![]() Throughout the summer and fall of 1918, the Royal Navy conducted a series of test flights in which one, then two, and later even three Sopwith Camel bi-planes were launched from suspension hooks slung beneath the ship’s hull. The 23-Class could carry up to three Sopwith fighters. Britain planned for its next generation airships to carry their own fighters. The British had seen first hand how vulnerable dirigibles were to fighter planes - its own home defence squadrons had exacted a heavy toll on the largely helpless German Zeppelins that began raiding southern England in 1915. In fact, the Royal Navy was test-launching fighter planes from its 23-Class Vickers rigid airships a full year before Argus was even commissioned.Ĭonceived foremost as a high-flying bombing platform, designers of the 23-Class equipped the 535-foot vessel with its own portable fighter escort - bi-planes that could be quickly launched to drive off enemy interceptors. NOT ONLY did the British commission the world’s first ever sea-going aircraft carrier, HMS Argus, it also devised the first airborne one as well. Whole squadrons could be stored inside the airships and moved back and forth to the landing deck via elevators.” ![]() (Image source: WikiMedia Commons) “Planners foresaw even more massive airships equipped with top-mounted runway surfaces and cavernous hangars hidden within the hulls. The USS Macon, pictured here, was a helium airship that could launch and recover small warplanes. and the Soviet Union experimented with the idea of flying aircraft carriers.
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