MIDWAY
CLASS
The workhorses of the
postwar carrier fleet, the Midway class flattops were created to fight
the war against the Japanese, and indeed had the nameship been finished
a few months earlier, she would have seen action in the Pacific. At the
time, surely no one could have foreseen that the ship would remain in
active service, albeit greatly modernized, for another forty-seven
years.
Midway's origins predate Pearl Harbor, and indeed
the
basic design was being developed more or less in parallel with the
Essex class. Although not yet an active participant in the war, by 1940
the USN was watching developments closely, particularly the performance
of the British armored carriers in the Mediterranean. Although American
carrier doctrine dictated that a ship's aircraft would form the
principal line off defense, since a heavily-armored carrier would be
less effective in its primary role thanks to a smaller aircraft
capacity, it was also recognized that any ship under serious air attack
could be expected to take hits. Seeking
to introduce an enhanced level of
protection while
retaining a large American style air wing, the USN evolved a
design larger than any previous American carrier.
Some of the preliminary designs included large caliber guns for use
against enemey cruisers, as at the time carriers were still seen as
being vulnerable to such attack, especially at night. The CV-B scheme
had four 6-inch turrets, plus eight more single weapons, with an
Essex-type island and three centerline elevators. The larger CV-A had
three triple eight-inch turrets and eight 5'/38s, with two centerline
lifts and portside deck edge elevator. The CV-D was an armored carrier
on the proportions of the Essex, which would have sufferred from the
same small air wing as the British armored CVs; the large CV-E actually
served as the starting basis for the Midways.
Well over 900 feet
long and displacing 60,000 tons at full load, the Midways would be even
larger than the converted battlecruisers Lexington
and Saratoga.
In order to achieve a top
speed of 33 knots, designers gave the class a basic hull form similar
to the Iowa class battleships. Recognizing the need for an improved
close-in antiaircraft capability, the Midways were to have an
exceptionally extensive gun armament. No fewer than eighteen five-inch
turrets were projected, and these would use brand-new 54-caliber
weapons with better performance than the earlier 38-caliber guns.
Experience had shown that weapons on the edges of the flight deck often
caused blast damage to parked aircraft, which were of course a
carrier's main reason for being. Thus, the five-inch turrets and
virtually all smaller weapons were fitted on galleries on either side
of the hull below the flight deck.
Midway
in her original
straight-deck configuration, shortly after completion. (USN)
As commissioned, the Midways could accomodate an air wing of over 140
aircraft, but with the straight deck configuration this did not
translate into a great increase in striking power as the aircraft could
not be launched and retrieved any faster than from the smaller Essex
class ships. The Midway's size did however allow a useful margin of
growth as naval aircraft became larger and heavier, as well as
providing more volume for aviation fuel and munitions. Midway
first went to sea with
wartime Vought
Corsairs, F6F
Hellcats, and Curtiss
Helldivers, but big
changes were in store for naval aviation. On July 21, 1946, Roosevelt
was the base for carrier
trials of McDonnell's Phantom I jet fighter, marking the first time
that an all-jet aircraft had operated from a US carrier. In September
of the
following year, Midway
hosted
Operation SANDY, the first firing of a ballistic missile from a ship.
The captured German V-2 used in the test was fired from a rig on the
aft part of the flight deck.
The P2V Neptune may have been an unlikely choice for carrier basing,
but its tremendous range and ability to carry a "Fat Man"
type
bomb made it the Navy's first nuclear strike aircraft. Too heavy for
carapult launches, Neptunes required JATO assistance, as seen here in a
lauch from Franklin
Roosevelt.
(USN
photo)
Although all three Midways were in active service
at the
outset of hostilities in Korea, none of the class would see action
during that conflict, as carrier strength (with the associated nuclear
deterrent) had to be maintained in the NATO theater as well. The size
of the Midways allowed (barely) for operations with
JATO-launched
P2V Neptunes; in a demonstration of the long-range strikes possible by
this arrangement, Midway launched a P2V off Norfolk that flew first to
Panama, and from there San Diego nonstop, covering 4,880 miles. These
interim nuclear bombers were soon replaced by the North American AJ
Savage.
Following
the lead of the Essex-class rebuild programs, the Midways were refitted
to angle-deck configuration in the mid to late 1950s. The basic
program, designated SCB-110, involved a general upgrading that included
sealing off the bow, fitting new electronics, and adding a pair of
steam catapults. The elevator arrangement was also altered; the
portside deck lift was retained to serve as the end of the angle deck,
and the forward centerline lift was extended to handle large aircraft,
but the rear center elevator was incompatible with the angle deck
configuration, and was replaced by a deck edge unit aft of the island.
The angled deck conversions immediately allowed a great increase in the
striking power of the class; with axial decks, they were restricted to
operating such types as the McDonnell Banshee,
Grumman Panther, and Skyraider,
but angled deck allowed for more potent aircraft such as the F8U Crusader,
F3H Demon,
and A3D
Skywarrior. FDR hosted the first deployment of Skywarriors aboard a
non-Forrestal class ship when VAH-3 Sea
Dragons deployed with its
A3D-1s in late 1957.
These alterations did not come without a price, as
the
waterline armor had to be removed, and the portside gallery was all but
sacrificed to accommodate the angle deck. The number of AA weapons was
also reduced; FDR
and Coral
Sea had never received the
full fit of five-inch turrets in any case. Actually, only Midway
and FDR
received SCB-110 proper, as Coral Sea
was put
through SCB-110A, which deleted all the existing
elevators in favor of two starboard side deck edge lifts and one port
side unit that did not impede the angle deck.
Midway
was put through an
extensive alteration (SCB-101.66) in the late 1960s that saw the ship
emerge as nearly an equal to the Forrestal class carriers. Although
nothing could be done about the hangar height, the elevators were
enlarged, more powerful catapults, and over an acre of area was added
to the flight deck. It had been planned to refit Roosevelt
to a similar standard,
but the refit had cost much more than anticipated, and Midway
would end up being the sole
SCB-101.66 ship.
The Midways' first taste of combat would come
during the Vietnam
War,
and all three ships would participate in the conflict at one
point or another. Indeed, Coral Sea
carried out some of the first airstrikes of the war in 1965, and later
that year Midway
fighters
scored the first air-to-air kills of North Vietnamese MiGs. Midway
was on hand in 1975 to cover
the evacuation as South Vietnam fell, and later brought back to the US
South Vietnamese aircraft that had been flown out to Thailand as Saigon
succumbed to the NVA.
USS Midway
(CV-41) underway
off Okinawa in 1983. At this point, her air wing still included F-4
Phantoms, as her size kept her
from operating the F-14
Tomcat.
Midway had first deployed F-4Bs in late 1963 when VF-21 Pacemakers
formed part of the air
group, and hosted the final USN carrier deployment of Phantoms, with
F-4S models belonging to VF-151 and -161 in 1986.
(DoD/PH1
David M. Witthuhn)
During the 1970s, the Midways were redesignated as
CV
multirole carriers; this was really only a paperwork change, as S-3 ASW
aircraft were never operationally carried, leaving the class as attack
carriers in all but name. FDR
was the first of the class to go, being decommissioned in 1978 and
scrapped two years later. Coral Sea
was earmarked for use as a training ship, but the expansion of the Navy
in the 1980s kept her in operational service while newer ships were
being built.
Coral Sea
saw
action against Libya in 1986, and did not
finally retire until 1990; sold for scrap in 1993, the "Coral Maru"
hung on as a stripped hulk for another seven years, until the last bits
of the old ship disappeared under cutting torches. Midway,
which since
the 1970s had been forward-deployed in Japan, was rebuilt once
again in the late 1980s, receiving hull bulges that actually ended up
causing the ship to roll more and making it harder for pilots to land.
She nonthelesss continued in service, deploying to the the Middle East
in the fall of 1990 for Operation Desert Shield. Midway operated from
within the Persian Gulf itself for Desert Storm, and her Hornets and
Intruders dropped over four million pounds of ordnance on Iraqi targets.
The first and last of the class to see service, Midway
decommissioned in 1992, and
even then she was kept on the Naval Vessels Register for some time for
potential recall as a training ship. She was stricken in 1997, but was
retained in storage at Bremerton until being donated for use as a
museum ship. Midway was towed to California for refurbishment in 2003,
opening as a museum at San Diego the following year.