Aircraft carriers in fiction

Aircraft carriers are the most prominent modern capital ship and appear in many fictional works.

Films

* The 1980 movie The Final Countdown is about an encounter by the with Japanese carriers shortly before Pearl Harbor.
* The 1986 movie Top Gun features aircrew from the . The Enterprise is also featured in the sci-fi film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home released the same year and the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October.
* The 1991 movie Flight of the Intruder features the during the Vietnam War.
* The 1994 film Clear and Present Danger has the USS Kitty Hawk launch a F/A-18 Hornet on an airstrike against a Colombian drug cartel.
* The 2001 movie Behind Enemy Lines features the Nimitz-class carrier on patrol off the Balkans
*The was used for the filming of the 1971 science fiction film Silent Running.
* The 2002 movie The Sum of All Fears features a Russian airborne attack on the .
* The appears in the 2005 movie Stealth, and is believed to be the aircraft carrier involved in search and rescue operations near the end of 2003's The Core.
*A robot who could transform into an aircraft carrier was one of many ideas rejected for the 2007 film Transformers. Director Michael Bay has expressed interest in revisiting and even achieving the concept for a sequel.

Novels
* Stephen Coonts started his Jake Grafton series of aircraft carrier novels with Flight of the Intruder in 1986. Set in the Vietnam war, it was made into a movie starring Danny Glover and Willem Dafoe in 1991.
* In Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham a battle group centred on a supercarrier called the is thrown from the year 2021 to 1942. Fans have argued over whether the novel is satirical, given Birmingham's background as a humorist.
*Patrick Robinson's first novel with the character of Arnold Morgan was named Nimitz Class in which the antagonist destroys the , a Nimitz class carrier and much of her battle group with a submarine-launched nuclear torpedo.
* Gordon Kent is the pseudonym for a father-and-son team of ex-naval aircrew who have written five novels mixing naval aviation and intelligence themes.
*Dale Brown's novels Shadows of Steel and Fatal Terrain feature an ex-Russian carrier being bought by the Chinese and then being leased to Iran and being subsequently named the Ayatollah Khomeini. The carrier is disabled by a B-2 stealth bomber attack after it begins attacking other Persian Gulf countries. The damaged carrier is given back to China who rename it as the Mao Zedong and use it during Fatal Terrain in their campaign to retake Taiwan which has declared independence. In this novel the carrier launches nuclear weapons against Taiwan and a Taiwan Navy frigate.

TV Show
* The 1995-96 television show Space: Above and Beyond featured a fictional USS Saratoga (SCVN-2812) in 2063. She was a John F. Kennedy class carrier in the series. This class of vessel had a designation of SCVN or Space Carrier Vehicle Nuclear.
* Supercarrier was a 1988 eight-episode TV series.
*The title ship of Battlestar Galactica and the current reimagining feature large spaceborne Battlestars which carry several squadrons of Vipers and several Raptors. The Vipers launch from and land into winged hangar pods positioned on the sides of the ship.
*The anime series Mobile Suit Gundam and its various alternate universes frequently feature Mobile Suit Carriers, space ships that are functionally equivalent to the modern day aircraft carrier. Often, but not always, they play a pivital role in the story, usually by housing the main character and his friends. Also, in one instance, a conventional Nimitz Class carrier appears in Gundam Wing.
* In the anime RahXephon, the main carrier Lydia Litvyak (named after the female Soviet ace) is used to launch fighter planes and other aircraft.
* Many of the capital ships in the sci-fi show Babylon 5 function as both battleships and carriers, equipped with both heavy ship-to-ship weaponry and the ability to launch multiple squadrons of fighters and bombers. Examples include the Minbari 'Sharlin' class war cruiser and the Earth Alliance 'Omega' class destroyer.
*The anime The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1983) features a space supercarrier, only this time launching Variable fighters that transform into giant robots.
* The anime Neon Genesis Evangelion shows an aircraft carrier the episode ', one of the Eva mechs using it as a platform to fight against an underwater enemy from.
* Aircraft carriers appeared frequently in the opening credits and numerous episodes of the military crime drama JAG and its' spin-off NCIS, often with fictional names.
* An aircraft carrier appears in the first season of the anime series Sonic X participating in an assault on 's island base.
* An aircraft carrier appears in the Family Guy episode "Death Lives" wherein Peter Griffin is having a flashback, and is shown to be where he and Glenn Quagmire first met.
* An aircraft carrier appears in an episode of the anime series '.
* An aircraft carrier appears in the manga "Hellsing".
* The Transformers had an Autobot named Broadside. The 2002 reboot Transformers: Armada features a Decepticon named Tidal Wave. Both are able to transform into an aircraft carrier, though the former is also a triple changer.
* Many of the capital ships in the sci-fi seriesStargate function as both battleships and carriers, equipped with both heavy ship-to-ship weaponry and the ability to launch multiple squadrons of fighters and bombers. In the show, the main protagonist, the United States Air Force, developed and builds several Daedalus Class Battlecruisers that carries up to 16 F-302 starfighters.

Video Games
*The Wing Commander series of computer games and novels takes place on spaceborne aircraft carriers in the 27th century, with the player character being a fighter pilot flying strike missions against alien opponents in an World War II-like interstellar war. Many of the carriers in the game are named for 20th century carriers; examples include Lexington, Saratoga, Intrepid, and Midway.
*The Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War computer game and its successor, FreeSpace 2, feature Battleship-Carrier hybrids which, in the first game seem not to have any armaments at all to some players.
*In the computer game Starlancer, both the Eastern Coalition and the Western Alliance utilise large and powerful space-based strike carriers as their Ships of the line, the largest of which being the ANS Yamato (a reference to the Japanese battleship Yamato, one of the largest battleships ever built). These vessels are primarily used to launch fighters and torpedo bombers into long-range combat, but they are also heavily armoured and armed with large flak turrets, nuclear torpedoes and laser turrets, making them highly effective in close-range combat.
*In the computer game Star Wars: TIE Fighter, the player spends most of the game flying various fighter craft off of Star Destroyers, which function as both aircraft carrier and battleship, sometimes working in support groups. Other Star Wars games and books indicate that many classes of Imperial Star Destroyers, as well as Rebel Mon Calamari Cruisers double as battleships and aircraft carriers, the latter carrying X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, and B-Wings.
*Carrier Command is a computer game for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC and PC platforms, simulating an aircraft carrier with remote-controlled aircraft and amphibious vehicles.

* In the RTS game Empire Earth, on the Digital-Nano Ages there is a futuristic aircraft carrier called the Nexus.
* In Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, a PC game developed by Rage Software, the player takes direct control of a high-tech supercarrier which can create and animate autonomous vehicles. The story and dialog of the game were written by noted comic book author Warren Ellis.
* In the Star Wars universe, the Old Republic fielded the during the Clone Wars. It doubled as both a carrier and a battleship, and was said to be able to carry over 420 starfighters into battle.
* In the computer game StarCraft, the Carriers are the capital ships of the Protoss faction. They attack by launching tiny robotic interceptors against their targets. They often operate in large groups, particularly when in a multiplayer game with Protoss players. Naturally, a large group of them are intimidating enough to convince inexperienced players into quitting the game. However, like carriers of real life, the Protoss Carrier's primary weakness is that they lacked weapons of their own, making them vulnerable when players learned to directly attack them rather than their interceptors. The Carrier is the same and unchanged in Starcraft II.
* In Ace Combat 5 and its prequel Ace Combat Zero the aircraft carrier Kestrel plays an integral part of many missions. In Ace Combat 5 it is hit and sunk by a submarine launched missile.
* In Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, the fictional company Neucom has a twin-hulled flattop carrier, while General Resources Ltd.'s carriers are identical to the Nimitz-class.
* In the computer games Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm, and Homeworld 2 space based carriers are used as auxiliary command ships if the Mothership is destroyed.
* In The King of Fighters videogame series, the nuclear arms dealer Rugal Bernstien lives on an aircraft carrier named the Blacknoah.
* In Jane's Fleet Command game you are given command of various Carrier Battle Groups and tasked to complete certain missions. The success of these missions generally revolves around the player's ability to manage both the carrier aircraft weapons and the surface warship components.
* In Battlefield 2142 both factions use massive floating carrier ships known as "titans" to transport troops, ships, and supply to battle.
* In the X-series of videogames by Egosoft, each race has a carrier that is used to launch and recover fighters
* The video game Star Fox Command features a new version of the Great Fox with an appearance strongly reminiscent of a spacefaring aircraft carrier.
* Several aircraft carriers can be seen docked around Prison Island in Sonic Adventure 2, one of them shown being destroyed when the island is destroyed by bombs planted by Shadow the Hedgehog. The flight deck of one of these ships also serves as a fighting arena in the game's multiplayer mode.
* In the video game Advance Wars: Dual Strike, aircraft carriers are expensive naval units that can carry aircraft loaded onto it. It is equipped with anti-air missiles that have the largest range in the game.
* Some levels of the video game Top Gun: Combat Zones feature an aircraft carrier, with the player often tasked to defend it from threats such as enemy bombers or Scud missiles.
* In Ace Combat Advance, one level involves defending the fictional aircraft carrier Yamato from waves of enemy aircraft and surface ships intent on sinking the vessel.
* Carriers are frequently seen in Command and Conquer, as part of the GDI, Allied, and USA arsenals.
* Carriers are also seen in Rise of Nations
* Several Nimitz class aircraft carriers appear in the game Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation serving with the Emmerian and the Estovakian Navies, and can be used as a rearming station when flying naval aircraft. The carrier allied with Emmeria can be identified by the fictional hull number, CVN-30.

Comics
* In the Marvel Universe, the intelligence organization, S.H.I.E.L.D. has its headquarters as an aerial carrier type called the Helicarrier.
* In the manga version of Akira, an aircraft carrier heads the American fleet as they sail near the ruined Neo-Tokyo. Tetsuo Shima temporarily "becomes" the carrier during his attack on the fleet and fires missiles (the missile turrets seem to run on their own under his control). Tetsuo later destroys the carrier by sending the American laser satellite FLOYD crashing down on top of it.
* In issues #130 through #133 of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, is shown operating an aircraft carrier armed with nuclear missiles which he threatens to fire, prompting the title character and his comrades to launch an assault that results in the carrier's destruction.
* An aircraft carrier appears in issue #2 of the Sonic X comic book serving as a command center for an underwater diving expedition to investigate the discovery of a possible Chaos Emerald.

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