{"id":12315,"date":"2026-04-11T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/11\/the-worlds-first-super-carrier-was-not-built-by-the-us\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T07:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:38:16","slug":"the-worlds-first-super-carrier-was-not-built-by-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/11\/the-worlds-first-super-carrier-was-not-built-by-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The World’s First ‘Super Carrier’ Was Not Built by the US"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Modern naval warfare is built around aircraft carriers, and today’s nuclear-powered behemoths are often referred to as “major carriers.” The name is fitting, as they are much larger than the first ships that carried and carried aircraft out of combat. In fact, the first aircraft carriers were not built for that purpose, but were designed for other uses, found a flat surface of some sort, and continued on their way. The term “super carrier” appeared before World War II, but it was not a ship of the United States Navy.<\/p>\n

The first ship to be called a super carrier was HMS Ark Royal (91) of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. The New York Times wrote an article describing a new German cruise ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, which was the first of 20, costing $5,000,000 ($115.9 million in 2026), and compared it to the Ark Royal, which it called a “large carrier.” The comparison was appropriate, as the Wilhelm Gustloff was comparable in size and could be converted into an aircraft carrier, which was all the rage back in 1938.<\/p>\n

If that happened, the paper concluded, the German submarine fleet could accommodate an unspecified 35 aircraft, which was a fraction of what the Ark Royal could carry. At the time, Ark Royal was about to undergo its sea trials, which would begin in early May 1938. Aircraft design underwent new ideas and developments throughout WWII, and Ark Royal’s designation as “the great carrier” by the New York Times was a no-brainer in retrospect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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HMS Ark Royal of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy<\/h2>\n
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Modern aircraft carriers are incredibly heavy, weighing 100,000+ tons, but HMS Ark Royal was much smaller. The ship weighed 22,000 tons, and was commissioned in 1938. Ark Royal operated for a few years until 1941, when it was sunk by the German submarine U-81, commanded by Kapit\u00e4nleutnant (equivalent to Lt. US Navy) Friedrich Guggenberger. The attack took place on November 13, 1941, when the Ark Royal was operating near Gibraltar during Operation Perpetual.<\/p>\n

U-81 fired four torpedoes, one of which hit its target, causing it to sink. At that time, the ship was towed, and only one of the 1,488 died in the attack, although almost all of Ark Royal’s aircraft were lost. The ship could carry up to 70 aircraft of various types and participated in several combat operations during its service life. Compared to the carriers used by the US Navy a few years later, the Ark Royal was closer in size and power to the Essex-class carriers.<\/p>\n

As for America’s largest carriers, those would not come until the Forrestal class aircraft carriers entered service in 1955. They got this unofficial name because of their size and weight, which far exceeded their predecessor, the Midway-class. The first ship in that class, USS Midway (CV-41), left about 45,000 tons of water in the sea, while the Forrestal-class ships left 81,000 tons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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  Modern naval warfare is built around aircraft carriers, and today’s nuclear-powered behemoths are often referred to as “major carriers.” The name is fitting, as they are much larger than the first ships that carried and carried aircraft out of combat. In fact, the first aircraft carriers were not built for that purpose, but were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-smartphones-tablets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12363,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315\/revisions\/12363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}