Building an aircraft carrier is difficult business. Many of the world’s great navies started by converting other ships into carriers, a practice that resulted in a few successes, and more than a few failures. Other navies worked their way up by experimentation. With China recently launching its first domestically built carrier, and Japan considering the conversion of its
What if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor eighty-plus years ago? The attack is today regarded as an enormous tactical success but a strategic failure. Several older battleships were damaged or destroyed, but the treachery of the attack spurred the United States to fully mobilize for war and to pursue that war with a vengeful fury.
As the guns fell silent at the end of the First World War, the remaining global powers sat together to resolve issues through negotiation rather than suspicion and war. New organizations like the League of Nations sprung up, hoping to bring some order to the perpetual chaos of global affairs. In this new zeitgeist of compromise, the leaders of the remaining world naval powers sat down and discussed their ships.
Editor’s note: Rychlik, USMC Ret., is the initiator of efforts to upgrade the posthumous Navy Crosses of three aviators at the Battle of Midway to Congressional Medals of Honor. One