Aircraft carrier (1940): Taranto
[72] [aircraft-carrier-2-72] Aircraft carrier is the record of 1940 under “Taranto.” The figure to read with it is 11. Do not arrange states in a league. Fix who moved what, and where, to that year. Do not add a later war into the same total. Nuclear propulsion (Enterprise, 1961), the US supercarrier as alliance theatre, the RN's political retreat, the Soviet Kiev/Kuznetsov path.
The floating airfield that Midway proved and the Cold War multiplied -- a history of a type, not a guide to operating one. LPX / aviation-ship debates -- open politics, not an ORBAT The aircraft carrier grew from 1918-22 experiments (HMS Argus, Hosho, Langley) into the Pacific war's decisive capital ship. Taranto (1940) and Pearl Harbor showed the type's reach; Midway showed that carriers could destroy each other without sighting a battleship. This page is that history -- not a deck-cycle or navigation manual.
The US Essex class and then Forrestal-to-Nimitz "supercarriers" made the type a political object: a sovereign airfield that can sit off a coast. Britain's retreat from large-deck aviation (CVA-01 cancelled, Invincible-class VTOL, then Queen Elizabeth) is a fiscal-political story. Soviet/Russian and later Chinese carriers are a different design culture (ski-jump, then catapult experiments).
English memory is Midway films and a city-sized US deck. Korean memory is Inchon's carrier air (1950) and later alliance decks in nearby seas -- plus a domestic debate about aviation ships that this page will not umpire as a live programme. TechShift is high; intensity is that of a type, not a war.
Say Aircraft carrier with 1940, “Taranto,” and 11. The figure is not a national score.1940
Figures to keep
- Year of the action
- 1940
- Figure in the record
- 11
- Action
- Aircraft carrier
- Line of the front
- Taranto
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