Fictional airborne aircraft carriers

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There are many fictional airborne aircraft carriers.

• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow features airborne aircraft carriers in the form of Zeppelin type airships.
• G.I. Joe features the Cobra Night Raven and Sky Raven, which is similar in configuration to the M-21 Blackbird| and D-21 drone.
• Crimson Skies features Zeppelin type airships with biplane combat air patrol fighters.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade features a Zeppelin carrying a biplane.
• The Nick Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D. series of Marvel comic books feature flying aircraft carriers.
• Echelon, a futuristic flight simulator features several variants of airborne aircraft carriers.
• In Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Spectrum headquarters 'Cloudbase', is an airship continually hovering (or floating) above London. Looking like a mix between a very flat zeppelin and a flying saucer with rotors protuding from outriggers, the top of the craft is occupied by a runway from which Spectrun Police launches its own jet fighter squadron.
• In Namco's Ace Combat 3, the UI-4053 Sphyrna is a modern Zeppelin like airborne aircraft carrier that houses all the aircraft of the terrorist faction Ouroboros.
• The Banshee is a futuristic airborne aircraft carrier used by the FAF in the anime Sentou Yousei Yukikaze.
• In the Japanese Anime Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman, and its US-version Battle of the Planets, the hero's craft, Phoenix, can store a jet fighter, and a flying rocket-tank. both can be launched and retrieved in flight. Although the Phoenix is actually a spaceship, it is built like a plane with wings and a tail assembly and during the shows spends most of its time flying through the air rather than traveling through space.
• In one of the Tom Swift novels (Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, 1954) Tom's father builds a giant 'flying laboratory' which he uses to scout the earth for Uranium deposits. The giant craft has a built-in hangar that houses a helicopter-launch as well as the new "Bolo fighter": a miniature jet fighter which the government has asked him to take along for testing. Although the book remains unclear whether the helicopter ever boards the flying laboratory in mid-air, it describes one occasion where the "Bolo fighter" is launched and subsequently retrieved while the laboratory is flying in the stratosphere
• An aircraft carrying a smaller one is featured as the main gadget in the Yoko Tsuno comic Message pour l'éternité (Message for Eternity). In order to scout a crater in the Russian-Afgan frontier region, the series writer Roger Leloup envisioned a U-2-like spyplane, carrying a little rocket-powered sailplane under its belly. Above the crater, the mother plane would release the sailplane that would then descend into the crater. A few days later, the sailplane would ascend from the crater using rocket power, rendezvous with the motherplane and reattach itself under it for the ride home.