THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE ROYAL NAVY SALUTES THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE ROYAL NAVY SALUTES THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER

Nick Hewitt, head of exhibitions and collections at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, celebrates the museum’s 10th anniversary with a rundown of some of the Royal Navy’s most historic warships.

HMS Indomitable in convoy, with Fairey Albacore torpedo bombers and Grumman Martlet fighters ready for action.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

The arrival and commissioning of HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s (RN’s) second 65,000-tonne, state-of-the-art carrier, cements Portsmouth’s centuries-old status as the home of cutting-edge naval technology. Indeed, the RN’s first submarines were based here from 1902, and the first, Holland 1, is on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, part of The National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN). What’s more, in 1906, Portsmouth Royal Dockyard built the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought, in less than a year.

HMS Argus, late 1918, with her full-length flight deck and the prototype carrier island constructed of wood and canvas.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

Curiously, 1906 was also almost the last time an RN ship named Prince of Wales entered the Naval Base, when the pre-dreadnought battleship, which was the fifth ship to bear the name, came in for refit. Her successor, the celebrated World War II (WW II) battleship, in many ways the pinnacle of the superdreadnought, never came to Portsmouth during her short but eventful service life. This sixth Prince of Wales, pennant number 53, was commissioned in January 1941, with WW II at its height. She, too, represented cuttingedge technology for her day, being a magnificent compromise of armour, gun power and speed designed to keep within the stringent limitations of the Washington and London Naval Treaties, unlike her ‘treaty-busting’ rivals being constructed in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

A Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo bomber, the RN’s first bespoke maritime strike aircraft.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

However, Prince of Wales did not enjoy the luxury of a lengthy acceptance process. She was bombed whilst still being fitted out, many key machinery tests were rushed or postponed, and in May 1941 she found herself in action against the German battleship Bismarck with a team of Vickers-Armstrong technicians on board to nurse her experimental quadruple 14-inch gun turrets.

The Grumman Martlet, a carrier-borne fighter aircraft, later known in the RN by its US Navy name of Wildcat.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

Hapless Force Z

After acquitting herself admirably against Bismarck, in August Prince of Wales went on to carry Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, where he met US President Franklin Roosevelt and the two leaders proclaimed the Atlantic Charter. Ominously, at the end of the year she was sent out to Singapore with the battlecruiser HMS Repulse as flagship of ‘Force Z’, an ill-fated ‘fleet in being’ intended to deter Japanese aggression. On Dec. 10, 1941, whilst searching for a Japanese invasion force making for Malaya, the two ships were attacked and sunk by Japanese aircraft with the loss of 840 lives.

Also used for spotting and reconnaissance, a Fairey Albacore torpedo bomber with its crew of three.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

The incontrovertible fact was that by 1941 even the most modern battleships, whilst still useful, had been superseded by aircraft carriers as the pre-eminent capital ships for any modern navy. In fact, one of the RN’s new armoured carriers, HMS Indomitable (92), was supposed to join Force Z, but she was damaged when she ran aground in the Caribbean and the force sailed without air cover. We will never know whether Indomitable would have saved Force Z, but it is beyond doubt that her aircraft would have made a difference. Her Hurricane and Martlet fighters would have been instrumental in protecting the fleet, and her Albacore torpedo bombers would have given Force Z a crucial over-the-horizon strike capability.

Full steam ahead: Blackburn Buccaneer S2 of 809 NAS ready for launch from HMS Ark Royal’s steam catapult.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

The RN was perfectly aware of the importance of carrier aviation, as the service had been at the forefront of developing this new technology since World War I. The RN operated the first true carrier, HMS Argus (I49), converted from an Italian ocean liner, a truly revolutionary design with many of the features which still define a modern aircraft carrier, including a fully enclosed hangar, a full-length flight deck, aircraft lifts, rudimentary but effective fire-prevention systems, and a crude but workable arrester system. Her air wing included Sopwith T.1 Cuckoo torpedo bombers – the first bespoke maritime strike aircraft and the pioneer of folding wings to facilitate easy stowage.

A bird’s eye view of HMS Hermes, showing her angled deck.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

The RN went on to commission HMS Hermes (95), the world’s first ship designed as an aircraft carrier from the keel up, and despite tensions and uncertainty over the procurement of suitable aircraft during the interwar years, the service remained a world leader in carrier strike capability. The RN’s armoured carriers proved astonishingly durable during WW II, standing up to repeated attacks by German and Italian land-based bombers in the Mediterranean and waves of Japanese kamikaze (suicide) aircraft in the Pacific. Although the attrition rate amongst the older ships was high, only one modern carrier, HMS Ark Royal (91) was lost during the war, to a submarine attack in the Mediterranean in November 1941.

HMS Ark Royal (R09) in heavy seas, with McDonnell Douglas Phantom II aircraft being respotted on the flight deck. A Phantom on the catapult of the Ark Royal, ready for launch, is re-created in the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Carrier Experience exhibition.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy

After the war, RN carrier aviation continued to enjoy a string of technological firsts, including the first steam-powered catapult (1950), the first carrier to be built with an angled deck (1955), the first carriers to be built with ‘ski-jumps’ to support the operation of Harrier VSTOL ‘jump jets’ (1977), and now HM Ships Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth, the largest warships ever built for the RN, which are taking carrier aviation technology to the next level in so many ways with innovations like the introduction of two deck islands to enhance aviation operations.

The City of Portsmouth, its Historic Dockyard and Naval Base, HMS Prince of Wales, and RN carrier aviation have in common extraordinarily long, illustrious and often overlapping histories, and The NMRN is proud to tell these stories across the country. HMS Prince of Wales (53) is commemorated in Portsmouth, where her bell, salvaged in 2002, is on permanent display in the HMS – Hear My Story galleries, which tell the story of the RN in the 20th century. The exciting story of how the RN led the world in the development of carrier aviation is told at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, where visitors can also see a full-scale recreation of the flight deck of HMS Ark Royal (R09), the RN’s last big deck carrier, and Europe’s largest and most important collection of naval aircraft.

HMS Hermes in June 1982, with the ski jump fitted in 1980 for her VSTOL Sea Harrier aircraft.

All Photos Courtesy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy