Essex class
_underway_at_sea_on_9_July_1955_(80-G-K-18429).jpg)
USS Philippine Sea in 1955
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| Class overview | |
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| Name: | Essex class |
| Builders: | |
| Operators: |
 United States Navy
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| Preceded by: | |
| Succeeded by: | Midway class |
| Subclasses: | Ticonderoga class |
| Cost: |
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| Built: | 1941–1950 |
| In commission: | 1942–1991 |
| Planned: | 32 |
| Completed: | 24 |
| Cancelled: | 8 |
| Active: | 0 |
| Retired: | 24 |
| Preserved: | |
| General characteristics (all stats as built) | |
| Type: | Aircraft carrier |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: |
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| Beam: | 93 ft (28.3 m) wl; 147.5 ft (45.0 m) max |
| Draft: | 23 ft (7.0 m) std; 27.5 ft (8.4 m) fl |
| Installed power: | 150,000 shp (110,000 kW) |
| Propulsion: | Westinghouse geared turbines connected to 4 shafts; 8 Babcock & Wilcox boilers |
| Speed: | 32.7 knots (37 mph 60.6 km/h) |
| Range: | 20,000 nmi (37,000 km) at 15 kn (28 km/h) |
| Complement: | ca. 2,170 (ship), 870 (air wing), 160 (flag) |
| Sensors and processing systems: |
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| Armament: |
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| Armor: | 2.5 in (64 mm) STS hangar deck; 1.5 in (38 mm) STS 4th deck; 3.5 to 4 in (88 to 100 mm) Class B + .75 in (13 mm) STS belt; 4 in (100 mm) Class B transverse bulkheads |
| Aircraft carried: | 90–100 (Lexington 110 aircraft) |
| Notes: | Basic class design was repeatedly modified, chiefly by additional AA and radar. Transverse hangar-deck catapult in CV-10, 11, 12, 17, 18 (later removed). CV-9 commissioned with no flight deck catapults; CV-10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20 with one; all others with two. CV-34 completed postwar to much-altered design. |
The Essex class was a class of aircraft carriers of the United States Navy that constituted the 20th century's most numerous class of capital ships. The class consisted of 24 vessels, which came in both "short-hull" and "long-hull" versions. Thirty-two ships were originally ordered; however as World War II wound down, six were canceled before construction, and two were canceled after construction had begun. No Essex-class ships were lost to enemy action, despite several vessels sustaining very heavy damage. The Essex-class carriers were the backbone of the U.S. Navy's combat strength during World War II from mid-1943 on, and, along with the addition of the three Midway-class carriers just after the war, continued to be the heart of U.S. naval strength until the supercarriers began to come into the fleet in numbers during the 1960s and 1970s.
The preceding Yorktown-class aircraft carriers and the designers' list of trade-offs and limitations forced by arms control treaty obligations shaped the formative basis from which the Essex class was developed — a design formulation sparked into being when the Japanese and Italians repudiated the limitations proposed in the 1936 revision of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (as updated in October 1930 in the London Naval Treaty) — in effect providing a free pass for all five signatories to resume the interrupted naval arms race of the 1920s in early 1937.
At the time of the repudiations, both Italy and Japan had colonial ambitions, intending on or already conducting military conquests. With the demise of the treaty limitations and the growing tensions in Europe, naval planners were free to apply both the lessons they had learned operating carriers for fifteen years and those of operating the Yorktown-class carriers to the newer design.
Designed to carry a larger air group, and unencumbered by the latest in a succession of pre-war naval treaty limits, Essex was over sixty feet longer, nearly ten feet wider in beam, and more than a third heavier. A longer, wider flight deck and a deck-edge elevator (which had proven successful in the one-of-a-kind USS Wasp (CV-7)) facilitated more efficient aviation operations, enhancing the ship's offensive and defensive air power.
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Wikipedia