Chinese Building Megacarriers

The latest Navy League of Australia has a cool article about how the Chinese are building four "megacarriers" (as opposed to American-style supercarriers) at a shipyard near Shanghai.

According to the story, it was originally thought that the hulls being constructed were just for really huge oil tankers - like they weigh half a million tones each - but now pictures are coming out (the magazine printed some, but they're a bit grainy) showing that these ships now have flat tops and conning towers. So they're more like aircraft carriers, but absolutely massive!

The author (Mr. L. Harry) speculated that such a big ship could embark 500 aircraft and helicopters and it would need 20,000 crew and aircrew just to man it- comparing that to an American carrier with 100 aircraft, and maybe 5000 or 6000 crew.


Mr. Harry goes on to say that they're still probably a couple years away from finishing these ships, and even then they won't be as capable or survivable one on one with American supercarriers, because these have been converted from the hulls of commercial-grade ships, and if just one gets sunk, that'd be a disaster for the Chinese navy. But with that many combat aircraft on board, they don't have to be as capable. There's not fleet that could stand up to that many aircraft.