Launch and recovery cycle

Aircraft carrier air operations include a launch and recovery cycle of embarked aircraft. Launch and recovery cycles are scheduled to support efficient use of naval aircraft for searching, defensive patrols, and offensive airstrikes. The relative importance of these three missions varies with time and location. Through the first quarter-century of aircraft carrier operations, launch and recovery cycles attempted to optimize mission performance for ships with a straight flight deck above an aircraft storage hangar deck. Carrier air operations evolved rapidly from experimental ships of the early 1920s through the combat experience of World War II.

World War I naval engagements demonstrated the increased range of dreadnought battleship guns and the inability of scout cruisers to fulfill their traditional role of finding the enemy fleet and informing friendly forces of advantageous maneuvers before they came within gun range. Aircraft carriers were initially perceived as a means for a fleet of battleships to bring along aircraft to find the enemy fleet and spot the fall of shot beyond visibility range of the firing ships.

As the first aircraft carriers became operational in the early 1920s, they learned the necessary techniques for storing, launching, recovering, and servicing aircraft at sea. Early fleet exercises demonstrated the ability of aircraft to extend effective gunnery range from 20,000 yards (18 km) to 24,000 yards (22 km). Theorists suggested the possibility of denying that advantage to the enemy by using fighters to shoot down enemy aircraft, and predicted tactical advantages for the fleet able to launch the larger number of aircraft. Aircraft carriers embarked as many aircraft as possible to maximize mission effectiveness and sustained mission capability through anticipated operational losses of aircraft.

Multiple planes could be launched from the flight deck in the time it took to move a single plane from the hangar deck to the flight deck. United States Navy doctrine, formulated in the mild climate of the eastern Pacific, considered the hangar deck a maintenance shop, and stored most embarked aircraft on the flight deck to minimize time required to position for launch.Royal Navy doctrine, formulated in the cold and stormy north Atlantic, stored most embarked aircraft on the hangar deck to minimize weather damage and maximize operational readiness when the time came to launch. In either case, when all aircraft were positioned on the aft portion of the flight deck, the aircraft carrier turned into the wind to maximize airspeed over the flight deck and began launching aircraft over the bow.

...
Wikipedia