Making It Harder Than Necessary?

Designing a carrier-based aircraft means dealing with several constraints that don't have to be addressed by designers of land-based ones. These affected folded size, weight, strength, takeoff and landing performance, etc. and varied by carrier class. However, in general, the designer was required to accommodate the most onerous. One across-the-board standard was the number that could be parted in the first 200 feet of an Essex-class carrier deck.

In the years following World War II, there were four basic U.S. aircraft carrier types:

Note that the elevators, deck width, and landing areas were roughly the same size. The major difference in size was total deck area with the escort carriers, CVEs, having the least. They were also much slower than the others, having a top speed of a bit less than 20 knots versus more than 30 for the bigger carriers including the CVLs.

The speed difference had a major impact on landing and takeoff performance requirements, since wind-over-deck was critical and the most that a CVE could generate in no-wind conditions was its own top speed. Because lift varies as the square of speed, that meant that the benefit of wind-over-deck in no-wind conditions was not about 30% less but more than 50% less.

In the early 1950s, due to budget and other considerations, only a few CVEs were deployable. However, many more were mothballed and available for recall if necessary. As a result, design requirements for new programs like the S2F and even the A4D jet attack airplane required operation from CVEs. Northrop proposed an early version of a lightweight fighter to the Navy in the early 1950s, without success, that was specifically focused on operation from CVEs.

Block Island was among the last of the escort carriers to deploy as such (some went to sea later as aircraft transports or communication relay platforms). Here CVE-106 is operating AF Guardians in the early 1950s as an ASW carrier.

It was put into reserve on 15 January 1954.

Having to deal with the lower wind-over-deck capability of the CVEs did provide naval aviators with extra margin when operating from the faster carrier classes. It also meant that the A4D Skyhawk could be successfully qualified to operate from former Royal Navy Colossus/Majestic-class aircraft carriers that had been modified with an angled deck, more powerful catapults, and stronger arresting gear like Melbourne, shown here alongside Kitty Hawk.