List of sunken aircraft carriers

With the introduction of military aircraft, the aircraft carrier has become a decisive warship class.^[1] In 1911 aircraft began to be successfully launched and landed on ships, with the successful flight of a Curtiss Pusher aboard USS Pennsylvania.^[2] The British Royal Navy pioneered the first aircraft carrier with floatplanes rather than flying boats, which under-performed compared to land-based aircraft.^[3] The first true aircraft carrier was HMS Argus,^[2][4] launched in late 1917 with a complement of 20 aircraft and a flight deck 550 ft (170 m) long and 68 ft (21 m) wide.^[4] As of 2026^[update] 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 Akitsu Maru—a landing craft carrier and troop transport with a small flight deck, carrying the Imperial Japanese Army's 64th Infantry Regiment.

Submarines were a major enemy of aircraft carriers, having sunk eighteen throughout the Second World War, including the Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano, the heaviest carrier of the war and the largest object sunk by a submarine, when she was hit by four torpedoes from USS Archerfish.^[5] Carrier-based aircraft sank sixteen opposing aircraft carriers, and land-based aircraft sank five. 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 was sunk by an internal explosion, and one was scuttled after scrapping was refused.

Only three (possibly four) carriers were sunk by gunfire in a surface engagement. HMS Glorious was ferrying aircraft to Norway in June 1940 when the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau found her within gun range and opened fire, sinking Glorious and her escorting destroyers.^[6] In October 1942, after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Japanese destroyers Akigumo and Makigumo are sometimes credited with finishing off the crippled and abandoned American aircraft carrier USS Hornet, but Hornet was already sinking with a 45 degree list after bomb and torpedo damage by aircraft operating from the carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku, and it is debatable whether their torpedoes really affected Hornet's fate. In October 1944, USS Gambier Bay was sunk by naval gunfire primarily from the Japanese battleship Yamato in the Battle off Samar. Meanwhile, the Japanese light carrier Chiyoda was crippled by US dive bombers, and later finished off by a US cruiser task force.^[7][8]