Key Points – The WWII-era Essex-class aircraft carriers were a pivotal development that served as a historic bridge to the modern carrier age. Some experts consider this one of the best classes ...

Perhaps no vessel embodies the U.S. Navy’s embrace of the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of its strategy as the Essex-class carrier.Between 1943 and 1950, twenty-four of the thirty-thousand ...

The Best: During World War II, the United States Navy commissioned 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers, making it the most numerous class of capital warships of the 20th century.These carriers were a ...

USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), an Essex-class aircraft carrier, fought in battles across the Pacific Theater, including at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It suffered heavy casualties during the invasion of ...

USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), an Essex-class aircraft carrier, fought in battles across the Pacific Theater, including at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It suffered heavy casualties during the invasion of ...

Laid down on December 1, 1941, and commissioned on August 16, 1943, the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Intrepid was one of 24 of its kind built during World War II.

Commissioned 75 years ago on Dec. 31, 1942, the Newport News-built USS Essex was the lead vessel of a new class of aircraft carriers that became the Navy's sledgehammer in the Pacific during World ...

USS Oriskany (CVA-34), named after the 1777 Battle of Oriskany, was an Essex-class aircraft carrier that stood 872-feet long with a beam of 147.5 feet. The US Navy commissioned her in 1950 and ...