HMS ARK ROYAL

NAME          BUILDER               LAID DOWN       LAUNCHED  COMMISSIONED                                      

Ark Royal        Cammel laird               16/09/35                 13/04/37           16/11/38                                                    

Type: fleet aircraft-carrier 

Displacement:22,000 tons standard and 26, 700 tons full load

 Dimensions: length 243.8 m (800 ft); beam 28.9 m (94.75 ft); draught 6.9 m (22.66 ft)

Propulsion: 3-shaft geared steam turbines delivering 102,000 shp (76061 KW)

Speed:31 kts

Armour: belt 114 mm (4.5 in); deck 64 mm (2.5 in)

Armament: eight twin I 14 mm (4.5-in) AA, six octuple 2-pdr AA, and eight quadruple 12. T-mm (0.5-in) AA guns 

Aircraft: about 65

Complement: 1, 575 including aircrew

NOTES

Completed in 1938, HMS Ark Royal was the Royal Navy's first 'modern' carrier. A combination of meager naval budgets and the lowly status of the 'Fleet Air Arm meant that she was the first carrier to join the fleet since the remodeled Glorious back in 1930. Plenty of time had thus been available to plan her, resulting in a thoroughly workmanlike and influential design laid down in 1935 and launched in April 1937. Though much of a size and displacement as the Glorious, she appeared much larger, having two levels of hangars with adequate headroom. Three elevators were incorporated but they were small and, had the ship enjoyed a longer career, would

have required replacement to cater for the rapidly increasing size of aircraft. She had two catapults ('accelerators') from the outset.

The Ark Royal's most innovatory feature was her strength, the ship introducing armoured flight and hangar decks, with the hangar walls an integral part of the main hull girder. Despite the space-consuming aspects of this configuration, she could stow a far greater number of aircraft than the Glorious. Capable of 31 kts, she was also as fast as the earlier ships.

Though the earlier conversions had 16 medium-calibre guns, these were poorly sited, mainly with a view to defence against surface attack. The Ark Royal carried eight twin-barreled destroyer-type mountings, with high elevations conferring a true dual purpose capability and sited four on each beam at the flight deck edges to give good firing arcs. Designers were, at last, alive to the dangers of air attack and a comprehensive fit of smaller automatic weapons was also incorporated. Though aircraft were, indeed, to prove the main hazard to both American and Japanese carriers, the Royal Navy was pitted .primarily against fleets without carriers, so suffering most of its carrier casualties, the Ark Royal included on 14 November 1941, from submarine attack.