The first take-offs and landings
The story of aircraft carrier origins begins with experiments rather than ships. In November 1910 the American civilian pilot Eugene Ely flew a biplane off a temporary wooden platform built over the bow of the cruiser USS Birmingham. In January 1911 he landed on a similar platform built over the stern of USS Pennsylvania, using ropes weighted with sandbags to catch hooks on the aircraft. These were short-lived trials, but they showed that an aeroplane could leave and return to a ship at sea.
Before the First World War several navies also tried seaplanes. These were launched from, or hoisted off, ships and recovered by crane after landing on the water. Britain converted a number of ships to carry seaplanes early in the war, including HMS Ark Royal (a different ship from later vessels of the name). The method was slow and depended on calm water, but it taught navies that aircraft could extend the reach of a fleet’s scouting.
Building the flight deck
The decisive step was a deck that aircraft could run along and land on. Britain’s HMS Furious, a large cruiser converted during the First World War, first carried a flying-off deck forward; later a landing deck was added aft. Landings were difficult, partly because hot exhaust and eddies from the funnel and superstructure disturbed the airflow. A single clear, flush deck was the obvious answer, and HMS Argus, converted from a liner hull and completed in 1918, is generally regarded as the first carrier of that layout.
Japan’s Hosho, commissioned in 1922, is usually described as the first aircraft carrier designed from the start for the role to be completed. During the 1920s and 1930s the main naval powers experimented with island superstructures at one side of the deck, arrester wires, catapults and hangars. Designs varied, and different navies reached different conclusions about how many aircraft a carrier should carry and whether it should be armoured.
Limits on the battleship
Treaty limits shaped this period. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 restricted the number and size of battleships among the leading naval powers, and it also set limits on carrier tonnage. Several unfinished battleship and battlecruiser hulls were converted into carriers as a result. This meant that early carriers were often large, fast ships with considerable capacity, rather than small experiments.
Many admirals still considered the battleship the centre of a fleet through the 1930s, and with reason. Heavily armoured gun ships were hard to sink with the aircraft of the time, and carrier aircraft were limited in range, weather tolerance and payload. How quickly this changed is a matter historians discuss; the shift was gradual and, even in 1939, not obviously inevitable.
Proof in war
Early Second World War operations began to change opinions. In November 1940 British torpedo aircraft from HMS Illustrious attacked the Italian fleet at its anchorage at Taranto and damaged several battleships. In December 1941 Japanese carrier aircraft struck the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, and days later land-based aircraft sank the British ships Prince of Wales and Repulse off Malaya. These events demonstrated that ships at sea or in harbour could be crippled by air attack, and that a battleship without air cover was vulnerable.
The Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 was the first naval battle in which the opposing ships never sighted each other, with all the fighting done by aircraft. A month later came the Midway carrier battle, in which American aircraft sank four Japanese fleet carriers. By then the carrier had become the main striking arm of the American and Japanese navies, and the balance of power in the Pacific depended on how many carriers each side had left.
What happened to the battleships
Battleships did not become useless overnight. They provided heavy anti-aircraft fire to protect carriers, bombarded shore targets and supported amphibious landings. Several remained in service well after 1945, and the United States briefly reactivated some in later decades. But no new battleship design was started in the leading navies after the war, and the ships already built were gradually retired.
The carrier’s rise also changed what a capital ship meant. A battleship’s power was concentrated in its guns and armour. A carrier’s power was its air group, which could be changed and upgraded without rebuilding the ship. Jet aircraft, angled flight decks and steam catapults later extended the carrier’s lead, and nuclear propulsion made large American carriers independent of frequent refuelling.
A broader shift
The fall of the battleship was not simply a case of one weapon beating another. Radar, long-range aircraft, submarine warfare and the sheer scale of Pacific distances all played a part, and these factors are summarised more fully in the history of warships. The carrier succeeded because it combined reach, flexibility and a protective escort of cruisers and destroyers. Its main weakness, vulnerability to air and submarine attack, meant that it was always part of a group rather than a lone ship, a pattern still seen in modern carrier strike groups.