The Ship Model Forum

Are aircraft carriers a source of national pride – or a ludicrous waste of money?


Patrick Bishop
Sat., February 5, 2022, 11:05 a.m.

Book review How to Build and Aircraft Carrier by Chris Terrill - Christopher Pledger
Aircraft carriers have been around since the First World War. If the usual laws of military Darwinism applied, they would be extinct by now, gone the way of the battleship which was eventually just too costly, resource-hungry and vulnerable to survive. But no. The carrier is flourishing. Fourteen navies operate them. The US has 11. They have become as much a national phallic symbol as Dreadnoughts were at the start of the last century – and they attract the same sort of controversy.
Britain’s membership of the carrier club is secured by HMS Queen Elizabeth, which completed her maiden operational voyage just before Christmas, returning to Portsmouth after 28 weeks and 26,000 miles at sea. Hot on her heels comes the second in the class, the Prince of Wales. Together, they earn us the respect of the Americans and put us up there with China and ahead of Russia, France and India. It’s about much more than military muscle. Boris Johnson, who inherited the building project from the Blair-Brown era, trumpets the new supercarriers as the embodiment of national prestige, flying the flag for Global Britain.
The ships are certainly impressive. Big Lizzie, as she is apparently nicknamed, is the largest and most powerful ship the Navy has ever built. She weighs 65,000 tonnes, is 280 metres long, and can carry up to 40 aircraft – notably the horrendously expensive American F-35 Lightning stealth fighter. The flight deck is the size of three and a half football fields. Her six engines generate enough energy to power a city the size of Swindon. And so on…
It adds up to an amazing feat of engineering, and it’s this aspect of the story and the human dynamics that go into making the whole enterprise work that fascinate film-maker Chris Terrill. He knows it inside out, having followed events since the first cut of steel in 2009 to last year’s deployment in the Far East, filming material for his BBC documentary Britain’s Biggest Warship. He’s an anthropologist and enthusiast who underwent the punishing training to qualify for the green beret of the Royal Marines at an impressively advanced age (he is 69).
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China's military has US aircraft carriers in its sights, but those flattops aren't 'little teacups,' their captains say
Christopher Woody
Tue, April 12, 2022, 8:03 a.m.·7 min read


China's development of advanced anti-ship weapons has renewed debate on aircraft carriers' future.
US officials say carriers aren't invulnerable but are well defended and won't be easy to attack.
Anyone thinking they're "little teacups out there or something" is wrong, Capt. Paul Campagna said.
In March 1922, the US Navy's first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, entered service. A century later, some are questioning whether carriers can survive in the wars of the future.
The development of increasingly sophisticated anti-ship weapons by capable adversaries, namely Russia and China, has raised doubts about those ships.
The captains of two of those carriers discounted the concern, saying the US Navy's 11 flattops would be tough to find and hard to stop.
Questions about whether carriers are "obsolete" have come up before, including when Congress was debating whether to build the USS Enterprise, the Navy's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in the late 1950s, Capt. Paul Campagna, the commanding officer of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, said.
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