5 Of The Worst Aircraft Carriers Of All Time

Aircraft carriers are the premiere warships used by blue water navies around the world, and it's been that way since World War II. After the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, aircraft carriers were some of the only remaining American large warships in the Pacific theater. As a result, much of the American military strategy in the Pacific theater was centered around aircraft carriers. This remained true long after the war, and these days, it's no different — aircraft carriers are the central force in any country's blue water navy.

Of course, like any military hardware, not every aircraft carrier that was designed, built, and employed by a navy turned out to be effective. Aircraft carriers have been around since World War I, and it took decades for navies to figure out how to properly use them. In fact, most early aircraft carriers were created by converting existing vessels by throwing a wooden flight deck on top. These didn't perform as well as a modern purpose-built carrier for obvious reasons.

Ultimately, many aircraft carriers used since their inception have been exceptional warships, but not all of them. There are stories of terrible aircraft carriers thrown into combat during several 20th and 21st-century conflicts. Throughout the development of modern aircraft carriers, serious design flaws, construction problems, and operability limitations occurred, causing several vessels to be more pomp and circumstance than viable weapons of war. Of all the bad aircraft carriers ever built, these five examples are some of the worst.

The Isa and Hyūga were built in 1917 and 1918, respectively, and they were not constructed as aircraft carriers. Both vessels were Isa-class battleships, and by the time World War II came around, they were decidedly obsolete. Battleships were quickly losing their effectiveness when confronted with air power, which is one of the reasons the aircraft carriers came to dominate the world's navies. Japan realized this after losing four carriers at the Battle of Midway.

That battle proved the effectiveness of air power, and because of cost and time, Japan opted to upgrade the Isa and Hyūga instead of building new carriers from the keel up. The decision was made to convert them into hybrid battleships/carriers, so they were outfitted with a small deck, replacing the aft gun turrets. The conversion process was extensive, and it only afforded the ability to service nine planes on its flight deck, with 11 stored below and one on each of the two catapults, bringing the total to 22.

While the catapults made it possible for the two converted battleship/carriers to launch planes, the flight deck was too small for proper aircraft carrier launch and recovery efforts, requiring any launched planes to land on conventional carriers or ground-based flight lines. The converted "battle carriers" were marginally useful at best, as they lacked the guns to successfully operate as a battleship, and they lacked the flight deck needed to recover their meager air force. Both the Isa and Hyūga were sunk toward the end of the war and were later surfaced and used as scrap to rebuild Japan, so they had some usefulness in the end.

These days, the Russian Federation isn't known for its aircraft carriers, and that's largely due to the fact that the country only has one, and it doesn't work. The Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov (known in the West as the "Admiral Kuznetsov") was once the flagship of the Russian navy, but these days, it's docked for repairs and has been since 2018. On paper, the Admiral Kuznetsov isn't necessarily a bad ship, though it's not truly comparable to an American aircraft carrier.

Still, the Admiral Kuznetsov displaces 55,000 tons of seawater, stretches nearly 1,000 feet, can travel at 33 mph, and supports an air force of about 30 aircraft. While not as large or capable as a modern nuclear aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov isn't a paltry warship. Unfortunately for the Russians, it's also obsolete, underfunded, plagued by corruption, and seemingly lost to a refit that will likely never be completed. The Admiral Kuznetsov is also a non-nuclear vessel, relying on the dark smoke-producing Mazut for fuel.

The vessel's repairs have been rife with problems, including multiple fires, the destruction of a dock that resulted in a massive hole in the carrier's deck, and more. Russia pulled sailors off the ship and sent them to fight in Ukraine, so there was not a great deal of pressure to rebuild the Admiral Kuznetsov. Additionally, it didn't see combat until 2016 — 35 years after it was launched. For the most part, the Admiral Kuznetsov has been little more than a money pit for Soviet and then Russian military budget planners, making it more of a headache than a military asset.

In the leadup to World War II, many navies around the world found themselves in desperate need of aircraft carriers. Building them from scratch is a lengthy and costly undertaking, so it was common to take an existing ship and convert it. This was true of military ships as well as commercial vessels. In the United Kingdom, the conversion of merchant vessels fell under the umbrella term Merchant Aircraft Carrier, or MAC ship, and that's precisely what they were. The first such vessel was the MV Empire MacAlpine, which joined the fleet on April 14, 1943.

While this practice filled an urgent need, the converted vessels were not up to the same standards as proper warships. The Empire MacAlpine hosted an aircrew and maintenance staff as onboard naval personnel, but the vessel was otherwise operated by civilians. The conversion did little more than add a 459-foot-long flight deck built atop the cargo holds, which carried grain. The converted grain ship/carrier could accommodate three to four Fairey Swordfish torpedo planes that could be launched and poorly recovered by the ship.

The converted ship wasn't necessarily a bad vessel, but it was incomparably suited to the fight. Multiple merchant vessels were converted in this fashion, and none of them achieved a single U-Boat sinking via Swordfish aircraft. Ultimately, the Atlantic Ocean was dominated by the Allies when the Empire MacAlpine entered the fight, so there wasn't a great deal for the ship to do. After the war, the Empire MacAlpine resumed its prior role as a grain carrier, and by 1970, she was scrapped in Hong Kong.

When the United States began using aircraft carriers, it did so with preexisting ships. These would be converted into carriers, so they weren't envisioned from the ground up for that purpose. The USS Ranger (CV-4) was the first U.S. warship designed from the keel-up as an aircraft carrier. Compared to modern carriers, she was small, displacing only 15,000 tons of seawater and stretching just 730 feet in length. Initially, it didn't feature an island superstructure, but one was later added after the Ranger was completed and commissioned in 1934.

The Ranger could accommodate 86 aircraft, and in the interwar years, these were primarily biplanes. During WWII, she spent most of her time in the Atlantic, as she was deemed too slow to operate against the stronger Imperial Japanese Navy. Still, after an overhaul, she made her way through the Panama Canal to the Pacific theater and supported several operations during WWII. Unfortunately, throughout her time on the water, the Ranger had several drawbacks that reduced her combat operability.

Because she was designed and built in the '30s, advances in aircraft design meant that by WWII, she couldn't accommodate most modern planes. Seeing as launching and recovering aircraft is an aircraft carrier's primary responsibility in combat, this made the Ranger somewhat useless as a warship. Instead of taking part in major combat actions, she was primarily relegated to ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic after her flight deck was reinforced in 1944. The Ranger was the only interwar-built ship that didn't engage the Japanese Navy during WWII, as she was reduced to a training carrier when she finally made it to the Pacific.

The Shinano was a Japanese aircraft carrier that secretly began construction prior to the U.S. involvement in WWII. She finally embarked on her sea trials in November 1944 but didn't last long in the Pacific theater. The Shinano was the largest aircraft carrier ever built when its construction was completed, as she displaced 64,000 tons of seawater. She was also 872 feet long and could support an air wing of 47 aircraft. For the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Shinano represented a major step forward in aircraft supercarrier design.

From the outside looking in, the Shinano appeared to be a deadly ship, and she could have been had she been designed with slightly thicker armor. After beginning her sea trials, the Shinano ran across the USS Archerfish (SS-311), a Balai-class submarine that entered the fight in 1943. Shinano was busy going about her sea trials to make her sea and war-worthy when the Archerfish noticed her on her second day at sea. Commander Joseph Enright authorized the launch of six torpedoes, four of which struck the Shinano, causing widespread flooding.

The Shinano's sailors tried to beach her but couldn't, and the Shinano capsized and sank. The sinking of the Shinano was a major blow to the Japanese, and she was and remains the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine. The action earned the sailors of the Archerfish a Presidential Unit Citation, and her captain received a Navy Cross. The Japanese got little from the exchange outside a great deal of wasted money and effort and the loss of 1,435 personnel.