HMS Ark Royal (1937)

Type

Aircraft Carrier

Period

20th Century

Nation

Great Britain

Overview: HMS Ark Royal (pennant 91) was a Royal Navy fleet aircraft carrier and one of the most famous British warships of the Second World War, gaining fame partly through repeated erroneous German claims to have sunk her before her actual loss in 1941. Specifications: She was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, launched 13 April 1937 and commissioned in November/December 1938. Standard displacement was about 22,000 long tons (27,720 tons deep load), with an overall length of 800 ft, a beam of about 94 ft 9.6 in, and a flight deck roughly 720-800 ft long by 94-95 ft wide; she could carry around 50 aircraft across two hangar decks, and was notable as the first carrier on which the flight deck and hangars were built as an integral, load-bearing part of the hull rather than an add-on superstructure. Service History: Ark Royal served across multiple theatres in 1939-40, including North Sea and Home Fleet patrols, the hunt for the Graf Spee off South America and West Africa, and the Norwegian campaign, before joining Force H in the Mediterranean in mid-1940 to protect Gibraltar and Malta convoys. Her most celebrated action came in May 1941 when Swordfish torpedo bombers launched from her decks crippled the German battleship Bismarck's steering, enabling other Royal Navy warships to close in and sink her. On 13 November 1941, while returning to Gibraltar after a Malta ferry run, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-81 and, despite prolonged salvage efforts and a tow attempt, capsized and sank early the next morning southeast of Gibraltar; most of her roughly 1,600 crew were saved. Notable Facts: A post-loss Board of Inquiry found that design flaws in her damage-control and flooding-containment arrangements contributed significantly to the sinking, lessons that were applied to later British carrier designs. Her wreck was not located until a BBC film crew found it in December 2002, revealing she had actually sunk further from Gibraltar than the wartime inquiry assumed. She has been produced as a plastic model kit by several manufacturers, including Airfix (1:600), Trumpeter and Merit (1:350), and Aoshima (1:700), making her a popular subject for WWII carrier modelers.