HMS Victorious (R38)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations. |
_Post-WWII.jpg) HMS Victorious (right) after 1950 refit |
|
| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Class and type: | Illustrious-class aircraft carrier |
| Name: | HMS Victorious |
| Ordered: | 1936 |
| Builder: | Vickers-Armstrong |
| Laid down: | 4 May 1937 |
| Launched: | 14 September 1939 |
| Commissioned: | 14 May 1941 |
| Decommissioned: | 13 March 1968 |
| Fate: | Scrapped 1969 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | As built: 29,500 tons Post-refit: 35,500 tons full load |
| Length: | As built: 673 ft (205 m) Post-refit 753 ft (230 m) waterline, 781 ft 238 m) overall |
| Beam: | As built: 95 ft (29 m) Post-refit 103 ft (31.4 m) |
| Draught: | As built: 28 ft (8.5 m) Post-refit 31 ft (9 m) |
| Propulsion: | 3 Parsons geared turbines 6 Admiralty 3-drum boilers 111,000 shp, 3 shafts |
| Speed: | 30.5 knots (56 km/h) |
| Range: | 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) at 14 knots (26 km/h) |
| Complement: | 2,200 (including air group) |
| Armament: | 16 × 4.5 inch (8 × 2) 48 × 2 pdr (6 × 8) 21 × 40 mm AA (2 × 4, 2 × 2, 9 × 1) 45 × 20 mm AA (45 × 1) |
| Aircraft carried: | During World War II: included: Albacore, Avenger, Barracuda, Corsair, Fulmar, Seafire, Sea Hurricane, Swordfish, Wildcat 1941: 36 Fulmar/Albacore 1945: 54 Corsair/Avenger Post-refit aircraft included: Gannet, Scimitar, Sea Fury, Sea Hawk, Sea Vixen, Buccaneer |
| Notes: | Pennant number R38 |
HMS Victorious (R38) was the second Illustrious-class aircraft carrier ordered under the 1936 Naval Programme. She was laid down at the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1937, and launched just two years later in time for World War II beginning in 1939. Yet she was not commissioned into the Royal Navy until 1941 due to an urgent and more pressing need for escort vessels for service in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Contents |
[edit] Service
[edit] Bismarck Episode
In 1941, just 2 weeks after commissioning, her first active mission began when she took part in the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Originally intended to be part of the escort for convoy WS-8B to the Middle East, Victorious was hardly ready to be involved in a hunt for the Bismarck with just one-quarter of her aircraft embarked aboard her. Sailing with the battleship HMS King George V, the battlecruiser Repulse, and 4 light cruisers, Victorious was hastily deployed to assist in the pursuit of the German ship. On 24 May 1941, Victorious launched nine of her biplane Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber aircraft and two Fulmar fighters. The Swordfish, under the command of Eugene Esmonde who would make his name with the "Stringbag", as the Swordfish was known, flew through foul weather and attacked in the face of tremendous fire from Bismarck's anti-aircraft guns. The result was only a single hit to the armoured belt. No aircraft were shot down during the attack, but the Fulmars ran out of fuel on the return journey and had to ditch in the ocean. Victorious would have no further part in the historic chase and sinking; aircraft from another carrier the Ark Royal would play a role that led to the sinking of the Bismarck three days later. Esmonde received a DSO for his part in the action.
[edit] Convoy duty
After ferrying aircraft to the besieged British Mediterranean base of Malta, Victorious returned to the naval base at Scapa Flow. She took part in various attacks against ports in Norway, which was under German occupation, as well as taking part in the arduous Arctic convoys, a vital supply line for the Soviet Union. On 9 March 1942, Victorious launched an attack on Bismarck's equally fearsome sister-ship Tirpitz. She scored no hits on the battleship, but it was enough to play a part in Hitler's decision to order all Kriegsmarine capital ships to not risk themselves against enemy aircraft.
The Arctic convoys were suspended temporarily after the horrendous losses that Convoy PQ17 suffered. Twenty-three ships out of thirty-six were sunk after the convoy had been scattered in fear that an attack was imminent by the German warships Admiral Hipper, Lützow, Admiral Scheer, and Tirpitz.
[edit] Pedestal
The suspension of the Northern convoy route released Victorious to take part in one last courageous effort to get supplies into Malta - Operation Pedestal. Pedestal, which began on 10 August 1942, involved a great array of ships in several groups working together; the battleships HMS Rodney and Nelson, the aircraft carriers HMS Eagle, Indomitable, and Furious, the cruisers HMS Cairo, Charybdis, Kenya, Manchester, Nigeria, Phoebe, and Sirius, thirty-two destroyers. Some of the carriers were transporting aircraft for Malta's use and the supplies were on fourteen merchant ships.
On the 11 August 1942 Victorious was slightly damaged by attacks from Italian bombers. The Eagle was less fortunate; torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. Ultimately Pedestal was a success. Supplies, including oil, and reinforcing Spitfires allowed Malta to hold out but at a cost of the loss of nine merchant ships, one aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and a destroyer.
[edit] Operation Torch
In November 1942, she took part in the North African landings. Operation Torch involved 196 ships of the Royal Navy and 105 of the United States Navy. The total number of Allied soldiers that landed was about 107,000. Ultimately successful, Operation Torch was the precursor to the later invasions of Sicily and France.
[edit] First Pacific Service
After a refit in the United States at the Norfolk Navy Yard during the winter of 1942-43, Victorious sailed through the Panama Canal to operate with the United States forces in the Pacific. During this time, the code name for the carrier was USS Robin, from the character "Robin Hood," as the US Navy was temporarily "poor" in carriers. In April 1943, Victorious sailed for Pearl Harbor to join Saratoga's Battle Group, at that time the only operational American carrier in the Pacific. Her operations in the South Pacific area were conducted in the Solomon Islands. During this time Victorious was home to US Navy fighter squadron VF-6, flying F4F Wildcats, as well as its own Wildcats of No. 832 Squadron (832 Squadron's Avengers were at this time detached to Saratoga). Between May and July, 1943, Victorious and Saratoga provided air support for Allied forces, including the invasion of New Georgia. In late 1943, Victorious returned to the UK, to the naval base at Scapa Flow. The refit had included the addition of such typically American appliances such as soda machines and ice cream freezers which were ridiculed by the sailors of the Royal Navy upon its return to them.
[edit] Attack on Tirpitz
On 2 April 1944, Victorious joined Anson, Duke of York, Emperor, Fencer, Furious, Pursuer, and Searcher, along with numerous cruisers and destroyers, in launching a devastating attack (Operation Tungsten) on the Tirpitz, involving twenty Barracudas in two waves, hitting the battleship fourteen times. The attack put Tirpitz out of action for three months. During the operation, Victorious became the first Royal Navy aircraft carrier to operationally use the F4U Corsair fighter. The Task Force returned to Scapa Flow after this relative success three days later.
[edit] Second Pacific Service
In June 1944, Victorious was attached to the British Eastern Fleet at Trincomalee, where she arrived on the 5th July. Victorious along with Illustrious, launched a strike against Palembang (Operation Crimson) and another strike in conjunction with Indomitable occurred against the Andaman Islands. Over the next eight months, awaiting the formation and departure of the British Pacific Fleet (BPF), the carriers Formidable, Illustrious, Implacable, Indomitable, and Indefatigable along with the battleships Howe and King George V, escorted by six cruisers and twelve destroyers, launched numerous air strikes against Japanese forces and installations in Indonesia.
The BPF finally departed Ceylon on 13 January 1945, en route to Sydney, Australia. Aircraft from the fleet attacked installations on Sumatra and Java on the 24th and 29 January (Operation Meridian).
In April 1945, Victorious along with Illustrious, Indefatigable, and Indomitable, launched strikes against Okinawa, along with the US 5th Fleet. While there, Victorious was hit by two kamikazes, though she suffered only minor damage due to her armoured flight deck, which was more resilient to such attacks than the wooden decks of American carriers.
In July, aircraft from 849 Squadron NAS, embarked aboard Victorious, located and attacked the Japanese escort carrier Kaiyo, seriously damaging her while at Beppu Bay, Kyūshū. She was stricken from the Japanese naval register a few months later.
[edit] Postwar
Immediately after the war, Victorious assisted in the repatriation of prisoners of war. Following this, in 1946, Victorious was pressed into service to carry war brides of British servicemen from Australia to the UK; her lifts were converted into temporary accommodation. Later, Victorious had a pivotal role in decks trials for the new carrier aircraft, known as the Hawker Sea Fury. She became a training ship from October 1947 to March 1950, with 3 lecture rooms and 12 classrooms in the hangar.
In October 1950, extensive reconstruction at the Portsmouth Dockyard commenced, that would radically alter her appearance and capability. This reconstruction would last over eight years because of frequent design changes to keep up with new technologies. Her hull was widened, deepened, and lengthened; her machinery was replaced with Foster-Wheeler boilers; her hangar height was increased; new armament of 3 inch (76 mm) guns was installed; and an angled flight deck was added. She looked completely different from the carrier that won ten of the eleven battle honours of the Victorious lineage. In 1958, she joined the Home Fleet, then transferred to the Far East Fleet, serving there for nine years. But sadly her career came to a premature end, when during refit in 1968 about a week before her scheduled re-commissioning, she was damaged by a relatively minor fire in the Chief Petty Officers' mess. The fire was out in 2 hours, and the ship was operating normally the next day. Because of the reduction of funding in the defence budget and the 1966 decision to phase out British fixed-wing naval aviation, no effort was made to recommission her. Her captain was notified of the decision not to recommission the ship the day before the scheduled recommissioning ceremony; the ceremony was held by the ship's crew anyway as a 'wake' for the ship. She was paid off in that year and scrapped, beginning in 1969 at Faslane Naval Base.
[edit] References
- Roger Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World, 1914 to the Present; An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1984)
- Robert Gardiner, ed., Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922 - 1946 (Conway Maritime Press, London, 1980)
- V.B. Blackman, ed., Jane's Fighting Ships 1950-51 (Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, London, 1951)
[edit] External links
|
||||||||
