The realisation that the airplane could play a part in naval warfare appears to have struck three naval officers - one from the British, American and French Fleets at the same and in the same place. They realised that a way would have to be found to get the frail, short-range aircraft aloft at sea. Epochal flights showed that ships could be used as floating airfields, but the development of effective aircraft carriers would be a long process marked by painful trial and error.
During WWI, the British Royal Navy took the lead, experimenting initially with seaplanes and then with warships bearing wooden ramps from which landplanes could take off. Only after the War’s end did Britain - and the US and Japan - produce true aircraft carriers with flight decks on which planes could routinely land as well as take off. These would be prototypes of the hulking, complex flat-tops that revolutionised naval warfare in WWII and proved to be the most powerful seagoing weapons in history.
