How fast can an aircraft carrier go?
The practical speed limit in knots for a displacement-type hull is approximately equal to the square-root of the hull length at the waterline (LWL) times 1.34 The Enterprise is the longest warship ever built. You’ll find some variation among different sources, but most of them list her length overall (LOA) as 1,123 feet, whereas ALL of the Nimitz class are usually listed as 1,092 feet. The Enterprise and the Nimitz class have the same length at the waterline (LWL), 1,040 feet. If the hulls may be considered displacement hulls, this puts the limit of both the Enterprise and Nimitz class warships at the square root of 1,040 (32.249) times 1.34= 43.2 knots. The “threshold speed” is generally considered to occur at a speed of about 1.2 times the square root of the ship’s LWL, which would mean that the Enterprise and Nimitz class ships are not likely to exceed a speed of 38.7 knots. Naval architects have long considered the problem of achieving significantly higher ship speeds, without incr
