Very interesting; I would have gotten that one wrong. But it sounds to me like there's a little room for argument over definitions here. As I've always understood it, the four Forrestal-class ships (Forrestal, Ranger, Saratoga, and Independence) were/are sisterships built to the same basic design. If in fact the plans of the Forrestal were altered to include the angled deck (which was news to me, I have to confess), and if we therefore assert that she wasn't designed with an angled deck, and if the Ranger was built to the same design...doesn't that mean that the Ranger also was originally designed without the angled deck?
This is the sort of thing that gets students and professors into hot arguments about exams. It looks to me like Billydelawder may deserve at least "partial credit," in that the Kitty Hawk, as the first one designed after the Forrestal class, must have been the first one designed from the very beginning to have an angled deck.
Bottom line: thanks to subfixer for bringing our attention to some information that, to my mind at least, rises considerably above the level of trivia. It's interesting to think about what the Forrestal-class ships would have looked like without the angled decks.
I remember vividly when the old Revell kit appeared, with its advertising proclaiming the ship as the ultimate high-tech "supercarrier." As a matter of fact I can also remember the Aurora Forrestal-class kits that came out at about the same time - considerably cruder than the Revell version, but with lots more planes (which, to a ten-year-old, was what really mattered). Now all the ships in that class have been decommissioned and, as I just read on the Navsource site, the Kitty Hawk is officially designated the senior commissioned ship in the Navy - and she's due for decommissioning shortly. I feel old....
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.