Original subtitles

(intense music)

Historically, the biggest empires

always had the biggest navies.

Or the biggest armies.

The most ships, the most men or both.

And in the modern age, science and industry

have repeatedly pushed the limits of men,

technology and imagination in the pursuit of that power.

(dramatic music)

More often, not by creating bigger armies,

but bigger weapons.

From aircraft that defy gravity, tanks to field guns,

bombers to battleships,

the destructive capability of the machinery of war

develops with each decade.

Each unique in their own way,

the machines in this episode share two common traits,

they are big and they are powerful.

(intense music)

In Word War I, guns began to assume monumental proportions.

Big Bertha, the German siege breaker,

could hurl an 800-kilogram projectile 13 kilometers.

And was used to devastating effect

in the early stages of World War I.

But during World War II,

a class of even larger super canons emerged.

And their psychological effect on the men facing them

meant that, like Bertha, they all had personalized names.

(intense music)

And one of the biggest was called Annie.

Annie was one of 25 massive railway guns

designed and built by the famous German Krupp Steel Works

prior to the commencement of World War II.

Designated the K5, they were developed to deliver shells

capable of destroying the French border fortifications

known as the Maginot Line.

The first objective was to deliver a large projectile

containing a large amount of explosive to the target.

The second objective was to provide range,

and some of the quarter-of-a-ton projectiles

were able to reach 50 kilometers.

Although they never saw service

on the Maginot Line,

they were involved of a variety of sieges.

And for Annie, that most famously took place

during the American invasion

of the Italian coastal town of Anzio in early 1944.

Annie was one of two K5s moved and hidden in rail tunnels

18 miles above the coastline where the Americans had landed.

From this vantage point, over two months,

the pair rained down their massive, exploding shells

on the 70,000 Allied troops

trying to break out of the established beach head.

(intense music)

It was during this time that the train-like sound

the huge shells made as they passed overhead

earned the guns the nicknames Anzio Annie,

and the Anzio Express.

(dramatic music)

And the K5's 288-millimeter caliber barrel

was rifled with 12 seven-millimeter grooves,

making it not just big but extremely accurate.

(explosions bursting)

Each K5 railway battery consisted of two guns.

Each gun had its own train with engine and six rail cars.

Ultimately, it was that size that proved her downfall.

For a railway gun,

you had to lay tracks to get it to its destination.

Now, not only was that intensive in terms of manpower,

but also inadvertently what you did was

when you were laying these tracks,

you were providing a path for the Allied bombers

to track where that railway gun actually was.

So it's survivability was put into question

by virtue of the fact of the tracks that it was running on.

The railway gun's great advantage

of being able to use existing infrastructure

to besiege armies was paradoxically its achilles heel.

(explosions bursting)

(intense music)

When on January 20th 1953 at the height of the Cold War,

formal World War II general, Dwight D. Eisenhower,

became president of the United States,

his inauguration parade included 65 bands,

floats from the then 50 states of the Union,

22,000 service men and women,

350 horses and a gun.

A brand new 280-millimeter cannon.

In the early '50s,

they were exploring how to deliver nuclear payloads.

And there was a series of tests in Nevada,

where they tested a variety of different delivery systems.

One of which the M65 Howitzer.

(dramatic music)

With missiles capable of delivering atomic warheads,

the most powerful weapons on the planet,

in the control of the U.S. Air Force,

the U.S. Army felt it too

should have a weapon of similar force.

And when in 1949, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

announced the development

of a 280-millimeter caliber nuclear projectile,

the Army set to work developing a mechanism to deliver it.

(intense music)

The result was a self-propelled gun

with an overall weight of 78 tons,

a length of 26 meters and a width of five meters.

Advances in mechanics meant that once in position,

Atomic Annie could be set up in 15 minutes.

And in May, 1953 in the deserts of Nevada,

the weapon was tested.

And they did actually fire an 800-pound nuclear shell

from the 280-millimeter artillery piece

seven miles in the Nevada desert

to explode as a nuclear device.

And it's the only time, certainly in the Western World,

that a nuclear shell had been delivered by a cannon.

(dramatic music)

Nine M65s were deployed in Europe

to counter the Soviet threat.

But Atomic Annie, like Anzio Annie,

was a transportation nightmare.

On the road, it resembled a large fire engine

with two prime movers using independent steering systems,

one positioned at either end of the gun carriage.

It's propensity to tip over,

earned it another less favorable nickname, the Widowmaker.

Evolution sometimes heads in a direction

that doesn't quite work.

And nuclear technology did not find

a natural place fired from a gun.

As the end of 1962 approached, the idea of the stately

and visible progress of an atomic cannon

moving across the world as a crucial influence had passed.

New weapons had been developed and the Atomic Annies

joined their cousins, the K5s, in retirement.

All were withdrawn from service,

along with their 80 odd shells constructed for them.

(cannon exploding)

(intense music)

What history has shown us

is that power is not always about sheer size.

The punch of a behemoth

doesn't necessarily have to come from a behemoth.

(dramatic music)

And in the case of M777, while it is still a large weapon,

155 millimeter in caliber,

and with an overall length of 10 meters,

the focus of its development was on reducing its weight,

which makes it extremely powerful.

(cannon exploding)

And that means that the M777 could be transported

in a larger range of helicopters

than its previous counterpart.

And so in that regard, it can be a much more deadly weapon

because the military can get it

to where it needs to be quickly.

The M777 tips the scales

at just over four tons.

To achieve this low weight,

it applies the latest advances in metallurgical science.

And its construction makes extensive use of a rare metal

that has found numerous applications

in the modern machinery of war, titanium.

Now, titanium has a density

which is about half that of steel,

but it's a very strong material.

So it means that you can reduce the weight

of your structure but at the same time

maintain strength that you need

when you're dealing with the high shock forces

when the gun fires a projectile.

(cannons exploding)

Everything about the M777

is a stark example of more for less.

It's operated by a crew of five.

Anzio Annie had a crew of 82.

The M777 can rapid fire five rounds per minute.

Annie fired one every five minutes.

And while Annie was accurate,

modern shells like the Excalibur

take accuracy to a new level.

So Excalibur is a shell which has a little

sort of motor that kind of deploys fins on firing,

and can actually use these fins

to intelligently guide the shell to its target.

(cannon exploding)

(dramatic music)

A lightweight behemoth

with incredible power and accuracy,

one of the few things the M777 can't do is move itself.

And a barrage is of little use

if you can't press your advantage.

To do that, you need to get up close.

(dramatic music)

Necessity they say is the mother of invention.

The mass of wire, mud, trenches and modern weaponry

on the Western Front during World War I

had led to an appallingly costly stalemate,

where success was measured not in kilometers gained,

but mere meters.

But on the 8th of August, 1918,

at the Battle of Amiens, on a single day,

the Allied forces moved 13 kilometers

across German held territory.

And on that day, the battlefield hummed

with the sound of over 550 of what would prove to be

perhaps the defining weapon of the war, tanks.

When the British were designing the tank in 1915, 1916,

they're aware of the nature of trench warfare

on the Western Front.

And the reason for this large track design

in that lozenge shape of the first tanks

was to give the tank mobility,

so if it came to the trench line,

if they were able to break through,

is that they'll be able to cross them

without falling into a trench,

and getting irrevocably bogged.

The 28-ton, rhomboid-shaped Mark 1 tank

first saw service on the Somme

on the 15th of September, 1916,

and was not a huge success.

Mechanical problems from what proved to be an underpowered,

and unreliable 78-kilowatt engine,

and crews inexperienced in handling the new weapon,

compromised the performance

of the few that made it to the battlefield.

And they were slow.

It actually was slower than an infantry when walking,

which meant that rather than being the tanks advancing,

and the troops coming behind the tanks,

it often meant that the troops went far in advance

of the tank which found it hard to keep up.

Noise inside the tank

made it difficult to communicate.

And as a result, some became hopelessly lost.

Others ground to a halt.

Their crews rendered unconscious by the fumes of the engine,

which sat in the middle of the fighting compartment

without any cover or muffler.

And they were prone to bogging in the muddy morass

that was the Western Front.

But development persisted.

Adjustments to each variation

were made based on combat experience.

In the Mark IV, power was up to 15 kilowatts.

Weight was down to 25 tons.

Speed increased to 6.5 kilometers an hour.

Continuous improvements that by 1918 saw the tank entrenched

as a vital cog in the machinery of war.

(dramatic music)

If you think of the emergence of the tank

on the battlefield in the First World War,

it's clunky, it's unreliable.

The armor's perhaps penetrated

by rifle and machine gun fire.

But nonetheless, it's this lumbering,

terrifying beast of war you've never seen before.

It has an immense psychological impact.

And it becomes tactically very significant.

As a soft, squishy infantryman with a rifle,

you are absolutely outclassed by this giant land ship.

And that remains true for decades.

And within just two of those decades,

tank warfare reached its zenith

with the outbreak of World War II,

and the famous German Blitzkrieg tactics of 1939,

a highly mobile and destructive all-arms method of fighting

led by the famous Panzer Tanks.

Blitzkrieg reshaped the battlefield.

Where previously emphasis had been on a smattering

of light tanks in infantry support roles,

the Allies now desperately needed medium tanks

that could compete with and defeat the German Panzers.

But in tank design,

the British had fallen well behind the game.

The British in 1918, it can be fairly be said

were probably the leaders in tank design.

However, the belief that tanks would be useful

in European War but probably not in the colonial warfare,

which the British find themselves doing

in the Interwar Period, meant that they did not spend

as much time looking at tank design

as they did until probably late in the 1930s.

Outclassed and with limited time,

and limited resources,

they turned to the Americans for salvation.

They responded with the M4 Sherman,

the most widely used tank

by the Western Allies during the war.

The design brief was simple,

a medium tank with a 75-millimeter main gun

mounted in a full traverse turret.

(dramatic music)

Fast enough to keep pace with the German tanks,

with good all-around visibility,

and improved armor allocation,

and it was needed almost immediately.

To save time, the Americans incorporated the engine,

transmission, tracks and suspension systems

of the M3 Lee Medium Tank.

On that existing chassis, the put an all new body

with frontal armor that was not a patchwork

of riveted plates but a solid piece

of cast homogenous steel, 50 millimeters thick.

To overcome the strength disadvantage of cast armor,

the front armor plate was cleverly sloped to 56 degrees,

creating a surface that would cause

some incoming rounds to glance off.

But more importantly, it increased the effective

thickness of the armor on the horizontal plane

to 91 millimeters, almost doubling protection.

Even so, against the heaviest of tanks,

the Sherman was vulnerable.

(explosives bursting)

Crews putting extra track on the front of the vehicles,

they're putting extra sand bags

on the front of the vehicles.

And this is trying to retard

any incoming armor piercing round.

Sometimes not to great effect.

Weighing close to 30 tons,

the Sherman had a top speed of 40 kilometers per hour.

Meaning it could keep pace

with its principal foe, the Panzer.

And armed with a medium velocity 75-millimeter main gun,

two anti-infantry machine guns,

and a .50-caliber Browning anti-aircraft gun,

they had the Panzer covered.

But the Sherman's greatest strengths

were its reliability and its numbers.

Nearly 5,000 were produced,

built by the giants of the American motor industry,

Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.

The whole Henry Ford type thing

with a production line of cars now applies to making a tank.

The Sherman's life was extended,

seeing combat in numerous Cold War conflicts.

But as anti-tank weaponry improved,

and the speed of warfare increased,

the need arose for battlefield behemoths

that were simply bigger and faster.

And there are none bigger

than the tank they call Whispering Death.

(ominous music)

The Cold War fueled an environment

which led to the development

of some of the most advanced weapon systems on the planet.

And when in the 1970s, the U.S. Army decided

they needed a faster tank with exceptional firepower,

and unprecedented levels of crew protection,

they took the best of the world's available

military technology and created the M1 Abrams.

Learning lessons from a variety of conflicts,

they designed a tank that despite weighing

up to 70 tons in some variants,

has a deceptively low profile.

Standing less than three meters tall,

the low height makes the Abrams a less obvious,

and less available target for enemy fire.

Significant work has also been done

to reduce the thermal signature of the tank,

making it harder to detect.

But if it is hit, it is constructed

using the most advanced armor available.

The protection system of the M1 Abrams

is fairly superior compared to a lot of main battle tanks.

And certain variants of the M1 Abrams

actually used depleted uranium in the turret.

Now, depleted uranium's a very dense material.

And that means it's able to provide superior levels

of protection against a whole range of weapon systems.

It was also the first tank

to use the British-developed Chobham armor,

a complex laminate structure that combines an arrangement

of ceramic blocks, metal plates, Kevlar,

and open space to achieve a near perfect blend

of anti-penetration surfaces.

In battle, the Abram's 120-millimeter smoothbore main gun

has been found to outrange

any other tank in current service.

And connected to the world's most advanced

tank-based targeting system

that monitors the tank's tilt, motion, and even the wind,

it allows the Abrams to fire on multiple targets

with accuracy while on the move.

(upbeat music)

But what truly sets the Abrams apart is its speed,

which can exceed 70 kilometers per hour.

To achieve this, it uses a distinctive power source.

The use of the gas turbine engine in the M1 Abrams

is fairly unique to main battle tanks.

And the reason why they use a gas turbine

is simply to reduce the noise,

and to give it the power it needs

to accelerate such a heavy vehicle.

This vehicle weighs up to 70 tons in certain variants.

And so it's a very heavy piece of military equipment,

and you need a substantial means of driving that forward.

(upbeat music)

It is the whisper-quite gas turbine

that has given the M1 its nickname.

A power source that is normally associated

with a very different kind

of battlefield behemoth, aircraft.

On the 6th of August, 1945,

an event took place that would change the world forever.

The heaviest bomber of World War II delivered a device

that would create the biggest explosion

mankind had ever experienced.

Less than 30 years previously,

heavier than aircraft had been little more than curiosities.

But the aircraft that carried that fateful payload

in August, 1945 was a far cry

from the timber and fabric of World War I.

It was a heavy bomber that revolutionized

military and civilian aviation.

Militaries always want aircraft

with increased speed and payload.

But in World War II, what the Americans desperately needed

was one with greater range to deal with the huge distances

covered in the war in the Pacific.

To achieve a lethal combination of speed, payload and range,

they based their designs on an aircraft

that was already the supreme bomber of World War II,

the B-17 Flying Fortress.

And built the largest, most complex aircraft

that had ever gone into production.

(intense music)

The Flying Fortress was a very capable airplane,

but it was firmly rooted in the '30s,

and it had been developed

as far as it could realistically go.

With the B-29, they designed it to do everything

a Flying Fortress could do and do it all better.

The B-29 was a combination

of cutting-edge technology and devastating fire power

wrapped in a massive package.

Fitted with four of the largest

radial engines manufactured in the United States,

the supercharged 18-cylinder Wright R-3350,

the Superfortress had a top speed

of over 550 kilometers per hour.

And a combat range of 5,220 kilometers.

Double that of the B-17.

And it was designed for sustained flight

at what was then dangerously high altitude.

As you ascend, temperature drops one degree per 300 meters.

Without heating and oxygen, anoxia can result in death

within 10 minutes at altitudes over 7,500 meters.

To overcome this, the B-29 became the first production

aircraft to feature a fully sealed and pressurized cabin.

It allowed them to fly routinely over 35,000 feet,

where the air is thinner and therefore you can fly faster

without putting as much strain

on the engines to maintain the speed.

The B-29 was in every way

a technological marvel.

A systems-driven aircraft with over 10 kilometers

of electrical cabling.

Part of which fed a state-of-the-art analog firing system

that remotely trained the aircraft's

five gun turrets on incoming targets,

compensating for speed, gravity and atmospheric pressure.

(airplane engine roaring)

Intercontinental range, payload and versatility

made the B-29 a game changer

that not only helped end the war,

but paved the way for both the Americans

and the Soviets to pursue even grander designs.

Designs that would allow them to deploy

greater payloads to war zones with unparalleled speed.

It started a game of brinkmanship,

a race to be the biggest,

a race the Soviets would ultimately win.

(airplane engine roaring)

During the latter stages of the Cold War,

when the Americans unveiled

the massive C-5 Galaxy transport,

the Soviets immediately countered,

and produced an aircraft that remains the largest

airborne military transport vehicle in the world today.

Known by NATO as the Condor,

it is the Antonov An-124.

Big machines need a big aircraft to lift them.

Designed to carry the largest Soviet tanks,

troops and support equipment,

and deliver them to a hot spot quickly,

the An-124 has a maximum takeoff weight of 405 tons

with a payload of 150 tons.

To put those weights into perspective,

it can carry two fully loaded B-29s,

throw in a fully loaded B-17 for good measure,

and still have room to spare.

The design of large transport aircraft

require the right combination of the design of a fuselage

that can accommodate the potential payloads

that may be required during its operation.

Included in that is the access to the payload.

With a fuselage close to 70 meters in length,

and 21 meters in height,

creating a cargo space 36 meters long and 6.4 meters wide,

comparable in size to a bowling green,

the sheer size of the aircraft

presents a unique design challenge.

A larger fuselage will affect the aerodynamics

of the aircraft, it will increase the drag of the aircraft,

and so you have to balance that

with wings that are large enough to generate enough lift,

and also quite principally, the engines,

that they develop enough thrust to lift these aircraft.

To generate that required lift,

the An-124 has a wingspan of 73 meters.

And with an upper deck that can accommodate

88 fully-equipped soldiers, it can deploy a small army

at over 1,000 kilometers per hour.

The An-124 is big and fast but on its own, not lethal.

The Tupolev Tu-160 on the other hand is all three.

(dramatic music)

Known by the NATO code name Blackjack,

or the White Swan in Russia,

the Tu-160 was the last bomber aircraft

produced by the Soviet Union before its collapse.

And is the largest jet-powered,

swing wing combat aircraft ever to enter service.

An aircraft again born of the military tit for tat

that was the Cold War,

when the Americans began developing

a similar aircraft, the B-1.

The Americans were developing

a supersonic, swing wing bomber

that could quickly penetrate Soviet airspace.

During that development, interestingly,

the Americans actually decided

perhaps that need wasn't there.

And so the Americans actually canceled the B-1 program.

The Russians however continued with the Blackjack,

and developed that aircraft into a very capable,

very high speed penetrating bomber.

All supersonic aircraft have swept wings.

Put simply, the faster you go,

the less wing area you need to generate lift.

But at low speeds, that lift is greatly reduced.

The engineering challenge was to produce an aircraft

with enough lift to raise a serious payload,

but one which could also reach speeds

comparable to a modern fighter jet.

And one solution for that is so called swing wings.

During low speed operation at takeoff,

and when you return for landing,

the wings are swept forward,

so that they are what we call very high aspect ratio wings.

And that configuration of wing is optimized

to generate lift very efficiently, especially at low speeds.

The variable geometry

outer tapered wings of the White Swan

are able to be swept back from 20 degrees to 65 degrees,

providing high performance flight characteristics

at both supersonic and subsonic speeds.

And the tail surfaces, horizontal and vertical,

are one piece and all moving for improved low speed control.

Equipped with four of the most powerful

engines ever fitted to an aircraft,

the Tu-160, which weighs 275 tons fully loaded,

manages an extraordinary top speed

of 2,200 kilometers per hour,

and climbs at a rate of 70 meters per second

to a service ceiling of 16,000 meters.

But while a behemoth in the air or on the land,

can be measured in terms of bowling greens,

at sea, the word behemoth takes on a whole other meaning.

(dramatic music)

For centuries, a nation's naval strength

determined its place in the world.

And as the centuries passed, ships slowly increased in size,

but the Industrial Revolutions sped that growth.

Engines created a new source of power.

Power gave rise to bigger ships with heavier guns,

and heavier guns led to heavier armor.

And in the early 1900s, a naval arms race

led to the creation of ocean-going behemoths

of such size that they defied imagination.

(intense music)

Battleships.

The battleship, really, I suppose you could say

reached its zenith during World War I.

It was a large steel ship, heavily armored,

fitted with big guns which could sling

tons of shells towards an enemy battleship.

(explosions bursting)

Since then, battleships continue to be used

through the Second World War but more as large gun platforms

than the traditional engagement between two battle fleets

steaming in parallel, endeavoring to sink each other.

And in the Second World War,

one of the biggest of those gun platforms

was the American Iowa-Class.

World War II saw a shift in the shape of naval warfare.

The Americans new and fast Essex-class aircraft carriers

had stolen the battleship's mantle

as the capital ships of the fleet.

But they needed vessels that could protect them

at speeds in excess of 30 knots.

The design challenge was to develop

a battleship fast enough to keep pace,

while also providing the fire power

to combat the heavy Japanese vessels already constructed.

At over 270 meters in length and with a beam of 33 meters,

everything about the Iowa-Class was big.

Eight water-tube boilers

feeding four advanced steam turbines

gave the Iowa a top speed of over 33 knots.

And to guard against torpedoes,

the Iowa-Class had a hull design

that included an internal bulge

consisting of four longitudinal bulkheads

behind the outer hull plating

with a depth of 5-1/2 meters,

designed to absorb the energy of a torpedo warhead,

protecting the superstructure.

But a battleship is nothing without big guns.

And the Iowa-Class carried nine massive Mark 7 main guns,

each with a caliber of 410 millimeters.

Perhaps the most well known

of the Iowa-Class was the USS Missouri,

with the Japanese famously signing

the surrender ending World War II on her deck

on the 2nd of September, 1945.

Decommissioned a number of times

before being brought back into service,

first in Korea in the 1950s and again in the '60s,

where her massive guns provided extra fire power in Vietnam.

The Missouri was finally decommissioned in 1992

after being resurrected yet again during the First Gulf war.

But not all battleships were survivors.

Hitler at one time referred to the First World War

German fleet as a romantic play thing, a parade piece.

If Germany were to fight again, under Hitler,

they would have a Navy to be reckoned with.

And by 1939, Germany boasted

a modern fleet of staggering proportions.

At the centerpiece of that fleet were two

50,000-ton battleships, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz.

(dramatic music)

The largest battleship class in Europe,

these two 150-meter-long behemoths

had a top speed of 30 knots,

and a range in excess of 16,430 kilometers.

In the Battle of Denmark Strait on the 24th of May, 1941,

the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen

engaged the British battleships,

the Prince of Wales and the Hood.

After only eight minutes of firing,

the Hook took a hit in her rear ammunition magazine,

and 100 tons of cordite exploded,

breaking the ship's back.

She quickly sunk,

taking all but three of her crew of 1,419 men with her.

(dramatic chilling music)

The Prince of Wales was also damaged,

and laid a smokescreen to cover her withdrawal.

In those eight minutes,

Bismarck had fired 93 armor-piercing shells,

and had been hit by three shells in return.

(gunfire exploding)

One had struck the fo'c'sle,

and 2,000 tons of water flooded the ship,

contaminating fuel oil stored in the bow.

Forced to change course to seek repairs,

the Bismarck was pursued by the Royal Navy.

Over the ensuing two days,

the German vessel took a surprising number of hits,

and still managed to evade her pursuers.

And it was armor that was the key

to the Bismarck's survival.

Nearly half of the vessel's overall weight

constituted protection to vital areas.

At the belt line, it reached 320 millimeters thick.

On the decks, 120 millimeters.

And the main gun turrets were shrouded

by steel 360 millimeters thick.

What did it for her in the end were the machines

that spelled the end of the battleship

as a machine of war, aircraft.

On the 26th of May, a flight of 15

Swordfish torpedo bombers launched an attack.

Within just hours, the pride of the German fleet was sunk.

What's really fascinating about the action

against the Bismarck was the aircraft, the Swordfish.

The most basic, simple, little aircraft

with torpedoes slung underneath

operating from an aircraft carrier.

I mean, the aircraft were technologically ancient.

The ship that launched those aircraft

was one of a new type of warship

that would hold sway for decades

as one of the most powerful of all the machinery of war,

and one of the biggest.

(dramatic music)

The aircraft carrier.

(intense music)

The British began using ships

to carry aircraft in World War I.

The first was the HMS Ark Royal,

a heavily modified merchant ship

that transported float planes in her hold,

which were slung over the side using cranes.

Despite not being a carrier as we know them,

she introduced a number of features

which are typical of aircraft carriers today.

An enclosed hanger which contains the aircraft,

a clear deck forward so that you could

launch aircraft from there and workshops

to provide all the means of supporting those aircraft.

The ship unfortunately only had a speed of about 10 knots,

so she was not very capable of high-speed operations,

or real use as an aircraft carrier.

Those real, purpose-built

aircraft carriers emerged in the 1930s.

And in the early days of 1941,

among the ships which gave chase to the Bismarck,

was one of them, also named Ark Royal,

and launched in 1938.

Far from being a converted merchant ship,

HMS Ark Royal displayed the two most distinctive features

of a modern aircraft carrier,

a flat 240-meter flight deck

that overhung the stern 20 meters above the waterline,

and the familiar control tower island

positioned on the starboard side.

With armored hangars extending three stories below,

the 50 aircraft that made up her strike weapons

were raised to the deck by hydraulic lifts.

Equipped with the now famous arrestor cables

to catch the aircraft on landing,

the Ark Royal used the latest steam catapult system

to assist them at takeoff.

With those aircraft comprising

the Ark Royal's primary weapons, she was lightly armed.

(airplane engine roaring)

But with a top speed in excess of 30 knots,

Britain's military planners believed

they would be able to outrun most enemy ships if attacked.

This thinking also led to the Ark Royal

being relatively lightly armored.

And it cost her.

In November, 1941, while sailing toward Gibraltar,

the Ark Royal fell victim to the German U-boat, U-81.

Sunk by torpedoes just as the Bismarck

had been only months earlier.

But where aircraft carriers really came into their own

was in the vastness of the Pacific.

And their experiences

would change the face of warfare forever.

One of the early lessons of the Second World War

was that the rapid advances in aircraft performance

and capabilities during the Interwar years

meant that command of the air become a prerequisite

to success in land or sea engagements.

The superior range, flexibility and effectiveness

of carrier-launched aircraft was no more ably demonstrated

than on the morning of the 7th of December, 1941,

when a Japanese task force

that included six aircraft carriers attacked Pearl Harbor.

And in a little over two hours,

decimated the American Pacific fleet.

The U.S. immediately responded by declaring war on Japan,

and began planning a reprisal.

What the Americans wished to do was attack the Japanese

where they least expected it, on their own soil.

And to do that, they drew on a growing understanding

of the aircraft carrier's potential.

You can approach your enemy territory,

and exercise your influence by means of force

with your aircraft from your ship.

You don't need a land base.

You don't need somebody else's territory to operate from.

You can operate from your own ship in international waters.

(chilling dramatic music)

The reprisal attack became known

as the Doolittle Raid,

and it was carried out using one of the new

Yorktown-class aircraft carriers, the USS Hornet.

The Hornet had a wartime complement of close to 3,000,

and was capable of carrying a mix of 90 aircraft,

including torpedo bombers, fighters and dive bombers,

giving her an unmatched ability to respond

to all manner of situations.

(dramatic intense music)

And in April, 1942, she steamed towards Japan

carrying a special unit of 16 highly-modified

B-25 Mitchell medium bombers

under the command of Colonel James Doolittle.

Although none of the B-25 pilots, including Doolittle,

had ever taken off from a carrier,

on the morning of the 18th of April in a heavy gale,

all 16 aircraft launched safely.

And from a distance of over a thousand kilometers

began their journey towards Japan.

The aircraft began arriving over Japanese cities

at about noon, six hours after takeoff,

and attacked military and industrial targets

in Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka.

None were shot down but landing medium bombers

on the Hornet's 245-meter flight deck

would be impossible for the aircraft,

which were deliberately ditched

over China following the raid.

All of the aircraft were lost

but all bar 11 crewmen emerged unscathed.

(dramatic music)

The Doolittle Raid was the first American attack

on the Japanese homeland,

and not only bolstered morale at home,

but in demonstrating the reach

of American naval and air power,

it had a deep psychological effect on the enemy.

It also marked the emergence of the aircraft carrier

as the dominant force in the war in the Pacific.

(dramatic music)

As aircraft grew in size and power,

they also grew in consumption.

And the Cold War prompted a desire for warships

that could operate without restriction.

Now, of course, in the aircraft carrier,

if you can provide the propulsive power

without needing all the fuel, you've got an advantage.

And the nuclear reactor provides that advantage.

You don't need to fuel the aircraft carrier

for her own propulsion,

and you can use the space which is freed up

to carry fuel to the aircraft.

The first American nuclear carrier

was the Enterprise class, which saw service for 50 years.

It was followed by the Nimitz.

(dramatic music)

The Nimitz class is over 330 meters in length,

displaces 100,000 tons,

and can carry its cargo of 90 aircraft,

which are launched from a flight deck

with a total area of over 18,000 square meters

that sits 20 stories above the surrounding sea.

And it cruises at 32 knots,

a speed it can maintain for 25 years.

A warship does all its work at sea in any conditions.

And the warship has to take the crew

and the weapon systems to sea, keep the crew fed,

fit and working under any conditions,

and to be able to fight under those conditions.

This imposes considerable challenges

on the way you design a warship,

and their survivability at sea.

Survivability was central to the Nimitz design

and being powered by two modern,

and relatively small Westinghouse nuclear reactors

allows a lot of hull space

to be dedicated to that survivability.

As such, over 14 million liters

of aviation fuel is stored on board,

added to that is the capacity

to stow over 3,000 tons of ordnance.

The Nimitz carries the latest in passive

and active defense systems.

However, the US Navy still bears the scars of World War II.

As a consequence, the aircraft hangars on board

are divided into three fire bays on each level

by thick steel doors that are designed

to restrict the spread of fire,

a feature present on all US aircraft carriers

since the devastating fires

caused by kamikaze attacks over 70 years ago.

(dramatic music)

The 10 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers,

once the largest warships on the planet,

are one of the most devastating of all the machinery of war.

Now, however, their mantle as the largest

falls to the Gerald R. Ford class.

Designed like the Nimitz with a lifespan of 50 years,

history suggests that her replacement will be even bigger.

(dramatic music)