No. 7

Flat-topped, lopsided but swift as a cruiser, an aircraft carrier at work is an ugly, color-splashed, noisy inferno. Launching her planes from the crowded flight deck, she throbs with the rumble of warming airplane engines. Hooded men in brilliant yellow, red, blue and green uniforms (to denote their functions) swiftly work the planes forward to take-off position. Every few seconds the roar of an engine in full throttle thunders through the echoing ship as another plane takes off. Only when the last bomber is in the air and the formations shrink into the sky does she settle back to the quiet peace of a ship at sea.

She returns to character again when the planes come aboard. On a platform at her stern the signal officer brings them in. They plunk down with a bang into the arresting gear, while the parti-colored uniforms of her goblins appear and disappear from her mahogany-red deck. Compressed air sighs and hisses. Bells ring. Whistles blow as planes taxi forward and are whisked magically below to the hangar deck on high-speed elevators. Occasionally a siren wails like a seagoing banshee as a pilot overshoots and cracks up against the barrier (but seldom hurts himself or crew).

For all its madhouse sound & fury, a U. S. Navy carrier is an outstanding example of the smooth coordination of man and complicated machine. It is also a powerful weapon for long-range reconnaissance, for delivery of swift and crushing raids from the air, like the British attack on the Italian Navy at Taranto. Big trouble is that the U. S. Navy has not nearly enough carriers (Britain has seven, Japan eleven). Last week the Navy launched its seventh. Down a greasy way of the Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. slid the 20,000-ton Hornet, to be tied up at the fitting-out dock. Typical of the leisurely pace of U. S. defense was the fact that she was launched only six days ahead of the promised date. A little more encouraging was the announcement that she would be all ready in November 1941, three months ahead of schedule.

Sister of the Yorktown and Enterprise, smaller than the 33,000-ton Saratoga and Lexington, bigger than the Ranger and Wasp, Hornet is one of five carriers ordered before the U. S. decided on a two-ocean Navy. The other four (Kearsarge, Essex, Bon Homme Richard and Intrepid) are on the way. After them will come seven more, all ordered (and all under construction). Barring a war, in 1945-46 the U. S. will have 18 carriers. If Britain should fall this spring and surrender its fleet intact to Germany, the U. S. Navy's carrier equipment would be superior to Adolf Hitler's by only 31,200 tons. But if this new German strength should be backed up by Japan's fleet (eleven carriers), U. S. carriers would be outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 in tonnage, 3-to-1 in numbers.

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