What's the difference between an Aircraft Carrier and a Battleship? They both do battle don't they?

Question

Ok
An aircraft carrier carries aircraft, but lets say you have a battleship with a
landing platform for a Chinook or something. Can it not be classed
as an aircraft carrier.
Hence the two are the same?

Answer 1

I truly can't believe how many really bad to downright horrible answers have been given for this question so far.

Let's look at the simple dictionary defintions of the 2:

aircraft carrier: a warship equipped with a large open deck for the taking off and landing of warplanes and with facilities to carry, service, and arm them.

battleship: Any one of a class of warships of the largest size, carrying the greatest number of weapons and clad with the heaviest armor.

The term battleship derives from the age of sailing vessels, when the largest, most heavily armed ships were the ones the made up the line-of-battle. Therefore, they were "line-of-battle ships", which was eventually shortened to just "battleship".

Robert L gives an amusing answer. He states (speaking of battleships) "They don't move very quickly, usually in 30kt range, and they all burn diesel fuel which means they have to have tenders to top off their bunkers." This is false. For one thing, 30knots IS fast even by modern standards. For another, they DON'T burn diesel. He then states (speaking of carriers) "An aircraft carrier on the other hand does carry airplanes and helicopters. Lots of them. It also carries a bunch of people to include a large contingent of marines who can get on those helicopters and go kick in someones door and tell them how naughty they've been." False again. Carriers do NOT carry Marine expeditionary forces (except in extremely rare circumstances in the past). LHAs and LHDs carry Marines and helicopters to transport them.

There's a lot of other amusing, very inaccurate answers, but I don't have the time to address them all. The defintions I provided you are really all you need to know, and the origin of the term "battleship" explains the whole "battle" part of the terminology.

Answer 2

A Aircraft Carrier is much diffrent from a Battleship. Many Sailors and Marines consider the Aircraft Carrier a floating Island. Besides all the diffrent airplanes it carries, it also has Navy Seals onboard, this is besides the Sailors and Marines it has. The Carrier also has elevators onboard do to the many diffrent levels (floors) the ship has. The Battleship can carry only one helo, but it is not a everyday thing. During a war, a Battle group (which is basically a circle formed by Battleships, Cruisers, Repair ships, etc...the Aircraft Carrier will always be the ship in the middle of this circle. It is the job of all the other ships surrounding the Aircraft Carrier to protect it at all cost.

Answer 3

while all of the above are pretty decent answers, let's look at facts. A battleship is a fairly large ship that has the big guns that bring the big bang. It carries a small contingent of marines, mainly for security reasons and none are in service right now. They don't move very quickly, usually in 30kt range, and they all burn diesel fuel which means they have to have tenders to top off their bunkers. Some do have a flight platform to carry or land a single bird. An aircraft carrier on the other hand does carry airplanes and helicopters. Lots of them. It also carries a bunch of people to include a large contingent of marines who can get on those helicopters and go kick in someones door and tell them how naughty they've been.
Most people don't understand just how complex an aircraft carriers weapons systems are and I think the Navy wants it that way. An aircraft carrier moves fairly rapidly using nuclear propulsion. It does have onboard fuel stores, but those are mainly for the aircraft and to serve as replinishment bunkers for the other ships in the group. Basically, an aircraft carrier projects power over a large area in the region it's working in. It can strike a target a long way from where it's at. A battleship can't do this. It's very limited.

Answer 4

The difference is that an aircraft carrier carries a hundred plus aircraft of many different varieties, including helicopters, radar planes, and strike aircraft. The point of an aircraft carrier is to project power within 400 - 600 nautical miles of it's location.

A battleship is a large artillery platform. While you can put a helicopter on it, that does not classify it as an aircraft carrier (cruisers and destroyers have the same capability). A battleship can project (disregarding missiles for a moment, using main guns only) its power for about 30 miles or so.

In addition, as shown in Pearl Harbor and during the sinking of the Yamamoto, a battleship is very vulnerable to an aircraft carrier through its aircraft. Battleships typically cannot hurt aircraft carriers, as they never get the chance to get close enough to use their main weapons (again, missiles excluded).

Answer 5

You can not land planes on Battleships. They have very large guns on their decks. The modern Navy does not really have a need for Battleships. They were obsolete by the end of WWII with the advent of the carrier. No major navy has constructed a Battleship in over 50 years.

The guns can only fire so far and they are usually limited by the horizon. A carrier is able to project force for hundreds and even thousands of miles via the aircraft aboard. One plane could take out several Battleships with modern munitions and it would never be in the range of the Battleship's big guns.

As another respondent put it they are essentially floating artillery platforms. The Navy has changed to use missiles and artillery shells are only useful in limited applications.

Super carriers, as some may call them, carry an air wing in the neighborhood of 85 aircraft. If you outfit a Battleship with a helicopter deck it would not be large enough to hold more than one or two small helicopters on the deck. The only place to put it would be on the fantail if you wanted to keep the guns functional and a Chinook would never fit.

A carrier holds most if its aircraft below decks. There are plenty of platforms that are capable of landing helicopters on the deck. It does not warrant a change in classification by the Navy. If you are curious I suggest you go to military.com and check out the Navy page. There is an equipment page that shows the various types of ships the Navy employs.

Answer 6

Well, just take a LOOK at then and you'll see the difference !!

Also, as someone pointed out: we're still building Aircraft-carriers, and the WORLD has retired the Battleship (for that matter even the heavy-gun cruiser!)

The NAME difference would derive from the pre-WWII navy (Brit and USA) when MOST Admirals were of the Battleship-mentality and didn't think Aircraft Carriers would survive much less provide valuable service !!

Just FYI - US Battleships of the WWII era DID typically carry two sea-planes for observation... on the Iowa-Class BB's... when recommissioned in the 1980's the aft-deck was converted to a landing and fueling platform for Helicopters.

I did the LAST SH-60B Seahawk landing aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) just prior to San Francisco's Fleet Week October of 1991... so the flight deck crew could meet their qualifications and get their flight-deck pay until her decommissioning in 1992

Answer 7

Battleships are very large but are packed with huge guns and other weaponry. An A/C carrier has less armaments but carries a lot of aircraft that can take off and land on it's flight deck. The Americans call them Flat tops.
Yes they do also go into battle but they stay on the fringes of the action and the aircraft fly to the action. The carrier is protected by a screen of destroyers and other smaller ships. I suppose on your count the small Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB) could also be called a Battleship.

Answer 8

A Battleship is a Ship fitted with big guns and weapons, like on the type 42 destroyer. HMS Southampton.

an Aircraft Carrier carries aircraft, which have guess what??! It carries aircraft!!!. HMS Ark Royal is an Aircraft Carrier.

yes ships like HMS Southampton have a helicopter pad, they need it for operational use, in the gulf, but it doesnt make it an aircraft carrier.

Answer 9

An aircraft carrier carries large numbers of planes and helicopters it also is not as heavily armed as a Battleship which although it can carry a few Helicopters does not have a runway to allow planes to take off. A Battleship is also the most heavily armed ship in a fleet because of this it is used as a picket fence or an escort ship for the slower aircraft carriers.

Answer 10

A battleship carries big mother f uckin guns, is smaller than an aircraft carrier and therefore more agile, specifically designed for battle with other sea faring vessells, although its huge cannns can be used to pound sea defences. And with the introduction of Cruise Missiles, they quite a good platform from which to launch them when an air attack is to dangerous.

The aircraft carrier essentially spelled the end of the battleship. Using its fleet of aircraft, its attack range is far bigger than a battle ship and more prolific than the cannons of a battleship. Therefore an aircraft carrier has no need for cannons