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Traces the history of aircraft carriers from the first flight from a ship in 1910 to the present-day operations of a nuclear-powered carrier.

Arranged by country and class, the book discusses each basic design and presents appearance notes and career summaries.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Super carrier
• Thunder ballet
• The golden age
• The Kitty Hawk
• Cold wars and hot spots
• Next-generation aircraft
• New developments
• Vietnam
• The Forrestal fire
• Turning point and aftermath
• Evolution
• Challenges
• A dangerous world
• Into the sunset
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Technical data
• Appendix B: Individual ships
• Appendix C: Aircraft technical data
• Appendix D: Air wings.

The book covers the Forrestal class supercarriers and the follow-on ships, which are basically of the same design, i.e. the Forrestal CV-59, Saratoga CV-60, Ranger CV-61, Independence CV-62, Kitty Hawk CV-63, Constellation CV-64, America CV-66 and Kennedy CV-67. (The Enterprise CVN-65 is unique and is not covered beyond an explanation of the reasons for returning to conventional power in the America and Kennedy that followed her.) As in The Essex Aircraft Carriers and The Independence Light Aircraft Carriers, the main emphasis is on the operational history of these ships, which covers a span of over fifty years. There are 81 photographs included in four signatures covering the whole history of the supercarriers interspersed within the body of the book. Maps include the Western Pacific, Vietnam, Mediterranean, Middle East, Indian Ocean and Caribbean. The front end paper illustration shows the Saratoga as representative of the Forrestal class with port and starboard profiles and an overhead view. The rear end paper shows similar views of the Constellation as part of the Kitty Hawk class. Appendix A gives a brief overview of the design technical data for the ships including their dimensions, propulsion systems, arresting gear, catapults, armament, and radars. Illustrations include an annotated inboard profile of the class as built, as well as annotated cross sections comparing the differences between Forrestal and the John F. Kennedy. Appendix B profiles individual ships with a short description of significant items that are not included in the main body of the book. Data for each ship includes the builder as well as dates for keel laying, launch, commissioning, redesignations and decommissioning. Illustrations include the command shield for each ship. Appendix C provides technical data (power plants, dimensions, weights, performance, crew, and armament) for aircraft that operated from the ships over the course of their careers. Included is a table comparing the old Navy designations with the uniform system adopted in 1962 as well as an explanation of each system. Appendix D includes a description of the air wing and its component squadrons and how they have evolved over time, as well as an explanation of the tail code system. For each ship, every deployment is covered with tables showing the dates of deployment, the squadrons assigned within the air group/air wing, the modex and aircraft types. Where the tail code letters are different from the air wing, they are shown next to the modex.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Illustrations and Maps
• The Dawn of Naval Air Power: From Dreadnoughts to Flattops
• Mobilizing for War
• Flattops in the Atlantic
• The Rising Sun
• Carriers at War: Fighting for Time
• Coral Sea
• Midway - The Turning Point
• Evolution of Combat Tactics: The Eastern Solomons
• The Battle for Guadalcanal
• Refining Carrier Tactics
• Island-Hopping in the Pacific
• The Marianas Turkey Shoot
• Ascent of the Air Admirals: The New Air Navy
• Prelude to the Philippines
• Leyte Gulf
• The Setting Sun
• Command of the Seas: Korea - Carriers and Politics
• Vietnam - President Johnson's War
• Cold Wars and Brush Fires
• The Desert Wars
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book explores the development, technology, and tactics of aircraft carrier warfare. The aircraft carrier emerged in the twentieth century as a major new weapon of war. Since World War II, there have been no engagements between carrier air groups, but flattops have been prominent and essential in every war where targets could be struck from planes at sea. Carriers can range at will, with planes that can be refuelled in the air to strike targets thousands of miles inland. From the improvised wooden platforms of the early 20th century to today's nuclear-powered supercarriers, Hearn explores how combat experience of key individuals drove the development, technology, and tactics of carriers in the world's navies. In the early 20th century, during the days of the dreadnoughts, naval officers first wondered whether aeroplanes could be launched from the deck of a surface vessel. From these early experiments, the first carriers emerged in the 1920s. While the rest of the world viewed them as defensive weapons, Japan focused on offensive capabilities and produced the finest carrier in the world by 1940. World War II would see the carrier emerge as the greatest surface ship afloat. Since then, no war has been fought without them. It has been published under the new Praeger Security International imprint and will appeal to readers interested in either naval or airpower history. It includes the key individuals responsible for the evolution of carriers and provides a comprehensive look at carrier development.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

The technical details of British warships were recorded in a set of plans produced by the builders on completion of every ship. Known as the 'as fitted' general arrangements, these drawings represented the exact appearance and fitting of the ship as it entered service. Intended to provide a permanent reference for the Admiralty and the dockyards, these highly detailed plans were drawn with exquisite skill in multi-coloured inks and washes that represent the acme of the draughtsman's art. Today they form part of the incomparable collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, which is using the latest scanning technology to make digital copies of the highest quality. This book is one of a series based entirely on these draughts which depict famous warships in an unprecedented degree of detail-complete sets in full colour, with many close-ups and enlargements that make every aspect clear and comprehensible. Extensive captions point the reader to important features to be found in the plans, and an introduction covers the background to the design. HMS _Victorious_ was a ship with two almost separate incarnations-as built in 1941 she was one of a new type of armoured carrier which saw strenuous wartime service; post-war the ship underwent a massive reconstruction lasting nearly eight years that saw her recommission in1958 as one of the best equipped carriers in the world, ready for another decade of duty. Both these phases of the ship's life are fully documented, which allows this novel form of anatomy to cover two generations of carrier design.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Beginnings
• A purpose-built ship and numerous conversions
• Take-off decks
• Take-off platforms, catapults and lighters
• HMS Furious
• HMS Argus
• USS Langley
• Progress
• Different navies, different techniques
• Flight from ships other than carriers
• HMS Implacable described and compared
• Flying from a straight-deck carrier
• Design innovation and the 'rubber deck'
• Transformation
• Flying from an angled-deck carrier
• Helicopters
• Short take-off, vertical landing
• What might have been
• Cross-deck operations
• Postscript.

Among all the celebrations of the RAF's centenary, it was largely forgotten that the establishment of an independent air force came at a cost - and it was the Royal Navy that paid the price. In 1918 it had been pre-eminent in the technology and tactics of employing aircraft at sea, but once it lost control of its own air power, it struggled to make the RAF prioritise naval interests, in the process losing ground to the rival naval air forces of Japan and the United States. This book documents that struggle through the cash-strapped 1920s and '30s, culminating in the Navy regaining control of its aviation in 1937, but too late to properly prepare for the impending war. However, despite the lack of resources, British naval flying had made progress, especially in the advancement of carrier strike doctrine. These developments are neatly illustrated by the experiences of Lieutenant William Lucy, who was to become Britain's first accredited air 'ace' of the war and to lead the world's first successful dive-bombing of a major warship. Making extensive use of the family archive, this book also reproduces many previously unseen photographs from Lucy's album, showing many aspects of life in the Fleet Air Arm up to the end of the Norway campaign. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, in November 1940 the inter-war concentration on carrier strike was to be spectacularly vindicated by the air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto - it inspired the Japanese to a far larger effort at Pearl Harbor the following year, but the Royal Navy had shown the way.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• List of Figures Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction
• Chapter 1. Carrier Interpretation
• Chapter 2. "Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable"
• Chapter 3. Triptych
• Chapter 4. Pearl
• Chapter 5. Amalgamation
• Chapter 6. "Well Done, Massie Hughes"
• Chapter 7. "Luminous Metallic Underworld"
• Chapter 8. "Better Part of Six Years"
• Chapter 9. "The Lord Looks Out for Drunks, Small Children, and CVEs"
• Chapter 10. "Quickening of Pulse"
• Chapter 11. "Like Bananas in Bunches"
• Chapter 12. "Rocket Business"
• Chapter 13. Denver Omelet Sandwiches
• Chapter 14. "Long Haired Scientists"
• Chapter 15. Massie
• Chapter 16. "Stand by to Repel Boarders!"
• Chapter 17. Buoyant Battlefield
• Chapter 18. Crucible
• Chapter 19. "Seeing Ghosts"
• Chapter 20. St. Valentine's Day Massacre
• Chapter 21. Okinawa
• Chapter 22. The Last D-Day
• Chapter 23. "Yanks Are on Their Way!"
• Chapter 24. Magic Carpet
• Chapter 25. Remembering Conclusion: Void of Memory Notes Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Recounts the stories of the USS Block Island CVE-21 and CVE-106 and their crews, many of whom served on both ships in the Atlantic and Pacific theatres In Valor and Courage: The Story of the USS Block Island Escort Carriers in World War II Benjamin Hruska explores the history and commemoration of the USS Block Island-or, more properly, the Block Islands, as two escort carriers bore that name during WWII. The first, CVE 21, bears the distinction of having been the only American aircraft carrier sunk in the Atlantic Theatre after being torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of North Africa. Of the CVE-21's 957 crew members, six sailors were killed and eighteen injured in the strike, and four of the Block Island's fighter pilots were lost later in the day searching for a safe place to land their planes. When the CVE-106 was commissioned to replace its predecessor, Captain Massie Hughes successfully persuaded the Navy to keep the CVE-21's crew together in manning the new ship. After resurrection as the CVE-106, the Block Island was assigned to the Pacific theater where it fought until the end of the war. The saga of these two ships and the crew that navigated two very different theaters of war offers a unique lens on naval strategy and engineering as it evolved during WWII, especially as pertains to the escort carrier class-generally underappreciated both in naval studies and in public memory. Using archival materials, dozens of oral histories, primary sources, and official records, Hruska traces the life of the Block Island from the CVE-21's construction through its missions in the Atlantic, its work as an antisubmarine hunter, its destruction, and the lasting impact of those experiences on its crew. Hruska's study juxtaposes traditional military history with an examination of the acts of remembrance and commemoration by veterans who served on the escort carriers, how those practices evolved over time, and how the meanings of personal wartime experiences and memories gradually shifted throughout that process.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Recent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated that American carrier air power can conduct coordinated deep-strike missions well beyond coastal reaches, providing around the clock target coverage, consistently accurate target attack, and multiple successful target attacks per sortie.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)