The carrier for the 21st century

摘要

From the outside, the massive form of the future USS Gerald R. Ford looks largely similar to that of the Nimitz class carriers that she is designed to replace. However, virtually every component and system of this new class of American super carrier is different, as the design work behind the giant carriers has seen the technology assessed, changed and advanced. Since the end of World War Ⅱ no nation has developed the aircraft carrier as much as the United States. World War Ⅱ saw the emergence of the carrier as the principal weapon of war for the US Navy, and after 1945 America invested heavily in maintaining its lead in naval aviation. The wartime carriers of the Essex class were progressively modernised as new equipment and technologies were introduced, including steam catapults, angled flight decks and mirror landing sights. Likewise, the three massive wartime-built ships of the Midway class (Midway, Coral Sea and Franklin D. Roosevelt) were extensively modernised. In the 1950s came the first true supercarrier, USS Forrestal, from which all subsequent classes of American aircraft carriers can trace a direct lineage. Nuclear-powered propulsion was added in 1961, when USS Enterprise was launched. The basics of carrier design were put in place between 1975 and 2010, when the ten ships of the Nimitz class were built, but, with Gerald R. Ford and her planned sisterships, many of these rules are set to be broken.