HMS EaGLE

NAME     BUILDER                   LAID DOWN     LAUNCHED     COMMISSIONED

Eagle        Armstrong Whitworth     20/02/13                08/06/18            26/02/24

Type: fleet aircraft-carrier

 Displacement: 22,600 tons standard and 26, 500 tons full load

Dimensions: length 203.3 m (667 ft); beam 32. 1 m ( 105.25 ft); draught 7.3 m (24 ft)

Propulsion: 4-shaft geared steam turbines delivering 50,000 shp (37285 kW) ·

Speed: 24 kts

Armour: belt 102-1'18 mm (4-~ in); flight deck 25 mm ( 1 in); hangar deck 102 mm (4 in), shields 25 mm ( 1 in)

 Armament: nine 152-mm (6-in), four102-mm (4-in) AA, and eight 2-pdr AA Aircraft:21

Complement: 834 excluding aircrew

NOTES

Before World War I, Chile ordered two stretched 'lron Duke' class battleships from Armstrong's Elswick yard. Only one of these, the.IIlmirante Latorre, was well advanced by August 1914; compulsorily purchased by the Admiralty, she was completed in 1915 as HMS Canada. Work on her un launched sister, the Almirante Cochrane (laid down in 1913), ceased with hostilities but she was taken in hand, post Jutland, for completion as an aircraft carrier. Like the Hermes she was far too late for the war; being launched in June 1918 and commissioning for extended trials in 1920. Several versions of the pioneering island superstructure were tried after initial experiments on the Argus. This kept her in dockyard hands for a great portion of the period between 1920 and 1923, when the Hermes was commissioned. The final version of the island was long

and low, topped-off by two funnel casings with the same thick and thin proportions as the ship's erstwhile sister. Her more ample battleship proportions made her considerably slower than the large cruiser conversions, but she had better stability. Despite the fact that she introduced the two-level hangar, she still had only modest aircraft capacity.

Much of the Eagle's pre-World War II service was in the Far East, but the carrier moved into the Indian Ocean in September 1939, thence to the Mediterranean to replace the GIorious. Following air strikes against Italian shipping at Tobruk she was badly shaken by bombing during the action off Calabria, suffering damage that eventually caused her to miss the

Taranto raid. Before she could refit in the UK, she saw further action in the Red Sea and the South Atlantic. Arriving back in the Mediterranean early in 1942, she was later involved in the famous August convoy (Operation 'Pedestal') when 41 warships fought through just five out of 14 merchantmen to lift the Malta siege. The Eagle was a major casualty, sunk by four torpedoes from U-T3 on 11 August 1942.