Friends who are familiar with the history of the Navy know that the first aircraft carrier of our army was the "Varyag" aircraft carrier purchased from Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2012, after a seven-year refit, the aircraft carrier was finally reborn and renamed the "Liaoning". Officially joined the sequence of our Navy.
Immediately, in "; On the basis of the success of the "Liaoning", our army has made persistent efforts to develop the mainland's first domestic aircraft carrier "Shandong", which was officially delivered to service in 2019. Compared with the "Liaoning" aircraft carrier, the "Shandong" has made a lot of technological progress, and its overall combat strength has also been greatly improved compared with the "Liaoning." With the commissioning of the "Shandong", our navy has also entered the "era of double aircraft carriers".
And now the largest, most powerful, and most advanced aircraft carrier of our military is the well-known "Fujian" aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier has completely gotten rid of the shadow of the Soviet-style aircraft carrier, it is a new generation of electromagnetic catapult aircraft carrier, compared with the two aircraft carriers, the "Fujian" aircraft carrier can be said to have been "reborn" changes!
The mainland's three aircraft carriers can actually be regarded as three different types of aircraft carriers, each of which has made great progress compared to the previous one, and we can see some clues from the differences between the three types of aircraft carrier islands.
For modern aircraft carriers, the importance of the ship island is self-evident. The aircraft carrier island is not only the command area of the aircraft carrier itself, but also the flight control room for dispatching aircraft carrier-based aircraft, and sometimes the command post of the entire aircraft carrier formation. At present, for aircraft carriers, the smaller the island, the greater the benefit. Because the most direct thing is that the smaller the aircraft carrier island, the smaller the deck area it occupies, so that the deck of the aircraft carrier can have more area for the carrier-based aircraft. Moreover, we know that the difficulty of take-off and landing of carrier-based aircraft is quite large, especially when landing, the seemingly huge aircraft carrier is like a "flat boat" on the sea surface, if the aircraft carrier island is too large, it is very likely to affect the line of sight and airflow of the carrier-based aircraft when landing, and bring certain uncertainty to the take-off and landing of carrier-based aircraft. For example, the Indian Navy's Vikramaditya aircraft carrier is not only very large, but also very close to the middle of the aircraft carrier, which makes the take-off and landing of its aircraft carrier aircraft actually very affected.
Soviet-era aircraft carriers, such as the current Russian Navy's Kuznetsov, the Indian Navy's Vikramaditya, and the mainland's "Liaoning" aircraft carriers, are all very large. This is because the Soviet Union's electronics industry needs to be improved, and in order to achieve the same function as the same type of electronic equipment in the West, it can only be built on a larger scale. For this reason, the Soviet aircraft carrier Kuznetsov is one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world, and our "Liaoning" is also very large because it is its same ship. According to the data that are now known, the length of the island of the "Liaoning" aircraft carrier is 70 meters, accounting for almost one-third of the total length of the aircraft carrier, and its width is 8.5 meters and its height is 32 meters.
After the "Liaoning" was put into service, our navy drew on experience and improved the more advanced "Shandong" aircraft carrier, and one of the signs of the "Shandong" aircraft carrier's combat capability enhancement is that the number of carrier-based aircraft carried by the "Liaoning" is much more than that of the "Liaoning." One of the credits for this lies in the shrinkage of the ship island. According to the data that we already know, although the island of the "Shandong" aircraft carrier looks similar to that of the "Liaoning", the length is only about 60 meters, which is 10 meters shorter, and the width has also been reduced. In addition, the "Shandong" aircraft carrier has also designed a double-decker ship island, which has achieved subdivision and high efficiency in command compared with the "Liaoning" aircraft carrier. Therefore, in the case that the port number cannot be seen from the angle, the most direct way to judge whether the aircraft carrier is "Shandong" or "Liaoning" is to look at the number of layers on the ship island, the double-decker is the "Shandong", and the single-decker is the "Liaoning".
In the case of the "Fujian," the aircraft carrier's island has been further reduced, which not only greatly increases the number of carrier-based aircraft on the deck of the aircraft carrier, but also takes into account the stealth performance. According to the available data, the length of the island of the "Fujian" aircraft carrier is about 40 to 50 meters, and the overall optimization range is relatively large, which is a manifestation of the advanced performance of the aircraft carrier.
Due to the installation of smaller ship islands, the utilization rate of the aircraft deck of the "Fujian" aircraft carrier will undoubtedly be the highest among the three aircraft carriers of our army after it is put into service in the future, and it will even provide the possibility for our military to explore larger carrier-based aircraft on board ships in the future. The following picture is a comparison chart of the islands of the same type of aircraft carrier Kuznetsov with the "Liaoning" aircraft carrier and the "Shandong" and "Fujian" aircraft carriers of our army.
However, at present, the size of the island of the "Fujian" aircraft carrier of the Chinese Navy is still larger than that of the "Ford" class of the United States, and the author believes that this is most likely because the installation of chimneys is still necessary for conventionally powered aircraft carriers. However, the author firmly believes that with the development of our military's overall technology, in the near future, we will definitely be able to reach or even surpass the United States in the field of aircraft carrier technology!
Comparison of Shandong and Fujian warships
Let's look forward to the early arrival of this day!