USS United States (CVA-58) - Design

Design

Early design discussions included debate on the aircraft carrier's mission. One view was that it could be built only for nuclear attack, against Soviet naval bases, using heavy bombers with a small hangar deck for a limited fighter escort and a small magazine for a small number of heavy nuclear weapons. Another plan was that it could be built with conventional attack capability with a large hangar deck for a large air wing and a large magazine. The nuclear attack supporters won in the initial design stage, but the design was modified to carry more fighters. The flush-deck United States was designed to launch and recover the 100,000 pound (45 t) aircraft required to carry early-model nuclear weapons, which weighed as much as five tons. The ship would have no island (command tower structure). It would be equipped with four aircraft elevators located at the deck edges, and four catapults, two at the bow with the outer ones at the deck edges staggered back. The carrier was designed for dual operations: landing at the rear of the ship and launching aircraft from the bow catapults, as well as launching from the four catapults simultaneously. The construction cost of the new ship alone was estimated at US$189 million.