Key Points and Summary – “Worst” aircraft carriers fail in different ways but share the same outcome: no sustainable airpower at sea. Russia’s Admiral Kuznetsov proved chronically unavailable.
-Brazil’s NAe São Paulo became a maintenance sinkhole. France’s Béarn was too slow for task-force ops and spent her life in secondary roles.
-Japan’s massive Shinano sailed unfinished and sank on her first voyage.
-Thailand’s Chakri Naruebet often lacked a fixed-wing air wing, turning a carrier into a helicopter ship.
-The common threads—weak propulsion margins, missing air wings, poor availability, and unready crews—show that a carrier only earns its keep when it generates sorties, safely and often.
The 5 Worst Aircraft Carriers Ever To Set Sail
Calling a warship “worst” isn’t about mockery; it’s about mismatch—between mission and design, cost and combat value, or headline promises and at-sea reality.
The five carriers below all sailed (no paper projects), and each failed in ways that still teach lessons about aviation at sea: power margins, air wing choice, sustainment, and the brutal arithmetic of availability.
1) Admiral Kuznetsov (Russia): A Flagship That Rarely Fights
Russia’s lone aircraft carrier became famous for the wrong reasons: smoke, cranes, fires, and long pier-side overhauls.
Designed as a STOBAR “heavy aviation cruiser,” Kuznetsov never solved the fundamentals—reliable propulsion, robust arresting gear, and a maintenance ecosystem that keeps a big-deck airplane factory humming.
The ship’s combat cameo in Syria exposed thin sortie rates and painful losses due to gear failures rather than enemy action. The collapse of a massive floating dry dock, onboard fires, and repeated delays turned a prestige hull into a case study in industrial fragility.
Admiral Kuznetsov. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Why it belongs here: Even when technically afloat, Kuznetsov has rarely generated sustained, safe flight ops. Carriers are judged by sorties over time; Kuznetsov’s most consistent output has been headlines about repairs.
2) NAe São Paulo (Brazil): Secondhand Headaches At Scale
Acquired from France (ex-Foch), São Paulo promised Brazil a blue-water fixed-wing deck. Instead, she became a parade of boiler troubles, fires, vibration issues, catapult and arresting-gear faults, and cascading obsolescence.
Availability cratered; upgrades proved pricier than new-build alternatives the navy could not afford; and flight operations became sporadic. After years of sunk costs, São Paulo was retired—then mired in a grim coda when scrapping plans ran into environmental and legal hurdles.
Why it belongs here: A carrier without predictable availability is a budget hole with a flight deck. São Paulo showed how buying a complex ship cheap can become expensive forever.
3) Béarn (France): A Battleship Hull That Missed The Carrier Age
Converted from a battleship hull begun before WWI, Béarn entered service so slow that she couldn’t operate with France’s main fleet units. Catapults and arresting gear worked; the air group flew; but the ship’s speed and power margins condemned her to second-line status.
By WWII, technology and doctrine had sprinted ahead; Béarn spent most of her career as a transport and training ship, not a fighting carrier.
Why it belongs here: Carriers must generate wind-over-deck and keep up with escorts. Béarn’s design compromised speed and growth so badly that she never mattered where it counted—in a task force.
4) Shinano (Japan): The Biggest Carrier To Sink On Her First Cruise
Converted in wartime from a Yamato-class battleship hull, Shinano was enormous but rushed. Watertight integrity and damage-control fittings weren’t finished; crew training was thin; and compartmentation shortcuts proved fatal.
Yamato-Class Battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Torpedoed by a U.S. submarine during her maiden voyage, she sank after flooding spread through spaces that should have been isolated. The ship never embarked a full, functioning air wing.
Why it belongs here: Size isn’t combat power. Shinano is the textbook on how unfinished construction and unready crews turn a massive hull into a brief, tragic footnote.
5) HTMS Chakri Naruebet (Thailand): The Carrier With No Air Wing To Match
Built to a compact Spanish design, Chakri Naruebet sailed with a handful of Harrier jump jets—until budget cuts grounded the fixed-wing component for long stretches. Helicopters kept the deck busy for disaster relief and patrols, but the carrier part of the carrier rarely existed. With minimal air wing, limited air-defense escorts, and long periods pierside, the ship became better known for ceremonial presence than for sustained naval aviation.
Why it belongs here: A carrier is its air wing. Without a reliable fixed-wing component and the escorts and sustainment to support it, you own an expensive helicopter platform with a ski-jump.
What These Five Aircraft Carriers Get Wrong—In Common
Power And Margin: Kuznetsov and Béarn reveal what happens when propulsion and speed can’t generate steady wind-over-deck or keep station with escorts.
Availability: São Paulo proves that maintenance truth beats purchase price. If you can’t fly regularly, you can’t keep pilots qualified—or deter anyone.
Readiness At Delivery: Shinano shows that an unfinished carrier is worse than no carrier; damage control and crew drills are as decisive as armor.
Air Wing Reality: Chakri Naruebet illustrates that carriers live or die on aircraft, spares, and training, not just on steel.
Underneath all four themes is the same lesson: a carrier is a system-of-systems—hull, air wing, escorts, logistics, and people. Miss any one at scale, and the flight deck becomes a stage set.
Aircarft Carrier Dishonorable Mentions (Briefly)
Kiev-Class “Aviation Cruisers” (USSR): Hybrids that tried to be both missile cruisers and V/STOL carriers, saddled with the Yak-38—a fighter with short legs and thin performance. They sailed, but the concept never delivered a true sea-control carrier.
Kiev-Class. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Early Charles de Gaulle (France): Now a capable flagship, but the early years suffered propeller failures and teething issues that hobbled availability and earned bad press. A reminder that even good designs can start badly—and recover with investment and discipline.
The French Marine Nationale aircraft carrier FS Charles De Gaulle (R91), and the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) are underway in formation in the Red Sea, April 15, 2019. The John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in support of naval operations to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central Region, connecting the Mediterranean and the Pacific through the western Indian Ocean and three strategic choke points. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Joshua L. Leonard)
Lessons The Next Carrier Should Tattoo On Its Hangar Door
Design For Availability: Build in maintainability, spares pipelines, and dockyard capacity. Pilots can’t fly schedules written by wishful thinking.
Air Wing First: Choose aircraft for range, payload, and sortie generation, then shape the ship to enable them—not the other way around.
Speed And Power Budget: Never cheat propulsion. If you can’t make wind and keep up with escorts, flight ops and survival both suffer.
Crew And Damage Control: Finish the ship, then train until bored. Well-drilled crews turn bad days into sea stories instead of loss reports.
Own The Ecosystem: Escorts, tankers, AEW, and logistics are part of the carrier you don’t see in the brochure. Fund them or fail.
Sinking Feelings
The worst aircraft carriers aren’t always the smallest or the oldest.
They’re the ships that couldn’t do the job their flags demanded—because propulsion lagged, the air wing vanished, the yard could never keep them ready, or the ship left the builders unfinished in spirit if not in steel.
Admiral Kuznetsov, São Paulo, Béarn, Shinano, and Chakri Naruebet each show a different way a carrier can come up short.
Together they underscore a single truth: a carrier isn’t a symbol; it’s a factory for airpower at sea.
If it can’t produce sorties—safely, repeatedly, and in all weathers—it belongs on lists like this one.
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.
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