While on vacation, I spent Monday the 17th at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel.  The fishing was awesome, but what was even more impressive was the carrier battle group that left port at the same channel I was fishing.  The carrier was number 5 and it was followed by a half dozen guided missle friggates and other various cruisers and a tender.  I even had my friend snap a picture of me with a 22" striper with the carrier in the background.

My question is, which carrier was that?

Hull #5 was the Yorktown. www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/cv-list1.html

Quoted: Hull #5 was the Yorktown. www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/cv-list1.html

That can't be it.  Did you notice the notes for that one?  "Sunk due to enemy action at the Battle of Midway".

The thing had the number "5" printed on the tower and on the hull.

Found it!  A guy at the FALfiles had the answer.  Turns out, it wasn't really a carrier.  Its does land planes and helos but not the same size as the full fledged ones.  I thought it looked a bit short.  

The one I saw was the USS PELELIU and it looked plenty impressive when it passed within a few hundred meters of where I was fishing.

navysite.de/ships/lha5.htm

If you think that's impressive wait until you see a carrier like the Washington.  They're monsters.  

The LHA's and the LHD's form the center of an Amphibious Ready Group, similar to the way an aircraft carrier forms the the center of a Carrier Battle Group.  Generally speaking you have one of each type groups floating around close to each other in various places around the world.  This provides a bunch of Marines and a bunch of planes to get whatever needs to be done, done.  

The LHA's (like the one you saw) are about the size of a WWII Essex class carrier (the later fast attack carriers of the war).  They're about the max for size that can go through the Panama Canal.  They carry up to 26 CH-46s, or different numbers of combinations of aircraft, like CH-53, Harriers, etc.

There is a larger class called LHD's (Wasp class) that was designed from the begining as a multi-purpose ship.  They have the same features as the LHA, but are larger and can carry about twice the aircraft and were desgined with operating the Harrier (20 of them) as a secondary mission.  

Both have well decks that can flood to launch landing craft, hovercraft, etc. and both have full hospital facilities and carry Marines and their equipment including tanks, guns, trucks, LAVs, etc.  

To give you an exapmle of the difference between the USN and the rest of the world, the aircraft carriers the Brits fought the Falklands war with are about half the size, and capability of an LHD.  A ship we don't even consider an aircraft carrier.

Ross

I was able to tour the Ronald Reagan last night. Now that's a BIG ship.

Had a blast!

Thank you, you know who you are.

I'm assigned to the USS Theodore Roosevelt Air Wing. So I've got a really nice BOV!

JIM

Quoted: Found it!  A guy at the FALfiles had the answer.  Turns out, it wasn't really a carrier.  Its does land planes and helos but not the same size as the full fledged ones.  I thought it looked a bit short.   The one I saw was the USS PELELIU and it looked plenty impressive when it passed within a few hundred meters of where I was fishing. navysite.de/ships/lha5.htm navysite.de/ships/lha5_3.jpg

PELELIU is a west coast ship. If you saw it while around the Bay Bridge Tunnel then you saw the USS BATAAN (LHD 5) http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/details/LHD5.htm.
PELELIU is LHA-5 based in San Diego http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/details/LHA5.htm

The LHA and LHD classes look very similar, but they do have, slightly, different operational capabilities. For instance, the LHDs were designed with the use of LCACs, hovercraft, in mind.

Both LHAs and LHDs form the center of an Amphibious Ready Group as was previously posted. However, ARGs rarely had combatants attached to them. What you may have witnessed was a new concept called an Expeditionarly Strike Group. In an ESG surface combatants are attached to an ARG in order to increase its flexibility.
Then again with the amount of ships coming and going from NAVSTA Norfolk you might have just witnessed a bunch of ships going out to the VACAPES to train totally unrelated to each other. Mondays and Fridays are very heavy for Naval traffic, Mondays going and Fridays coming in.