I’ve seen the Pearl Harbor movie where they make a big deal of taking weight off the planes because the ship’s runway is just too short. Why can’t they just be longer? Or was just that because they lacked the time during ww2?
It seems like the problem still exists today and i just don’t get how a massive ship would be affected by a longer runway. Maybe make it telescoping like a firetruck’s ladder so it can be retracted during bad weather.
What’s the limiting factor here?
In: Engineering
Fighter planes need about 3000 ft. of runway. If a carrier wanted to put in full runways, they would both a take off and landing runway—so you can launch and recover at the same time. They aren’t exactly placed to end to end (there is a bit of overlap) so the combined runways would be about 5000 ft. long, or about 1500 metres. The longest ship ever built was 458 metres. This means a full runaway carrier would need to be three times larger than longest ship ever built.
That is a huge ship. A ship that largest would never be able to fit into any harbour or dry-dock. You wouldn’t even be able to build a ship that size with any current location. Also, a ship that size would require a lot more power to move properly. Instead of using more power to move the ship, they use a minimal amount of power to launch and land planes from a shorter runway.
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