I was wondering because i just watched an episode of build it bigger on the discovery channel about the uss George bush, and when they were discribing it they said it was 500 tons of steel and 47,000 tons of aluminum. this kinda struck me as odd because i thought that it was mostly made of steel. and i would think that even if it was mostly aluminum, that the hull would be steel. and i think the hull would weigh more than 500 tons.
The hull is steel the island is an aluminum composite. Carriers are 100,000 tons of Diplomatic Diplomacy!
An aircraft carrier is a pretty large hunk of metal. And it's mostly steel... at least its structure and weight bearing surfaces. As I recall, there was quite a bit of aluminum and other light stuff used for cosmetic stuff, like covering on interior bulkheads (walls). But the flight deck is about three football fields of steel... thick steel. Planes landing on an aircraft carrier don't land. They are trapped when their tail hook grabs an arresting cable, and kind of fall out of the sky. When they hit, they need something pretty substantial to break the fall. A carrier displaces an awful lot of water, but, and this is a guess, probably less than 100,000 tons... the one I was on displaced less than 80,000 tons. About 40 feet of it is underwater. Most of its crew live below or very close to the waterline. But there's enough above water to allow for the city that the carrier contains to operate pretty much like any city with a population of about 6,000. It has stores where you can buy almost anything, barbers, a hospital, dentists, doctors, fitness center, theaters, fast food places where you can have a hamburger made to order, restaurants where the food is free, a post office, gas stations, a radio studio and a television studio, newspaper, churches--a chapel as well as other places people can meet to hold religious services, even an airport. I looked at the ship's website. From what little information there is, it looks to be just a few feet larger than the old carrier I was on. If it weighs 500 tons, it has to displace 500 tons. Don't ask me how they do it... unless it was materials used during construction and removed.
Steel with an aluminum structure above the flight deck. (old shipyard worker)
