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60 free Aircraft Carriers trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This aircraft carriers trivia quiz covers the floating airbases that replaced the battleship as the capital ship of every serious navy. The easy questions handle the basics: what carriers replaced, Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid, the coloured shirts on a US flight deck, the F-35 on Britain's Queen Elizabeth class and the museum ship in New York. From there it moves through the pioneers, Ely, Samson and Dunning, the Washington Treaty conversions, Taranto, escort and CAM ships, and the postwar inventions that made jets workable at sea. The harder half is for naval buffs: which ship the word 'supercarrier' was coined for, the first ships over 80,000 and 100,000 tonnes, HMS Hermes and the island, the two Japanese carriers with port-side islands, the price India paid for Vikramaditya, Admiral Kuznetsov's original name and the Swedish submarine that embarrassed a strike group. If you have played our navy or World War II quizzes, this is the deep dive on one ship type. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry on aircraft carriers before publishing.
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Q 01Which type of warship did the aircraft carrier replace as a fleet's flagship after the Second World War?
The battleship
Carriers transformed naval battles from gunfire to beyond-visual-range air strikes.
Q 02Which US Secretary of State described an aircraft carrier as '100,000 tons of diplomacy'?
Henry Kissinger
Britain's Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope put it another way: countries that aspire to strategic influence have carriers.
Q 03How many large nuclear-powered fleet carriers does the United States operate?
11
Their combined deck space is more than twice that of all other nations put together.
Q 04To evade nuclear submarines, carriers are expected to sustain speeds above roughly what?
30 knots
High speed also increases the 'wind over the deck', giving aircraft more lift at launch.
Q 05The term 'supercarrier' was first used by The New York Times in 1938 about which ship?
HMS Ark Royal
That Ark Royal was 800 feet long and designed to carry 72 aircraft.
Q 06Which 1954 ship was the first aircraft carrier over 80,000 tonnes full-load displacement?
USS Forrestal
USS Enterprise (1960) was the first over 90,000 tonnes and Nimitz (1972) the first over 100,000.
Q 07Project Habakkuk, a wartime carrier of ice and wood pulp, is described in the article as an early example of what?
An 'ultracarrier'
A 1976 US Navy 'ultracarrier' concept envisaged a 500,000-ton ship 1,310 feet long.
Q 08Who made the first experimental take-off of an aeroplane from a US Navy ship, on 14 November 1910?
Eugene Burton Ely
He flew a Curtiss Pusher off the cruiser USS Birmingham, and two months later landed on USS Pennsylvania.
Q 09The first take-off from a moving ship, in 1912, was from which British pre-dreadnought?
HMS Hibernia
Commander Charles Samson flew a Short biplane off her deck.
Q 10Which navy's ship Wakamiya conducted the world's first carrier-launched air raid, in September 1914?
Japan's
Its Farman seaplanes attacked Austro-Hungarian and German ships off Qingdao without scoring a hit.
Q 11The first carrier-launched airstrike, the 1918 Tondern raid, used seven aircraft of which type?
Sopwith Camel
Launched from HMS Furious, they destroyed two zeppelins at the German airbase.
Q 12Who made the first landing of an aeroplane on a moving ship, on HMS Furious in 1917?
Edwin Harris Dunning
He was killed days later when his aircraft was thrown overboard on another attempt.
Q 13Which 1918 ship became the world's first carrier capable of both launching and recovering aircraft?
HMS Argus
Turbulence from Furious's funnel had made landings so dangerous that a flush deck was developed.
Q 21USS Sable and USS Wolverine were unusual training carriers that operated on which waters?
The Great Lakes
Both were conversions used to train pilots away from the war zones.
Q 22The angled flight deck was invented by an officer serving which country?
Britain
Royal Navy Captain Dennis Cambell's design allowed simultaneous launch and recovery of faster jets.
Q 23The first optical landing system was fitted in 1952 to which British carrier?
HMS Illustrious
Jets' faster landing speeds gave pilots little time to correct mistakes.
Q 14Which 1922 agreement pushed early carriers to be converted from cruisers and battlecruisers rather than built new?
The Washington Naval Treaty
The conversions produced USS Langley, the Lexington class, Japan's Akagi and Kaga and Britain's Courageous class.
Q 15Which 1922 Japanese ship was among the first purpose-built aircraft carriers to be commissioned?
Hōshō
HMS Hermes was laid down earlier, in 1918, but not commissioned until 1924.
Q 16In November 1940, a British carrier launched a strike on the Italian fleet at which harbour?
Taranto
It knocked out three of six anchored battleships for the loss of two torpedo bombers.
Q 17How many carriers did Japan concentrate for the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Six
No other nation had fielded anything comparable as a single unit.
Q 18The Doolittle Raid launched 16 B-25 bombers against Japan from which carrier?
USS Hornet
She sailed to within 650 nautical miles of Japan for the April 1942 strike.
Q 19Which British carrier's sinking by German battleships in 1940 exposed carriers' vulnerability?
HMS Glorious
She was lost during the Norwegian campaign.
Q 20Wartime CAM ships were merchant vessels that could launch, but not recover, what?
A single catapult-launched fighter
The pilot had to ditch or bail out after defending the convoy.
Q 24What does the acronym CATOBAR stand for?
Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery
It is the most expensive method but lets heavily loaded aircraft take off.
Q 25STOBAR carriers, such as Russia's and India's, launch aircraft using what instead of catapults?
A ski-jump
They still recover aircraft with arresting wires and a tailhook.
Q 26An aircraft that misses the arresting wires and goes around is called what?
A bolter
The angled deck lets a bolter take off again without hitting parked aircraft.
Q 27What is the radio call sign of the landing signal officer?
Paddles
Before angled decks, LSOs signalled corrections with coloured paddles.
Q 28Which officer, usually a commander, controls launch and recovery from Primary Flight Control?
The air boss
The captain works one level below on the navigation bridge; below that is the flag bridge.
Q 29How do US Navy flight-deck crews indicate their different responsibilities?
Coloured shirts
At least seven colours are worn on a modern US carrier.
Q 30The concentration of a carrier's superstructure into an 'island' was pioneered on which ship in 1923?
HMS Hermes
USS Langley's flush deck suffered from exhaust fumes blowing across it.