Where naval warfare goes, probably nothing can be more complex and intimidating than an aircraft carrier, until they turn out less so. Not all of them lived up to their expectations. We consulted experts in coming up with the five worst aircraft carriers in history by considering design flaws, crew competence, and combat records. Here are the ignominious entries, in no particular order.
Tragedy befell the Shinano, a WWII Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) battleship turned supercarrier. Sister to the mighty Yamato and Musashi battleships, it was sunk on sea trials in November 1944 by three torpedo strikes from the submarine USS Archerfish (SS-331); she sank seven hours later. Included in this loss were 69,000 tons with 1,435 officers, enlisted sailors, and civilians. This easily places the Shinano among the worst carriers in history.
Another IJN carrier, Taihō, illustrates crew incompetence. The submarine USS Albacore hit the Taihō with just one torpedo on June 19, 1944. Ineptitude among the crew proved to be the more serious problem when the damage control officer, an inexperienced man, made the fatal error of ordering the ship’s ventilation system opened to attempt to dissipate gasoline fumes. This turned the vessel into a floating time bomb. A tremendous explosion ensued, which sealed the fate of Taihō. This example shows the importance of good crew management.
Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine gained quite a reputation, but their fleet of aircraft carriers was virtually non-existent. The Graf Zeppelin was the only carrier they managed to build, and it was a brilliant feat of engineering on paper. Still, due to the outbreak of WWII, all work on it was delayed, and it remained unseaworthy by 1943. Then, Admiral Karl Dönitz, succeeding Admiral Erich Raeder, who himself did not believe in aircraft carriers, effectively abandoned work on the Graf Zeppelin. This ship was ultimately sunk by the Germans, then raised by the Soviets, only to be finally sunk as a target vessel in 1947.
Problems abound with Admiral Kuznetsov, the sole aircraft carrier Russia possesses. Its Mazut power, its sunken dry dock in 2018, the costly onboard fire in 2019, and other issues have affected this ship commissioned in 1990. It made a total of just six patrols from 1991 to 2015. This perhaps explains why, so far, Kuznetsov has not been involved in the current Ukraine conflict.
The example of India’s flagship aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, underlines lasting reliability problems with Soviet-design carriers. The ship was originally the Soviet Navy’s Admiral Gorshkov, purchased by India in 2004 for USD 2.35 billion. Since that time, the Vikramaditya has suffered a toxic gas leak in 2016 that killed two and saw three fires between 2019 and 2021. These incidents point to the troubles of keeping such complex vessels seaworthy and in operation.
These five carriers stand as object lessons in the annals of naval history, demonstrating what can go wrong due to a combination of flawed designs, incompetence of the crew, and strategic missteps.