Evolution of American Aircraft Carriers

the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is often described as one of the most dangerous places to work in the world because of numerous aircraft landing taxing or taking off in a relatively small confined area moreover there are rockets fuel catapults and the resting wires which have plenty of potential for things to go wrong any job that requires you to be on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is considered the most dangerous job classification in the u.s navy according to one study during a 15-year period 918 dec personnel were injured that included 43 fatalities 47 disabilities and the rest sustaining major injuries over 90 percent of all accidents were attributed to human error modern aircraft carriers are much safer and more efficient than ever before every 37 seconds they can launch two aircraft and recover one in daylight that said in the recent years the injury rate has fallen to as low as 30 incidents per 100 000 aircraft recoveries but this wasn't always the case in this video we'll take you on a journey of how aircraft carriers evolved to what they are today with a focus on pivotal design changes the most significant design change in the newest fourth class carrier is so subtle straightforward and long-term vision that the chances are it's not what you think on november 14 1910 the u.s navy successfully launched an airplane from a light cruiser uss birmingham two months later the first arrested landing occurred on board uss pennsylvania these two events were considered the starting point of american naval aviation but a true game changer came 12 years later when a seven-year-old collier uss jupiter was converted to an aircraft carrier and renamed uss langley with a 542 feet long flight deck and retractable mass and exhaust pipes uss langley had a flush deck design uss langley was an experimental ship so it was not restricted by naval treaties its goal was to figure out a basic doctrine on how to operate an aircraft carrier as the first landings and takeoffs occurred the u.s navy gained invaluable experience in the flight deck of uss langley as experimentation continued arresting wires and catapults were tested modified and improved let's not forget that in this process many airplanes crashed flipped and nosedived pilots were injured there were even a few fatalities but they were determined and eventually they got it they figured it all out even though at a great cost the earlier arresting systems were weight based with the initial system relying on sandbags the wires were suspended about 10 inches above the deck and this worked but was by no means perfect as it would result in what was called instrument phase the instrument phase was a distinguished mark of langley pilots as they spent five years figuring out the basic operations on the carrier and oftentimes during unsuccessful landings the pilot's face would smash against the instrument panel wiping out teeth and breaking noses it was rough the weight-based system was in use until the 1930s after that it was replaced by hydraulic cylinder type arresting gear which allowed for landing of heavier aircraft at higher speeds [Music] uss lexington and uss saratoga were the first two american carriers to feature islands the biggest benefit of the island was redirecting exhaust plumes up and away from the flight deck the biggest downsides were increased air turbulence and decreased clearance on the flight deck the island superstructure was a great hazard to landing aircraft but its benefits outweighed the risks the islands on both carriers were installed on the starboard side of the carrier this was intentionally done because propeller planes would inherently swing to the port site due to the torque effect of the propeller spinning clockwise pilots had to correct for this during takeoff and landing and thus it made sense to have the island on the starboard side another benefit was that it was easier for the aircraft carrier to navigate in smaller channels lexington-class carriers were originally laid down as battle cruisers after world war one however during construction they're modified to be aircraft carriers lexington and saratoga proved extremely successful as aircraft carriers and they convinced the u.s navy of the value of large carriers lexington-class carriers were almost 900 feet long had a top speed of up to 35 knots and carried about 90 aircraft they had two elevators and a giant hangar divided by a fire curtain the height of the hangar was not exceeded until mid 1950s lexington and saratoga were the largest aircraft carriers in the u.s navy until 1945 during peacetime between world war 1 and world war ii lexington saratoga and langley often engaged in war game exercises this is when many strategies on how to best utilize aircraft carriers were developed carriers battleships and other surface combatants were split into two teams and were presented with various problems to solve fleet problem 10 involved testing shore and naval defenses of panama canal against a battleship attack in a daring move uss saratoga separated from the fleet with a single escort cruiser to make a white sweep to the south and attack the panama canal the airplanes were launched at 2 o'clock in the morning while being 200 miles at sea at dawn the panama logs were hit with a dive bombing attack the defenders were taken completely by surprise the effectiveness of this attack was the beginning of carrier center task force as was advocated a year later by lieutenant commander forest sherman in the early days of aircraft carriers if the airplane failed to catch the arresting wire it was improbable that it would take off again for this reason barrier wires were installed to prevent aircraft from crashing into the crew and other airplanes that were parked in front of the landing area crashing into the barrier wires would usually result in damage to the airplane and injuries to the pilot but it was much better than the alternatives if an airplane landed successfully the barrier wires which were installed three to four feet above the flight deck would be lowered so the airplane could taxi over them in 1931 uss ranger was laid down this was the first american ship to be designed and built from the ground up as an aircraft carrier during the design phase ranger was conceived to have a flushstick design just like the langley but during construction an island superstructure was added due to the washington naval treaty ranger was a relatively small carrier having a displacement of about 14 000 tons while the vessel was still under construction the u.s navy realized that the minimum effective size of a carrier was at least 20 000 tons so in a way ranger was obsolete even before its construction was completed due to budget cuts as a result of the great depression a lot of design features were removed from the carrier such as extra elevators elimination of catapults simplified fire control and so on but it did still feature weapon elevators and it appears to be the first carrier to ever have them uss ranger was kind of a flop considering it was built from the ground up as an aircraft carrier she was deemed too slow to operate in the pacific so she missed most of the action during world war ii instead she was deployed in the atlantic and after the war was sold for scrap yorktown class and wasp class were the last carriers limited by the washington treaty there were three ships in the yorktown class including uss enterprise and uss hornet uss wasp was the sole ship of her class yorktown class carriers had been given an extra elevator since the existing two elevators on the lexington class were proven to be inadequate [Music] deck edge elevators were first introduced on uss wasp as an experiment and were later incorporated into the essex class carriers if the legacy elevator ever broke and got stuck in the down position that would affect flight deck operations but having an elevator on the side would not compromise the carrier's operations deck edge elevators would become the norm in the future carrier designs another benefit of this design was increased deck space when the elevator was in the up position as it provided additional parking space sx class carriers were the most numerous class of capital ships built in the 20th century in total 24 ships were built out of the 32 that were ordered during world war ii since the class was not limited by naval treaties it was about 60 feet longer and 10 feet wider than the previous yorktown class as the airplanes kept getting larger and heavier a lot of attention was directed towards the larger size of the flight deck and the hangar space below other innovations of the sx class include a torpedo protection hanger deck armor and the bulbas bow by the way the bulbous bow always looks like that even when the ship is not excited early flight decks were made of wood and no armor this made the flight deck lighter which lowered the ship's center of gravity the wood was also easy to repair the issue was that bombs could easily penetrate the flight deck and reach both the hanger deck and even lower decks pre-world war ii carriers such as yorktown and wasp class had little to no armor this was a severe design flaw which was even acknowledged during the construction phase but nothing could be done because the carriers had a restricted tonnage limit due to the treaty the absence of armor on uss wasp proved fatal when she was lost due to a torpedo attack in 1942 similarly uss yorktown was lost during the battle of midway and uss hornets was lost during the battle of santa cruz islands meanwhile none of the essex class carriers were lost during world war ii as these ships were much more heavily armored specifically a two and a half inch hanger deck armor was introduced on the sx class these carriers did take a lot of beating from bombs suicide planes and fires but none were lost uss franklin was the most heavily damaged carrier during world war ii that still survived she was badly damaged by a japanese air attack in march of 1945 but still managed to return home on her own power similarly uss bunker hill was severely damaged by two kamikazes within a 30-second period she also survived and made it back to pearl harbor from the lessons learned during world war ii a decision was made to start adding armor to flight decks the midway class of three carriers received a three and a half inch armor plating at the deck level and two inch plating at the hangar level midway was the first class of american aircraft carriers which had armor protection for hangers of course the downside of adding all this armor was increased top heaviness of the vessel which resulted in poor seaworthiness as the flight deck would get washed over during higher sea states the midway class carriers were capable of embarking as many as 137 aircraft but it was deemed impossible to operate more than 120 from a single carrier midway class carriers in their original configuration were the last ships to be limited by the panama canal locks limit size in other words the next carrier class was going to be a super carrier i've been meaning to share with you where the not what you think magic happens and this is it but before we go into the next segment i also want to share with you this photo of my studio i'm sitting in that chair right now and speaking into that microphone see a few weeks ago i took an iphone photography course on skillshare who's the sponsor of today's video and i want to share with you some of the before and after photos and what i learned while following through each lesson with my instructor dale i learned why you shouldn't always put the subject of your photo right in the middle how to draw focus to an object and how to make a photo capture the sort of feeling that you want to convey simply by changing angles lighting and post editing photos right on my phone i don't mean just adding filters on skillshare you can learn anything from mindfulness and yoga to music production to learning and investing in cryptocurrencies all through easy to follow professionally made videos with no advertisements as opposed to the one you're watching right now the best part is my first thousand viewers who click the link in the description can get a free trial of their premium membership to explore their creativity accomplishing growth is extremely satisfying i hope skillshare and i can be part of that journey for you by the end of world war ii it became clear that the future of naval aviation was in jets but this meant that carriers needed to be modified in order to accommodate these heavier and faster jet aircraft the modifications varied from simpler things like adding a jet engine test facility at the fantail area of the carrier to major modifications like a complete redesign of the flight deck the angled deck was first tested in 1952 by the british and later by americans on uss antietam which was a modified essex class carrier antietam's flight deck angled 10 and a half degrees to the left of the longitudinal axis jet aircraft's higher speed would have required the entire length of the centerline flight deck to arrest the airplane on landing which would have meant no aircraft could take off if one was landing obviously very inefficient but an angled flight deck allowed for simultaneous launch and recovery operations of aircraft but even more importantly the new design fixed another big issue because now airplanes that failed to catch an arrester cable could accelerate and relaunch without any risk to the parked aircraft in the front the trials on uss and titan were so successful that the u.s navy decided to retrofit angled flight decks onto most of the sx and midway class carriers jet aircraft presented another major issue to the carrier's operations what happens in the event of an emergency landing in case a tail hook or landing gear breaks simple barrier wires may not be sufficient to stop the aircraft so barricades were invented to deal with this problem a barricade is an emergency recovery system that can be set up within minutes it relies on webbing that consists of upper and lower horizontal loading straps that transfer the energy of the landing aircraft to the arresting engines below the deck while barricade engagements are rare they have saved numerous lives the fourth soul class of four ships was the first class of super carriers forestalls were about 25 larger than their predecessor midway class specifically they were 100 feet longer and nearly 20 feet wider additionally a deeper hull resulted in much better sea keeping than the previous class while still incorporating an armored flight deck originally forestall and saratoga were laid down as axial deck carriers but during construction both were converted to angled deck ships this allowed for a larger island roomier hangars and better damage control forestall class also had four catapults and four elevators compared to just three of each on the midway class as the first super carrier forrestal's design was not mature so some mistakes were made in particular the positioning of the port side elevator was problematic to say the least as it was located at the four of an angled deck next to the catapults and this severely limited flight operations whenever the elevator was in the down position this issue and other ones were fixed in the future kitty hawk class carriers as the elevator was moved to the aft end of the angled deck kitty hawks were essentially forestalls with a few improvements like the angled deck being 40 feet longer larger fuel tanks repositioned elevators and installation of terrier missile launchers in total three kitty hawk class carriers were built with the fourth one uss john f kennedy being considered as a subclass due to many minor design changes jfk was originally supposed to be a nuclear-powered carrier but due to budget cuts was converted to be a conventionally powered carrier and she was the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier built for the us navy you may be wondering why we haven't talked about catapults yet well the reason is that prior to world war ii they were seldomly used even by the end of the war it was estimated that about 40 of the aircraft launches relied on catapult but in the early 50s with the rise of super carriers and jet aircraft catapults became essential after the war commander c c mitchell of the royal navy developed a steam-based catapult system which was both effective and efficient in launching jet planes the united states navy was very impressed with this british invention and immediately bought five steam catapults one was used for testing in philadelphia navy yard uss hancock and uss hyken deroga also got two catapults each and then project steam was born during which sea evaluations of these new catapults were conducted a variety of jet aircraft were tested with these new steam catapults propeller airplanes were tested as well overall the trials were extremely successful the most significant attribute of steam catapults was consistent acceleration for most of its stroke after the end of project steam the us navy adopted steam catapults on all of its carriers an interesting tidbit is the two extensions at the end of the forward catapults which were called the bridal catcher the bridle would link the shuttle to the aircraft and would pull it down the catapult's track at increasing speed at the end of the catapult track the aircraft would depart into the air and the bridle would be flung out into the sea unless the carrier had a bridle catcher which would recover the bridle so it could be used again but modern carriers do not use bridle catchers anymore as bridles are now obsolete instead the catapult launch bar is directly attached to the nose gear of the aircraft during the early days of naval aviation pilots relied entirely on their visual perception of the landing area as well as the aid of landing signal officers or lso lsos utilized colored flags cloth paddles and lighted wands while lsos are still used today in the u.s navy an optical landing system does most of the ball work originally developed by the british after world war ii optical landing systems or ols was deployed on american carriers in 1955 which greatly improved safety on the flight deck the original optical landing systems relied on a concave mirror that was gyroscopically controlled on the port side of the flight deck but the next generation of ols which are also referred to as the lens consists of a row of green lights called datum lights and a column of vertical lights an amber light called the meatball travels up and down the column depending on the relative position of the aircraft to the flight deck if the meatball is above the green light the aircraft angle of approach is too high if the amber light is below the green light the aircraft is too low and if the meatball is in line with the datum line the aircraft is on the right track at any given point the lso is in control of the lens and also in contact with the pilot via radio the lso would also operate wave off lights which are red flashing lamps that instruct the pilot to go full power or go around the original idea was that the ols would completely eliminate the need for landing signal officers but when the ols was introduced the accident rate actually went up prior to using the lens the accident rate on american aircraft carriers was 35 per 10 000 landings after the introduction of the lens without the lso it went up significantly but when the lens was combined with the lso the accident rate dropped to 7 per 10 000 landings in 1957. sometimes technology or personnel alone are not sufficient for a better outcome but combining the two was truly a great leap forward towards safer flight operations on the carriers which is still in use to this day the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier took three years to build at a cost of 4.16 billion dollars uss enterprise also known as big e had eight a2w nuclear reactors each replacing one of the conventional boilers being nuclear powered meant that uss enterprise could cruise around the world for 20 years before needing refueling simultaneously the us navy was building smaller nuclear surface combatants such as uss bainbridge and uss long beach as it was envisioned at the time that the future of american navy was nuclear but cost overruns prevented this from happening as big e was the only one built out of the six carriers originally planned with a displacement of 93 000 tons she was quite something the longest naval vessel ever built big e had four rudders which was two more than any other carrier and she had the most amount of electronics installed on her at the time that included 1800 telephones for a crew of six thousand the unique square-shaped island was a result of the most powerful radar system installed at the time the scanfar radar was a long-range air search and target acquisition radar which relied on vacuum tubes and consumed a lot of power as you can imagine it took a lot of space inside the island scanfar was one of the earliest phased array radars a worthy predecessor to the future am spywan radar that is used in the modern aegis combat system the flight deck is a dangerous place to be as there are a lot of things that can go wrong the following two accidents are prime examples of how the u.s navy learned about how simple flight deck operations can result in huge loss of life in 1969 uss enterprise was almost lost due to a single rocket an md-3a huffer a tractor-mounted unit used to start aircraft had its exhaust positioned two feet away from a zuni rocket attached under the wing of an f4 phantom bomber the exhaust heated the rocket in excess of 320 degrees fahrenheit which caused a rocket to explode the blast damaged the phantom's fuel tank from which burning jet fuel poured onto the deck that set off a chain reaction with more planes and bombs exploding nearby uss bainbridge and uss rogers rushed to help it took four hours to extinguish the fire sadly 28 sailors lost their lives and over 300 were injured 15 aircraft were destroyed and the flight deck took some major damage two years earlier in 1967 a similar accident happened aboard uss forrestal a zuni rocket was missing a safety pin and during the switch from external to internal power an electrical power surge occurred which caused the rocket to fire into the external fuel tank of an a4 skyhawk the resulting fire from the spilled jet fuel started a series of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. the uss enterprise and forest stole fires prompted the navy to revise its operational procedures such as better weapon handling improved firefighting better communication between key senior personnel and educating the flight deck crew on subjects such as ordinance cook-off temperatures and times the 10 nimitz-class carriers are the workhorses of american naval aviation the carriers can operate over seven types of aircraft and carry up to a maximum of 90. during flight operations on a flight deck the size of five football fields a carefully choreographed team ensures both safety and efficiency while traveling at speeds in excess of 30 knots as many as four aircraft can be launched every minute while simultaneously recovering aircraft four elevators each the size of two average city lots bring the jets to the flight deck from hangers below the various functions of the flight deck personnel are identified by various colors they were purple for fuel handlers yellow for officers and aircraft directors who are responsible for movements on the deck green for catapult and a resting gear crew blue for tractor drivers and elevator operators browned for plane captains that ensure aircraft is safe to fly and inspected after landing white for landing signal officers safety observers and medical personnel and finally red for crash and salvage teams and the ordnance handlers the design of the nimitz-class carriers is based on the lessons learned from forestall and enterprise super carriers the ship's layout is somewhat similar to the kitty hawk class the biggest design change from enterprise was using two a4w nuclear reactors instead of 8. this greatly freed up space which allowed nimitz-class carriers to carry an additional 3 million gallons of fuel for aircraft on board and escorts the two nuclear reactors produce enough electricity to power a city of a hundred thousand the carriers have about 90 days worth of food and supplies on board four water distilling units provide 400 000 gallons of fresh water each day that are used by propulsion plants catapults and the crew flight deck angle was slightly reduced to nine degrees which improved airflow around the carrier defensive armament varies from ship to ship but usually includes three or four phalanx seaways a dozen or two sea sparrow missiles and sometimes rim 116 rolling airframe missiles starting with uss carl vinson the ships have been constructed with anti-submarine capabilities another thing that was pioneered on uss carl vinson was carrier classic which was a basketball game between north carolina and michigan state on remembrance day in 2011. everyone was all hands on deck starting with theodore roosevelt the carriers were manufactured with modular construction meaning that instead of building the carrier from the ground up there are pieced together from prefabricated blocks which greatly increased construction efficiency the average costs of building each nimitz-class carrier was 9.7 billion dollars since the first nimitz-class carrier was laid down in 1968 and the last one was commissioned in 2009 there have been quite a few changes as the class design has evolved for instance the newest nimitz class carriers uss ronald reagan and uss george h w bush only have three arrester wires compared to four on the previous ships this was due to the introduction of the improved fresnel optical landing system during refueling and complex overhaul which happens every 20 years nimitz-class carriers are updated with the newest equipment which brings all their carriers up to the new standards at this point nimitz class carriers have a mature design with not many things that can be significantly improved which brings us to the latest and greatest class of american super carriers the fourth class carriers feature numerous incremental updates to most of the legacy systems steam catapults were replaced with electromagnetic aircraft launch system or emails the biggest benefit of this new design is smoother acceleration which results in less stress on the aircraft's airframe other benefits include the system's reduced weight the ability to launch a greater range of aircraft and reduce maintenance but the issue is that emails are still not mature enough and tend to be less reliable than the legacy steam catapults similarly the advanced arresting gear landing system pioneered on uss gerald r ford utilize electromagnets to stop aircraft instead of using hydraulics with the main benefit being reduced shock on the airframes at the time of landing the main visual difference between nimitz and ford class carriers is the slimming and relocation of the island about a hundred feet aft this allowed for the creation of a pit stop a centralized location for rearming and refueling aircraft instead of moving the aircraft around to perform various tasks this concept is supposed to decrease turnaround times which ultimately means more sorties per day other updates to four-class carriers include new stealth features new radars updated rim 162 evolved c-sparrow missiles and also increased automation resulting in a crew of several hundred fewer personnel compared to nimitz-class carriers which will save millions of dollars over the life cycle of the carrier finally the biggest improvement in this class of carriers is the redesigned nuclear reactors that can produce 25 percent more power this enhancement coupled with the fact that ford class carriers do not use steam for catapult operations means that the steam produced by the two a1b reactors can generate two and a half to three times the amount of electricity that nimitz-class carriers produce nimitz-class carriers suffer from chronic overloading of their electrical generators but that's because the nimitz class was designed in the 1960s when on-board technologies required much less electrical power so now it has a limited margin available to meet the increasing demand of electricity in fact the limited electricity supply of nimitz-class carriers is the primary roadblock to installing new but power-hungry technologies with this in mind during the design phase of four-class carriers the decision was made to future-proof the class from this problem by doubling the supply of electricity currently only half of the electric power generation capacity is being used with the remaining half available for future technologies the us navy expects the fourth class carriers to be in service for 90 years who knows what naval aviation would look like in 90 years given how quickly technology evolves maybe the decision makers in the us navy are really ahead of our times or maybe they're just full of optimism take a minute to think about it is there much that you can predict 90 years ahead of time drop us a comment we know you're a creative bunch

Channel: Not What You Think

Views: 2,939,865

Keywords: not what you think, aircraft carrier, cvn, uss langley, uss enterprise, uss saratoga, uss lexington, uss ranger, uss yorktown, uss wasp, uss midway, uss forrestal, uss kitty hawk, uss john f Kennedy, uss nimitz, uss gerald r ford, uss ford, us navy, steam catapults, arresting gears, flightdeck

Id: wfG5lNVK0WM

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TheJudge20182]

There was only like more then 30 of them or something.

[u/UltraHit5]

I want to build my own carrier