Aircraft carriers are a symbol of each country's comprehensive national strength, and their essence is a warship loaded with warplanes, and on land, fighters have enough runways to take off, but on aircraft carriers, the range available for take-off is limited. In order to overcome this difficulty and further improve the efficiency of fighter take-off, the United States painstakingly studied for 21 years to develop an electromagnetic catapult device, while China mastered this technology in only 11 years. What exactly is electromagnetic ejection technology? Why is it called an aircraft carrier weapon?
On November 14, 1910, an American pilot pilot flew a warplane from a cruiser, creating the first time a human fighter jet took off from a warship. On 2 May 1912, a British Navy piloted a warplane from a battleship that was on its way, which not only set a precedent for aircraft to take off from a sailing warship, but also provided inspiration for researchers from all over the world.
In 1912, in order to solve the problem of loading and transporting seaplanes, the British Navy came up with a way to convert a cruiser into a ship that could accommodate aircraft, and after the successful test, they converted three more ferries, which was the earliest prototype of an aircraft carrier.
At that time, aircraft carriers, as carriers for loading fighters, could not provide for fighters to land, and aircraft could only land at nearby airfields after takeoff, which greatly limited the attack range of aircraft. In August 1917, the British Navy Major was desperate, he flew the fighter, tried to land in a sideways manner, the process was very dangerous, the surrounding staff stubbornly tugged on the wings, so that the plane landed safely, but not every time was so lucky. When the Major tried this method again, an accident occurred, and the plane directly overturned, and the plane sank to the bottom of the sea.
In September 1918, Britain finally built the aircraft carrier Hundred Eyes Giant that could land safely, and at this time, the aircraft carriers of the United States and Japan were also in intensive development. Countries scrambled to improve the original plan, creating aircraft carriers with far greater displacement and volume than before, and after 1936, the US Military's Yorktown, Japan's Xianghe and Britain's Shining became the best aircraft carriers at that time.
During World War II, countries with aircraft carriers occupied the maritime battlefield. In November 1940, the British aircraft carrier HMS Kornari showed extraordinary strength, and the torpedo bomber force blew up and injured 4 Italian Navy battleships, so that the world realized that the era of aircraft carriers was coming.
At first, the fighters on the aircraft carrier took off in the same way as on land, that is, using the runway, but soon the drawbacks of this method appeared. In order to enhance combat effectiveness, more fighters are bound to be parked on the aircraft carrier, and if they all take off from the runway, they have extremely strict requirements for the size of the aircraft carrier.
In fact, as early as 1911, a U.S. Navy captain invented a catapult, and after continuous improvement, he successfully developed a compressed air catapult, and successfully completed the first catapult takeoff in human history in November of the following year. Unfortunately, because the fighters at that time were very light in weight and could take off autonomously, the captain's invention was not taken seriously.
With the birth of jet fighters, countries began to realize the importance of catapults, because the weight of jet aircraft far exceeded that of previous types of fighters, so it was difficult to achieve autonomous take-off on the limited aircraft carrier runway, and compressed air catapults did not play much role. In 1951, the British Air Force Reserve Commander invented a steam catapult that successfully solved the take-off problem of heavy aircraft, but soon the problem arose again.
Steam catapult has a fatal drawback, that is, its own weight, in order to achieve the power to be able to catapult the aircraft, this catapult needs to consume half a ton of fresh water every time it is used, if you want to launch 6 fighters, the aircraft carrier needs to store 3 tons of fresh water inside, and the catapult itself has a self-weight of nearly 500 tons, so that on the one hand, it is a waste of fresh water resources, on the other hand, it increases the burden of the aircraft carrier.
In 1960, American researchers developed an internal combustion catapult, which only needs less than 200 liters of water per ejection, and the whole system is only the size of a car, far lower than the volume of the steam catapult. But this catapult has the risk of blowing up the chamber at any time, and once it is blown up, it will bury an entire aircraft carrier, so the United States has not used this device on a large scale.
In 1978, Australian experts used a stand-alone generator as a power source to accelerate the projectile on the rail to 5.9 kilometers per second, which proved the feasibility of electromagnetic catapult and gave the United States an inspiration. In 2013, the US aircraft carrier FORD Ford, the most expensive aircraft carrier ever built by the U.S. Navy, costing as much as $13 billion, is the latest electromagnetic catapult technology used on the ship.
Compared with steam catapult technology, the biggest advantage of electromagnetic catapult is energy saving, the former due to the complex energy conversion process, coupled with the instability of the gas, it is inevitable that losses will occur, but electromagnetic catapult is directly converted from electrical energy to kinetic energy, which greatly improves the utilization rate of energy. While the utilization rate is improved, it means that the space for energy storage can be reduced, which can save more available space on the aircraft carrier.
In addition, the system of the steam catapult is very complex, in addition to the catapult itself, there are many facilities such as seawater desalination equipment, storage tanks and heating devices, while the electromagnetic catapult device system is more streamlined and the overall device is lighter. Since there is no need for complex operations, there is no need to arrange so many operators, which reduces the manpower burden. Moreover, the function of electromagnetic catapult is also very perfect, not only can catapult heavy fighters, but also light fighters can also be used, with only slight adjustment of parameters on the line.
It is precisely because of the above advantages that electromagnetic catapult is known as an aircraft carrier weapon, and it took American researchers a full 21 years to successfully develop it. After China successfully developed the first principle prototype in 2008, it completed the research and test of electromagnetic catapult in only 11 years, reaching the level of standing side by side with the United States.