- published: 05 Jan 2014
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The Nimitz-class supercarriers are a class of ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in service with the United States Navy. The lead ship of the class is named for World War II Pacific fleet commander Chester W. Nimitz, who was the Navy's last fleet admiral. With an overall length of 1,092 ft (333 m) and full-load displacements of over 100,000 long tons, they are the largest capital ships in the world. Instead of the gas turbines or diesel-electric systems used for propulsion on many modern warships, the carriers use two A4W pressurized water reactors which drive four propeller shafts and can produce a maximum speed of over 30 knots (56 km/h) and maximum power of around 260,000 shp (190 MW). As a result of the use of nuclear power, the ships are capable of operating for over 20 years without refueling and are predicted to have a service life of over 50 years. They are categorized as nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and are numbered with consecutive hull numbers between CVN-68 and CVN-77.
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations. They have evolved from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons into nuclear-powered warships that carry dozens of fixed wing and rotary-wing aircraft.
Aircraft carriers are typically treated as the capital ship of a fleet and are extremely expensive to build and important to protect: of the nine nations which possess an aircraft carrier, six of these nations possess only one such ship each. Twenty-one aircraft carriers are currently active throughout the world with the U.S. Navy operating 11 of them as of June 2011[update].
The 1903 advent of heavier-than-air, fixed-wing aircraft was closely followed in 1910 by the first experimental take-off of such an airplane from the deck of a United States Navy vessel (cruiser USS Birmingham), and the first experimental landings were conducted in 1911. On 4 May 1912 the first plane to take-off from a ship underway took place when Commander Charles Samson flew from the deck of HMS Hibernia. Seaplane tender support ships came next; in September 1914, the Imperial Japanese Navy Wakamiya conducted the world's first successful naval-launched air raids. It lowered four Maurice Farman seaplanes into the water using its crane, which were taking off to bombard German forces and could be retrieved back from surface afterwards.