One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  Another new technology, long-range guided missiles, was also approaching maturity. In 1955 the U.S. Navy formed a Long-Range Objectives Group specifically to work out the likely shape of the fleet fifteen years hence, and thus to provide direction for naval research and development. The group’s 1956–1957 reports were particularly significant, because they were of great interest to CNO Admiral Arleigh Burke. They give some idea of contemporary concerns; one was clearly the rising cost of attack carriers. Up to this point, carrier size had been set by the needs of heavy attack bombers. By 1956 it seemed that the fleet might shift to long-range cruise missiles (Regulus) as its heavy strike arm. It also seemed that within a decade there might be effective vertical takeoff fighters (the Navy was then helping fund the Ryan X-13 tail-sitting VTOL airplane, with delta wings). Both a tail-sitter and a cruise missile might operate from large surface ships, in which case big carriers might no longer be needed. Their remaining key mission would be tactical attack, which at the time involved tactical nuclear weapons. The 1956 Long-Range Objectives report envisaged a return to smaller (Essex-sized) carriers operating a new all-weather jet attack airplane—which the Marines would share. With its limited warload, it could be designed for short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) operation from fields ashore. This airplane emerged later as the Grumman A-6 Intruder. When it became obvious that limited wars would be fought with large numbers of non-nuclear weapons, it also became clear that the A-6 could never be a short takeoff airplane, and the Navy felt fortunate that it was still operating large carriers. The tail-sitting VTOL fighter also never materialized, although the potential of VTOL was later raised again to justify an abortive shift to smaller carriers.

  U.S. Navy, PH2 Geoffrey L. England

  USS Abraham Lincoln, typical of modern U.S. nuclear carriers, October 1994.

  The long-range cruise missile was cancelled in favor of an even more futuristic weapon, the Polaris ballistic missile. Polaris did end the carriers’ involvement in U.S. strategic war plans except for SIOP commitments that continued throughout the Cold War. To pay for the crash construction of the submarines and of the missile, the annual carrier program ended with USS America. Further carrier design continued, an important object being to find a less expensive way to build a nuclear carrier. Since the size of the Enterprise had been determined by her eight-reactor power plant, the next step was to use individually larger reactors and to reduce the total to four.

  By the early 1960s the U.S. Navy was operating a large force of Essex-class ASW carriers (CVS) alongside its attack carriers. Their original mid-ocean ASW role was fading, because the new P-3 Orion could cover the whole Atlantic from coastal bases, the Azores, and Iceland. Moreover, it was fast enough to reach contacts before the original information (from SOSUS and other sources) became entirely stale. However, another CVS role opened. The Soviets began to deploy nuclear attack submarines. Carriers, particularly those using conventional power, were not fast enough to outrun such craft. Moreover, the Soviets built up their own ocean surveillance system, which could cue their attack submarines. They demonstrated it in spectacular fashion in February 1968, when such a submarine intercepted the carrier Enterprise despite her high speed, as she deployed to Vietnam. As they were withdrawn from the mid-ocean ASW role, the ASW carriers were assigned to work with attack carriers. The ideal formation was three attack carriers working with one ASW carrier. However, the Essex-class carriers were clearly ageing. How vital would it be to replace them, at a time when building any carriers at all seemed difficult? Proposals for a new CVS mentioned that it would both support troops ashore (S was sometimes taken to mean support) and conduct ASW. The idea died.

  To a limited extent the U.S. Navy retained a kind of reserve carrier ASW capability. By 1956 the Marines were interested in helicopter assault from the sea (vertical envelopment), and a small carrier, based on the abortive CVE, was designed for them as the LPH. Its design specifically allowed for conversion to a helicopter ASW ship, as helicopters were now seen as effective ASW platforms. The contemporary Royal Navy mixed ASW aircraft with attack aircraft and fighters on its small carriers. It soon went so far as to consider building special ASW helicopter carriers (which it wanted to call escort cruisers) to clear its attack carriers of these aircraft. The U.S. LPH was too slow for that, but in the early 1960s un-modernized Essex-class carriers were converted into helicopter carriers for the Marines. Later much larger helicopter carriers were built as the Tarawa (LHA-1) class.

  Carrier construction resumed fitfully, the Johnson administration deciding to build a further ship. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was skeptical of the carriers’ value. Initially he did not want to build any carriers, but the Navy’s effective operations in Vietnam convinced him that they were worthwhile. McNamara also questioned whether the nuclear power plant was worthwhile. Ultimately McNamara chose a conventional power plant for the next ship, USS John F. Kennedy (CVA-67). Although quite different in detail, the new ship was effectively a repeat version of America.

  Work on more compact, less expensive reactor plants continued, so that by the time a further carrier was being considered for construction about 1966, there was a two-reactor plant nearly as powerful as the eight that powered USS Enterprise. It was possible to wrap them in a somewhat smaller hull, but still with roughly the same flight deck as had been adopted with USS Kitty Hawk more than a decade earlier. The resulting USS Nimitz (FY67 program) became the prototype for ten more nuclear carriers, built over two decades. The Nixon administration ordered two more ships (FY70 and FY74 programs).

  The completion of USS Nimitz coincided roughly with the end of the Vietnam War. Money was very tight, and there was little prospect of building new carriers—and none replacing the worn-out ASW carriers. Since the carrier ASW mission was now mainly about self-protection, it occurred to CNO Admiral Zumwalt that this mission could be transferred onto the big carriers. Instead of their previous attack designation (CVA), they were re-designated CV. Admiral Zumwalt went further, arguing that a carrier should be able to “swing” her Air Group from mission to mission, adding and subtracting aircraft as needed. In effect he was using the fact that carriers are largely modular, their big hangars sized to accommodate a wide variety of aircraft. They were not quite as modular as might be imagined, because different aircraft needed different command and control facilities and different maintenance facilities. For example, part of the CV modification was installation of an ASW module, which equated to (but improved) the command and control and acoustic analysis facilities of a CVS. Installation was possible because the earlier manual facility could be automated. The computers involved were beginning to shrink dramatically. This degree of automation was linked to the appearance of a new carrier ASW aircraft, the Lockheed S-3 Viking, which was also highly automated, linked directly to the ASW module both while in flight and upon landing.

  Before becoming Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Zumwalt had been the last Chief of the Long Range Objectives Group. In that role he had had a good chance to think through what he considered the great challenges of the post-Vietnam world, as well as the technologies he thought would soon come to fruition. He particularly worried that Soviet silencing would render SOSUS, the key to American ASW, useless.13 Without SOSUS, the U.S. Navy would find itself relying heavily on convoying, and on local mainly active sonar. In Zumwalt’s view, that in turn would require a large force of small carriers, which he eventually called sea control ships. As CNO, Zumwalt considered the sea control ship a key program. 14 Zumwalt hoped that such ships could be built for a fraction of the price of a conventional carrier. They would have little or no strike capability. New VTOL technology would provide them with some fighter defense.15 Instead of the usual airborne radar aircraft (E-2 Hawkeyes) they would rely on unmanned radar airships, which would lock onto them and follow them around the oceans.16 Helicopters were already accepted as the key to local ASW defense.

  In fact Zumwalt’s sea control ship did not long survive
his tenure as CNO, although the Spanish navy built a sea control ship to U.S. plans, and a Spanish shipyard built a scaled-down version for Thailand. Both navies operated British-designed Harrier attack fighters from their ships. In the United States, advocates of small but numerous carriers were defeated. The smaller the carrier, the more vulnerable to weapons (which were not of course scaled down). To mount the same air effort, the smaller carrier had to be replenished more frequently, and replenishment was both expensive and potentially dangerous. Moreover, the VSTOL aircraft that would make a small carrier practicable offered lower performance, including dramatically reduced payloads and shorter ranges (which would keep the carrier closer to hostile forces).

  Admiral Zumwalt accepted that larger carriers retained a valid role, but he wanted to scale down from the big Nimitz. He proposed a conventionally powered 50,000- to 60,000-ton Tentative Conceptual Baseline (T-CBL) ship; in September 1972 Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird issued a program decision memorandum calling for the design of a $550 million carrier (the sea control ship was expected to cost $100 million, and the frigate $45 million). The third Nimitz (Carl Vinson, CVN-70) was bought instead for the FY74 program, but by this time T-CBL was regarded as a likely future carrier design, more affordable than the existing one, but not yet mature enough to buy.17 Thus in July 1975 new Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered the Navy to begin further studies of a non-nuclear carrier (the Navy appealed). Eventually Schlesinger approved work on a 50,000-ton CVNX, whose cost should not exceed that of USS Nimitz. The CVNX was to incorporate a variety of innovations in areas such as catapults, elevators, and command and control. However, in January 1976 a panel concluded that it would be more economical to buy a fourth Nimitz to retain the thirteen-carrier force beyond 1985. President Gerald Ford therefore included long-lead items for the ship in his draft FY77 budget. However, in response to criticism, he substituted plans for two oil-fueled carriers in FY79 and FY81. The cut in size (to something like T-CBL) was justified partly by hopes that a transition to a new generation of VSTOL aircraft would minimize demands for carrier size. The new carrier was tentatively designated CVV, the second V indicating VSTOL.

  The Carter administration, which entered office in 1977, was far less interested in attack carriers, which it associated with power projection in the Third World (as it entered office, the administration view was that it was essential for the United States to make peace with Third World countries, as reflected in its decision to turn the Panama Canal over to Panama). Despite its reluctance to consider carrier construction at all, the Carter administration did support the reduced-price CVV. Designed within a severe price limit, it would be much smaller than the existing ships, and it would be non-nuclear. Instead of designing the ship to operate a tactically coherent Air Wing, it was designed with an Air Wing scaled to meet the price and size of the ship. It turned out that quite drastically shrinking a conventional carrier saved remarkably little money. Congress was unimpressed; it approved a fourth Nimitz in the FY79 program—which President Jimmy Carter then vetoed. The following year he felt compelled to reverse course, partly because operations in the Indian Ocean demonstrated the value both of nuclear power and of a large carrier Air Wing. Thus the fourth Nimitz was finally included in President Carter’s final budget (FY80). By this time, too, hopes of a new VSTOL generation had generally been abandoned.

  Then the situation changed dramatically. President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman, envisaged a fleet built around large carriers, consistent with the maritime strategy he supported. He knew that the war plans written by the Joint Chiefs of Staff required an unaffordable total of twenty-two; he settled for an affordable force of fifteen operational carriers. That meant more ships, because some carriers were always in long-term refit. Lehman was determined to build up the Navy at minimum cost; he was painfully aware that a build-up could easily cause gross inflation in defense products, so that it would buy almost nothing. Among his achievements was an agreement with the sole American yard capable of building nuclear carriers, Newport News, to invest in sufficient plant to build two ships simultaneously, so that each would cost considerably less than if ordered separately. Congress understood what he was doing, and it approved two pairs of carriers (CVN-72-3 and CVN-74-5).

  Lehman also understood the potential of the large-deck amphibious ships. He replaced the ageing LPH fleet with much larger LHDs (Essex class), effectively improved versions of the LHA. By this time the Marines were operating STOVL fighters (versions of the British Harrier). Lehman required the LHD to be convertible into a sea control ship. The situation had changed dramatically since Zumwalt’s time. Zumwalt had espoused the small sea control ship as an alternative to the expensive carrier, a way of killing off the big decks. Because he was so successful in building large carriers, Lehman saw the LHD as a potential supplement, to make up numbers in areas of less intense threat, and to extend U.S. naval presence.

  Although Lehman’s large decks looked much like their predecessors, the logic of their design had changed. USS Forrestal was designed to operate heavy attack bombers, which were then the largest U.S. carrier aircraft. Existing fighters were far smaller; they could operate even from an Essex. By 1980 the F-14 Tomcat was by far the most demanding carrier airplane, the one that set minimum carrier standards. The largest attack bomber, the Douglas A-3, could operate from a substantially smaller ship. However, it was the F-14 that could, it was hoped, fight the outer air battle, killing Soviet missile-bearing bombers and thus winning sea dominance.

  As the Cold War ended, the logic of carrier operation began to change again. The role was again mainly attack. The emerging reality was that national air defense systems, like those of Iraq, could be knocked out in the initial stages of a war. Attack aircraft could operate at higher altitudes. They could more easily use the precision weapons, such as laser-guided bombs, which had emerged from the Vietnam War. Within a decade, the best such weapons were GPS-guided. Both kinds of weapons offered a new kind of attack. In the past, a carrier had launched mass raids against single targets. Mass was needed both to saturate enemy defenses and to ensure that hits were made, since the probability of hitting per bomb was limited. Precision weapons, delivered from outside enemy air defense range, could be used singly. One airplane could attack multiple targets on each sortie. A carrier with, say, forty-eight attack aircraft on board could hit at least forty-eight separate targets if her aircraft flew once per day.

  The question became not how many airplanes the carrier could accommodate, but rather how many targets she could attack each day. That in turn depended on how rapidly her flight deck worked. Nimitz-class carriers reflected some much earlier ideas: that the bow catapults should be reserved for ready nuclear strikes, for example (to be launched at the outset before the ship could be vaporized), and that most strikes should be full-effort Alfa strikes, in which all available aircraft flew together to hit the same target. Flight deck turnaround time depended on how crowded the deck was, and on how weapons elevators were arranged in relation to aircraft elevators and catapults. Flight deck configuration really had not been rethought since the mid-1960s.

  It gradually became clear that the new kind of operation could be conducted most efficiently if the deck were emptier, because airplanes could move around more easily. It also helped to move the island further aft, exchanging it with an elevator, so that airplanes could be fed to the catapults more efficiently. Weapons elevators should be rearranged. By the time the new configuration was being developed, it seemed likely that at some point the Navy would adopt unmanned armed aircraft (UCAVs). A new flight deck arrangement also seemed to offer the most efficient way of operating them. Big decks and big ships were still clearly best, but for very different reasons. On this basis the most recent carrier, USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), was designed.

  Several studies showed not only that large carriers were far more efficient than smaller ones, but that even larger ones might be attractive. Just how large was
never clear. By the late 1990s it could reasonably be argued that the Nimitz hull had more than run out of design margin, and that some redesign and enlargement was warranted. On the other hand, it was not clear how such growth could be controlled. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz personally decided to cap growth by requiring the next carrier (CVN-77) to fit within the same hull form as its predecessors. There were noticeable external changes: a large bow bulb, for better hydrodynamics, and a new island and mast.