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HMS Ark
Royal
HMS Ark Royal (91), the lead ship
of her class of aircraft carrier, was the third ship of
the Royal Navy to be named in honor of the flagship of
the English fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. She
was designed in 1934 to meet the limits of the Washington
Naval Treaty, and was built by Cammell Laird at
Birkenhead, England. Construction was completed in
November 1938.
In December 1939 she was sent to
the South Atlantic to help in the search for the German
cruiser Graf Spee. In the spring of 1940 she participated
in the Norwegian campaign, and in July she joined the
attack on the French Navy's base at Mers El K?bir,
Algeria. The following September, Ark Royal took part in
a second assault on the French Navy, this time at Dakar.
While covering a Mediterranean convoy in late November,
her planes attacked Italian battleships, though without
making any hits. In return, she was bombed, and missed,
by enemy aircraft.
During March 1941, Ark Royal
pursued the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
during the last phase of their Atlantic sortie. On 26 May
of that year, her torpedo planes hit Bismarck, making the
enemy battleship virtually unmaneuverable and allowing
other British warships to close and sink her.
Ark Royal was also very active in
the Mediterranean Sea during 1941. She struck the port of
Genoa in early February, during a British Naval raid deep
into Italian-controlled waters. On several occasions, she
ferried planes to the beleaguered base at Malta and
covered Malta-bound convoys. While returning to Gibraltar
from one such mission, Ark Royal was torpedoed on 13
November 1941 by the German submarine U-81. After a
difficult struggle against progressive flooding, the
carrier capsized and sank on 14 November 1941.? Her
exact location remained unknown until mid-December 2002
when the BBC announced that a film crew had located the
wreck in 3,500 feet of water some 30 miles off Gibraltar.
Laid down: |
16 September
1935 |
Launched: |
13 April
1937 |
Commissioned: |
16 December
1938 |
Fate: |
torpedoed by
U-81 on 13 November 1941. Sunk 14 November 1941 |
General
Characteristics
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Displacement: |
22,000 tons |
Length: |
800 feet |
Beam: |
94.8 feet |
Draft: |
28 feet |
Speed: |
31 knots |
Range: |
7600 miles
at 20 knots |
Complement: |
1,600
officers and men |
Armament: |
16
4.5-inch/45-caliber guns in eight twin mounts, 48
two-pounder 8-barrel Pompoms, 32 .50-caliber
machineguns |
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