Thread: Australia's first aircraft carrier

seaplane tender

Unless I am mistaken, the world's first purpose built aircraft carrier.

And for those who feel it is not a 'proper' aircraft carrier - it carried aircraft.

In the event, seaplane carriers turned out to be pretty much a dead end, although many warships, usually cruisers, but including everything from submarines to battleships were designed betweeen the wars to carry seaplanes, with storage and dedicated launch/recovery equipment. Some of the larger vessels even had catapults, I think.

But by the mid 1920s it was clear that the future was large ships with flight decks, and a sufficient speed to knock a fair bit off the length of needed deck.

Would radar have done a lot of the same job that a sea plane did?

Originally Posted by 3toes

Would radar have done a lot of the same job that a sea plane did?

Part of it. But seaplanes can operate "over the horizon", and can often spot submerged submarines. And seaplanes were operational twenty years before radar.

Originally Posted by 3toes

Would radar have done a lot of the same job that a sea plane did?

They did not have radar back then.

Originally Posted by 101RRS

They did not have radar back then.

I'm not even sure they had radios back then

Originally Posted by bob10

I'm not even sure they had radios back then

That is correct. They did, however, have wireless telegraphy, and I have a contemporary (1925) Admiralty Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy to prove it.

Radios came later after the Americanisation of Australian English.