Earliest aircraft carrier

Ok, I've heard of the earliest instance of aircraft carrier being the HMS Pallas in 1806 carrying kites. But exactly how early could've the Royal Navy or even the U.S. Navy developed a ship to carry gliders, balloons, or kites for use in warfare? Could balloons or gliders have been used for propaganda or reconnaissance, or maybe even bombing in the Revolutionary War, or maybe the War of 1812?
 
I think it was the French right around WWI or before it (maybe 1910) who made the first aircraft carrier.

I think you'd need industrialization of some kind, and either dirigibles or powered-flight aircraft. So I'd put it around the latter 19th century as the earliest "aircraft carriers" could come into being.

I don't believe anything like air-balloons or kites would spur the development of aircraft carriers. Those seem like they can be carried on normal boats, and wouldn't require or lead to the innovation of a specialized design just for their mass transport.
 

Philip

Donor
I think you are going to need steam power before you can have a deck clean enough to operate aircraft.
 
A tethered balloon as an observation/recon platform is very plausible at any time starting in the late 1800s (or even earlier with an earlier invention of hot air balloons!)...just need someone to think of it. Very practical, too. You could see the whole enemy line of battle and direct your fleets accordingly. Recall that without modern propane burners you need to "Fill" the balloon with heat from a large fire (on a wood-and-sail ship!) and can maintain a little bit of lift with oil lamps, which works well for tethered balloons but won't allow for self-mobile balloons.

Bombing from balloons is highly risky for little gain. A field gun could shoot you down (huge target that has to slowly float over your lines...winds permitting). Frankly, a line of artillery will be far more dangerous to the enemy.

Gliders...need something to get them high enough to work, otherwise you simply glide a hundred meters off the deck and into the ocean. Even balloon-launched means splashdown, only this time say a couple kms away from rescue now. You'd need airplanes to make gliders realistic, which of course also makes them obsolete for most uses. :p Not a practical solution at all.

Kites...I can't really think of any practical use there at all. Too subject to the whims of the winds to put people up there or try to direct munitions drops. The latter also is far less practical with far less range than a simple cannon. You'd need a line hundreds of feet long to equal cannon ranges...and then you have to control it that far away to get it over the target and manipulate whatever mechanism drops the munitions (difficulty increasing greatly with each foot of string).

In summary: Tethered Balloons for observation: yes, anytime, really, and very practical...genius even. Gliders or Kites: no, totally impractical. Bombers of any platform: no, impractical, cannons work far better in about any circumstance.
 
The Union Army wins this award, I believe. They had a barge to operate observation balloons in 1863. I think that is the right year. It wouldn't be a great stretch to move balloon operations to a steam ship.

An even earlier carrier may be possible if Geekis Khan's Handy Dandy Steam Slave takes off. :)
 
I think it was the French right around WWI or before it (maybe 1910) who made the first aircraft carrier.

I think you'd need industrialization of some kind, and either dirigibles or powered-flight aircraft. So I'd put it around the latter 19th century as the earliest "aircraft carriers" could come into being.

I don't believe anything like air-balloons or kites would spur the development of aircraft carriers. Those seem like they can be carried on normal boats, and wouldn't require or lead to the innovation of a specialized design just for their mass transport.

The cruiser HMS Hermes was converted about the same time as the French ship. I don't know what the definition of an aircraft carrier is but without powered flight any balloon or kite will be restricted probably by a cable as there is no control over where it would go. It would be virtually impossible to attack a ship without powered flight

Initially any aircraft would be used for observation purposes and could be tethered to a ship expanding the field of vision. Naval aviation began with reconnaisence flights The could have been used in the Napoleonic Wars to watch French Ports or in the War of 1812 to Hunt down privateers but there would be problem as hot air balloons could set fire to sails and masts and hydrogen is inflammable. Reconnaisence ballons could have been used in the Russo-Japanese war and there was an American Army balloon corps in the American Civil War. Balloons could have increased observation of blockade runners.

Heavier than air flight didn't come in until the Twentieth Century so aircradft carriers couldn't have come in much earlier apart from ships eqipped with balloons
 
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