Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Aircraft Carriers (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Aircraft carriers are some of the most fearsome weapons in the world. They are enormous platforms that can travel around the globe, projecting power over an enormous part of it. However, aircraft carriers have a rather humble origin that actually predates the invention of the airplane. Throughout the 20th century, they saw many innovations and adaptations that turn them into the fearsome weapons they are today.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Yet, despite their power, some people say that the age of the aircraft carriers, maybe at an end. Learn more about aircraft carriers, how they were created and how they work on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story

Starting point is 00:01:04 that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us. Every week on the ThruLine podcast. from NPR. Believe it or not, the origins of the aircraft carrier can actually be found in the 19th century with the development of balloon carriers.

Starting point is 00:01:30 As the name suggests, balloon carriers were ships that launched balloons. They were mostly used for observational purposes. An observer on a balloon could see further than someone on a ship, so it allowed a fleet to see their enemy before they saw them. The first balloon carrier is considered to be the SMS volcano, which was launched in 1849, by the Austrian Empire. It was the first time that aerial and naval combat were combined. Balloon carriers remain in use by many armies up until the First World War. And just as an aside, there is still at least one active balloon carrier in the world that I'm aware of, and it's located on

Starting point is 00:02:08 Lake Tahoe. It's a public hot air ballooning company that launches and lands balloons from a custom design balloon carrier. And I actually went hot air ballooning on it several years ago, and you can do it too, if you're ever in Lake Tahoe. The balloon carrier was then briefly superseded by seaplane tenders. The first seaplane tender was the French ship Lafudra, which was launched in 1910. A seaplane tender had one or more seaplanes on the ship with a short deck for takeoffs. The planes would then land on the water near the boat, which would be brought back up to the ship via a crane. As with balloons, seaplanes were mostly used for reconnaissance or observation. While balloon carrier, and seaplane tenders did mix aviation with naval ships, they were not what we would consider

Starting point is 00:02:54 to be a real aircraft carrier. The marriage of fixed-wing aircraft and ships took place relatively soon after the invention of the airplane. In 1909, the idea of a ship that could carry aircraft was proposed by the French inventor Clement Adder in his book La Aviation Militaire. He proposed a flat-decked ship where planes could take off and land from. And it didn't take long for these theoretical ideas to be tested. The first experimental takeoff of a winged aircraft from a ship took place on November 14, 1910, by a civilian pilot named Eugene Ely. He took off in a Curtis Model D. Byplane from the USS Birmingham while it was parked in Hamptoms Road, Virginia. Just a few weeks later, on January 18, 1911, Ely did the first landing on a ship, the USS Pennsylvania,

Starting point is 00:03:44 which was anchored in San Francisco Bay. After landing, he was able to turn the plane around again and take off. The landing on the Pennsylvania brought up one of the first problems that had to be solved with aircraft carriers. How do you stop a plane that's landing in a very short amount of space? Most runways are very long and on a ship you do not have the space that you have on a runway. The solution in this first landing was conducted on a deck that was only 130 feet using sandbags and ropes that would catch hooks on the plane when it landed. And that same basic idea is still used today. These first experimental takeoffs and landings were conducted on stationary ships. The first takeoff from a moving ship took place on May 9th, 1912, when

Starting point is 00:04:32 Commander Charles Rumney-Samsan took off from the HMS Hibernia while it was moving at 15 knots off the coast of Wymouth, England. The start of the First World War saw the first uses of aircraft carriers and actual military operations. Early in the war, on September 6, 1914, the Japanese seaplane carrier, Wakamia, launched the first-ever air raid from a ship. They attacked Austrian and German ships off of the coast of Kuang Dao, China. That year, the HMS Royal Ark was launched, which was the first ship built from scratch to be a seaplane carrier.

Starting point is 00:05:07 In 1916, the HMS Furious was the first aircraft carrier to have a flat-top deck. It wasn't until August 2nd, 1917, that Commander Edwin Harris Dunning landed his soft-whip-whip-up-up on the HMS Furious, conducting the first landing on a moving ship. The length of time it took to conduct a landing on a moving ship, from the first landing on any ship, indicates just how difficult landing on a moving ship can be. In 1918, the British launched the HMS Argus, which was the first ship, do have a full-length flat deck. Up until this point, the ship set serves. a carrier function were still a far cry from a true aircraft carrier. For starters, most of the

Starting point is 00:05:49 ships still use seaplanes, and all of the ships were simply older ships that were retrofitted to have a flat deck. They usually looked rather odd because they were often just regular ships with something flat bolted at the top. It wasn't until after the First World War that aircraft carrier development really came of age. The first aircraft carrier built from the ground up to actually be an aircraft carrier was the Japanese carrier, Hosho, which was commissioned in 1923. The interwar period saw the start of a massive change in the theory of naval warfare. For centuries, the premier naval war ships were large ships with a lot of guns. During the age of sailing ships, they were known as ships of the line, and when ships were made out of metal, they became known as

Starting point is 00:06:36 battleships. The idea behind a battle ship was simple. The bigger the guns, the guns, than the thicker the armor, the easier you could attack your opponent and survive their counterattack. However, as both ships and planes developed rapidly in the 20th century, the power of aircraft became obvious. A plane could travel further than an artillery shell. It could attack another ship well beyond the horizon, which couldn't even see the ship that was attacking it. Many countries of large navies began constructing aircraft carriers, even though many of them were repurposed from other vessels, often right in the middle of construction. The United States didn't launch its first aircraft carrier until 1920, when the USS Langley was commissioned.

Starting point is 00:07:18 And it wasn't until 1934 that its first aircraft carrier built from the ground up was commissioned, the USS Ranger. World War II saw aircraft carriers become the dominant ship in naval warfare. They took over battleships in naval doctrine. Battleships still existed and had a place, but they couldn't match an aircraft carrier for range and power. Despite the power of aircraft carriers, they had a problem. On their own, they were relatively weak. An aircraft carrier usually just had a few small guns to protect itself if it were to get into a direct firefight with another ship. And this weakness gave rise to the carrier group.

Starting point is 00:07:59 A carrier group is a small fleet of ships which usually surrounds an aircraft carrier to provide support and protection. Usually cruisers and destroyers. One of the first times a carrier group was used in combat was actually in the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. During the Second World War, the American and Japanese often had multiple aircraft carriers in a single fleet. This was the case at the Battle of Midway, the largest aircraft carrier battle in history, and the subject of a previous episode. The Second World War saw a 112 aircraft carrier sea service between all belligerent countries. The post-war period once again saw major changes in aircraft carriers and aircraft carrier strategy. The biggest change had to do with the rise of jet aircraft.

Starting point is 00:08:48 Jets were faster and more powerful, but they required a longer distance to take off and land, and they also required a sturdier deck to handle their increased weight. This led to a new breed of aircraft carrier that were dubbed supercarriers. The first supercarrier was the USS Forest Stahl, which was commissioned in 1955. The Forestall was the first in an entire class of carriers that included the USS Saratoga, the USS Ranger, and the USS Independence. The Forestall, in order to accommodate jets, had several innovations, including an angled deck, which was longer than normal,

Starting point is 00:09:24 and a steam-driven catapult which could accelerate planes quickly for launch. The Forestall class of carriers had a gross tonnage of 75,000 tons, and were 25% larger than the Midway-class carriers from World War II. In 1961, the next big innovation was unveiled with the commissioning of the USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Carriers had become so large that nuclear reactors became the only real option for powering them over long periods of time. The Enterprise had eight nuclear reactors the most of any carrier in history. The Enterprise was supposed to be the first of an entire class of carriers, but none of the other ones were ever built. The next class of carriers were the Nimitz class carriers that were unveiled in 1975 with the commissioning of the USS Nimitz.

Starting point is 00:10:16 There were 10 Nimitz class carriers that were built, the last of which was the USS George H.W. Bush, which was commissioned in 2009. The Nimitz class carriers all had two nuclear reactors and a hundred thousand ton displacement. All ten of the Nimitz class carriers are still in service today. However, having their basic design created in the late 60s and early 70s, the 21st century saw the need for a new class of aircraft carrier. The first carrier and the namesake of this new class is the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was commissioned in 2017. The biggest innovation in the Ford class carriers is that they replace the steam catapults with an electromagnetic catapult system. The Ford class ships will have more powerful nuclear reactors and will require, require 25% fewer crew members. Today, there are 20 aircraft carriers active in the world.

Starting point is 00:11:12 France has one, the UK, Italy, India, and China have two, and the United States has 11. The United States 11 supercarriers are larger than any other carriers in any other country. Aircraft carriers are not cheap to build, nor are they cheap to maintain. The USS Gerald R. Ford, for example, cost almost $13 billion to build. and the entire program for the Ford class carriers so far has been $37 billion. An average Nimitz class carrier has a crew of about 5,000 men and women who perform a wide range of duties, everything from pilots to mechanics, crew that handle munitions and fuel, as well as cooks, nuclear engineers, and even network administrators.

Starting point is 00:11:58 In 2015, I had the pleasure to visit the USS Harry S. Truman as it was doing training off the coast of Virginia. I did a landing on the carrier, stayed overnight, and then was launched off the carrier the next day. Watching the crew on the flight deck was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Dozens of crew members, all wearing different colored shirts to signify their different duties, were all engaged in a highly intricate and extremely dangerous ballet. And I should add that landing and getting launched from an aircraft carrier is something that is unlike any other experience you'll ever have. and, oddly enough, something that most of the crew on an aircraft carrier never actually gets to experience. While aircraft carriers are still very powerful and can project power around the world,

Starting point is 00:12:45 there are many people who think that the age of the aircraft carrier is over. Despite the carrier groups that surround them, they are still very vulnerable to missiles, drones, and a new breed of hypersonic missile. In many war games, these multi-billion-dollar floating fortresses are often sung, using nothing other than a small boat packed with explosives. That being said, at least as of the time of this recording, aircraft carriers are still the unmatched kings of naval warfare. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:13:24 The associate producers are Austin Oakden and Cameron Kiefer. I want to thank everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I'd also like to thank all the members of the Everything Everywhere community who are active on the Facebook group and the Discord server. If you'd like to join in the discussion, there are links to both in the show notes. And as always, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram,

Starting point is 00:13:47 you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Aircraft Carriers (Encore)

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