Bismarck

In a real war today, I would not want to be on a carrier or any Large ship. They are sitting ducks. There missiles that can take out an entire carrier group in one shot. The Russians, Chinese and others have them. Iran is working on it. It doesn't take much accurate aiming. Yes, I am talking about a nuclear tipped torpedo or air-ship. Apart from that most small modern ship do not have heavy armor since the development of the missile that hits after rising above it and hitting it amidship from the top at high speed.

 

After WW 2, US Navy carrier fleets were always concerned with countering air launched, nuclear tipped missiles from Soviet Backfire bomber squadrons. The Aegis combat system was explicitly designed to counter a mass missile launch against carrier battle groups. The new theater ballistic defense systems are designed to protect against, what else, ballistic missile attacks directed against battle groups and amphibious assault landing areas.

The submarine attack is the one most likely to succeed. US subs were technologically dominate for so long that surface ship anti-sub and anti-torpedo defenses did not receive the attention they had in the immediate post war years. Seems like that is slowly changing now.

 

Actually large ships are more survivable and more of an actual war deterrent (and it has been that way since Noah was C-in-C). Small ships don't have armor because small ships haven't had armor since we switched to steam from sail and shrank the world to modern size. The reason they don't have armor is that small ships are tactically more cost effective, but strategically ineffective (i.e. small ships are bullets, they are not forts).

And only a PALTPD would ever toss a nuke at a ship first and actually it does take a lot of aiming to put a nuke close enough to a capital ship.