HMS Victorious (R38)
Encyclopedia : H : HM : HMS : HMS Victorious (R38)
_Post-WWII.jpg "HMS_Victorious_(Illustrious-class_aircraft_carrier)_Post-WWII.jpg") Victorious after 1950 Refit | |
| Career |
|
|---|---|
| Ordered: | 1936 |
| 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 |
| Range: | 11,000 nautical miles at 14 knots (20,400 km at 26 km/h) |
| Speed: | 30.5 knots (57 km/h) |
| Complement: | 2,200 (including air group) |
| Armament: | 16 x 4.5 inch (8x2) 48 x 2 pdr (6x8) 21 x 40mm AA (2x4, 2x2, 9x1) 45 x 20 mm AA (45 x 1) |
| Aircraft: | 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 |
Bismarck Episode
In 1941, her first active mission, just 2 weeks after commissioning, began when she took part in the infamous 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 such a potent battleship as 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 hastily deployed to assist in the pursuit of the German ship. On 24 May 1941, Victorious launched nine of her biplane Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomberaircraft and two Fulmar fighters. The Swordfish under the command of Eugene Esmonde attacked in the face of tremendous fire from Bismarck's anti-aircraft guns, delivering 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 to the ship and had to ditch in the ocean. Contact with the battleship was soon lost, and Victorious would have no further part in the historic chase and sinking. Bismarck herself was sunk just three days after Victorious's attack on the warship. Esmonde received a DSO for his part in the action.Convoys
After ferrying aircraft to the besieged British territory 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 1941, 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, in which twenty three ships out of thirty six were sunk, after the convoy had been scattered due to the fear that an imminent attack was to take place from the German warships Admiral Hipper, Lützow, Admiral Scheer, and Tirpitz.
The suspension of this convoy route, allowed Victorious to take part in one last courageous effort to relieve the besieged Malta named Operation Pedestal, which began on 10 August 1942. It involved an astonishing array of ships, including the battleships Rodney and Nelson, the aircraft carriers Eagle, Indomitable, and Furious, the cruisers Cairo, Charybdis, Kenya, Manchester, Nigeria, Phoebe, and Sirius, thirty-two destroyers, and fourteen merchant ships. One of the objectives of the operation was for Furious to launch her Spitfires and land them at Malta, thus reinforcing that island's air defence. Furious succeeded in doing on 11 August 1942 and headed back to Gibraltar, her mission complete.
On the same day, Eagle was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-73, and Victorious herself was slightly damaged by bombs from enemy aircraft. The next day, Indomitable was badly damaged by enemy aircraft forcing her to return to Gibraltar. Later that day, the cruiser Cairo and two transports were sunk, while the cruisers Kenya and Nigeria and the tanker Ohio were heavily damaged.
On 13 August 1942, the cruiser Manchester was heavily damaged by Italian motor torpedo boats and subsequently scuttled; four merchant ships were sunk. Ohio was attacked again, this time by Stuka dive-bombers. At the end of the day, just five of the original fourteen merchant ships were left. Later that day, three of the merchant ships, Melbourne Star, Port Chalmers, Rochester Castle, entered Malta to the jubilation of the besieged peoples and forces of the territory. The fourth merchant ship entered Malta the next day. The crippled tanker, Ohio, the most vital of them all arrived at Grand Harbour, lashed between two destroyers, on 15 August. The oil from Ohio, as well as the supplies from the heavily damaged survivors of the original fourteen merchant ships, not to mention the Spitfires that were flown from the deck of Furious were vital for the survival of Malta. A large price was paid though, with the loss of nine merchant ships, one aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and a destroyer. One carrier and two cruisers were badly damaged during the operation.
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. It was a total success.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 initial operation was an attack on the Solomon Islands along with Saratoga. Between May and June, 1943, Victorious and Saratoga covered the invasions of Bougainville, Munda, and 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.
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 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.Second Pacific Service
In June 1944, Victorious was attached to the British Eastern Fleet at Trincomalee. In July 1944, Victorious along with Illustrious, launched a strike against Palembang; on the 25th, another strike in conjunction with Indomitable occurred against the Andaman Islands. Over the next eight months, as part of the British Pacific Fleet, which now included 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.In April 1945, Victorious along with Illustrious, Indefatigable, and Indomitable, launched strikes against Okinawa, along with the US 5th Fleet. While there, after launching further strikes against Sumatra and Palembang with other British carriers, Victorious was hit by two kamikazes, though she suffered only minor damage due to her armoured flight deck, which was more resilent to such attacks than the wooden decks of American carriers.
In July, aircraft from No. 849 Squadron, embarked aboard Victorious, located and attacked the Japanese escort carrier Kaiyo, seriously damaging her while at Beppu Bay, Kyushu. She was stricken from the Japanese naval register a few months later.
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 guns was installed; and an angled flight deck was added. She looked completely different to 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 pacifist political climate at the time and the reduction of funding in the defence budget, and the decision was made to not 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.
See HMS Victorious for other ships of the name.
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)
External link
| Illustrious-class aircraft carrier |
| Illustrious | Formidable | Victorious |
| List of aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.