“One size does not fit all” is a common expression that has been used to describe a variety of things, most commonly a reference to clothes. However, within the United States Navy, some strategists of the 1970s considered that it could also be used to describe aircraft carriers. With rising prices associated with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, as well as budget limitations following the Vietnam War, there was a serious consideration of a less ambitious design, that of the Conventionally Powered Aircraft Carrier (Medium), or CVV.
However, the CVV design was conceived during a time when the Navy was looking for methods to maintain its forward presence without stretching its budget too thin. With a displacement of 52,000 to 62,000 tons and an air group of 65 aircraft, it would have been smaller than its Nimitz-class cousins but still sufficient to carry the existing conventional aircraft in the Navy’s inventory. Its steam propulsion plants delivering 100,000 shp would have propelled it to speeds in excess of 20 knots. While it would have been sufficient to keep abreast of carrier task groups, it would not have had the same speed as its nuclear-powered sisters.
Advocates claimed that the CVV could be constructed for considerably less money than a nuclear carrier, meaning that more vessels could be deployed. In 1976, President Gerald Ford went so far as to cancel an order for a fourth Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in favor of the construction of two CVVs. This was based on the belief that vertical or short take-off and landing aircraft would come to predominate the decks of these vessels, although when these aircraft did not appear, the design of the CVV was changed to accommodate the Navy’s fixed-wing aircraft.
However, the project never got past the planning stages to go on to the slipway. As the numbers began to come together, there was a weakening of support for the medium carrier. Two CVVs with reduced air groups and catapults would be required to equal the sortie rate of one supercarrier. When life-cycle costs were taken into consideration, there would be little, if any, cost savings. Within the Navy’s leadership, there had been a long-held preference for larger carriers with increased range and sortie capacity.
The thinking on strategy also underwent a change. By the early 1980s, the Reagan administration’s commitment to a larger and more powerful fleet and the funding to back it eliminated the financial necessity that provided the CVV with its niche. The fourth Nimitz-class carrier, USS Theodore Roosevelt, was authorized, and the medium carrier notion dropped from the shipbuilding list.
In retrospect, the CVV incident provides a glimpse into an ongoing debate: whether or not to expand the Navy’s aircraft carrier fleet with more agile, more affordable ships, or to simply leverage the unparalleled strength of their Nimitzes. Today’s debates over “lightning carriers” and a “Hi-Lo” fleet strategy reflect many of the same considerations raised in the 1970s. Those in favor of lighter carriers argue their flexibility, lethality, and potential to support their supercarriers in high-end operations. Others are wary of their viability, range, and potential to spread force too thinly. Though the CVV never actually existed, the tale of the CVV illustrates the same dynamic of cost, capability, and strategy that still influences naval aviation today. The trade-off between fewer ships of greater capability and more ships of lower capability has remained an unresolved design problem, much the same as it was when the Navy initially penned the lines of its medium-sized carrier solution some four decades ago.
