RN Aircraft Carriers: Courageous Class 1928

[jbryce1437]

The three ships of the Class, Courageous, Furious and Glorious, were laid down as battlecruisers and completed as such during the First World War. After the war they were classed as capital ships in the terms of the 1922 Washington Treaty and it was decided to convert them to Aircraft Carriers, rather than scrap them, which the Treaty allowed. All three were converted in the 1920's with Furious being the first to be completed, the other two had slight modifications after lessons were learned from the conversion of Furious.
Furious was reclassified as an Aircraft Carrier in 1925 and during the inter war years served with the Atlantic, Home and Mediterranean Fleets.
Courageous was reclassified as an Aircraft Carrier in 1928 and she served with the Mediterranean, then Atlantic and Home Fleets. During conversion her 15 inch guns were removed and later reused on the Royal Navy's last battleship - Vanguard.
Glorious was reclassified as an Aircraft Carrier in 1930 and served with the Home and Mediterranean Fleets.
All three saw service during World War II but Courageous became one of the first RN casualties of the war when she was sunk by U29, with the loss of 519 crew members on 17th September 1939.
Glorious was sunk by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on 8th June 1940, along with the destroyers Acasta and Ardent. There were only 40 survivors from Glorious and one each from the destroyers.
Only Furious lasted the length of the war and after early service with the Home Fleet was transferred to Nova Scotia. She took part in the Norwegian Campaign in 1940. She spent much of the war on aircraft ferry duties and delivered vital aircraft for Malta in preparation for Operation Torch and Operation Pedestal. She was later involved in the attack on Tirpitz during Operation Mascot. She was placed in reserve in 1944 and paid off in 1945 and berthed at Loch Striven where she was used for experimental work with aircraft explosives on the ships structure.

Furious

pre conversion hms-furious.JPG

furious jimbocard.jpg

Glorious

glorious....[1].jpg

glorious big.jpg

Courageous

courageous-large-light-crui.jpg

hms%20courageous-2[1].jpg

[ivorthediver]

OK not being the brightest cookie on deck I make that ten classes of carrier type on the new forum now [ thank god it wasn't more or I would be taking my boots off ]

[jbryce1437]

OK not being the brightest cookie on deck I make that ten classes of carrier type on the new forum now [ thank god it wasn't more or I would be taking my boots off ]

Still more, so untie your boot laces

Jim

[ivorthediver]

Bring em on Jim , bless you

[Brian James]

HMS Glorious....1939 schematic.

[designeraccd]

Could have used that drawing when I was building my little camo'd GLORIOUS a while back!! DFO

[Brian James]

The ill fated Carrier HMS Glorious pictured in the late 1930's.
She was the second of the three Courageous-Class Battlecruisers .....built at Harland & Wolff, Belfast in 1915.Designed to support the Baltic Project championed by the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, they were relatively lightly armed and armoured. Glorious was completed in late 1916 and spent the war patrolling the North Sea. She participated in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917 and was present when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered a year later.
Glorious was paid off after the war, but was rebuilt as an aircraft carrier during the late 1920s. She could carry 30 per cent more aircraft than her half-sister Furious which had a similar tonnage. After re-commissioning in 1930, she spent most of her career operating in the Mediterranean Sea. After the start of the Second World War, Glorious spent the rest of 1939 unsuccessfully hunting for the commerce-raiding German Cruiser Admiral Graf Spee in the Indian Ocean before returning to the Mediterranean. She was recalled home in April 1940 to support operations in Norway. While evacuating British aircraft from Norway in June, she was sunk by the German Battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the North Sea with the loss of over 1,200 lives.

[Brian James]

A Supermarine Seafire pictured being brought up onto the flight deck of HMS Furious, August 1944.

[timlewin]

Charles Lamb, "To War in a Stringbag" covers the loss of Courageous in his excellent book, he was there. Very well worth reading. The loss of Glorious and her escorting destroyers is one of those recurring nightmares, why was there no air cover? were they sacrificed to distract attention from the evacuation of the Norwegian Royal family? was this just a case of catastrophic incompetence?
tim

[Brian James]

HMS Courageous pictured at Gibraltar in 1928.