V o L u m e I : a d

and resilient cargo platform. In addition to its primary transport role, the

C-130 served throughout the Cold War in roles ranging from command and

control to airborne hospital. It was exported to more than fifty countries.

Although not as prolifically produced, the Antonov An-12 Cub provided the

Warsaw Pact with a similar tactical airlift capability and mirrored the C-130

in size, capability, and breadth of mission.

The Lockheed C-141 Starlifter and, after 1970, the Lockheed C-5

Galaxy provided the United States with its strategic heavy lifting. The Galaxy

was designed to carry 500,000 pounds of cargo, including the U.S. Army’s

bulkiest vehicles. Not to be outdone, the Soviets matched the C-141 with

the Ilyushin IL-76 Candid in 1971 and the C-5 with the Antonov An-124

Condor in 1982, the latter of which remains the largest military aircraft ever

mass-produced.

The civilian air transport sector mirrored the advancements pioneered

within the military over the course of the Cold War. Through the 1950s, U.S.

dominance in the industry was challenged only by the British, epitomized by

the latter’s development of the world’s first turbojet-powered airliner, the

de Havilland D.H.106 Comet, in 1949. Although significantly faster than its

American piston-powered counterparts, the Comet could carry only thirty-

six passengers and demonstrated a structural weakness that led to calami-

tous midair disasters. Although later variants of the Comet would double the

Aircraft

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Equipment belonging to the 32nd Combat Mobility Hospital being loaded into a Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft

during Exercise reforger 81. (U.S. Department of Defense)

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number of passengers and prove to be much safer, the model never recovered

from its initial weaknesses in the public’s eye and was quickly outclassed

when Boeing released its Model 707 turbojet in 1958. The Soviet design

bureau Tupolev introduced several airliners in the 1950s based on its bombers:

the Tu-16 Badger accommodated passengers as the Tu-104, while the Tu-95

Bear was reclassified as the Tu-114.

Short- and medium-range airliners thrived in the U.S. market in the

1960s, particularly the Douglas DC-9 and Boeing Models 727 and 737.

Longer-range mass transport was provided by the 747 jumbo jet, which first

flew in February 1969 and could accommodate up to 500 passengers over a

maximum distance of 6,200 miles. Supersonic travel became a mark of pres-

tige, if not commercial success, for each bloc by the 1960s and 1970s: the

Soviets produced the Mach 2.3 Tu-144 in model form at the 1965 Paris Air

Show, while a collaborative Anglo-French program generated the Mach 2.2

BAe/Aerospatiale Concorde in 1976.

Rotary-wing aircraft did not make the substantial gains in technology

and capability experienced by their fixed-wing counterparts during World

War II. The first military helicopter with more than limited operational apti-

tude was the Sikorsky R-5, which entered service in 1946 and was used for

observation, communications, and search and rescue during the Korean War.

In 1956, the Bell Company established itself within the rotary community

with the noteworthy UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the “Huey.” UH-1

variants saw action in a variety of transport and attack roles in the Vietnam

War and beyond.

Helicopter production became more specialized as it slowly advanced,

leading to dedicated transport and gunship designs only by the late 1950s and

early 1960s. In 1957, the Soviet Mil design bureau unveiled the Mi-6 heavy-

lift chopper, while the U.S. inventory remained devoid of medium and heavy

lifters until the debut of the Boeing-Vertol CH-47 Chinook in 1961 and Sikor-

sky S-64 in 1962. Twenty years after the Mi-6, Mil followed up with the even

larger Mi-26, which operated with a unique configuration of eight rotors and

was the heaviest rotary-wing aircraft to achieve flight during the Cold War.

Bell created the first dedicated helicopter gunship in 1966 with its

Model 209, fielded under the moniker AH-1 HueyCobra and later simply

Cobra. Although the U.S. Army continued to use the AH-1 throughout the

Cold War, the Hughes (later Boeing) AH-64 was introduced in 1975 as a

replacement for the earlier model. Soviet attack capability was entrusted

largely to the gunship versions of the Mi-8 Hip and Mi-24 Hind in the 1960s

and 1970s and to the Mi-28 Havoc in the 1980s. Aircraft, both fixed-wing and

rotary, enjoyed tremendous advances in the period of the Cold War.

Robert G. Berschinski

See also

Berlin Blockade and Airlift; Bombers, Strategic; Korean War; LeMay, Curtis Emer-

son; Mutual Assured Destruction; Soviet Union, Army Air Force; Strategic Air

Command; U-2 Incident; U-2 Overflights of the Soviet Union; United States

Air Force; United States Navy; Vietnam War

90

Aircraft

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Aircraft Carriers

References

Baker, David. Flight and Flying: A Chronology. New York: Facts on File, 1994.

Chant, Christopher. A Century of Triumph: The History of Aviation. New York: Free

Press, 2002.

Fredriksen, John C. International Warbirds: An Illustrated Guide to World Military Air-

craft, 1914–2000. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001.

———. Warbirds: An Illustrated Guide to U.S. Military Aircraft, 1915–2000. Santa Bar-

bara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999.

Isaacs, Jeremy, and Taylor Downing. Cold War: An Illustrated History, 1945–1991.

Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.

Norris, Guy, and Mark Wagner. Giant Jetliners. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks, 1997.

Shaw, Frederick J., and Timothy Warnock. The Cold War and Beyond: Chronology of

the United States Air Force, 1947–1997. Washington, DC: Air Force History and

Museums, 1997.

Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of Air Power. New York: William Morrow,

1986.

Aircraft carriers were first utilized in combat in World War I. During that

conflict, the Royal Navy converted a merchant ship, the Argus, into the first

carrier with an unobstructed flight deck, but the war ended before it could

be put into action. The U.S. and Japanese navies soon followed the British

example. The first U.S. aircraft carrier was the Langley, commissioned in

1922. Japan’s first carrier, the Hosho (1922), was also the first such vessel

designed as a carrier from the keel up. Nevertheless, carriers still remained

largely experimental and had yet to be fully tested in war. That all changed

in World War II.

On 10–11 November 1940, during a British attack on Taranto, and on

7 December 1941, with a Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor, aircraft carriers

proved their worth and opened a dramatic new era at sea. Carriers played

leading roles in almost all of the major sea battles of the Pacific theater dur-

ing the war, including the Coral Sea, Midway, and Leyte Gulf. The Battle of

the Coral Sea was the first engagement that pitted fleets in battle out of sight

of the other, the fighting being carried out by aircraft alone. Aircraft carriers

could deliver more firepower than even the largest battleships. During World

War II, carriers came to replace battleships as the indispensable capital ships

of modern naval warfare.

In the post–World War II period, aircraft carriers were both enlarged

and improved technologically. But because of the great expense involved in

building and maintaining carriers, some U.S. policymakers, still skeptical of

their true value, sought to limit their production. President Harry S. Truman’s

administration, for example, canceled construction of the carrier United States

in 1949, leading to the so-called Revolt of the Admirals. But little more than

a year later, aircraft carriers in the Far East proved invaluable in projecting

U.S./United Nations airpower into the Korean War. Carriers again proved

Aircraft Carriers

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