On December 27, 1922, the Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned the first aircraft carrier in the world that was designed and built as an aircraft carrier, the Hōshō.
Digging Deeper
Prior to the Hōshō, some ships such as the USS Langley CV-1 were converted (in 1920) to aircraft carriers from other warships or merchant ships. The Royal Navy (British) Ark Royal is probably the first of what we would recognize as a more or less modern carrier, commissioned as a carrier in 1914 after being converted from a freighter that was in the process of being built in 1913. The few seaplanes carried by the Ark Royal could not land on the flight deck, but had to land on the water and be taken back aboard by crane.
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