The USS United States (CVA-58) was a supercarrier that was begun in 1948, but never finished. Even though the keel was laid, the actual layout of the final ship has always been pretty poorly defined in published sources. It would have been an angled-deck supercarrier of modern design, but with no island at all, just a flat deck. But diagrams of it have always been vague, unofficial or dubious.
Huzzah! The National Archives has a number of high-rez plans of the ship as designed in October 1947. Five diagrams of slightly differing study concepts are available; I’m not sure which – if any – most accurately depicts the ship as it was eventually to be defined.
CV-New Study Arrangement Plans
Here’s one of the diagrams… greatly reduced in size. See the National Archives page for the full-rez versions.
As I thought. Once I saw the file names it was clear that these came from the annual BuShips “Spring Styles Book”. BuShips stole fashion industry lingo and techniques to sell Congress on what they wanted added to the ship construction budget in any given year and the “Spring Styles” book was their sales piece.
Many thanks, Scott. I’d been wondering whether any official plans (as opposed to artist’s concepts) of this particular ship would ever come to light.
Very interesting – great find!
Excellent.
Interesting that the USS Unites States started to develop the solution to simultaneous launch and retrieve (the Brit angled deck) but were only looking at the launch portion of that issue. The small angled catapults are really only a secondary part of the issue. Aircraft careening through the straight deck on a bolter was the real problem that the angled deck solved.