The U.S. Navy’s three Midway-class aircraft carriers — USS Midway, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, and USS Coral Sea — served continuously from 1945 through 1992. The USS Midway was the only U.S. aircraft carrier to ever launch a captured German V-2 rocket (1947). USS Midway became the first U.S. aircraft carrier based overseas at Yokosuka, Japan in 1973. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, USS Midway flew 3,339 combat sorties — averaging 121 per day.
USS Midway: An Aircraft Carrier with Serious History
Midway-Class Aircraft Carrier. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
The Midway-class was an important aircraft carrier for the United States Navy during the Second World War. Oddly enough, the Midway-class was among the first aircraft carriers that were laid down after the American entry into the war, but they were not completed before the end of the conflict.
The carriers incorporated a number of optimizations and lessons learned from combat experience, drawn not only from the U.S. Navy but also from the Royal Navy, particularly regarding the level and placement of armored protection.
The Midway-class was, in essence, a class of aircraft carriers that were much more capable than their early World War Two predecessors, but that were not quite as capable as the much larger aircraft carriers that made up the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier presence during the Cold War. Despite their imperfections, some Midway-class ships would serve into the 1990s, retiring after the end of the Cold War.
Experience Under Fire
When the United States entered the Second World War, the British Royal Navy had far more experience fighting a modern war at sea. Keen to help their new allies, the Royal Navy gladly shared the information it had collated on modern warships. “The damage experiences of several British carriers,” reads an American damage report, “which unlike US Carriers were fitted with armored flight decks, demonstrated the effectiveness of such armor in shielding hangar spaces from GP bombs and vital spaces below the hangar deck from semi-armor-piercing (SAP) bombs.”
It quickly became clear that an effective aircraft carrier had to make certain design compromises to be a successful naval aviation element. One of the most important considerations was weight.
With torpedoes, bombs, aviation and vessel fuel, not to mention the aircraft themselves, aircraft carriers had to trim weight where possible, both for acceptable speeds while underway.
One of the first elements to be stripped from the Midway-class was much of the defensive weaponry organic to earlier carriers. Air defenses would increasingly be the purview of the other ships a carrier sailed with rather than that of the aircraft carrier itself.
Armor plating optimization was another boon to the Midway-class design.
With the assumption that aircraft carriers would have to absorb a certain amount of hits irrespective of armor protection levels or accompanying air defense assets, the Midway-class’s hull was extensively compartmentalized, with crew quarters, fuel, weapons, and engine sections carefully engineered to be sealed off from one another, should the ship begin taking on water.
Armor was, in vital areas, quite thick, with hardened steel plating up to three or four inches thick.
Record Setter
The Midway class achieved several post-war firsts unique among aircraft carriers.
As one account reads, “from the beginning of its service, the Midway played key roles in the Cold War. In 1946, it became the first American carrier to operate in the midwinter sub-Arctic, developing new flight deck procedures.
The following year, Midway became the only ship to launch a captured German V-2 rocket. The trial’s success became the dawn of naval missile warfare. Just two years after that, Midway sent a large patrol plane aloft to demonstrate that a carrier could deliver atomic bombs.”
When the Midway-class was laid down, it was among the largest aircraft carriers then in existence. Though their 60,000-ton displacement is modest by the standards of today’s supercarriers, which can displace over 100,000 tons, the Midway-class would remain the largest warships in the U.S. Navy until the advent of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
Compared to the later Nimitz-class carriers or the upcoming Gerald R. Ford-class, the Midway-class was diminutive — ultimately, only three Midway-class carriers were commissioned for the U.S. Navy. But they were particularly long-lived.
(Feb. 1, 2021) The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) steams through the Indian Ocean. Nimitz is part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and is deployed conducting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Joseph Calabrese)
Aircraft Carrier Nimitz-Class Back. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Longevity Measures
Over their four decades of service, the Midway class underwent several rounds of modernization.
Their flight decks were strengthened to handle the additional stresses of aircraft landing as the Navy transitioned to jet aircraft.
Other reinforcements and optimizations were retrofitted to the design, and saw extensive bow and flight deck alterations.
“All three Midway-class ships subsequently carried out operations against Vietcong and North Vietnamese targets,” explained the United States Naval Institute. ”From 1965 to 1975, the Midway made nine deployments to the war zone, the Coral Sea eight, and the Roosevelt—still an Atlantic Fleet carrier—one. The Midway and Coral Sea also had important roles in the evacuation of military personnel and civilians from Saigon when South Vietnam fell in April 1975.”
“On 11 September 1973, in a historic move, the Midway became the first U.S. aircraft carrier based overseas when Yokosuka, Japan, became her home port. From there, with air wing CVW-5 embarked, she operated in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean areas for 18 years. On 2 November 1990, she arrived in the North Arabian Sea to provide air support for Operation Desert Shield. And, with five other U.S. carriers, the Midway flew missions in support of Desert Storm in 1991. Keeping pace with the larger carriers, her aircraft flew 3,339 combat sorties—an average of 121 per day—during the conflict.”
Despite the extensive post-Second World War combat the Midway-class saw, Desert Storm would be the end of the class, when the USS Midway was retired.
The class was not the most sophisticated nor the largest aircraft carriers in service with the United States Navy, but they were nonetheless flexible platforms that successfully transitioned from the piston-engine age of the Second World War to the jet age and beyond the end of the Cold War — a remarkable feat for any vessel.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
