USS United States (CVA-58)

Artist's rendering of the proposed USS United States handling McDonnell FH-1 Phantom fighters and Lockheed P2V-3C Neptune twin-engine bombers
Class overview
Name:	United States class
Builders:	Newport News Shipbuilding
Preceded by:	Midway class
Succeeded by:	Forrestal class
Planned:	5
Completed:	0
History
United States
Name:	United States
Ordered:	29 July 1948
Builder:	Newport News Drydock and Shipbuilding
Laid down:	18 April 1949
Fate:	Cancelled 23 April 1949
General characteristics
Class and type:	Aircraft carrier
Displacement:	68,250 ton class 83,200 tons full
Length:	1,090 ft (330 m) overall, 1,030 ft (310 m) waterline, 1,088 feet (332 m) flight deck
Beam:	130 ft (40 m), 190 ft (58 m) flight deck
Draft:	37 ft (11 m)
Propulsion:	Eight 1,200 psi (8.3 MPa) Foster-Wheeler boilers, four Westinghouse steam turbines totalling 280,000 hp (209 MW) driving four 20.5 ft (6.2 m) diameter screws
Speed:	33 knots (61 km/h)
Complement:	3019 officers and crew; 2480 air wing officers and crew
Armament:	8 × 5 in (127 mm) / 54 caliber guns in single mounts, 16 × 76 mm / 70 caliber guns in eight twin mounts, 20 × Oerlikon 20 mm cannons
Aircraft carried:	12 to 18 heavy bombers and 54 jet engined fighter aircraft

USS United States (CVA-58) was to be the lead ship of a new design of aircraft carrier. On 29 July 1948, President Harry Truman approved construction of five "supercarriers", for which funds had been provided in the Naval Appropriations Act of 1949. The keel of the first of the five planned postwar carriers was laid down on 18 April 1949 at Newport News Drydock and Shipbuilding. The program was canceled, United States was not completed, and the other four planned carriers were never built. Nevertheless, USS United States is the ancestor of all U.S. supercarriers.

The chief proponent for the new large carrier was Admiral Marc Mitscher. He wanted a carrier that would be able to handle the most effective weapons of the day. Early design discussions centered around developing a carrier that would be able to support combat missions using the new jet aircraft. These were faster, larger and significantly heavier than the aircraft the Essex and Midway-class carriers were handling at the end of the Second World War. It was thought that the aircraft carried would have to have longer range to allow the carrier to operate farther away from the target. The deck would have to be able to handle the weight of the heavy jet aircraft landing on the deck. Furthermore, the experience gained against the Kamikazes at the end of the war drove home the need for the ship to have an armoured flight deck. Too many pilots had been lost from kamikaze attack while they were sitting below the wooden flight deck in the pilot ready room. The implication then is that the ship's strength deck would have to be the flight deck rather than the hangar deck, as was the case in the earlier U.S. carriers. That would mean the ship would have a greater tendency to roll in rough weather, as a greater part of the ship's weight would be elevated higher above the waterline.

Based on the size of the aircraft that the new ship was to carry, the design of the carrier was to be flush decked, meaning that the ship would have no island control structure. This was done to create more space for large winged aircraft. The flush-deck design carried with it two major areas of concern. The first was concern over how smoke from the power plants would be diverted away from the flight deck. This had been a major issue with the US Navy's first aircraft carrier, USS Langley, in the 1920s when carrier development was first underway. The second was the placement of early warning radar equipment to allow the ship to detect incoming attacks. One solution was for a command ship to be close by which would carry the commander of the task force and the early detection radar. The command ship would radio electronic information and orders from its command center over to the carrier. A second was for the ship to carry aircraft that could fly the early warning radar. These would fly overhead and detect approaching aircraft. In truth, the ship as designed would not be able to safely operate by itself, but would need to operate in conjunction with traditional fleet carriers as a complementary bomber-carrier. In fact, the ship was being designed on the basis of the aircraft that it was thought it would carry, and these were based on projections of what aircraft would be in existence in the period 1952 to 1960.