About this item

On 9 May 1912 the first airplane take-off from a ship was made from the deck of the HMS Hibernia. In July 1918, seven Sopwith Camels launched from the converted battlecruiser HMS Furious damaged the German airbase at Tnder and destroyed two zeppelins. The age of the carrier was born. In the interwar years the Lexington, Akagi and Courageous class carriers were developed, but it was only during World War II that the aircraft carrier finally came into its own. Fleet carriers carrying 30 40 aircraft allowed the Japanese and US navies to project air power across the vast Pacific Ocean, with the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor presaging a new kind of warfare. With the sinking of hundreds of ships during World War II, including the German battleship Bismarck in 1941, by the end of the war carriers ruled the waves and the era of the battleship had passed.