CV-1, the first aircraft carrier to serve active duty in the U.S. Navy.
I've got some fond memories of this ship. I've known the name for most of my life. I grew up in Pensacola, Florida, home to the Pensacola Naval Air Station, where the vast majority of U.S. carrier pilots train. Pensacola is also home to the National Naval Air Museum, a place I would often frequent as a child. It's been years since I've been back there but I can remember clearly from my last visit a row of carrier models in the museums massive entraince. There were ships from every class represented there, Langley, Lexington, Essex, Yorktown, John F. Kennedy(the ship my dad served on), Enterprise, even up to the Reagan class. The Enterprise and reagan models were HUGE, nearly 15 feet long, but the size of the models kept getting smaller until you got down to the Langley. The image of here was quaint, a little 1 1/2 foot model with a dozen small plains on it, one of them landing on the 3rd catch rope which was nothing but a piece of string weighed down with little sandbags. Even when I was six or seven I knew this little ship was primitive. I even played in a park near my elementary school called Langley Park so, when I hear the name Langley it tends to remind me of those years.
My only thought about this ship is this... She has to be in the game, I don't care what tier. This little boat is meant to be here. She was converted to a seaplane tender in 1936 and never saw action in WW2 in the true carrier roll so we never really knew what the little L could do. I do think that the Langley would fit in well as a tier 2 or 3 carrier, maybe tier 4 but that might be pushing it. Her 36 planes isn't a large number, but neither is it small. The drawback is that she didn't have a long enough deck to launch monoplanes, she was a biplane only ship.
