The United States Navy’s Nimitz-Class nuclear powered aircraft carriers are the biggest warships ever built. Over 300 metres long, and displacing in excess of 100,000 tons, they have a crew of more than 5000 men and women. Each ship can carry approximately 80 aircraft.

The biggest battleships were the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Musashi and Yamato, 72,000 tons displacement, with armour over 16 inches thick and armed with nine 18.1-inch guns. Musashi was sunk in 1944, Yamato in 1945, by American aircraft.

Biggest WW2 bomb;

22,000lb 'Grand Slam'

The Grand Slam (Earth Quake bomb), was a very large freefall bomb developed by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis (who also made the bouncing bomb) in late 1944. At a weight of 9.98 t (22,000 lb) the Grand Slam was almost twice the weight of his previous large bomb, the 5.44 t (12,000 lb) Tallboy. Both weapons were intended for use against large and protected buildings, structures against which smaller bombs would be ineffective. The name grand slam comes from the game of bridge, where it is a term that means winning all the tricks, "cleaning the table".

When it was calculated that the Avro Lancaster B1 Special bombers used for Tallboy could carry an even larger bomb, work started on the Grand Slam, which was effectively a scaled-up Tallboy. The new design was highly aerodynamic, with a long tail incorporating offset fins, causing it to spin as it fell and stabilizing it, due to the gyroscopic effect, much as the spin imparted by the rifling of a gun barrel increases the accuracy of a bullet. The spin also allowed the bomb to reach supersonic speeds, as the increased stability enabled it to pass through the sound barrier without wobbling or being thrown off-course.

The Grand Slam had a much thicker case than typical World War II bombs, so it would survive the impact of hitting a hardened surface. The hardened steel bomb casing was cast in one piece in a sand mould using a concrete core. Torpex was then poured in, bucket by bucket. When filled, the hot molten explosive took a month to cool down and set, greatly limiting production. Like the Tallboy, the rate of production and material and manpower investment in each bomb meant that aircrews were told to land with their unused bombs on board, rather than jettison them into the sea if a sortie was aborted.

When dropped from high altitude onto compacted earth, the Grand Slam would penetrate over 40 metres into the ground. The explosion would leave a camouflet (cavern) which would undermine foundations of structures above, causing collapse. This is what happened to the Bielefeld railway viaduct, the first enemy target destroyed by a Grand Slam.

Post-war the Handley Page Victor was designed with the provision to carry either a single Grand Slam, or two of the smaller Tallboys, internally.

The bomb was also built in the US where it was designated as "Bomb, GP, 22,000-lb, M110 (T-14)". The US developed a larger bomb using the same principles as the Grand Slam, the T-12 Cloudmaker, which weighed 20,000 kg (44,000 lb) , but it was not employed operationally.