Patrick J Lyons, Whose Carrier Rival the US Navy's? New York Times, Aug 10, 2016.
Quote:
"aside from the 10 American giants [ie supercarriers], there's currently only one big carrier in the whole world that can handle such a job — and it doesn't belong to Britain, Russia or even China. It's the Charles de Gaulle * * * Though it is nuclear-powered, the Charles de Gaulle isn't quite a supercarrier — it's shorter and much lighter, and doesn't pack the same punch. But neither does it rate down among the small escort carriers and helicopter carriers that a number of navies employ. It is considered a medium-size fleet carrier, and these days, it has that category practically to itself.
"Russia has the Admiral Kuznetsov, but that ship has been plagued with mechanical problems and doesn't leave port often. A partially completed sister carrier was sold to China, but it has yet to complete trials. India has an older Russian castoff that rarely sails
Note:
(a) French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (R91) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr ... _Charles_de_Gaulle_(R91)
("is the tenth French aircraft carrier, the first French nuclear-powered surface vessel, and the only nuclear-powered carrier completed outside of the United States Navy"/ Commissioned 2001; Homeport: Toulon, France)
is the only active carrier of France, which retired all all other (conventionally power) carrier.
(b) carrier dimensions from en.wikipedai.org:
.............................................Displacement .............................Length:
Charles de Gaulle ...................42,500 tonnes (full load) ...........261.5 m (858 ft) overall
Nimitz-class aircraft carrier .....100,000 to 104,600 long tons ...Overall: 1,092 feet (332.8 m)
..............................................(101,600–106,300 t)
Admiral Kuznetsov .................55,200 tons (Full-load) ..............305 m (1,001 ft) o/a
(c) helicopter carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_carrier
(The latest one for Japan, Izumo, was commissioned in 2015 and has a length and displacement of 248 m (814 ft) and 27,000 mt )metric tons), respectively)
(d) "Britain, which got out of the fleet carrier game years ago for cost reasons, is getting back in: A newly built carrier, which is larger than the Charles de Gaulle, is expected to be commissioned next year."
"The Royal Navy is constructing two new larger STOVL aircraft carriers, the Queen Elizabeth class, to replace the three now retired Invincible-class carriers [the last was decommissioned in 2014]. The [former] ships are HMS Queen Elizabeth [which will come first] and HMS Prince of Wales