The Navy’s Midway-Class Aircraft Carriers: Meet a Real ‘Battle Carrier’
Story by Peter Suciu • Sunday
Conceived as a beefier “battle carrier,” the Midway-class aircraft carrier featured an armored flight deck was more resilient and better able to recover from dive-bombing and kamikaze attacks – and to ensure that it could still carry enough planes to do the job the ship was longer than three football fields.
Six of the nearly 1,000 foot long behemoths were planned, and three were built. And from her launching on March 20, 1945 USS Midway (CV-41), which was named after the decisive World War II carrier battle fought just three years earlier, was the largest warship on the planet.
The USS Midway arrived too late for World War II, and was commissioned on September 10, 1945 – but she would play a major role during the changing geopolitical climate of the Cold War. For 47 years, as the longest-serving aircraft carrier in the 20th century, she was a pioneer as well; the first American carrier to operate in sub-Arctic midwinder, which required the development of new flight deck procedures, and became the only ship to launch a captured German V-2 rocket and then sent a patrol plane aloft to demonstrate that atomic bombs could be delivered from a carrier.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-navy-s-midway-class-aircraft-carriers-meet-a-real-battle-carrier/ar-AA16Skt8?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=9eb66c2f60654a7f8aefa70640632c2e
