Aircraft carrier

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An aircraft carrier is a warship that has a primary role of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a mobile airbase. Aircraft carriers allow a naval force to carry their own air support. In many nations, aircraft carriers are considered capital ships. A number of nations still organize their navies around carrier battle groups, with an aircraft carrier or multiple carriers at the center of the group.

NationStates use and examples

Some NationStates navies use dedicated or hybrid aircraft carriers, namely:

In Real Life

The first aircraft carriers were seaplane tenders, which appeared just before World War One. Between the First and Second World War, the US introduced the USS Akron and Macon, airships that could carry a few (4 and 5 respectively) aircraft, which were specially designed to take off and land aboard an airship. This is one example of how airships could be used by Past Tech nations. During WWII, the aircraft carrier and its subtypes matured until the sinking of the world's largest battleship (Yamato by carrier-based aircraft in 1945 proved that the battleship's time as the primary element of a fleet was over.

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