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World War II in the Pacific Ocean involved clashes between aircraft carrier fleets. Japan started the war with ten aircraft carriers, the largest and most modern carrier fleet in the world at that time. There were seven American aircraft carriers at the beginning of the hostilities, although only three of them were operating in the Pacific.
The aircraft carrier I [Note 1] was the first planned aircraft carrier conversion project of the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I.The Imperial Navy had experimented previously with seaplane carriers, though these earlier conversions were too slow to operate with the High Seas Fleet and carried an insufficient number of aircraft.
Aircraft carriers of World War II by country Aircraft carriers serve as a seagoing airbases, equipped with a flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying and recovering aircraft. [ 1 ] Typically, they are the capital ships of a fleet, as they project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for operational support.
Seydlitz, the fourth Admiral Hipper-class cruiser, was about 95 percent complete when she was cancelled after the outbreak of World War II. She was among the vessels selected for conversion into auxiliary aircraft carriers in early 1942, and was to be renamed Weser.
HMS Argus was a British aircraft carrier that served in the Royal Navy from 1918 to 1944. She was converted from an ocean liner that was under construction when the First World War began and became the first aircraft carrier with a full-length flight deck that allowed wheeled aircraft to take off and land.
[2] As World War II loomed, two more classes of carriers were commissioned under President Franklin Roosevelt: the Essex class, which is informally divided into regular bow and extended bow sub-classes, and the Independence-class ships, which are classified as light aircraft carriers. [3] Between these two classes, 35 ships were completed.
The keel of Ranger, the first American ship designed and constructed as an aircraft carrier, was laid down in 1931, and the ship was commissioned in 1934. [2] Following Ranger and before the entry of the United States into World War II, four more carriers were commissioned. Wasp was essentially an improved version of Ranger.
World War II was the first war where naval aviation took a major part in the hostilities. Aircraft carriers were used from the start of the war in Europe looking for German merchant raiders and escorting convoys.