Crazy stats on the size of the U.S. Navy by January 1945

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Dudes never stood a chance.

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Japanese were done after the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

100 aircraft carriers? Was that supposed to be 10?

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100 aircraft carriers? Was that supposed to be 10?

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Nope. We had 100 aircraft carriers of which there were three types: fleet, auxiliary, and escort. I believe we had 14 or 15 fleet carriers while the remainder carrier armada was made up of the auxiliary and the escort carriers.

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1902 first airplane. 40 years later landing planes on ships. Pretty impressive technology leap.

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Try 1902 first fight stays in the air for 12 seconds.
67 years later we land two men on the moon and bring them back home safely.

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Try 1902 first fight stays in the air for 12 seconds.
67 years later we land two men on the moon and bring them back home safely.

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One happened, the other is purely speculation.

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67 years later we land two men on the moon and bring them back home safely.

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And in the 60 years since then we ain't done shite

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Try 1902 first fight stays in the air for 12 seconds.
67 years later we land two men on the moon and bring them back home safely.

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I had a great grandmother who lived to be 103 years old. She was born in 1867 and died in 1971. When she was a little girl her family was attacked and killed by Indians during a migration after the Civil War. She and her brother were spared. Before she died she sat in an air conditioned room with a television set and watched NASA engineers use computers to direct the moon landing.

That's crazy. Think of everything that happened in her lifetime. I don't think many humans have ever witnessed the amount of change and progress she saw.

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67 years later we land two men on the moon and bring them back home safely.

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*allegedly

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And in the 60 years since then we ain't done shite

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Baw posted this on a device that didn’t exist 60 years ago to an internet that didn’t exist 60 years ago.

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100 aircraft carriers? Was that supposed to be 10?

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Nope. The main fleet carriers back then were built based on light or heavy cruiser hulls and then evolved into the purpose built Essex class. These were front line ships, but they weren't nearly as large as today's carriers. WW2 fleet carriers were 25 to 30000 tons displacement; today's Nimitz and Ford ships are north of 100000 tons. The WW2 fleet ships could be cranked out en masse. I think we had something like 25 operating by the end of WW2, most of them built after Pearl Harbor.

The rest were smaller escort type carriers that might only carry 10 planes used to do things like protect convoys or hunt and kill submarines outside of fleet on fleet battles away from the main battlegroups. Many of these ships were just merchant ship type hulls with a flight deck slapped on top, so they could be cranked out even faster than the fleet ships.

So, don't think supercarriers. Think a number of smaller carriers that were the flagships of battlegroups and navies with the vast majority of the carriers being any smaller ships that could be fitted out with a flat top and could operate independently of the battlegroups where needed.