of course Eagle but of course as may be guessed from the fact that they had doubled the number of holes that compared to the United States Navy but only six more aircraft and their combined strike package individually each Royal Navy carrier was significantly weaker in terms of overall strike power and of course with those 8-inch guns on the Lexington's also in anti surface combat capability apart from the overall technical lead that the Royal Navy initially held thanks to having developed aircraft carrier technology for a lot longer the only other advantage to this multiple hull approach of the Royal Navy's was the fact that it could have a carrier in more places and than the other two powers but at the in the end if you were going to turn up to a single location with a carrier a Lexington was far and away the most capable unit that you could show up with of course this was the dawning of the fleet carrier and so every single one of these ships came with various faults and issues that needed to be rectified by modernization xandrie fits in the upcoming few years as well as obviously the carrier tactics of each nation and needing to be developed but that's a subject for another video the next video will cover the lessons learned modernizations and reef its inherent to the carriers that we've been discussing in this video and we'll then look at the 1930s carrier building program enacted by the three nations but that's a video for another time and so we'll leave you today with thanks for listening and hope see you again in another video that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for drydock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 436,007

Rating: 4.932827 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Aircraft Carriers, World War 1, Washington Naval Treaty, Wakamiya, HMS Hermes, HMS Argus, HMS Furious, Bearn, HMS Glorious, HMS Courageous, HMS Ark Royal, USS Langley, USS Lexington, USS Saratoga, Kaga, Akagi, Hosho

Id: DZA2NwyEdK4

Length: 47min 39sec (2859 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019