... aircraft carrying cruisers), which were discussed in greater detail
in the first part of this article
, were intended for carrying vertical/short take-off and vertical landing (V/STOVL) aircraft. The Soviet engineers proceeded from the premise that U.S. aircraft carriers had qualitatively greater potential in terms of aviation. The only worthy rivals of the U.S. Grumman F-14 Tomcats and McDonnell Douglas F/A 18 Hornets were the MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-27s.
Ground-based fighters are rarely allocated to the navy (there are many more examples of the reverse process taking place). The flight decks of carriers are too short for conventional fighter jets to take offs. This is where the catapult — the universal method of increasing an aircraft’s take-off ...
... After the unsuccessful attempts to build “Stalin’s Big Fleet,” as it was called
[1]
, which was supposed to include aircraft carriers (the first such proposals were
heard when the Russian Empire was still in existence
), the Soviet Navy was forced to put aircraft carriers – which had in any case been labelled “weapons of imperial aggression” – on the backburner for a long time. The first Soviet carrier ships were a rather bizarre kind of hand-me-down, having been developed from ...
... aircraft carriers. On retiring, he continued to serve the United States in various posts in both governmental and nongovernmental organizations.
Admiral Holloway's book will be definitely of interest to anyone who is interested in the history of the U.S. Navy and its aircraft carriers. It reveals fascinating details of the Korean and Vietnam wars, life inside the Pentagon, the creation of the U.S. nuclear-powered fleet, and relationships between members of the top brass and political decision makers. Many of his ideas ...
