The aircraft carrier is a warship built around a flight deck and hangar so it can launch, recover and support fixed-wing aircraft at sea, functioning as a mobile air base independent of land airfields. Early experiments, including the first shipboard takeoff from USS Birmingham in 1910 and the first landing on a moving ship aboard HMS Furious in 1917, led to HMS Argus entering service in 1918 as the first vessel able to both launch and recover aircraft with a full-length flight deck. Carriers displaced the battleship as the capital ship of major navies over the following decades, most consequentially in the Pacific theater of the Second World War, where carrier-based air power rather than surface gunnery decided the largest naval engagements. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Disputed
Introduced YearHMS Argus (1918) is usually credited as the first true aircraft carrier able to both launch and recover aircraft; earlier ships from 1910 onward experimented with takeoff and landing at sea without full carrier capability. Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category) Weapon Class Connections
Used In
Source Wikipedia: Aircraft carrier
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Aircraft carrier
Wikipedia- Origins and history sections
Lead section, first paragraph
is a warship designed to carry, launch, recover and support aircraft at sea, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities that allow it to serve as a mobile, seagoing airbase.
- Weapon class classified from the entity's own sourced description text.
- Correction: a warship, not itself an aircraft (false match on the word 'aircraft').
Used In: World War I, Wikipedia article text
Early in World War I, the Imperial Japanese Navy ship conducted the world's first carrier-launched air raid: on 6 September 1914, the Wakamiya used its crane to lower Farman seaplanes into the water.
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