If memory serves me, Midway was an Essex class hull. I know she couldn't have Tomcats in her airwing (I thing it was a JBD thing).
Actually, CV-41 was built on a Battleship hull of the then new USS MONTANA, a new class of BB, abandoned after the Midway victory in June '42, the death knell of the battlewagon (new construction) in the future. She was commissioned only weeks after the Japanese surrender in 1945. I reported aboard MIDWAY in the drydock in January 1970, and made the '71 & '72 Westpac deployments.
Also, last airwing with F-4s...........definitely smaller that Ranger.
Smaller hull, but with an equivalent area flight deck (4 acres), constructed during the 1966-70 modernization overhaul at Hunters Point. She also lost her #3 waist catapult in the mod to make space for avionics support equipment for the A-6 She competed very ably with the 4-cat FORRESTAL "Supercarriors" in Alpha Strike launch performance throughout the rest of the air war (in fact, earned the PUC for the ship/CVW-5 performance during "Linebacker II", in 1972)!
Nope,
she was much bigger than the
Essex but still smaller than the later supercarriers that started with the
Forrestal class.
True that, Flash!
*Photo: USS MIDWAY (CVA-41), steaming past "Fisherman's Wharf" enroute to post overhaul sea trials - mid-1970
BzB
