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The carriers hold the line - aircraft carriers, Korean War - Brief Article
Naval Aviation News, May, 2002 by John Reilly
Air defense remained a deep concern to the war's end. In April 1953 Commander Carrier Division Five reported that "the inability of any radar in the Task Force to detect high-altitude jets is considered to be a most serious problem.... Generally speaking, radar performance leaves much to be desired. The vulnerability of the Task Force to jet aircraft has been demonstrated on numerous occasions." The new SPS-8 air-search radar helped, as did better training for CIC crews and a new Mark 10 IFF system. As in WW II, destroyers were called on to assist the carriers with radar detection and fighter direction. The process of change in the carrier Navy was beginning to pick up speed.
In 1947 the Chief of Naval Operations had approved a carrier improvement program called Ship Characteristics Board Project 27A. The unfinished Oriskany (CV 34), laid up after V-J Day, entered the yard that fall, followed by eight other Essex-class ships. The project was calculated to give carriers the ability to operate 40,000-pound planes, including jet aircraft. Flight decks were to be strengthened, and more powerful hydraulic catapults and bigger elevators, jet blast deflectors and provisions for jet fuel would enable the ships to handle a new generation of warplanes. Islands were to be streamlined, and five-inch gun mounts would be removed from flight decks to increase usable deck space. Oriskany left the yard in October 1950. As the first post-WW II aircraft carrier, she was also the first to put her improvements to the test of combat, joining TF 77 in November 1952. Other carrier enhancements such as angled decks, steam catapults and hurricane bows followed.
Two years after the Korean war ended, Forrestal (CVA 59) became the first of an entirely new generation of supercarriers to go into commission. Oriskany, though, had led the way in the waters off Korea. Her hard-earned experience, with that of her sisters, would pay dividends in the decades to come.
John Reilly is the former head of the Naval Historical center's Ships History Branch, and is now a researcher for the Naval Historical Foundation.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
