Description
Book SynopsisThe Royal Navy invented the aircraft carrier and most of the key innovations which have enabled carriers to remain effective, exploiting continuing changes in aircraft technology, from biplanes to supersonic jets. This book tells (and explains) how that happened over more than a century of British carrier development, based largely on declassified official documents, both British and US. Major themes include British domination of the early years of carrier development, and the audacious and highly original plans for their use during World War I, which inspired later naval thinking on the potential of carrier aviation. The introduction of armoured flight decks in the 1930s was only the first of a sequence of British innovations, the most important of which made it possible for carriers to operate jet aircraft (the angled deck, the steam catapult, and the mirror landing sight). These British developments, particularly the steam catapult, were crucial to the survival of the US carrier f
