Ark Royal: Sailing Into Glory

---

In other scrapping matters, Exeter, Nottingham and Southampton are in the trot of Fareham Creek awaiting the scrapyard, and Manchester and Gloucester are soon to replace them. The four Type 22 Frigates recently decomissioned will probably make their way to Portsmouth soon too. All in all a busy period. Filed under Navy , News , out and about. At on Thursday 24 March she will be towed out of Portsmouth Harbour on her way to the breakers yard in Turkey.

She has been laid up in No 3 Basin in the Dockyard for almost 6 years, after being decommisioned in She was sold to a Turkish shipbreaker earlier this year after an ebay-style auction. It seems she is being sold off in order to clear space for her sister ship HMS Ark Royal , who decommisioned last week. It really is the end of an era with the departure of Invincible. She first arrived in Portsmouth in brand-new from the shipbuilders. My Dad was working in the Dockyard at the time and worked on her when she was dry-docked for the first time, apparently one of the underwater sonar transducers took an accidental dink that needed fixing.

Amongst all of the political sprawling for brownie points with the departure of Ark Royal, we should never forget the role that she played in the Falklands War in Men died flying Sea Harriers from that ship. Filed under Falklands War , Navy , News. Not in terms of actual, serving ships, but in terms of rusting hulks that are to sail no more. The disposals section of the MOD must be a lot busier than any other department right now. HMS Invincible has been rusting in 3 Basin for almost 6 years now, and is due to be towed to Turkey for scrapping soon.

They are bering hurriedly offered for sale in order to create space for more ships that will be leaving service soon. One more Type 42 — Manchester — is due to leave service in the next year, with the other four remaining ships in the class going by The four remaining Type 22 Frigates — Cornwall, Campbeltown, Cumberland and Chatham — are all due to decomission and be moved to Portsmouth awaiting disposal.

And then we also have the stricken HMS Endurance , very unlikely to ever sail again. Portsmouth Dockyard will be looking more like a giant version of Pounds Yard soon. A very sad state of affairs. Her decomissioning will also be marked by a parade and ceremony in Portsmouth Guildhall Square on the Saturday. About sailors from the Portsmouth-based aircraft carrier — which is being decommissioned in March — will parade through the city on January 22 to celebrate the close affiliation between the warship and its home port. A Royal Marines band will lead the parade which starts at Paradise Street near the city centre Tesco at The crew will march to Guildhall Square via Commercial Road, past Portsmouth and Southsea train station and under the civic buildings.

The parade leaves Commercial Road at Ark will be open to visitors at Victory Jetty in Portsmouth Naval Base between midday and 4pm on Saturday 22 January and 10am and 3pm the following day. Areas open on board will include the hangar, flight deck and operations room.

Also on Saturday members of the ships crew will parade on the pitch at Fratton Park before the Portsmouth-Leeds United game. As much as it is welcome to see the efforts being made to recognise Ark Royal, I hope the same efforts are made to honour HMS Illustrious when she is decomissioned in several years time.

See a Problem?

As loved as she is, there are plenty of other fantastic ships that have gone off to the breakers yard without a murmur — Fearless and Intrepid, for example, and then we have some of the Falklands veteran Type 42 Destroyers. Filed under event , Local History , Navy , Uncategorized.

During the latter, two Colossus -class ships performed the first ship-based helicopter assault in history. Four Colossus es and all five completed Majestic s were loaned or sold to seven foreign nations — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, and the Netherlands — with three ships serving in three different naval forces during their careers.

Despite being intended as 'disposable warships', all of the completed Light Fleet carriers exceeded their planned three-year service life. The maintenance carriers were the first to be paid off in the s, and by the s, all of the Royal Navy carriers, bar Triumph , which was later recommissioned as a repair ship had been sold to other nations or for ship breaking.

Share this title

The carriers in other navies had longer service lives. At the time of her decommissioning in , Minas Gerais was the oldest active aircraft carrier in the world. Despite attempts to preserve several of these carriers as museum ships , the last surviving example, Vikrant , was sold for scrapping in Experiences during the early part of the Second World War had demonstrated to the British that the Royal Navy needed access to defensive air cover for Allied fleets and convoys, which could only be provided by more aircraft carriers.

Navigation menu

This ship was conceived as an intermediate step between the expensive fleet carriers and the limited-capability escort carriers. The Light Fleet design, completed at the start of , was effectively a scaled-down Illustrious. The propulsion machinery was of a similar design to that used in cruisers—some of the steam turbines were sourced from cancelled cruisers.

The carriers were intended to be 'disposable warships': Construction was approved by the Naval Board in February , with the first two ships, Colossus and Glory , laid down in March. The ships were launched from late onwards, with the first commissioned in December During operational service, the living conditions aboard the Colossus -class ships were criticised, which resulted in the abolition of hammocks in favour of fixed bunks and the introduction of centralised eating arrangements in later warship designs.

The impracticality of shore-based repair establishments in the Far East and Pacific theatres of the Second World War saw a requirement for aircraft maintenance carriers. As the ships were designed with the repair and transportation of aircraft in mind, much of the equipment required for carrier flight operations, including control facilities, arresting gear , and catapult , were not installed. The six remaining Light Fleet hulls were originally to be completed as Colossus -class ships, but the rapid development of carrier-based aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons required modifications to the original design.

Following the war's end, work on the Majestic class was suspended, then restored to a low-priority status, [17] [18] with the rate of work increasing as foreign nations purchased the ships. In , eight 'Improved Majestic s' were planned, but developments in carrier aviation and the rapid obsolescence of the Light Fleets and the wartime armoured carriers required a larger and more capable design, which became the four-ship Centaur class.

In the original design, each ship was capable of carrying 41 aircraft. To launch and recover aircraft, the carriers were initially equipped with hydraulic catapults , arresting gear , and crash barriers.

1942 Design Light Fleet Carrier

The Light Fleets were the first British aircraft carriers where the ship's air group was seen as the 'main armament'; any mounted weapons were to be for close-range anti-aircraft defence. Lessons learned during the early part of the Pacific War showed the superiority of the Bofors 40 mm gun to other anti-aircraft weapons. By the end of the war, all Colossus -class ships had swapped all their other weapons for Bofors in single and twin mountings, and the Majestic design had been modified to carry 30 of the guns: Although four Colossus -class ships were completed before the end of the war, they did not see front-line action: During the late s and early s, the carriers were used as testbeds for new aircraft and technology.

Throughout late , Ocean was used to test several new aircraft: The Colossus class first saw combat during the Korean War.

Following the end of the Korean War, Warrior and Sydney returned to Korean waters on separate deployments, to ensure that the armistice was enforced and hostilities did not re-ignite. Ocean and Theseus were part of the British response to the Suez Crisis. The two maintenance carriers were decommissioned during the s and scrapped: Pioneer was sold in , and Perseus in As Britain was unable to maintain the size of her wartime fleet after the end of the Second World War, several Colossus -class ships were placed into reserve, [17] while work on the Majestic class was initially halted at the end of the war, then restored to a low-priority status.

The majority of the Light Fleets in foreign service were modernised, either during construction or afterwards, to operate jet aircraft. This usually consisted of the installation of an angled flight deck , upgrading the aircraft catapult to be steam-powered , and installing an optical landing system: After hostilities broke out on 1 May , it attempted an attack on the Royal Navy Task Force which did not take place, as poor winds prevented the heavily laden A-4Q jets from being launched. In , the Australian government suggested that Australian personnel be used to help counteract a personnel shortage in the Royal Navy by manning an aircraft carrier, one or more cruisers, and six destroyers.

Following the Second World War, a post-war review suggested that the Royal Australian Navy acquire three aircraft carriers as the core of a new fleet; funding restrictions saw the number of proposed carriers dropped to two. The first aircraft carrier acquired by the Royal Australian Navy, Sydney was deployed to Korea in order to maintain a consistent British Commonwealth carrier presence in the conflict.

Shop by category

Although deployed to the Far East Strategic Reserve on several occasions, and assigned to escort Sydney to and from Vietnam on three occasions, Melbourne was not directly involved in any conflict during her career. Evans in —which, along with several minor collisions and incidents, led to the reputation that the carrier was jinxed. After Vengeance was returned from her loan to Australia, she was sold to the Brazilian Navy on 14 December Brazilian law prevented the MB from operating fixed-wing aircraft, so two separate air groups had to be embarked.

Minas Gerais was the last of the Second World War-era light aircraft carriers to leave service, and at the time of her decommissioning was the oldest active aircraft carrier in the world. Following wartime experience showing the effectiveness of naval aviation, the Royal Canadian Navy decided to acquire an aircraft carrier. In the meantime, Powerful had been upgraded to operate jet aircraft.

Arromanches was replaced in active service by the French-built Clemenceau class , and was converted into a training ship in A major upgrade between and saw the carrier fitted with a new propulsion system, an updated radar suite, and a 9. Following her decommissioning, Vikrant was marked for preservation as a museum ship.

• Cry Uncle, Sumbody
• Halting the Sexual Predators among Us: Preventing Attack, Rape, and Lust Homicide
• INSPECTION AUTHORIZATION INFORMATION GUIDE, Plus 500 free US military manuals and US Army field manu
• The Place Where You Go to Listen: In Search of an Ecology of Music
• Smite Me, Oh Dark One