List of sunken aircraft carriers



With the advent of heavier-than-air flight, the aircraft carrier has become a decisive weapon at sea. In 1911 aircraft began to be successfully launched and landed on ships with the successful flight of a Curtiss Pusher aboard USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4). The British Royal Navy pioneered the first aircraft carrier with floatplanes, as flying boats under performed compared to traditional land based aircraft. The first true aircraft carrier was HMS Argus (I49), launched in late 1917 with a complement of 20 aircraft and a flight deck 550 ft long and 68 ft wide. The last aircraft carrier sunk in wartime was the JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Amagi, in Kure Harbour in July 1945. The greatest loss of life was the 2,046 killed on JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Akitsu Maru—a converted passenger liner with a small flight deck, carrying the Imperial Japanese Army's 64th Infantry Regiment.

Submarines were the biggest enemy of aircraft carriers, having sunk eighteen throughout the Second World War. Most notably, the JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Shinano was the largest carrier of the war, and the largest object sunk by a submarine when she was hit by four torpedoes from USS Archerfish (SS-311). Sixteen carriers were lost to the air groups of enemy aircraft carriers, and five were sunk to land based aircraft. Ten were sunk in non combat zones, six were sunk as target ships, one was scuttled to prevent capture, one was sunk as a block ship, one sank to an internal explosion, and one was scuttled after scrapping was refused.

The rarest way for an aircraft carrier to be sunk was in a surface action against enemy warship gunfire, of which only three (debatably four) were sunk. HMS Glorious was en route ferrying aircraft to Norway in June 1940 when the German battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau found her within gun range and opened fire. Excellent long range gunnery sank both Glorious and her escorting destroyers. In October 1942, after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Japanese destroyers JAPANESE DESTROYER Akigumo and JAPANESE DESTROYER Makigumo are sometimes credited with finishing off the crippled and abandoned American aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), but Hornet was already sinking with a 45 degree list after bomb and torpedo damage from aircraft operating from the carriers JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Shōkaku and JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Zuikaku, and it is debatable whether their torpedoes really affected Hornet's fate. In October 1944, USS Gambier Bay was involved at the Battle off Samar, where she was sunk by naval gunfire, primarily from the JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Yamato. Meanwhile, the Japanese light carrier JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Chiyoda was crippled by US dive bomber aircraft, and later finished off by a US cruiser task force.