The first air carriers

- Cdt Shirshendu Pandey

30777/N/115

In 1910, a civil stunt pilot Eugene B. Ely had one of the

weirdest ideas of those times. He wanted to take off from the deck of a ship.
The critics’ take over the stunt was rather discouraging. They argued that the
runway made over any ship would not be long enough to support a take off
and if at all Ely could take off somehow, the highly turbulent winds over the
sea surface would not let the plane be steady (and most importantly Ely didn’t
know how to swim). The secretary of US navy declined the finance proposal
expected to be approved by Ely. But Ely’s urge could not be stopped. He
convinced an aviation enthusiast, a millionaire probably, to finance the
making of an 83 foot long ramp on the scout cruiser Birmingham. The ramp
turned downwards at the forecastle of the ship. He was to fly a Curtiss’ pusher
which was ‘assembled’ out of two wrecked ones and was without an engine
which was to arrive on the day of experiment.

It was Nov 14 and the whole experiment was being delayed. No one better
than Ely knew that the success of the stunt depended highly upon the weather
staying calm and any delay could let the autumn wreck his plans.Anyway the
engine was fixed and with a thunder in the clouds and raindrops in air, Ely
took off from the deck. And as he left the plane slipped downwards until the
water splashed at the wheels and then it gained height heroically. The media
made Ely a celebrity in no time. Although most people were impressed, the
naval officials were not. There were even bigger concerns that needed to be
answered. It was difficult to take planes to sea if they could only take off and
not land. The ramp made many of the guns of ships inoperable. They decided
that the flight was just a stunt.
But, Capt Chambers felt the planes in sea
had great future for the navy. He arranged a longer deck on the stern of a
cruiser Pennsylvania for landing. The deck was propped with 22 ropes that
ran the breadth of the platform and were tied to sandbags at both ends, each of
50 pounds. The plane was fitted with a hook that would pull the ropes and will
be dragged until it stopped. On Jan 18, 1911, Ely took off from an army
airfield and flew toward the anchored Pennsylvania, shut the engine some
distance from the ship and touched the deck. The ropes pulled the aircraft as it
came to a halt. Needless to mention, the lesson was driven home. Not by the
Americans but by the British. The American admirals preferred traditional
naval tactics and felt the air arm of navy wasn’t an ingenious notion until Ely
proved it to them. But, the reluctance was still there in accepting the invention
of a new segment of navy. It is due to this reason that in spite of being given a
green signal to the research the US navy was lethargic about any advancement
in this field. But the British took it more seriously.

Not even 14 months had passed since the maiden ship

deck landing and Lt. Charles R. Samson repeated the stunt on a platform over
the bow of the ship HMS Africa. The British were already looking for means
of deploying seaplanes using seaplane carriers. But the planes that could land
on sea could usually land only in harbours and never over the turbulent waters
of the open sea. The concept was applied but the results didn’t meet the
ambitions of the British admirals. However these seaplanes proved vital for
their reconnaissance abilities in the war of Jutland. But the British admiralty
needed more agile planes than the clumsy and slow sea planes. In 1915, a
navy lieutenant, B. F. Fowler flew his fighter from a moving cruiser with a
platform on H.M.S. Vindex. The platform was too short for a landing and so
the plane was ditched into the sea. The British immediately asked for the
conversion of cruiser Furious into a full fledged airfield where planes could
land. When finished with, Furious was a menace. It had narrow strips at both
end separated by the ship’s superstructure and the mast. The gases out of the
engine made the landings literally suicidal. In 1918, when it came to serve no
landings were permitted onboard. Although Furious was a fiasco, it offered
valuable lessons. So, when Argus succeeded Furious, all corrections were
aptly made. It had a flat surface and the runway running the full length of the
ship with all the structure hidden. The exhaust gases were directed at the sides
of the field by long chimneys. But more important systems of the ship were
forced to be hidden under the flat surface of the ship to avoid any interference
to landing aircrafts. Soon it was found that an island placed at the sides of the
ship would not interfere with the landings. These are the basic design traits
that are being followed till date. Argus for all practical reasons is considered
to be the first aircraft carrier finished in 1920. Due to its flat surface it was
called a ‘flattop’.

When Argus became operational it

caught the eyes of the other navies. In 1922, America commissioned her first
flattop U.S.S. Langley. At the same time Japan had her first carrier ready too
and it was Hosho which was a petite ship but turned an important key to
Japanese victory against US navy in the WWII. Hosho was the first to deviate
from the flattop design since the preceding carriers. It had an island for the
chimneys at the sides of the ship. But the truest and first prototype of today’s
aircraft carriers was H.M.S. Hermes and was commissioned to the royal navy
in 1924. It had an island attached to the ship by the side. But the tall island
that was also used for the command and control over the runway was too tall
for the sip and made it unbalanced. Just by looking at Hermes one could say
the ship was going to flip at the side. It was remarked, “It’s a miracle that the
ship floats.” Apart from being ill designed, Hermes was very small and could
carry not more than 12 aircrafts. Its runway could not compensate for the few
anti-aircraft guns; in fact this made it a more vulnerable target. No wonder
Hermes became prey to the Japanese bombers. Although the ships were made,
the air war strategies and rules were not yet perfect and every nation would
lose a lot before the valuable lessons of war were driven home. WWII would
prove to be their first class. Anyways the British seemed to lack interest in
their newly felt initiative and it died out. After Hermes, the Royal navy did not
go for another carrier for almost a decade.

The late 1920s saw more and more aircraft

carriers coming up and even more lining up in for the shipyard constructions.
By 1928, US navy was getting ready with almost a fleet of aircraft carriers
and more and more pilots were being trained for the air war at sea and coasts.
The carriers Lexington, Saratoga and Yorktown had already been started off
with. When USS Lexington became fully operational in 1929 end, it was
potentially the strongest aircraft carrier with an obsessive load capacity of 100
fighter crafts, bombers better known as dive bombers and torpedo bombers.
While America was overwhelmed with her developments, the Japanese were
matching up with them in a cut throat competition over ship design,
construction and aircraft development.

The Japanese admiralty had ordered the

conversion of two enormous vessels into aircraft carriers and they were Akagi
and Kaga in competition with the US navy’s Lexington and Saratoga. In
comparison with the Japanese rivals the US ships were better since they were
aircraft carriers from the keel up. Strategically, Saratoga seemed to be the
strongest ship in the US fleet with an unchallenged speed of 34 knots. But this
didn’t put the Japanese on a lower ground. The Japanese were more interested
in making better aircrafts than highly equipped ships and they were right in
their strategy. But Akagi and Kaga along with the older Hosho were just to
keep Japan at par with the American navy for time being. The true plans were
consolidated at the end of 1928 when the Japanese established a project to
start with a massive construction of three aircraft carriers Ryujo, Shokaku and
Shikaku. Much later, the Soryu too joined the Kure naval shipyard for
construction. Although all the carriers that succeeded Hosho were massive,
Ryuo was small displacing a petite 10,500 tons and very fast, at near 34 knots.
This was the smallest aircraft carrier that was actually designed to be fast and
agile with less capacity but better maneuverability. This concept was new and
worked as far as the Japanese were concerned.

In all respects, the US navy was making

better ships but her aircrafts were not going to stand against the faster and
dreadful Japanese aircrafts. Unfortunately, the American air force was least
interested in giving best fighter pilots for the naval training and even more
unfortunately, for quite long the air force controlled the naval air strategies
which the Pearl Harbor attack taught the Americans, was very stupid.
Although the Japanese admirals faced bigger problems than their US
counterparts, they were more successful. The problem was that the Japanese
administration was highly dominated by the ‘Samurai rich army’ which was
independent in functioning. The army felt that the navy was a feeble and
merely a supporting force. This prejudice was dealt aptly by Admiral
Yamamoto who convinced the army generals to take a notice of the US
advances in the naval air arm. It was just the envy of the Japanese generals
that provided the initial force for the construction of Hosho. But for
Yamamoto, it was a dream. He himself gathered best Japanese pilots and
founded the naval air war strategy school and supervised its functioning from
time to time.

In the mean time, the British, who had a traditional

paradox of overlooking the untraditional air arm of navy, had the Royal Air
Force ignoring the naval air school. In this case the whole naval air arm was
controlled by the air force pilots and few naval pilots who held offices which
they could barely control. However, by 1933, most navies were convinced that
it will be the aircraft carrier that would have a future in the navy since air
power gave navy a far reaching range and unprecedented power. It took
another ten years since the aircraft carriers took control of the seas that this
‘untraditional’ naval arm proved its worth and its first kill was avenged by the
reluctant British attack on Taranto. In 1940, on 11 November, led by Lt Cdr
Kenneth Williamson, twelve Fairy Swordfish biplanes six equipped with
bombs and others with flew from the deck of HMS Illustrious across the
Mediterranean Sea and bombed the Italian fleet that had blocked the
Mediterranean sea-lanes. The attack destroyed half the Italian fleet and the
rest fled to Naples clearing the long blocked routes. The power of the aircraft
carrier could have scarcely been demonstrated in a better manner.