Aircraft Carrier guide, tips, and compare tech tree stats for all the current available ships.
Aircraft carriers primary roles include scouting, destroying battleships and other carriers. Fighters are a great tool for scouting the field, make sure to use them to also defend your fleet mates from other carrier planes.
- Torpedo Bombers – use these primarily on battleships and carriers, do not waste them on destroyers and stay away from cruisers.
- Dive Bombers – use these primarily on destroyers followed by carriers then cruisers.
If your carrier is on fire the repair consumable should be saved until your planes are either ready to take off or land.
Full detail stats on the various aircraft carriers listed here below.
| Ship | Tier | Nation | Cbt Cap | Squadrons | MB Firing Range | AA Range | Max Speed | Turning Radius | Surface Detection | Air Detection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosho | 4 | Japan | 31800 | 3(4) | 3.5km | 2.1km | 25kn | 600m | 7.9km | 8.1km |
| Zuiho | 5 | Japan | 36500 | 4(4) | 4.0km | 5.0km | 28kn | 810m | 8.5km | 8.0km |
| Ryujo | 6 | Japan | 39600 | 4(4) | 4.0km | 5.0km | 28kn | 600m | 9.0km | 7.9km |
| Hiryu | 7 | Japan | 45600 | 5(4) | 4.5km | 5.0km | 34kn | 840m | 11.9km | 9.9km |
| Shokaku | 8 | Japan | 51400 | 5(4) | 4.5km | 5.0km | 34kn | 960m | 12.4km | 12.0km |
| Langley | 4 | USA | 33300 | 33700 | 2(6) | 3.5km | NONE | 2.0km | 16kn | 550m | 10.1km | 7.4km |
| Bogue | 5 | USA | 36500 | 2(6) | 4.0km | 3.5km | 17kn | 440m | 11.9km | 7.0km |
| Independence | 6 | USA | 35300 | 36700 | 3(6) | 4.0km | NONE | 5.0km | 32kn | 640m | 10.3km | 11.5km |
| Ranger | 7 | USA | 44900 | 3(6) | 4.5km | 5.0km | 30kn | 820m | 14.2km | 13.3km |
| Lexington | 8 | USA | 57300 | 4(6) | 4.5km | 5.0km | 34kn | 780m | 17.5km | 15.0km |
| Essex | 9 | USA | 56300 | 4(6) | 5.0km | 5.0km | 33kn | 860m | 14.9km | 14.4km |
Tips on working with your aircraft units!
Fighters will automatically attack anything that is attacking them back. Be cautious though, their DPS is significantly higher if you explicitly order them to attack something. To do so just select the squadron and then click attack on the enemy aircraft that’s attacking your planes. If you let them purely “defend” themselves then they won’t do the full damage potential.
Dive Bombers can attack a target, just click on the ship and a grey pattern will appear over them and planes head straight for the target. The grey pattern can be rotated if you hold down and click-drag the attack dot on the outer circle over your target, useful if your target changes directions. For optimal results make sure your aircraft are always coming in to your attack angle, and not having to fly over or past your target. Pressing down alt and clicking on the map will issue a “manual drop” where your dive bombers will attack a specific part of the map, downside is this does not track a moving target, upside is this is a substantially tighter drop and good for dealing heavy damage to big slow targets.
Torpedo Bombers is similar to dive bombers but instead of an oval dispersion it gives a fan dispersion when you left click on a target, and a manual drop gives a narrow cone. Due note that there is a small minimum range for torpedoes, and once you issue a manual drop close to a target it might not let you counter that order.
