HMS Illustrious (87)
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| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Name: | HMS Illustrious |
| Ordered: | 13 January 1937 1936 Naval Programme |
| Builder: | Vickers-Armstrongs |
| Laid down: | 27 April 1937 |
| Launched: | 5 April 1939 |
| Commissioned: | 25 May 1940 |
| Decommissioned: | End of 1954 |
| Struck: | 3 November 1956 |
| Motto: | Vox Non Incerta ("No Uncertain Sound") |
| Fate: | Scrapped at Faslane. |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Illustrious class aircraft carrier |
| Displacement: | 28,661 tons full load |
| Length: | 743.75 ft (226.70 m) |
| Beam: | 95 ft (29 m) |
| Draught: | 28 eet (8.5 m) full load |
| Propulsion: | 6 Admiralty 3-drum boilers 3 Parsons geared turbines producing 110,000 shp (82 MW) driving three shafts |
| Speed: | 30.5 knots (56 km/h) |
| Range: | 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) at 14 knots (26 km/h) |
| Complement: | 1,200 |
| Armament: | (1940) as laid down 16 × QF 4.5 inch naval gun (8 × 2) 48 x QF 2 pounder naval gun (6 × 8) (1945) post upgrades 16 × QF 4.5 inch naval gun (8 × 2) 40 x QF 2 pounder naval gun (5 × 8) 3 x Bofors 40 mm gun (3 x 1) 38 x Oerlikon 20 mm cannon (19 x 2), (14 x 1) |
| Aircraft carried: | 1940: 15 Fulmar and 18 Swordfish 1945: 36 Corsair and 21 Avenger |
HMS Illustrious (87), the fourth Illustrious of the British Royal Navy, was an aircraft carrier which saw service in World War II, the lead ship of the Illustrious class of carriers which also included HMS Victorious (R38), HMS Formidable (R67), and HMS Indomitable (R92).
Illustrious was built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Barrow-in-Furness, launched in 1939, and commissioned in May 1940. She displaced 23,000 tonnes and had the capability to carry up to 36 aircraft, a number greatly reduced by her armoured deck. Perhaps predictably, she was nicknamed "Lusty" by the men who served on her.
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[edit] Service
Illustrious joined the fleet in August 1940. Her first assignment was in the Mediterranean, where she was used to provide convoy cover, perform anti-shipping strikes, and raid positions in North Africa.
On 31 August, she was used to launch a strike against airfields at Maritza. On 11 November 1940, she became the first carrier in history to launch a major strike against an enemy fleet in a daring attack against the Italian fleet at Taranto. Twenty-one aircraft from Numbers 813, 815, 819, and 824 Squadrons based on Illustrious attacked the Italian fleet at night. The Italians were caught off-guard, and one battleship was sunk and 2 were heavily damaged.
On 10 January 1941 Illustrious was attacked while escorting a convoy east of Sicily by Axis Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 and Ju-87 "Stuka" dive-bombers, being hit by 8 bombs and suffering extensive damage, destroying her sick bay and ward room, and killing amongst others the England rugby player W. G. E. Luddington. While in Malta receiving repairs for her battle damage she was again bombed, flooding her boiler room. On 23 January she sailed to Alexandria, Egypt for temporary repairs, arriving at noon on 25 January, and then sailed to Virginia for permanent repairs at the safer Norfolk Navy Yard. One propeller shaft had to be cut away and her speed fell to 23 knots.
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She returned to service in May 1942, and was immediately dispatched to the Indian Ocean. Later in May, Illustrious and her sister ship Indomitable participated in Operation Ironclad, covering the landings at Diego Suarez in Vichy French controlled Madagascar. In 1943, she returned to the Mediterranean, for operations with Force H, based at the British territory of Gibraltar. She was used to help cover the Allied landings in Sicily in September 1943.
In 1944, she joined the Eastern Fleet, where she participated in raids on the Indonesian islands of Sabang on 22 July 1944 and Palembang on 24 January and 29 January 1945. After this, Illustrious put into Fremantle, Australia, for rest and re-supply. She then sailed with the rest of the British Pacific Fleet on 4 March to Manus, and from there sailed on 19 March to Ulithi. Later in 1945, as part of the British Pacific Fleet, designated Task Force 57 by Admiral Nimitz she covered the landings at Okinawa with her sister ships Formidable and Victorious, where she won her last Battle Honour. While in the Pacific, she was hit by two kamikaze aircraft. Her armoured flight deck absorbed the brunt of some hits, but the hull was progressively warped by damage that would have been confined to the superstructure in her American counterparts.
After the war she was given the role of training and trials ship, with a speed limited to 22 knots due to accumulated wartime damage. She was refitted and modernized from January through August 1948, decommissioned at the end of 1954, sold on 3 November 1956, and finally scrapped, after a successful career, at Faslane. Formidable and Indomitable were also scrapped in the 1950s; Victorious, the last of the class, was scrapped in 1969.
[edit] Battle honours
- Taranto 1940
- Mediterranean 1940-41
- Malta Convoys 1941
- Diego Suarez 1942
- Salerno 1943
- Sabang 1944
- Palembang 1945
- Okinawa 1945
[edit] References
- V.B. Blackman, ed., Jane's Fighting Ships 1950-51 (Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, London, 1951)
- Roger Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World, 1914 to the Present; An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1984)
- Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991) ISBN 0-393-02918-2
- Richard Collier, War in the Desert (Caxton Publishing Group, London, 2000) ISBN 0783557213
[edit] External links
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