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Airfields at Sea

© Dennis Morehouse

The aircraft carrier is the logical outgrowth of the battleship race, at least, it is obvious with our advantage of hindsight, although it wasn't so obvious to the 'battleship Admirals'. These Admirals, in all the Navies, had grown up with battleships and understood their raw power. They thought in terms of gun caliber, weight of shot and thickness of armor. While the quest for bigger guns and heavier ordnance easily translated into aircraft, which are the 'guns' of the carrier, this wasn't obvious at the time of the first carriers because the aircraft were pretty fragile, short ranged, and couldn't lift much.

Because the advantages of the aircraft carrier weren't obvious to the powers that be, it didn't come into its own as a capital ship until WW II. Development work began nearly thirty years earlier. The first launch from a ship occurred in 1910 when Eugene Ely, a civilian, took off from a wooden deck built over the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham. He landed ashore. The first deck landing took place three months later, when Mr Ely landed aboard the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania; again on a specially built deck. This route was not pursued because it rendered the forward guns of the cruiser useless, and though the British didn't duplicate these experiments until 1912 and 1917, respectively, they were the first to take aircraft to sea with the Fleet.

The first aircraft carriers in service were actually seaplane carriers. Aircraft could launch from the deck, but had to land on the water, to be hoisted back aboard. This method was severely limited by any kind of seas at all, as the planes couldn't survive a landing on rough water, but the Royal Navy made used HMS ENGADINE, RIVIERA and EMPRESS to take aircraft to sea operationally.

Between the wars, progress was made in the design of aircraft carriers and the supporting gear they carried, but Naval theory still held that the Battleship was the most important combatant, and that aircraft and their carriers existed only to provide scouting forces for the fleet. This facade began to crack in 1935, when Brigadier General Billy Mitchell was finally able to arrange his test of air against battlewagon, and sunk the old German battleship Ostfriesland with aerial bombs. The battleship Admirals were not amused, or impressed, but the writing was on the wall if you had the vision to see it. In 1940, that vision became reality when the British Fleet Air Arm crippled the Italian Fleet as it lay at anchor in Taranto harbor. This attack closely foreshadowed, and was very similar to, the raid on Pearl Harbor.