HMS Ark Royal (91)

Categories: World War II aircraft carriers of the United Kingdom | Ships sunk by U-boats | Ark Royal class aircraft carriers

HMS Ark Royal (91), was the third ship of the Royal Navy to carry the name and the second to be an aircraft carrier. She was designed in 1934 to meet the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty, and was built by Cammell Laird and Company, Ltd. at Birkenhead, England. Construction was completed in November 1938. She was the first British aircraft carrier to be designed and built as an aircraft carrier.

Her hull was the maximum length permitted at that time for drydocking. This was also the first time where the flight deck was a integral part of the ship as opposed to an add-on or superstructure deck as on earlier vessels. She had 2 levels of hangar decks.

Service history

On 25 September 1939, just weeks after World War II broke out, Ark Royal participated in the rescue of the submarine HMS Spearfish, which was damaged off Horn Reefs. During this operation on 26 September, one of her Blackburn Skua aircraft shot down a German flying boat for the first enemy aerial kill of the war.

In December 1939, she was sent to the South Atlantic to help in the search for the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. In the spring of 1940, she participated in the Norwegian campaign with HMS Glorious. On June 13, 1940, Ark Royal launched an air attack on Trondheim, Norway. As Ark Royal turned into the wind to launch aircraft in foggy conditions, two destroyers, HMS Antelope and HMS Electra collided, and had to return to England for repairs.

In July, she joined the attack on the French Navy's base at Mers El Kébir, Algeria with HMS Hood, Valiant, Resolution, Arethusa, and Enterprise. The following September, Ark Royal took part in a second attack on the French Navy, this time at Dakar. Her torpedo planes attacked the French battlecruiser Strasbourg, but no hits were scored, and the French ships made it safely to Toulon. On July 9 1940, she was attacked by Italian aircraft with no damage. On August 1, aircraft from the Ark Royal attacked the Italian base at Cagliari, while the carrier HMS Argus delivered 12 Hurricane fighter aircraft to Malta. While covering a Mediterranean convoy in late November, her planes attacked Italian battleships, though without making any hits. In return, she was attacked by enemy aircraft with no damage.

She struck the port of Genoa, Italy, in early February 1941, during a British Naval raid deep into Italian-controlled waters. During March 1941, Ark Royal pursued the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the last phase of their Atlantic sortie. In late May, whilst serving in the Mediterranean as part of Force H along with HMS Renown and the cruiser HMS Sheffield, she was called upon to search for the Bismarck in the Atlantic. On 26 May, her scout planes found the battleship. Later that day, her torpedo planes made attacks on the Bismarck. During the first attack, her planes mistakenly attacked the Sheffield, as the pilots had not been informed that Sheffield had been sent ahead to shadow the Bismarck. Fortunately, the torpedoes had been fitted with the then new magnetic exploders (which, after this event, were subsequently deemed to be unreliable and withdrawn from use by the RN) and exploded upon hitting the water, and Sheffield managed to evade the rest; no major damage was incurred, and one of the pilots signalled 'Sorry for the gipper' to the Sheffield. Torpedoes with the older contact exploders were then fitted to her Swordfish planes and another attack was made just before sunset. In the second attack, her torpedo planes hit Bismarck, damaging rudder machinery, making the enemy battleship virtually unmanoeuvrable, and allowing other British warships to close and sink her on the morning of 27 May. No planes were lost in either of these attacks.

Ark Royal was also very active in the Mediterranean Sea during 1941. On several occasions, she ferried planes to the beleaguered base at Malta and covered Malta-bound convoys. The Germans reported her as sunk several times. While returning to Gibraltar from one such mission on 13 November 1941, Ark Royal was hit by one torpedo from the German submarine U-81. Progressive flooding choked the boiler uptakes; since she had no diesel backups, all power was lost, including power to the pumps. After several hours, already listing heavily while under tow towards Gibraltar, the carrier capsized to starboard and sank on 14 November 1941.¹ Only one crewman was lost during the evacuation of the ship. Her exact location remained unknown until mid-December 2002, when the BBC announced that a film crew had located the wreck in 900 metres of water some 30 miles (48 km) off Gibraltar.

Battle honours

• Norway 1940
• Spartivento 1940
• Mediterranean 1940 to 1941
• Bismarck 1941
• Malta Convoys 1941

References

¹ Fleet Air Arm Archive entry on HMS Ark Royal II

• Roger Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World, 1914 to the Present; An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1984)
• Ernle Bradford, The Mighty Hood (World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1959)

See HMS Ark Royal for other ships of the same name.

External link

• Maritimequest HMS Ark Royal photo galleryde:HMS Ark Royal (91)

ja:アーク・ロイヤル (空母・初代) zh:皇家方舟号航空母舰 (1937年)