The French Navy’s Charles De Gaulle
aircraft carrier is the most powerful aircraft carrier in the world, outside the
mighty American supercarriers of course. That’s despite the fact that she is a small
carrier, about 40% smaller than the British Queen Elizabeth-class carriers. She is even
smaller than the Russian Admiral Kuznetsov and the Chinese Shandong. But don’t let
her small size fool you, because Charles de Gaulle is a perfect example of “It’s not
about the size, but what you can do with it.” The primary advantage of the French carrier
versus the others is that it uses Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery, also
known as CATOBAR. In fact, besides the American supercarriers, Charles de Gaulle is the only
aircraft carrier in the world that is equipped with catapults. I know the Chinese Fujian carrier
is also equipped with catapults. That said, she’s still undergoing sea trials! But
why is having catapults such a big deal? Aircraft carriers that don’t have
catapults rely on a ski-jump ramp. The issue with using ramps is that they
limit the take-off weight of aircraft, which restricts the amount of fuel and
munitions that they can carry. In contrast, catapults allow for launching much heavier
and larger aircraft. This means that aircraft launched with catapults have more punch as they
have a longer range and can carry more weapons. But why aircraft launched from Charles De Gaulle
experience more Gs compared to those launched from American Supercarriers, how the breaking of a
piece of the carrier’s propeller resulted in a fiery scandal, why French naval aviators operated
from American supercarriers in Spring of 2018, and how the decision to give Charles
de Gaulle unlimited range resulted in moving her island more forward on the
flight deck … is not what you think. Let’s go back to the catapults, because they
allow the French Navy to do something that almost no other navy can do. First, Charles De
Gaulle is the only non-American carrier that can launch early warning aircraft like the
E-2C Hawkeye. The Hawkeye is equipped with radars capable of detecting targets as far as
300 nautical miles away. Without catapults, navies cannot launch these types of aircraft
because they're simply too heavy. This is why aircraft carriers equipped with ski ramps
have to rely on helicopters for early warning, and of course, helicopters’ surveillance
envelope is a fraction of the Hawkeye’s. Another big advantage of having catapults
is that it allows Charles de Gaulle to have interoperability with the American supercarriers.
This makes her the only aircraft carrier in the world that can operate all types of US Navy
aircraft including, C-2 Greyhound, F/A-18 and E-2D Hawkeyes. Conversely, French aircraft
can also operate from American supercarriers. Charles De Gaulle has a three-wire
arresting system, with two deck edge elevators and two catapults. Each elevator
can move two aircraft every two minutes. The carrier uses two American built C-13 catapults,
although these catapults are only 246 feet long, which is significantly shorter than the 310-foot
long catapults on American supercarriers. Each catapult can slingshot a 25-ton
aircraft at 145 knots in under 2 seconds, but because the catapults are shorter, they
need to accelerate the aircraft faster. This is why aircraft launched from American
supercarriers experience anywhere between 3 to 4 Gs of acceleration, while aircraft launched
from Charles de Gaulle experience 4 to 5 Gs. Charles de Gaulle can theoretically launch
aircraft every 30 seconds, but in reality, the maximum sortie rate is 25 aircraft
every 4 hours. Unlike American carriers, simultaneous catapulting and recovery
is impossible on this French carrier, because both catapults extend into
the runway. When it comes to landings, the Rafale pilot has just under 300 feet of runway
to go from 120 knots of speed to a full stop. This usually takes about 1.5 seconds, during which
the pilot experiences 4 G’s of deceleration. In total, Charles de Gaulle can carry up
to 40 aircraft. 23 fixed-wing aircraft and two helicopters are stored in the hangar
bay. The rest are carried on the flight deck, including the E-2C Hawkeye, which won't
fit into the hangar bay anyway. This aircraft with a pointy nose is a twin-engine Dassault
Rafale-Marine multirole fighter aircraft. Charles de Gaulle can carry as many as 36 Rafales,
but normally she carries only 24 to 30 fighters. By the way, Rafale can be translated into English
as “gust of wind” or “burst of fire”. Employing three dozen fighter jets while leveraging
early warning aircraft gives the French Navy the ability to create a mobile bubble
of controlled sea, land and air space that’s roughly 370 miles to 430 miles in diameter.
And they can maintain that control for as long as the ship's resources last. No one but
the Americans have that kind of capability. The ship typically embarks two Hawkeyes, one
AS565 Panther maritime intelligence Helicopter, and one Pedro. You may wonder who Pedro
is! Well, Pedro is a call sign for an AS365F Dauphin helicopter which has a very
unique mission. During flight operations, there’s always a helicopter in the air, located
about 340 feet to the port side of the carrier. In case there’s a mishap and a pilot ejects,
having a helicopter already in the air will allow the rescue of the pilot within 3 minutes. This
greatly increases the pilot's chances of survival. Now obviously during a mishap that requires
ejection, the aircraft itself is unlikely to survive. But regardless, Charles De Gaulle has a
24/7 aircraft repair shop which has more than a million spare parts in inventory! There are also
two test benches for the aircraft engines. Why is this important? Because it allows for the
Rafale fighters to have an availability rate of over 94%. This means that at any point
in time, out of the 36 embarked Rafales, 34 are ready to fly! According to the
French Navy, a 94% availability rate would make any air wing extremely jealous. For
reference, the F/A-18 availability rate on the American supercarriers was 43% back in 2014,
although by 2023, it had almost doubled to 80%. Another important feature of the Charles De Gaulle
is its nuclear-powered propulsion system. In fact, aside from the United States, France is the only
nation in possession of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. This allows the carrier to continuously
steam ahead at 25 knots … for about 5 years. In practice it takes her about 7 to 10 years to
burn through its low enrichment fuel called “Caramel”. A big advantage of nuclear power is
that it enables this carrier to go from 0 to 20 knots in just 4 minutes, and reach her maximum
speed of 27 knots in seven minutes. In contrast, older conventionally-powered carriers
can take dozens of minutes to reach their maximum speed. In addition, nuclear
reactors take relatively small space, since they don’t require smokestacks or
designated fuel storage areas. But installing the two nuclear reactors aboard Charles
de Gaulle also resulted in some drawbacks. The island on Charles de Gaulle is located in
an unfavorable forward location, partially due to her being nuclear powered. Nuclear reactors
on American supercarriers are refueled every 25 years, but this French carrier needs refueling
much more frequently, once every 7 to 10 years. The island’s suboptimal positioning was to
allow easier access to the nuclear reactors. Charles de Gaulle’s nuclear reactors are also
often criticized for being underpowered. Instead of developing a dedicated nuclear reactor for
the aircraft carrier, the French simply took the existing reactor design from the Le Triomphant
class submarine and installed it on their new carrier. The intention was to save money, but
the French still ended up spending more money to supercharge the K15 nuclear reactors so that
the carrier could specifically reach a maximum speed of 27 knots. That’s because 27 knots is
the minimum speed required to safely catapult a fully-loaded Rafale fighter in zero true wind.
While each of the two K15 nuclear reactors installed on Charles De Gaulle produce 150
megawatts of power, the two American A4W reactors installed on Nimitz class carriers produce 550
megawatts each. This is what allows the Nimitz Class carriers to have top speeds in the range
of 35 to 40 knots. The supercarriers’ exact top speed is of course classified, but the theoretical
maximum is believed to be 44 knots. Interestingly, both retired conventionally-powered French
aircraft carriers Foch and Clemenceau had a maximum speed of 32 knots, which was
5 knots more than Charles de Gaulle’s. Now it may seem that the nuclear reactors
on Charles de Gaulle are what handicapped her top speed, but for many years, it was
her propellers! While sailing to Norfolk, VA in November 2000, one of the carrier's
propellers disintegrated. Specifically one of the propeller blades just fell off
and sank to the bottom of the ocean. This forced the carrier to return to her home port. The
interesting thing is that prior to this incident, it was already known that both propellers
were defective due to poor manufacturing. But they were installed anyway. When the carrier
returned to France to investigate the issue, it came to light that the carrier’s two brand
new spare propellers were also defective. The strength of the propellers was compromised
due to the large amount of bubbles and cracks found inside the copper-aluminium
alloy near the center of the propellers. Maybe they should have used aluminum instead!
This led to a huge scandal, with politicians launching an investigation to find the guilty
party. It turned out that the propeller supplier, Atlantic Industrie, was responsible for the
poor craftsmanship. But mysteriously, a fire destroyed the engineering and design department
files at the manufacturing company, hindering a complete understanding of the issue. A fire
always makes for a better scandal, doesn’t it?! With the spare propellers also being defective,
it seemed like the poor carrier would be stuck at port for 18 months while new propellers
were made, but the situation was saved when the old propellers from the retiring
French aircraft carrier, Clemenceau, were salvaged and installed on Charles de
Gaulle. The only issue was that at higher speeds, the old propellers caused too much vibration, so
the speed of the carrier was limited to around 25 knots. It was not until May 2008 that the
new made-in-USA propellers were installed, which allowed the ship to reach
her maximum speed of 27 knots. Even though nuclear power allows the ship
to travel long distances, in practice, the operational freedom of any nuclear-powered
aircraft is limited by the amount of food and aircraft fuel that it can house. Charles
De Gaulle carries up to 315 tons of food, 600 tons of munitions and 3,400 tons of aviation
fuel which gives the carrier 45 days of autonomous operation. She can also carry 1000 tons of
diesel to resupply the escort ships. The fuel reserves onboard the ship allow the carrier
air wing to conduct about 700 flights in total, meaning that with a top sortie rate of 100
flights per day the carrier would exhaust its fuel reserves in just 7 days. But historically,
Charles De Gaulle has performed 45 sorties per day during high intensity missions, which means
the fuel reserves would last for about 2 weeks. To enable longer deployments, there’s always a
replenishment tanker assigned to the carrier, which provides an additional 30 days of endurance.
With one underway replenishment per week, the carrier's fuel levels on board
would never drop below 70%. Plus, during high intensity scenarios, a second tanker
would be assigned to the carrier strike group, so one tanker would always be shuttling supplies
between the replenishment ports and the carrier . Even though Charles De Gaulle is arguably the
sole most powerful aircraft carrier outside of the supercarriers, ironically, being the only one is
also her biggest weakness. That’s because each time the carrier goes into maintenance, which
could last for years, the French Navy loses its aircraft carrier capability altogether.
In fact, this is why the Royal Navy decided to build two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft
carriers, so when one is undergoing maintenance, the other one would be available for deployment.
That said, according to the Rule of Thirds, to have one operational aircraft carrier at any
point in time, you really need to have at least three aircraft carriers. So how come France didn’t
at least build 2 carriers, like the Brits did? Back in the 1980s, France had plans to build
two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. But things didn’t work out. The construction of
Charles de Gaulle began in 1987, and took 14 years to finish. This was due to the government
stopping the funding of the carrier on multiple occasions. So when the carrier was eventually
commissioned in 2001, Charles de Gaulle was already showing her age. Pipes were corroding
and cracks in the hull were starting to appear. This taught them a valuable lesson! If you’re
gonna build a ship, just build it. Don’t take your sweet croissant time, because it will cost
you way more at the end. The cost of constructing this carrier was about $2.2 billion dollars, which
was roughly half of $4.3 billion dollars spent on USS Ronald Reagan, the American supercarrier that
entered service that same year. As a result of all the delays and being over baguette, which
is French for being over budget, in 2005, the French government voted against building
a second aircraft carrier, leaving Charles de Gaulle without any sister ships; a decision
that would panic them about a decade later. In 2017, Charles de Gaulle entered her midlife
refit, which was going to last about two years, and this worried the French Navy. Their
worry however was not about the ship, but about the “savoir faire” of their airwing.
In English “savoir faire” means expertise. Two years to go without practicing any flight
operations is a long time. Lucky for them, the Americans offered Charles de Gaulle’s air wing
a tremendous opportunity: to train with them on their supercarriers, which was possible, since
French aircraft could also operate from American supercarriers. As a result, in Spring of 2018, the
French Navy brought 13 aircraft and 350 personnel to Virginia to conduct flight operations aboard
American supercarriers. Speaking of expertise, outside Americans, French naval aviators are
currently one of the most experienced in the world since Charles de Gaulle was deployed
to Afghanistan in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2010, in Libya in 2011, and in
Iraq and Syria in 2015 and 2016. By then, Charles de Gaulle had performed
more than 40,000 fighter sorties. In December 2020, the French President, Emmanuel
Macron, announced that Charles de Gaulle was expected to retire in 2038, after which, she
would be replaced by the all new aircraft carrier, Porte-avions de nouvelle génération, or
PANG. With a displacement of 83,000 tons, PANG will be as large as the Queen Elizabeth-class
aircraft carriers. This carrier would feature all new K22 nuclear reactors, electromagnetic
catapults and advanced arresting gear, making PANG the very first supercarrier
to be commissioned by the French navy.
