According to the Discovery channel:
10. Hood class battlecruiser
9. Deutschland class pocket battleship
8. Essex class aircraft carrier
7. Bismarck class battleship
6. North Carolina class battleship
5. Fletcher class destroyer
4. Ticonderoga class guided missile Aegis cruiser
3. Queen Elizabeth class battleship
2. Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier
1. Iowa class battleship

I'm really beginning to hate the Discovery channel for these stupid lists.

A sinlge Nimitz class carrier can really take out an entire small country just on its own. How does a retired battleship class that rarely was in battle compete?

Warrior began active service most inauspiciously. She froze to the slipway when she was launched on December 29th 1860 during the coldest winter for 50 years. Frozen snow covered the dockyard and Thames braziers blazed down the ship's sides but when Sir John Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty, came to do the honours, she refused to budge.
Extra tugs and hydraulic rams pulled her while hundreds of men ran from side to side on her upper deck, trying to rock her free. After 20 minutes, she finally gave way. Sir John smashed a bottle of wine over her bow with the words "God speed the Warrior"

Warrior later in her career

Warrior was obsolete within a decade. She was relegated to the Reserve Fleet ranks and in 1883, withdrawn from sea service. She was now little more than a floating hulk, although still officially classed an armoured cruiser.
Her masts and guns were stripped when she was used as a depot ship for two years. Her name became Vernon III in 1904, when she joined Portsmouth-based HMS Vernon, the Navy's torpedo training school. Her role was supplying steam and electricity to neighbouring hulks. A year later, another armoured cruiser called Warrior was launched.

March 13 1929, leaving Portsmouth Harbour for Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven

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Warrior early in her career
The Hon Arthur Cochrane, son of the Earl of Dundonald, became her captain after her commission on August 1st 1861. The ship underwent minor modifications after a sea trial. In June 1862, she started active service in the Channel Squadron, patrolling coastal waters and sailing to Lisbon and Gibraltar.
Crowds of up to 6,000 people turned out to see the new supership as she visited British ports. She never once fired a shot in anger. Her strength was her ability to keep the peace.
Foreign navies soon imitated her advanced features, and armour-plated lookalikes with even greater firepower rolled down dockyard slipways. Engine designs improved steadily, with coaling stations springing up in ports all over the world.

Warrior, second from left, during the early part of the Twentieth Century

Nobody wanted the old battleship when she went up for sale in 1924. Five years on, she inherited the name Oil Fuel Hulk C77 when starting life as a shipkeeper's home and floating oil jetty at Pembroke Dock in Wales.
Some 5,000 ships refuelled alongside her in her 50 years at Pembroke. However, the Royal Navy kept her in reasonable condition with occasional maintenance trips into dry dock keping her hull intact. Warrior was the only example of the 45 ironhulls built between 1861 and 1877 to survive.

Home for 50 years. Llanion Cove on the Cleddau River, Wales.

Originally Posted by Whispering Death

I'm really beginning to hate the Discovery channel for these stupid lists.

A sinlge Nimitz class carrier can really take out an entire small country just on its own. How does a retired battleship class that rarely was in battle compete?

As long as that country doesn't have any submarines ...

Well it's the exact same deal with the Iowa-class, I'm not sure what you're getting at?

Should carriers not be designed to work in a fleet? That sounds like a bad idea to me.

This list is pretty bad

1. HMS Hood -sunk by a single 12" shell that pentrated her paper-thin armor like a hot knife through butter and blew the ship apart. In fact most historians consider the Battlecrusier idea to be a bad seeing how many of them were sunk in WWI.

2. Deutscheland Battleship. Another failed design, completely incapable of defending herself against armed opponents (too slow and too weak armor)
As for the others, well they arn't bad choices but there are other ships that deserve to be on the list more. For example

HMS Dreadnaught
HMS Victory
IJN Yamato (superior to USS Iowa)
USS Constitution
USS Monitor/CSA Virginia

Originally Posted by mmarsh

As for the others, well they arn't bad choices but there are other ships that deserve to be on the list more. For example

HMS Dreadnaught
HMS Victory
IJN Yamato (superior to USS Iowa)
USS Constitution
USS Monitor/CSA Virginia

Why the USS Contitution didn't make that list I don't know

Why is the Ticonderoga-class cruiser on there, yet the arguably more deadly Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is not?

Why is the Iowa-class on there at all?

Why is the Nimitz-class only second?

Can we just say the Discovery Channel "experts" are a bunch of morons and leave it at that?

Trust me they jugde them on more than just how powerfull they are. They expain it all on the show.

Yes, yes, innovation and production and all that, correct?