[wastedyears]

Didn’t WWII carriers have decks that curved upwards?

[Charles Martel]

Didn’t WWII carriers have decks that curved upwards?

No, just a flat deck set parallel with the keel. Angled flight decks, ski-jumps and steam catapults are all post-war developments.

[tanknetter]

Didn’t WWII carriers have decks that curved upwards?

Some did, to assist landing aircraft with slowing down. HMS Furious and Hermes did, as well as the Japanese Akagi and Kaga did. Maybe some others (like Hosho). Also, HMS Ark Royal had a large stern flight deck extension that angled downwards.

Here's the sloped deck on Hermes:



I think Akagi and Kaga, (and a few others), had the forward end of the flight deck slope downwards too. Meaning that their flightdecks actually had a very shallow "V" (or chevron) shape to them.

But those were holdovers from an earlier era when countries were still trying to figure carriers out. Furious was also built with a secondary flight deck that allowed aircraft to be flown directly off from the hangar. Akagi and Kaga were built with a TWO secondary flight decks (since they had two stacked hangars).

The USN had true flat decks from the start. However, for several of its carriers (Yorktown class, the one-off USS Wasp CV-7, and a few of the initial Essex class ships) the USN had hangar deck catapults:

[tanknetter]

Here's a picture of a model of Akagi showing her sloped flight deck pretty well. Good, decent-res pics of the Japanese carriers are pretty hard to come by.