The Nakajima B5N was the standard of what type of warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft?
Aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for staging aircraft operations. Aircraft carriers are expensive to build and are critical assets. Carriers have evolved since their inception in the early twentieth century from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons to nuclear-powered warships that carry numerous fighter planes, strike aircraft, helicopters, and other types of aircraft. While it is possible to launch heavier aircraft such as fixed-wing gunships and bombers (it has been done) from aircraft carriers, it is virtually impossible to land them.
List of escort carriers of the Royal Navy The escort aircraft carrier, also called a "jeep carrier" or "baby flattop" in the USN or "Woolworth Carrier" by the RN, was a small and slow type of aircraft carrier used by the Royal Navy in the Second World War. They were typically half the length and one-third the displacement of the larger fleet carriers. While they were slower, less armed, unarmoured and carried fewer aircraft, they were less expensive and could be built more quickly. This was their principal advantage, as escort carriers could be completed in greater numbers as a stop-gap when fleet carriers were scarce. However, the lack of protection made escort carriers particularly vulnerable and several were sunk with great loss of life. The light carrier (hull classification symbol CVL) was a similar concept to escort carriers in most respects, but they were designed for higher speeds for deployment with fleet carriers.