First and last aircraft carriers

The first one

By chance I found an online article (Ref.1) about the first aircraft carrier in naval history, i.e. the first ship on which an aircraft landed and took off. It was the cruiser Pennsylvania, of the U.S. Navy, and the first landing on its provisional flight deck occurred on January 18, 1911, in San Francisco, California, by a biplane aircraft Curtiss, piloted by Eugene B. Ely , a U.S. professional civil pilot.

Cruiser vessel	Pennsylvania
Length	154,00 meters
Breadth	21,18 meters
Displacement	13.900 Tm
Propulsion	2 steam reciprocating engines
Speed	25 knots
Armament	guns, torpedos
Complement	829

To convert the cruiser to an aircraft carrier, they built on its upper aft deck a wooden temporary platform for takeoff and landing, about 37 by 9 meters and to stop the aircraft within the limited available space, they devised a system of ropes or hawsers with sandbags at each end, crossed over the flight platform and held temporarily in position by means of boards arranged thereon. They fastened to the aircraft landing gear a kind of hooks that by catching the ropes would drag the sandbags and would stop the plane. The system worked well and it is remarkable that, basically, is the system still used nowadays.

Landing platform

After landing successfully on that improvised aircraft, after a short break on board, the same plane with the same pilot took off from the platform, although this was not the first naval takeoff by Eugene B. Ely, as the real first was made on November 14, 1910, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, from a similar platform fitted onboard the cruiser ship Birmingham.

The photographs shown in this post are taken from Ref.1 and I thank the U.S. Naval Historical Center, his kindness for allowing the use of his photographs.

The last one

After having "discovered" the first aircraft carrier it would make sense to deal with the last one and a simple Google search found in Wikipedia (Ref.2) that it is the "Gerald R. Ford," of the United States Navy, part of a class destined to replace the current Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Its main features are these:

Air craft carrier	Gerald R. Ford
Length	333 meters
Deck / waterline breadth	77 / 41 meters
Displacement	101.600 Tm
Propulsion	2 nuclear reactors
Speed	35 knots
Armament	missiles
Complement	4.660
Number of air crafts	90 aprx.
Flight deck	333 x 78 meters

In Ref.3 you can see a detailed description and photos of this ship.

Construction began in 2007 and is scheduled to end in 2015 at Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia, the only U.S. shipyard capable of building nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. A 2009 report said that this ship will cost 14 billion USD, including 5 billion in research and development.

References
Ref.1- Naval Historical Center home page.U.S.A.
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/ev-1910s/ev-1911/ely-pa.htm Ref.2- Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford_class_aircraft_carrier
Ref.3- Blog "Poderío militar"
http://poderiomilitar-jesus.blogspot.com/2011/04/northrop-construira-nuevo-portaaviones.html