In 1910 the first aircraft was successfully launched from a small wooden platform on a stationary ship. Just four years later, seaplane-carrying warships were being used to launch the first naval air raids, and by 1918 the first aircraft carrier to feature a full-length flight deck was in service. High quality artwork and historical photographs help author Mark Lardas tell the fascinating story of the pioneering years of naval aviation, covering such historic clashes as the Japanese siege of Tsingtao, the British raid against German Zeppelin bases at Cuxhaven and the Battle of Jutland, which saw the first airplane take part in a naval battle. Through detailed analysis he explores their development from hastily adapted merchant ships to the launch of HMS Argus, the first aircraft carrier to have a full-length flight deck, and shows how they paved the way for the aircraft carriers of the future.

Jack McCleery was born in Belfast in 1898, the son of a mill owning family. He joined the RNAS in 1916 as a Probationary Flight Officer. During the next ten months he completed his training at Crystal Palace, Eastchurch, Cranwell, Frieston, Calshot and Isle of Grain, flying more than a dozen landplanes, seaplanes and flying boats, gaining his wings as a Flight Sub-Lieutenant. In July 1917 he was posted to the newly commissioning aircraft carrier HMS Furious, which would be based at Scapa Flow and Rosyth. He served in this ship until February 1919, flying Short 184 seaplanes and then Sopwith 1½ Strutters off the deck. He also flew a large number of other types during this time from shore stations at Turnhouse, East Fortune and Donibristle. He served with important and well-known naval airmen including Dunning, Rutland (of Jutland) and Bell Davies VC. He witnessed Dunning’s first successful landing on a carrier flying a Sopwith Pup in 1917 and his tragic death a few days later. He also witnessed the Tondern raid in 1918, the world’s first carrier strike mission. He took part in more than a dozen sweeps into the North Sea by elements of the Grand Fleet and Battle Cruiser Fleet. He carried out reconnaissance missions off the coast of Denmark, landing in the sea to be picked up by waiting destroyers. He witnessed the surrender of the High Seas Fleet. Promoted to Captain, he acted as temporary CO of F Squadron for a time postwar.

Aircraft Carriers is the definitive history of world aircraft carrier development and operations. Norman Polmar’s revised and updated, two-volume classic describes the political and technological factors that influenced aircraft carrier design and construction, meticulously records their operations, and explains their impact on modern warfare. Volume I provides a comprehensive analysis of carrier developments and warfare in the first half of the twentieth century, and examines the advances that allowed the carrier to replace the battleship as the dominant naval weapons system. Polmar gives particular emphasis to carrier operations from World War I, through the Japanese strikes against China in the 1930s, to World War II in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, and Pacific theaters. It begins with French inventor Clément Ader’s remarkably prescient 1909 description of an aircraft carrier. The book then explains how Britain led the world in the development of aircraft-carrying ships, soon to be followed by the United States and Japan. While ship-based aircraft operations in World War I had limited impact, they foreshadowed the aircraft carriers built in the 1920s and 1930s. The volume also describes the aircraft operating from those ships as well as the commanders who pioneered carrier aviation. Aircraft Carriers has benefited from the technical collaboration of senior carrier experts Captain Eric M. Brown and General Minoru Genda as well as noted historians Robert M. Langdon and Peter B. Mersky. Aircraft Carriers is heavily illustrated with more than 400 photographs—some never before published—and maps. Volume II, which is forthcoming from Potomac Books in the winter 2006-2007 (ISBN 978-1-57488-665-8), will cover the period 1946 to the present.

"An illustrated history of the aircraft carrier, from World War I through World War II, the Cold War, and today"--

This fully illustrated study details Germany and Italy's failed development of World War II aircraft carriers, and the naval aviation ships that the two Axis powers sent into action in their place. The quest for a modern aircraft carrier was the ultimate symbol of the Axis powers' challenge to Allied naval might, but fully-fledged carriers proved either too difficult, expensive or politically unpopular for either to make operational. After the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Hitler publicly stated his intention to build an aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, which was launched in 1938. A year later, the ambitious fleet-expansion Z-Plan, was unveiled with two additional aircraft carriers earmarked for production . However, by the beginning of World War II, Graf Zeppelin was not yet completed and work was halted. Further aircraft carrier designs and conversion projects such as the ocean liner Europa and heavy cruiser Seydlitz were considered but, in January 1943, all construction work on surface vessels ceased and naval resources were diverted to the U-boat Campaign. This book explains not only the history of Germany's famous Graf Zeppelin fleet carrier and German carrier conversion projects but also Italy's belated attempt to convert two of her ocean liners into carriers. It considers the role of naval aviation in the two countries' rearmament programmes and describes how ultimately it was only Italian seaplane carriers and German ocean-going, catapult-equipped flying boat carriers that both Axis powers did eventually send into combat.

First published in 1996. The First World War was the single most important event of the twentieth century. This volume concentrates on non-U.S. aspects of the conflict. Organized alphabetically, its more than 600 detailed entries offer information and insight on such subjects as the causes of the conflict, major battles and campaigns, weapons systems (including military aviation, chemical warfare, the submarine, and the tank), and the terms of the peace. Some 350 biographies provide information on the roles played in the conflict by generals, admirals, and civilian leaders. There are also biographies of individuals who were shaped by the war, such as Charles De Gaulle, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin; essays on each of the countries involved in the conflict; new appraisals of such subjects as military medicine and artillery tactics; and essays on such diverse subjects as art, literature, and music in the war. Each entry has references for additional reading, and a subject index provides easy access. The volume is an excellent reference source for scholar and neophyte alike.

According to Aulus Gellius, Archytas, the Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist, was reputed to have designed and built, around 400 BC, the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 metres. This machine, which its inventor called The Pigeon, may have been suspended on a wire or pivot for its flight. The 9th century Muslim Berber inventor, Abbas Ibn Firnas's glider is considered by John Harding to be the first attempt at heavier-than-air flight in aviation history. In 1010 AD an English monk, Eilmer of Malmesbury purportedly piloted a primitive gliding craft from the tower of Malmesbury Abbey. Eilmer was said to have flown over 200 yards (180 m) before landing, breaking both his legs. He later remarked that the only reason he did not fly further was because he forgot to give it a tail, and he was about to add one when his concerned Abbot forbade him any further experiments. Bartolomeu de Gusmão, Brazil and Portugal, an experimenter with early airship designs. In 1709 demonstrated a small airship model before the Portuguese court, but never succeeded with a full-scale model. Pilâtre de Rozier, Paris, France, first trip by a human in a free-flying balloon (the Montgolfière), built by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, . 9 km covered in 25 minutes on October 15, 1783. (see Le Globe below for first unmanned flight, 2 months earlier) Professor Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert, two French brothers, Anne-Jean and Nicolas-Louis, variously shared three milestones of pioneering flight: Le Globe, the first unmanned hydrogen gas balloon flew on 26 August 1783. On 1 December 1783 La Charlière piloted by Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert made the first manned hydrogen balloon flight. In 1951, the Lockheed XFV-1 and the Convair XFY tailsitters were both designed around the Allison YT40 turboprop engine drivin

Offering exhaustive coverage, detailed analyses, and the latest historical interpretations of events, this expansive, five-volume encyclopedia is the most comprehensive and detailed reference source on the First World War available today. One hundred years after the beginning of World War I in 1914, this conflict still stands as perhaps the most important event of the 20th century. World War I toppled all of the existing empires at the time, transformed the Middle East, and vaulted the United States to becoming the world's leading economic power. Its effects were profound and lasting—and included outcomes that led to World War II. This multivolume encyclopedia provides a wide-ranging examination of World War I that covers all of the important battles; key individuals, both civilian and military; weapons and technologies; and diplomatic, social, political, cultural, military, and economic developments. Suitable as a reference tool for high school and undergraduate students as well as faculty members and graduate-level researchers, World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection offers accessible, in-depth information and up-to-date analyses in a format that lends itself to quick and easy use. The set comprises alphabetically arranged, cross-referenced entries accompanied by further reading selections as well as a comprehensive bibliography. A fifth volume provides chronologically arranged documents and an A–Z index.

The first aircraft carriers made their appearance in the early years of World War I. These first flattops were improvised affairs built on hulls that had been laid down with other purposes in mind, and it was not until the 1920s that the first purpose-built carriers were launched, but no-one was as yet clear about the role of the carriers and they were largely unloved by the 'battleship admirals' who still believed that their great dreadnoughts were the ultimate capital ships.World War II changed all that, At Taranto, Pearl Harbour, and in the North Atlantic, the carrier, the ugly duckling of the world's navies, proved itself to be the dreadnought nemesis. As the tide of war turned, the fast attack carriers of the U.S. Navy spearheaded the counter-attack in the Pacific while the makeshift escort carriers helped to seal the fate of the German U-boats in the Atlantic. The carrier, and naval aviation, thus emerged into the post-war world as the primary symbol and instrument of seapower; it would play a crucial role in the strategic encirclement of the Soviet Union and enabled western airpower to be rapidly and effectively deployed in areas of conflict as remote as Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands and the Gulf.Kaplan describes the adventure of the young American, British, and Japanese naval aviators in the Second World War. It is an account of their experiences based on archives, diaries, published and unpublished memoirs, and personal interviews with veteran naval airmen of WWII, providing a vivid and often hair-raising picture of the dangers they encountered in combat and of everyday life aboard an aircraft carrier. It considers some of the key aspects of the WWII naval aviator's combat career, such as why it was that only a tiny minority of these pilots those in whom the desire for aerial combat overrode everything accounted for such a large proportion of the victories.In the major carrier actions of that conflict, from the Royal Navy's attack on Taranto which crippled the Italian fleet in 1940, to the Japanese carrier-launched surprise attack on U.S. Navy battleships and facilities at Pearl Harbour in 1941, to the carrier battle of Midway in 1942, and the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot of 1944, through the Japanese Kamikaze campaign against the U.S. Carriers in the final stages of the Pacific war, this book takes the reader back to one of the most exciting and significant times in modern history.

From 1941, Italy had been developing a top-secret project to install guided rocket weapons aboard aircraft carriers. Campini Capron s revolutionary guided rocket weapon, the DAAC, which would later become Hitler s Henschel HS-117 Schmetterling ( Butterfly ), was the selected projectile. Classified intelligence on the V-1 flying bomb and other aircraft projects were acquired and then discarded when Ansaldo s naval architect, Lino Campagnoli (1911 1975), issued plans for the Impero battleship to be transformed into a modern fleet carrier. Previously unpublished documentation reveals how the last of the four state-of-the-art Littorio-class battleships, which was in advanced completion (hull components and engines installed), was destined for conversion into a modern aircraft carrier. This is an exhaustive historical review of the Impero and Regia Marina s (Royal Navy) developments as well as the dramatic story of the lack of co-operation and strategic insight with Regia Aeronautica before and during the war (1922-1943). Also, a final evaluation of the revolutionary Pugliese anti-torpedo system, based on unpublished German and Russian documentation, is assessed.