Aircraft Carriers Trivia
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59 free Aircraft Carriers trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 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
The battleship. In December 1941 Japanese aircraft sank the Royal Navy's Prince of Wales and Repulse at sea: without air cover, big guns had no answer to bombers and torpedo planes.
Q 02Which US Secretary of State is widely credited with calling an aircraft carrier '100,000 tons of diplomacy'?
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger is widely credited with the line. The number is near literal: a fully loaded Nimitz-class carrier displaces roughly 100,000 tons.
Q 03What drives every aircraft carrier in the US Navy?
Nuclear reactors
Nuclear reactors. Each ship can steam for over 20 years before refuelling, and federal law obliges the Navy to keep at least 11 carriers in service.
Q 04Which Japanese tactic, begun in late 1944, put several American carriers out of action off Okinawa?
Kamikaze attacks
Kamikaze attacks. British carriers had armoured flight decks, and a US liaison officer aboard one said a hit there meant only 'Sweepers, man your brooms'.
Q 05Swordfish torpedo bombers from which British carrier crippled the battleship Bismarck's rudder in May 1941?
HMS Ark Royal
HMS Ark Royal. Her biplanes first attacked the British cruiser Sheffield by mistake; a second strike jammed Bismarck's rudder, and the fleet caught and sank her the next morning.
Q 06Which US carrier, generally counted as the first supercarrier, was named for the first Secretary of Defense?
USS Forrestal
USS Forrestal. In 1967 a stray rocket set off bombs on her crowded deck off Vietnam, killing 134 men, and the Navy overhauled its firefighting training afterwards.
Q 07Project Habakkuk was a British wartime plan to build a giant aircraft carrier out of what?
Ice and wood pulp
Ice and wood pulp, a slow-melting frozen mix called pykrete. A test model was built on a lake in Alberta before longer-range patrol aircraft made the ship unnecessary.
Q 08Eugene Ely's 1911 landing on USS Pennsylvania, the first on any ship, introduced which device carrier aircraft still use?
A tailhook
A tailhook. Hooks under Ely's biplane snagged ropes stretched between sandbags on a wooden platform; two months earlier he had made the first take-off from a ship.
Q 09Which future US president was shot down in 1944 flying a torpedo bomber from the carrier USS San Jacinto?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush. He bailed out over the Pacific and was picked up by the submarine USS Finback; a Nimitz-class carrier now carries his name.
Q 10Which carrier jet does Maverick fly in the 1986 film Top Gun?
F-14 Tomcat
F-14 Tomcat. The Navy loaned the production real Tomcats and days of filming aboard a working carrier at sea, while repainted American F-5s played the enemy MiGs.
Q 11The 1918 Tondern raid, the first strike flown from a carrier's deck, used seven aircraft of which type?
Sopwith Camel
Sopwith Camel. Flying from HMS Furious, they destroyed Zeppelins L 54 and L 60 in their shed; three pilots, short of fuel for the trip back, landed in neutral Denmark, were interned and soon escaped home.
Q 12What stopped Edwin Dunning's aircraft in 1917 in the first landing on a moving ship?
Deck crew grabbing it
Deck crew grabbing it: men sprinted out and dragged his biplane down by rope loops as he cut the engine over HMS Furious. Dunning was killed five days later attempting another landing.
Q 13Which 1918 ship became the first carrier with a full-length deck for both take-offs and landings?
HMS Argus
Q 21USS Sable and USS Wolverine were unusual training carriers that operated on which waters?
The Great Lakes
The Great Lakes. Both were side-wheel steamers, former luxury lake cruise ships given flat decks, and thousands of navy pilots made their first carrier landings on them on Lake Michigan, far from any submarine.
Q 22Which carrier feature did British officer Dennis Cambell devise for landing jets?
Angled flight deck
Angled flight deck. Slanting the landing strip off to one side meant a jet that missed every wire could power away over open water and try again, and the US Navy quickly rebuilt USS Antietam to test it.
Q 23What do carrier pilots call the amber light that guides their landing approach?
The meatball
HMS Argus. Converted from an unfinished Italian liner, she had nothing standing above her full-length deck, because air churned up by the funnel and bridge of HMS Furious had made landing there deadly.
Q 14Which 1922 agreement led navies to turn unfinished battleships and battlecruisers into aircraft carriers?
The Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty. It capped battleship fleets but let each navy finish a few cancelled hulls as carriers, which is how the American battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga went to sea with flight decks.
Q 15Which 1922 Japanese ship was among the first purpose-built aircraft carriers to be commissioned?
Hōshō
Hōshō. Britain laid down a rival first, but Japan finished sooner and commissioned her in December 1922; she survived the Second World War and ended her career ferrying Japanese troops home.
Q 16In November 1940, a British carrier launched a strike on the Italian fleet at which harbour?
Taranto
Taranto. Twenty-one Swordfish biplanes flying from a single carrier put three Italian battleships out of action in one night, for the loss of just two aircraft.
Q 17Which Japanese admiral devised the six-carrier strike on Pearl Harbor?
Isoroku Yamamoto
Isoroku Yamamoto. His six carriers launched two waves of aircraft against the fleet at anchor, yet the American carriers happened to be away and escaped untouched.
Q 18The Doolittle Raid launched 16 B-25 bombers against Japan from which carrier?
USS Hornet
USS Hornet. Asked where the bombers had come from, President Roosevelt told reporters 'Shangri-La', the hidden valley of a popular novel, and the Navy later gave that name to a new carrier.
Q 19Which British carrier was caught and sunk by the guns of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Norway in June 1940?
HMS Glorious
HMS Glorious. She had no aircraft in the air when the German ships sighted her, and she went down with her two escorting destroyers and more than 1,500 men.
Q 20How did a sortie usually end for the Hurricane fighter catapulted from a wartime CAM ship?
The pilot ditched or bailed out
The pilot ditched or bailed out near the convoy and hoped a ship would pick him up. The rocket-launched fighters were a stopgap until enough escort carriers arrived.
The meatball. Pilots keep it lined up with a row of green lights all the way down; it grew out of a British mirror sight introduced in 1954, when faster jets left pilots too little time to correct an approach.
Q 24What does the acronym CATOBAR stand for?
Catapult Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery
Catapult Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery. A catapult flings each aircraft off the deck and wires stop it on return, the costliest arrangement to build but the one that lets jets leave with full fuel and weapons.
Q 25STOBAR carriers launch their jets using what instead of catapults?
A ski-jump
A ski-jump. The upward-curved bow ramp turns some of a jet's forward speed into climb, but aircraft launched this way cannot carry the fuel and weapons loads that a catapult allows.
Q 26A carrier jet that touches down but misses every arresting wire and must fly off again has made what?
A bolter
A bolter. Pilots push the throttles to full power the instant they touch the deck, so that if nothing catches, the jet is already moving fast enough to fly off and try again.
Q 27What is the radio call sign of the landing signal officer?
Paddles
Paddles. Landing signal officers once stood at the stern holding a brightly coloured paddle in each hand to guide pilots down; today they talk to pilots by radio, but the old nickname stuck.
Q 28Which officer, usually a commander, controls launch and recovery from Primary Flight Control?
The air boss
The air boss. From a glass-walled tower high on the island he or she directs every aircraft on the flight deck and in the sky for five miles around the ship, helped by a deputy known as the mini boss.
Q 29How do US Navy flight-deck crews indicate their different responsibilities?
Coloured shirts
Coloured shirts. Yellow marks the directors who move aircraft, red the ordnance and crash crews and purple the fuel handlers, so anyone can read a crowded, deafening deck at a glance.
Q 30Which carrier served as the Royal Navy's flagship during the 1982 Falklands War?
HMS Hermes
HMS Hermes. Launched back in 1953, she sailed for the South Atlantic three days after the invasion to lead the task force, and four years after the war was sold to India for a second career.