Aircraft Carriers: If the Navy Magically Merged Aircraft Carriers and Battleships

Everything you need to know: After World War II, navies found themselves saddled with surplus battleship hulls and considered converting them into “aircraft carriers”—hybrid ships that combined the firepower of a battleship with the capabilities of an aircraft carrier.

-The United States, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom explored such conversions, but most projects were abandoned due to high costs and inefficiencies compared to purpose-built aircraft carriers.

– The U.S. Navy’s Iowa-class battleships had been equipped with flight decks for helicopters and Harrier jets, but these projects were never realized. The Soviet Navy took a different path with the kyiv-class “heavy aircraft-carrying cruisers,” combining aircraft carrier functions with heavy missile armament.

-Although modern technology such as the F-35B improves the capabilities of small aircraft carriers, the lack of battleships makes a revival of combat carriers unlikely.

The Aircraft Carrier: The Navies’ Quest for Hybrid Warships After World War II

The dream of the combat aircraft carrier did not die during World War II, despite the substandard performance of many converted ships and despite the severe demands that jet aviation would place on modern flight decks.

Indeed, the possibilities offered by new technologies continued to generate proposals for new aircraft carrier configurations almost as long as the last battleships remained in service. Even after the retirement of the last battleship, the idea of ​​combining the characteristics of surface ships with air capabilities continued to appeal to major navies.

Post-War Proposals for Aircraft Carriers

After the war, navies faced the same problem as after World War I, namely a surplus of large battleship hulls. In the US Navy in particular, admirals were reluctant to abandon these hulls, despite the obvious obsolescence of battleships.

In the United States and elsewhere, architects explored the idea of ​​converting old battleships, or sometimes unfinished battleship hulls, into aircraft carriers. In France, engineers studied the possibility of converting the incomplete battleship Jean Bart and the damaged and refloated Strasbourg into aircraft carriers. The Soviet Navy gave considerable thought to the possibility of completing its incomplete battleships and battlecruisers as aircraft carriers. The Royal Navy even considered completing its Lion-class battleships as hybrid aircraft carriers, with two 16-inch turrets forward and a flight deck aft. The Director of Naval Ordnance called the idea “abortive” and it was not seriously pursued. French and Soviet engineers came to similar conclusions, as the conversions were prohibitively expensive and would have resulted in ships less effective than purpose-built aircraft carriers.

Iowa Class

Most of the world’s modern battleships were placed in reserve shortly after the war and were scrapped in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The hulls were large, but not ideal for conversion to aircraft carriers, and in any case, purpose-built ships were cheaper and more effective. Only the four Iowa-class ships survived into the 1980s, thanks to their solid design, a continuing need for gunfire support, and the Navy’s immense resources. Over the course of the class’s long history, several proposals have emerged to convert them into hybrid combat carriers. Most of these proposals involved replacing the aft turret with a flight deck capable of operating helicopters, thereby giving the warships inherent anti-submarine and reconnaissance capabilities. The Royal Navy had undertaken a similar effort with the cruisers HMS Tiger and HMS Blake, with mixed success, but the Iowas were much larger and therefore offered much more space.

Technological advances made the prospect even more attractive. As the promise of the Harrier VSTOL fighter became apparent, conversion plans envisioned battleships capable of carrying their own fighter protection. One project involved installing ski jumps and aircraft facilities on the Iowas that would allow them to carry up to twenty Harriers. The ideas were abandoned for the traditional reasons: conversion would be extremely expensive and would result in inferior aircraft facilities compared to the flight decks of warships dedicated to aviation. The Iowas returned to service, but with their main armaments intact and without major modifications.

Soviet approach to aircraft carriers

While the Americans were considering how to modernize the Iowa, the Soviets took a different path. Instead of equipping a battleship with a flight deck, they decided to equip an aircraft carrier with the type of weapons normally associated with a surface combatant. Soviet naval doctrine did not view aircraft carriers as the center of large strike groups, but rather as playing a primarily defensive role.

The result was the kyiv class, a group of four “heavy carrier cruisers” that could employ helicopters and VSTOL aircraft while carrying heavy anti-surface, anti-aircraft, and anti-submarine armament. Most notably, all Kievs carried at least eight P-500 surface-to-surface missiles, designed to strike enemy carrier battle groups at a range of up to 300 km. The Kievs also carried a plethora of anti-aircraft and anti-submarine missiles.

While most conversion proposals resembled battleships with flight decks, the Kievs were more like aircraft carriers with a foredeck covered with missile launchers. Their primary fighter was the Yak-38 Forger, of which they normally carried twelve, as well as sixteen helicopters. The four kyiv-class ships were mostly successful in service, although the sole surviving ship, INS Vikramaditya, underwent a rebuild when sold to India to acquire a full flight deck with ski jump.

The last salvo

Paradoxically, concurrent technological advances in the Navy would likely make the idea of ​​an aircraft carrier more feasible today than in the past. The F-35B Panther VSTOL fighter has made short-deck carriers considerably more lethal than even at the height of the Harrier era. The MV-22 Osprey has, similarly, greatly increased the flexibility of small aircraft carriers. Unfortunately, there are no more battleships to convert. If the Navy had good reason to ditch the obsolete Iowas, the existence of the F-35B and MV-22, along with the desire to spread air assets across a wide range of platforms, could revive demand for large surface ships that can do a little bit of everything.

About the Author: Dr. Robert Farley

Dr. Robert Farleyfrequent TNI contributor, teaches at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. He is the author of The Battleship Book and can be found at @drfarls. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Image credit: Creative Commons.