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( Supercarrier)
A supercarrier is a warship belonging to the largest (unofficial) class of aircraft carrier, and generally has a displacement greater than 75,000 tons deep load.[citation needed] Few countries operate carriers with displacements larger than 40,000 tons (such as Charles de Gaulle). Those closer to 20,000 (such as HMS Illustrious) are more typical. Supercarriers are the largest warships - some oil tankers are longer and heavier. The first ship to be described by the New York Times as a supercarrier was HMS Ark Royal in 1938; with a length of 685ft and a displacement of 22,000 tons, she was designed to carry 72 aircraft.[1] In 1943 the superlative was transferred to the 45,000-ton carriers of the Midway class, as a step-up from the 27,000-ton Essex class.[2] The post-war standard for supercarriers was set by the proposed USS United States and USS Forrestal.[3] The Soviet Union 's 85,000-ton nuclear carrier Ulyanovsk, closely comparable in size to earlier American supercarriers, was 40% complete when it and a follow-on vessel were cancelled in 1991, due to post-Cold-War funding cuts. The United States is no longer alone in building supercarriers, with Britain building two 64,000-ton carriers and France considering building one vessel based on the same design. These ships are routinely referred to as supercarriers by legislators[6][7][8][9] and the media.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] The two Queen Elizabeth class vessels will provide the Royal Navy with capabilities much closer to United States Navy carriers than its current Invincible class vessels. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee, the First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Alan West explained that interoperability with the United States Navy was as much a deciding factor of the size of the carriers as the firepower of the carrier's airwing
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