USN's First Aircraft Carrier

[missileer]

ThumbDog,

Thanks for adding a few more historical pieces to the puzzle. And congratulations for having an ancestors name on the first USN aircraft carrier. This story gets more interesting every day.

John

[Stagecoach]

the very first US aircraft carrier was the USS Langley, it was a modification of a cargo ship with a flat surface for airplanes to deploy mounted on top made 1927 - 28.

[Foute Man]

Originally Posted by Stagecoach

the very first US aircraft carrier was the USS Langley, it was a modification of a cargo ship with a flat surface for airplanes to deploy mounted on top made 1927 - 28.

I guess this is a matter of definitions. I think you mean the USS Langley was the first flattop (ship with a full length flight deck to launch and retrieve heavier than air aircraft), but it wasn't the first US Navy ship to launch and retrieve aircraft, this was USS Birmingham in 1910/1911.

USS Langley was converted from a collier between 1920 - 1922 and recommissioned in the US Navy as an aircraft carrier in 1922, not in 1927/1928

In 1927 the two ships of the Lexington class (converted battlecruisers) entered service in the US Navy and only in 1934 the first purpose built US aircraft carrier was commissioned, this was USS Ranger (CV-4)

There are several videos about the USS Langley on Youtube, (like this one) that will show the enourmous difficulties the pilots faced when trying to land on a moving ship.



In 2013 a Dutch pilot landed his STOL aircraft on a moving cargoship in The English Channel. The ship itself has an overall length of about 95 meter, a beam of 14,90 meter and free deck space of about 69 meter (read the full specifications of the vessel here) The video of that landing can be seen here, and only watching it made me very nervous

[rickstef]

Foute Man, with the youtube link, just use the part of the url AFTER the / between the youtube tags

[Thumb Dog]

Hi All,

And hi again, missileer.

Here are a few quick screen grabs of the Intrepid, its hydrogen generating gear and its barge, the George Washington Parke Custis.

And did I miss it, or was it mentioned before that Fiddler's Green sells a paper model of the Intrepid?

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog

[papermodelfan]

Fiddlers Green does indeed have a model of the Intrepid. See it here: <http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/aircraft/Balloon-Lowe.html>