Medium Aircraft Carriers, The better operational capabilities and sortie generation of the larger carriers led to the abandonment of the concept of a Medium Aircraft Carrier, which would have provided almost the same striking power with a smaller crew and air wing. As a result, the fleet of today is entirely composed of supercarriers.
Medium Aircraft Carriers: The Warship the U.S. Navy Needs to Build?
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Briefly after using both big fleet carriers and smaller escort carriers during World War II, the U.S. Navy developed a predilection for nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, which could carry about ninety combat aircraft.
Over time, the Navy came to favor the larger warships because of their cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency, even if smaller, more affordable Medium Aircraft Carriers were considered as a supplement to supercarriers.
The better operational capabilities and sortie generation of the larger carriers led to the abandonment of the concept of a Medium Aircraft Carrier, which would have provided almost the same striking power with a smaller crew and air wing.
As a result, the fleet of today is entirely composed of supercarriers. The largest warships on the high seas are the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers of the US Navy.
Nearly ninety combat aircraft may be carried by the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, which are home to almost five thousand sailors and Marines.
However, things didn’t have to be this way: a few decades ago, the Navy might have added smaller, more affordable flattops—the Medium Aircraft Carriers—in addition to the massive ships.
The United States Navy used both escort carriers and larger fleet carriers during World War II. With a mix of fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers, the bigger carriers made up the fleet’s primary offensive striking force.
The purpose of the escort or “jeep” carriers, which were smaller vessels with smaller air wings, was to support convoys by air and act as a stand-in for fleet carriers while the larger vessels were engaged in other missions.
From large nuclear-powered fleet carriers like the USS Enterprise to the more compact attack and antisubmarine carriers of the wartime Essex class, the Navy operated a variety of carriers following the war.
Supercarriers eventually took the place of the smaller, older carriers as they grew older. Except for the USS Midway and USS Coral Sea, nearly every carrier in the U.S. Navy by the middle of the 1980s was at least a thousand feet long. No smaller carriers were ever constructed.
A Comparison of Supercarriers and Medium Carriers to See Which the US Navy Selected Large carriers were favored due to a combination of pragmatic and political factors.
During the Cold War, defense spending was somewhat unconstrained, although it was safer to suggest purchasing one major carrier in a single year rather than two smaller carriers in consecutive years. The cancellation of the second carrier could occur due to an unanticipated financial emergency.
Big carriers were more economical. It was less expensive to operate one hull with a crew of 6,000 men than two hulls with a combined workforce of 9,000 men, even though they had equal numbers of planes.
As escorts, a single carrier also only needed a single group of cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. Lastly, bigger ships can fly more sorties and operate more sophisticated aircraft than smaller ones.
However, big carriers are very costly to purchase and maintain, therefore those within and outside the Navy looked for alternatives. Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, the then-chief of naval operations,
Battled in the 1970s with two issues: the Pentagon’s shrinking post-Vietnam budget and the Navy’s massive fleet of obsolete World War II ships. Zumalt ran the possibility of seeing a sharp decline in the quantity of battle-force ships if he did nothing.
To maintain a sizable fleet, Zumwalt suggested dividing the ships into two categories: highly competent high-end vessels and less capable low-end vessels.
This also applied to carriers; to augment the current supercarriers, Zumwalt suggested the creation of a so-called “Medium Aircraft Carrier.” The Medium Aircraft Carrier would have a flight deck that measured 908 feet in length.
Weigh about 61 thousand tons, and being powered conventionally, with an air wing of up to sixty planes, the ship could accommodate up to 3,400 people overall, including aircrew.
With only two steam catapults as opposed to the four on bigger carriers, the Medium Aircraft Carrier could launch aircraft at a rate that was only half that of larger carriers.
Instead of three elevators, there would only be two. It was nearly as powerful as a supercarrier, but with fewer planes since it removed antisubmarine warfare and fleet air defense aircraft from the mix to focus on striking power.
There were benefits to producing additional, smaller carriers as well. The number of carriers fell below twenty for the first time in decades, raising the possibility that there wouldn’t be enough flight decks available to meet all needs in the event of a conventional war.
Naval aviation was more resilient to individual carrier losses during the war because it was dispersed over several platforms. Finally, the growing significance of recently established operating regions, including the Persian Gulf, put a strain on available resources.
The Medium Aircraft Carrier was eventually deemed unappealing due to its smaller platform’s drawbacks, even with its stated benefits. The Navy would continue to purchase larger ships as long as it could afford them because of their many advantages.
Today, all of the Navy’s carrier fleet is made up of nuclear-powered supercarriers. The Navy continued to operate with an all-supercarrier fleet.
