Of all the contentious naval projects under the aegis of the U.S. military, perhaps none are as intriguing as the USS United States, the supercarrier proposed in the late 1940s. Designed to carry larger aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs, the ambitious vessel was canceled five days into construction with an interservice rivalry lit off between the U.S. Navy and the newly formed U.S. Air Force.
The concept of the USS United States came at the end of World War II, indeed the time of the aircraft carrier’s ascendancy to the ultimate naval platform, but nuclear weapons and the jet fighter did require a radical redesigning of carrier capabilities. The United States-class supercarrier was to be the future of naval aviation, capable of launching strategic bombers and jet fighters from an uninterrupted deck.
The design could provide a flight deck without superstructure, so larger aircraft with longer wingspans could land in such structures. This design attempted to make it possible for the Navy to form up in strategic nuclear bombing missions, an area that had been dominated by the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC). However, the flush deck configuration posed such challenges in venting exhaust gases and did not allow for large bombers to be fitted on an elevator so had to be stored on the flight deck as well.
Despite these and other challenges, the keel for the first USS United States was laid down in April 1949 at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Virginia. The vessel was to be a flagship for the entire U.S. Navy, of length 1,090 feet and up to 83,200 tons in displacement. In addition to those Navy jets the Grumman F9F Panther and McDonnell FH-1 Phantom, it would carry future heavy bombers.
Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson, however, immediately canceled it, which led to the “Revolt of the Admirals.” Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan resigned in protest and Congress forced his hand, conducting an investigation that led to the ouster of Johnson. The collapse of the USS United States was a significant victory for the Air Force, whose place as the sole service capable of strategic nuclear bombing remained unchanged.
Although it would not come to fruition as a nuclear-capable supercarrier, naval nuclear ambitions would eventually evolve into a crucial leg of the nuclear triad with the Polaris missile subs of the late 1950s. It was also able to sustain the use of carrier-based aircraft which deployed tactical nuclear weapons well into the early 1990s.
The saga of the USS United States serves as an enduring testament to the highly competitive environment which characterized the relationship between the Navy and the Air Force in the early years of the Cold War-a time of competition over resources and strategic advantage. The legacy continues to play out today in U.S. military aviation and naval strategy.