With the advent of heavier-than-air flight, the aircraft carrier has become a decisive weapon at sea.[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, as flying boats under performed compared to traditional 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] 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 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.[5] 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 Scharnhorst and Gneisenau found her within gun range and opened fire. Excellent long range gunnery sank both 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 from 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 involved at the Battle off Samar, where she was sunk by naval gunfire, primarily from the Japanese battleship Yamato. Meanwhile, the Japanese light carrier Chiyoda was crippled by US dive bomber aircraft, and later finished off by a US cruiser task force.[7][8]
Crippled by torpedo bombers and dive bombers from Japanese fast carriers, finished by torpedoes from the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo after failed attempt to scuttle during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
Crippled by Japanese dive bombers and torpedo bombers from the carrier Hiryū during the Battle of Midway later finished off by Japanese submarine I-168 while under tow.
^According to the Bureau of Naval Personnel a total of 288 U.S. Navy officers and crewmen from Langley were missing in action and later declared dead following the sinking of Langley and the two ships (Pecos and Edsall) that rescued survivors but were also sunk shortly afterwards. Including the 31 United States Army Air Forces pilots that were originally on Langley that also died in a subsequent sinking, a total of 319 from Langley were killed.[9]
Bishop, Chris; Chant, Chris (2004). Aircraft Carriers The world's greatest naval vessels and their aircraft. St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI Publishing Company. ISBN0760320055.
Fontenoy, Paul E. (2006). Aircraft Carriers: an illustrated history of their impact. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN185109573X.
Polmar, Norman (2006). Aircraft Carriers: a history of carrier aviation and its influence on world events. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books Inc. ISBN1574886630.