President Donald Trump wasted no time after his inauguration. That week he repeated his campaign pledge to
rebuild the U.S. military, worn down from 15 years of deployments to
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Naval aviation figured prominently in Trump’s reckoning as he expressed
willingness to slash the trouble-plagued Lockheed-Martin F-35 triservice
fighter-bomber. Defense Secretary James
Mattis has directed a thorough investigation of the perennially late,
over-budget Lightning II, still incomplete in its twentieth year of
development. Trump has mentioned
possibly upgrading the Navy and Marine Corps’ current FA-18 Hornet, less
capable than intended for F-35 but a proven entity and far more affordable.
Meanwhile, the new administration appears willing to continue the
new-generation aircraft carrier. The USS
Gerald Ford (CVN-78) also has
suffered significant delays and cost over-runs, and likely will be delivered
without full operational capability. But
two sister ships have been approved, and they are unlikely to be cut. Thus, the Trump administration seems to grasp
the world-historic significance of American seapower.
In December 1941 the aircraft carrier burst upon the world stage in a
20th century version of Shock and Awe.
Literally overnight the flattop leapt into the global spotlight with the
stunning Pearl Harbor attack. Thus, the
carrier resembled the proverbial country-western musician who worked twenty
years to become an overnight sensation.
The U.S. and Japanese navies had commissioned their first carriers in
1922, beginning two decades of perfecting ships, aircraft, operating technique
and doctrine. But the global leader was
the British Royal Navy, which initiated the carrier to combat in World War
I. In 1917 the battle cruiser HMS Furious was converted to operate Sopwith
biplanes, and the next year she launched what a future generation termed a
“power projection” mission against a German Zeppelin base.
Actually, the aircraft carrier’s origins predated the Great War. In November 1910, pioneer flyer Eugene Ely of
the Glenn Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company demonstrated the potential of
ship-based aircraft by taking off from a platform rigged on a U.S. Navy
cruiser. Two months later he plunked his
pusher down on the improvised deck of another warship, dragged to a stop by
hooks that snagged ropes stretched across the platform. The captain of USS Birmingham declared Ely’s feat the most important landing since the
dove returned to Noah’s ark.
Both ships were anchored, and neither stunt was repeated. But the seed had been planted; it germinated,
sprouted, and cropped.
During the 1920s and 30s ships and aircraft evolved, forming an
increasingly potent binary.
Fabric-covered biplanes gave way to all-metal monoplanes with greater
speed, range, and ordnance capacity.
When World War II erupted in 1939 the Royal Navy was confronted with
enemies in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean—and potentially in the
Pacific. Though possessing the world’s
most powerful fleet, Britain had to allocate its ships according to
geo-strategic need. Thus, in November
1940 HMS Illustrious launched 21
obsolescent Swordfish biplanes to attack the Italian fleet in Taranto
Harbor. The nocturnal attack was a
spectacular success, sinking or sidelining three enemy battleships. The naval balance in the Middle Sea had
shifted—overnight.
Historians still argue the influence of Taranto on Japanese plans for
Hawaii, but the similarities are obvious.
Carriers defined the Pacific War: in fact, only flattops could have
launched the attack against Hawaii in December 1941. The Imperial Navy showed the world the way to
naval supremacy by grouping six carriers into a unified striking
force—something that no one else had remotely approached. When the smoke cleared on December 8, the
world’s greatest ocean became a giant chessboard with squares defined by
degrees of latitude and longitude. With
America’s naval kings—battleships—sidelined, the mobile, long-range queens
carried the fight.
Over the next four years aircraft carriers were essential to both
navies. Four major carrier battles were
fought in 1942, providing America essential victories at Coral Sea, Midway, and
Guadalcanal. Midway in June proved
decisive: U.S. carrier planes sank all four Japanese carriers engaged, with one
American flattop lost. Thereafter Japan
never regained the strategic initiative.
A new generation of U.S. carriers spearheaded the Central Pacific
offensive of 1943-45. With new aircraft
on their decks, Essex and Independence class ships enabled nearly every
amphibious operation of the Pacific War.
Their victory off the Mariana Islands in June 1944 ended the Imperial
Navy as an offensive arm, and provided roosts for General Curtis LeMay’s
firebirds as B-29s began searing Japanese urban-industrial areas.
Meanwhile, carriers proved vital in the Atlantic. U.S. and British escort carriers—small, slow
ships operating specially-trained antisubmarine squadrons, helped defeat
Admiral Karl Doenitz’s U-boats. The
mission largely was accomplished by May 1943, clearing the translatantic convoy
routes that enabled the D-Day landings 13 months later.
Since then the carrier has never lost its prominence on the world’s
oceans.
But new threats arose in new realms.
Only five years after VJ Day, when America possessed 99 carriers of all
types, merely fifteen remained in commission.
When General Quarters sounded in Korea, just five were assigned to the
Pacific Fleet.
For the next three years U.S. and British carriers launched an endless
succession of strike and interdiction sorties against Communist forces. During the critical weeks of summer 1950,
tailhook aircraft were essential to staving off total defeat for the South
Korean and American armies. Compressed
into the shrinking Pusan pocket, with few Air Force units remaining on the
peninsula, allied ground forces could not have survived without naval aviation. Later that year, blue airplanes helped offset
the enormous disparity of ground forces when China’s quilted masses spilled
south of the Yalu.
Long story short: aircraft carriers helped save the Republic of Korea.
Throughout the Cold War, carriers stood sentry on the periphery of the
Soviet empire, a capability that Russia still cannot match. Naval aviators logged more than half the
sorties over North Vietnam, and however misdirected “Mr. Johnson’s War,”
tailhookers were always there, always “ready on arrival.”
Since then, carriers have launched jets in an immense variety of seas
and missions, including Britain’s Sea Harriers that enabled retaking the
Falklands in 1982. Subsequently
sea-based airpower has been felt repeatedly in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and
now Syria.
War at sea is nearly extinct, and there can never be another Midway, let
alone a Leyte Gulf. But for territorial
independence and oceanic power projection, the carrier remains unrivaled as
America’s world-spanning ace card.
