1Somatogravic Illusion
Pilots taking off from aircraft carriers must keep their hands off the stick until they are fully launched off the end of the ship and in the air. This is to prevent them from intentionally diving the plane into the water due to a form of disorientation called “somatogravic illusion.”
2. All aircraft carriers in history (save two) have their bridges on the starboard side due to a near-universal tendency of pilots to veer left during an emergency.
3. Aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo of the Argentine navy was originally a British Colossus class Aircraft carrier from World War 2. She was sold to the Netherlands, who then sold it to the Argentine Navy where it ultimately participated in the Falklands war against her original builders, the British.
4. All poop generated by the troops aboard US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford will be vaporized by plasma.
5. Germany built one aircraft carrier during World War 2. The wreck of Graf Zeppelin was discovered in 2006 by a Polish survey ship in July 2006, about 260 feet below sea level.
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6Aircraft Carrier Shinano
During World War 2, U.S. submarine Archerfish sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano, but the U.S. Navy did not believe that a submarine could actually sink a carrier until the acting commander drew a picture of the carrier.
7. Project Habbakuk was a plan by the British during World War 2 to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice) for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. They even made a 60 feet prototype that took three years to melt. The project was however shelved due to rising costs, added requirements, and the availability of longer-range aircraft and escort carriers which closed the Mid-Atlantic gap that the project was intended to address.
8. During World War 2, the US Navy had two freshwater aircraft carriers on the Great Lakes to train its pilots. During training, aircraft losses were high. As such they often used older aircraft. The floor of the Great Lakes is littered with World War 2 aircrafts and lately, people have been recovering them.
9. In 1963, a series of tests proved that the Hercules C-130 transport aircraft could land on and take off from the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. It was the largest plane to ever successfully land and take off from an aircraft carrier and was nicknamed “Look Ma, No Hook” to brag about how it needed neither an arresting hook nor a catapult assist.
10. US aircraft carriers are so large they each have their own designated zip code for mail and logistics purposes. Submarines and other surface ships too have their own Fleet Post Office.
11USS Yorktown
During World War 2, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown was heavily damaged after destroying a Japanese aircraft carrier during the first carrier battle in history. After 48 hours of emergency repairs, it ended up helping destroy two more carriers before being sunk and inadvertently saved the other US carriers.
12. During a film sequence of Top Gun, an aircraft carrier captain changed the ship’s course and altered the lighting of a shot. Director Tony Scott was told it would cost $25,000 to change its course. He quickly wrote a check, the course was reverted, and he got 5 more minutes to get his shot.
13. During World War 2, the Japanese navy had Submersible Aircraft Carriers. These carriers were able to carry aircraft underwater to their destinations, surface, launch their planes and then quickly dive again before they were discovered. They were able to carry 3 Aichi M6A Seiran aircrafts underwater to their destinations.
14. The French named one of their aircraft carriers after Ferdinand Foch, a man who said, “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” French aircraft carrier Foch was decommissioned in 2000.
15. Aircraft carrier USS Oriskany which was intentionally sunk after its decommissioning in the Gulf of Mexico is now known as the Great Carrier Reef. 70 feet down, the Oriskany’s navigation tower is teeming with prickly sea urchins and crusty barnacles. Giant barracuda prowl the tower’s empty windows. The wreck has attracted at least 38 species of fish, including goliath groupers, mako sharks, amberjacks, and red snappers. It is by far the largest vessel ever sunk to make a reef.
16HMAS Melbourne
In 1985, Australia decommissioned its only aircraft carrier (HMAS Melbourne) and sold it for scrap to a Chinese company. It was towed to China where, before scrapping, it was studied extensively by the military to help design China’s first aircraft carrier. The Chinese even asked the Australian government for the blueprints but this request was “politely rejected.” Apparently, the ship was not fully broken down until 2002.
17. In 1972, some of Aircraft Carrier USS Ranger's crew carried out two-dozen acts of sabotage to prevent the ship from returning to Vietnam.
18. In 1975, a lot of Huey helicopters had to be pushed off the flight deck of the USS Midway into the sea to make way for the emergency landing of an aircraft with Vietnamese evacuees on board. Not just USA helicopters, every Vietnamese helicopter that landed was immediately pushed off for the next one to land. America’s evacuation effort consisted of sending helicopters to the embassy to pick people up. Anyone with a helicopter in the military ranking flew their family and loved ones away. They all headed out to sea to look for the nearest American ship. Lots of pilots said they were totally out of fuel, waiting to land.
19. During Korean War, General Lewis B. Puller tried to convince the Pentagon that ice cream was a “sissy food” and that troops would be tougher if indulged with beer and whiskey. Pentagon responded with an official statement ensuring soldiers were served ice cream a minimum of three times a week on aircraft carriers and other navy ships. Going back, ice cream not only bolstered the morale of US forces in Pacific during World War 2, it greatly demoralized the Japanese Senior Command to the point where they had no hope in winning the war. US Navy, seeing the importance of ice cream in raising the spirits of troops, converted a tanker to be able to produce thousands of gallons of ice cream so that it would always be available to troops. Japanese were appalled realizing that they were against an enemy so abundant in resources that they could “waste” such valuable fuel and manpower to provide their men with something so trivial as ice cream.
20. In 1942, as Japanese torpedoes slowly sank the U.S.S. Lexington, then the second-largest aircraft carrier in the Navy’s arsenal, the crew abandoned ship, but not before breaking into the freezer and eating all the ice cream.
21USS Ronald Reagan
In the 2005 war games, a Swedish submarine called HSMS Gotland was able to sneak through the sonar defenses of the US Navy Aircraft Carrier Ronald Reagan and its entire accompanying group, and (virtually) sank the US Aircraft carrier on its own and still got away without getting detected.
22. Back in 1929-30, the aircraft carrier USS Lexington powered the city of Tacoma, Washington for a month. When drought conditions caused the water levels in Lake Cushman to fall below the intake level for the hydroelectric dam, the Navy sent Lady Lex from Bremerton and used cables to tie her into Tacoma's power grid. Lady Lex provided power through Christmas and New Year’s until melting snow had sufficiently replenished the lake.
23. Due to its unreliable power plant, Russia’s only aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is so unreliable that it has to be accompanied by a small fleet of tugboats whenever it is deployed.
24. As of May 2021, Russia has only one aircraft carrier and none under construction. Unlike most western naval ships that use gas turbines or nuclear power, Admiral Kuznetsov is a conventionally powered ship that uses mazut as fuel, often leading to a visible trail of heavy black smoke. Russia does have five nuclear-powered ice breakers though with five more currently planned or under construction. They need these because it’s the only way they can get their navy out of the North Seas.
25. USS Long Beach was the only US Navy nuclear-powered ship that was not an aircraft carrier. Being a guided-missile cruiser, it was the world's first nuclear-powered surface combatant. During its operation, it was ultimately concluded that nuclear power was too expensive to use on anything other than carriers. It was decommissioned in 1995.
