USS Constitution is unique in that its commanding officers come from the pool of officers screened for Commander (O-5) Command as CO-Special Mission, rather than CO-Afloat (special mission command almost exclusively involves shore-based command or command of so-called “expeditionary” and security forces like security boat teams or assault craft units, with less promising career prospects post-command), but instead of wearing the badge for Command Ashore (like I think every other CO-Special Mission billet), they wear the badge for Command at Sea (CO-Afloat). Because it’s USS Constitution (still technically a ship and technically afloat, even if it never goes anywhere except to turn around in the harbor every now and then).
Admirals and generals have flags to show their rank and presence – hence the term “flag officer”. When an admiral boards a ship, the appropriate flag is raised; it is then lowered when (s)he departs.. If there is more than one admiral on board, the flag for the senior officer is flown.
One of the more whimsical anecdotes about the Battle of Midway involves Admiral Nagumo (Kidō Butai’s commander) transferring from the Akagi after it became obvious that it could not function as flagship. He boarded the light cruiser Nagara, but when his chief of staff went to raise his Vice Admiral’s flag — a Rising Sun with a broad red stripe across the top — he found that there was none aboard. So he took the screen commander’s Rear Admiral’s flag (a Rising Sun with red stripes across the top and bottom) and tore off the bottom stripe. As Walter Lord put it, “The effect was tattered, but certainly no worse than the fleet.”
While Fletcher did hand over control to Spruance, it wasn’t because he was on a cruiser. It was because the loss of Yorktown left his Carrier Task Force, TF17, with no carriers. In a carrier battle, it was toothless.He judged (correctly, in my opinion) that Spruance could better lead TF16 from Enterprise than Fletcher could from a ship many miles away from TF16.
Spruance chose Enterprise as his flag because she’d been Halsey’s flagship when Spruance was given command on short notice. Later, when Spruance was given command of the enormous 5th Fleet, he led it from a cruiser, Indianapolis.
The flagship is the ship designated by an admiral commanding a group of ships (fleet, strike force, battle group, etc.) as the ship on which he with his supporting staff will be deploying. The commanding admiral is one person. The other people in tow (sorry) are his supporting staff.
The United States Navy does not have a ship designated as the “Navy flagship” as the commanding officer of the Navy is the Chief of Naval Operations, an administrative positionbased in the Pentagon. His/her staff is offiially called Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (abbreviated OPNAV) but is also known as Navy Staff.
The above refers to US Navy practice. Checking Wikipedia (sorry, I can’t link now), I see some other countries, for both their navy and coast guard, do have a designated flagship for the entire navy or coast guard. Some even have two designated flagships for the entire navy; one of those flagships is designated as a ceremonial flagship.
This may be a source of confusion. Rather than “morph into”, it took additional meanings.
As others note, a flagship is the ship where the commanding officer is. That meaning has not changed, and is still used.
Because the command officer of the fleet traditionally took the largest and most prestigious ship, “flagship” took on the meaning of prestige as well. For example, “X9000 is the company’s flagship model.”
At the beginning of WWII, ships didn’t have extensive Combat Information Centers and the command staff was much smaller than what it became later.
At a minimum, a ship needed staterooms for the task force commander and staff, meeting rooms and such.
Note that the ship will still have a captain which commands the ship while the admiral commands the group.
Note that both Fletcher and Spruance were “black shoe” admirals, commanders coming up the ranks of traditional surface ships. The aggressive “brown shoe” aviator admiral Halsey was to command the operation, but as he was hospitalized just before the battle.
The USN was developing carrier warfare doctrine on the fly at this stage of the war. Prewar doctrine called for carriers to act either independently or in groups of two rather than one large group. The idea was to minimize risk, but early Japanese success demonstrated the advantage of grouping carriers.
Presumably the lead ship of the Constitution class was the Constitution, just as USS Iowa was the lead ship of the Iowa-class battleships and USS Atlanta was the lead ship of the Atlanta-class light cruisers.
There’s a tendency for random civilians and military PR flacks & jingo-ey military boosters to loosely use flagship to mean “biggest, bestest, most ceremonially important ship” rather than “fleet command ship with an admiral aboard to command that fleet.”
I can totally believe that ST:TOS’s Enterprise is a “flagship” in that universe by the former definition.
The retcon on that is the first captain Robert April became an Admiral and kept the Enterprise NCC-1701 as his flagship although he never commanded from it except in one episode of TAS. Admiral Will Riker alluded to this in TNG in that Starfleet allows admirals to designate the ship they want as their flagship.
The Enterprise is called the flagship a few times over the years. I know the Enterprise-D was and the TOS Enterprise* is called a flagship in Strange New Worlds (*so, not TOS but the same ship).
