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In 1948, the country’s first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, ordered the USS United States, a supercarrier displacing seventy thousand tons designed to carry up to eighteen large strategic bombers off its deck.
An auspicious start for a ship that experienced so many accidents.
Like the preceding Midway-class, Forrestal had an armored flight deck—but its deck was more robustly integrated as a load-bearing element of the hull rather than as a superstructure.
Forrestals were decommissioned one-by-one between 1993 and 1998—but stayed busy right until then. In 1993, Ranger deployed off of Somalia and provided photo reconnaissance, logistics and air support for Operation Restore Hope as it faced opposition from warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid. As the United States prepares to deliver its second one-hundred-thousand-ton Gerald Ford-class supercarrier later in 2019, it’s easy to forget that until the mid-1950s the Navy’s carriers displaced between a third or half that much. The Midway-class carriers built during World War II were designed to launc...