[billnchristy]

I suppose a surprise attack could cause one to be hit. Can you imagine the wrath that would follow though?

Given the compartmenting and size, I don't think a single missile would sink a carrier, it would hobble it and take it out of the fight and there would be massive losses, but it would have to be a "perfect" hit to drop one in my opinion. The largest spaces inside that could be filled are the engine rooms and reactor auxiliary rooms, both totally isolable from each other, I believe, IIRC, you could completely fill one with seawater and retain buoyancy.

Fully laden with fuel, planes and people I have seen over 100k tons displacement and as low as 70 something empty. That says to me you have about 30k tons of buffer and probably closer to 40k tons.

30t is 22m gallons of water which is around 3m cubic feet.

Then you have CIWS which is anecdotally so sensitive that it will shoot seagulls out of the sky. You'd probably also have planes that would try to intercept or even sacrifice themselves for the carrier.

I do believe it would be a very hard target. To get a hit, you'd need to be asleep, no planes launched, CIWS inactive and even then survivability is extremely high.