Perhaps I should have been more clear in my previous post regarding the “void” and “back” breaking. Ships are designed to be supported by the water, evenly from stem to stern. Imagine a very heavy model ship just laying in the dirt in your backyard, buried up to the “waterline”.
An explosion underwater creates a 3-D overpressure sphere which expands roughly in a sherical way. During this overpressure phase, the “water pressure” inside the sphere is VERY low (vacuum-ish), so much that the overpressure shere collapses onto itself (as the whole shebang is rising to the surface) and creates a “ball” of very HIGH pressure water, which then rebounds outwardly to create the vacuum again. As this pressure phenomenon is rising, the surround “normal” water pressure decreases, so this compression/vacuum system maintains its strength pretty well. If this system rises up under the middle of the carrier’s keel during the vacuum phase, the effect is the same as digging a big hole under that model of the boat in your yard, leaving only the bow and stern supported. The “spine” of the boat is NOT designed for that loading situation, and may very well snap. It may not sink completely, but it ain’t going anywhere soon.
A sufficiently large (nuclear) device, pre-positioned underwater in the known path of a carrier (straights, canals, ports) and remotely detonated is the best way, from what I was taught.
Disabling the propulsion would make the carrier unable to to move where it needs to be and to perform flight ops when it got there. I don’t think the Navy would consider that a laughing matter at all.
Bear in mind that the flight deck of a carrier is considerably stronger than the upper floors of the WTC towers. It’s made to have 60,000lb planes virtually crashing into its surface. Not to say there would not be heavy damage but the energy of a 747 crashing would be dissipated over a large area of the flight deck rather than being concentrated at one point as a bomb would do.
The hard part is getting the 747 there. Even in an unpowered long dive it’s likely to quickly overspeed and probably tear itself apart just from aerodynamic loads. Aiming at the hull below the flight deck is good as it’s a more vulnerable spot but the 747 would have to be more boat than airplane as the flight deck is around 65 feet from the water.
I take it as an inevitable given that given enough time, unless the world situation morphs into one in which no organized collectivity has much of an axe to grind, some group sooner or later is going to detonate a nuclear device. It may be a simple Hiroshima-type uranium bomb rather than something akin to the modern hydrogen-fusion thingies, but some C- level college student did a term paper detailing exactly how you’d go about building one of those suckers a few years back, and if he could figure it out, I reckon other folks can too.
Also, in addition to attacking it in port or attacking it while at sea, there’s one other possibility: infiltration / suicide mission.
I’m answering this without preview because I’m curious to see how my “cold” response jives with other people - so if I’m redundant, please forgive me the indulgence.
That said - It’s very unlikely a man-portable chemical explosive could sink a carrier, so your scuba plan seems unlikely to work. I suppose a man-portable explosive might be able to possibly damage the propellor - but I do n’t think the smart money is on your frogmen being able to operate effectively in the propwash. At best, maybe a man-portable explosive could be used to damage or destroy part of the sonar array - hardly worth the effort.
No way would a jet liner collision work - the carrier’s onboard defenses, escort ships, and planes are intended to be able to defend it from large numbers of modern military aircraft and missiles - an airliner would be detected and destroyed long before it could pose a threat.
It did indeed, but bear in mind the British ships destroyed by Exocets were much, much smaller than an American CVN. An Exocet would certainly damage a big carrier, but almost certainly could not sink it. In fact, they didn’t sink any British ships, either; the ships lost were abandoned because of secondary fires.
Furthermore, the Exocets were as successful as they were in large part due to the Royal Navy ships not having sufficient anti-missle defenses. That was corrected in every modern navy in the world REAL quick after the Falklands Islands War. Nobody wants to re-learn that lesson. Fact is, if the Argentines had possessed thirty or forty missiles instead of just six, they’d have won the war.
It seems to me terrorists would have to get aboard the carrier and find a way to detonate one of the nuclear devices on board. Kaboom.
I’ll have to agree with other posters that it would be nearly impossible for terrorists to sink an aircraft carrier sans nuclear weapons.
However, sinking one may be a bit of overkill (no pun intended) depending on your objective. If your goal is to simply disable it, you’d have a much easier time. It would take much less divers/explosives to damage the shafts/screws of the carrier enough to render the entire carrier unusable. IIRC, a carrier has to maintain a fairly high speed (around 25 knots or so) to conduct flight operations. Damaging a shaft or two would prevent it from being able to reach those speeds.
Of course, I could be way wrong, as most of my knowledge on this subject comes from the Internet and Tom Clancy novels.
There are numerous subtle ways to sabotage or damage such a complex system as an aircraft carrier.
The problem is access. If you have someone inside, then a number of scenarios become available – from adulterating the lubricating oil for various systems, to electrical/electronic interferrence, or even biological attacks. A storekeeper, cook, or even a corpsman could take out a lot of personnel fairly quickly with some simple pathogens. That could leave the ship vulnerable.
Attacks from the outside are more problematic. Most of the obvious large-scale force projection options are already thought of and protected against. Exocets won’t do it – they will be shot down by the Phalanx system. Airplanes just don’t stand a chance. If they aren’t supposed to be within 100 miles, they won’t be a threat. Even if you were to crash a jet onboard, that’s happened numerous times to carriers – it’s survivable.
Something like a million Wal-mart bags released where they can clog the cooling ducts – now that could be bad. Swarms of bees, or birds – that could be bad. A dirty bomb might cripple an aircraft carrier, but it wouldn’t destroy it.
If you have a nuke, you don’t use it on an aircraft carrier. It’s easier to park it in San Francisco Bay or somewhere on the Hudson. That would get much more attention. Deploying a nuclear device as a mine would make for a large package – for the bouyancy needed – so the subs would see it.
It’s within the realm of possibility, particularly if you have someone inside, but not likely.
“Adulterating the lubricating oil”?! C’mon, man, think big! A carrier is packed full of kerosene and explosives!
Upon reflection, I will not elaborate any further on that point.