Though the war career of HMS Ark Royal spanned only a brief 27 months, these were so packed with incident that the ship seemed to be rarely out of the headlines. Still a new ship, she was attached to the Home Fleet at Scapa when hostilities opened. Events started quietly at sea with only the enemy's U-boats particularly active, but the naval policy of aggressive patrolling put the big ships in harms s way, and the Ark Royal was narrowly missed by submarine torpedoes on 14 September 1939. She was fortunate for, only three days later, HMS Courageous was lost to a similar attack. Carriers were eventually to prove the masters of the U-boat, but the time was still well in the future.

Within a fortnight, the fleet was at sea in strength to cover a stricken submarine and Blackburn Skuas from the Ark Royal chalked up a 'first' by shooting down an enemy shadower, the first Luftwaffe casualty to the RN. The price was still a stiff dive-bombing attack that narrowly missed her.

The following month saw the Ark Royal detached to join Force K in the equatorial Atlantic, to engage in a search for an active enemy raider. Her aircraft gained great experience in area search, locating enemy supply ships and disrupting their organization. Unfortunately the raider, which turned out to be the Graf Spee, was apprehended much farther south. Some consolation was gained early in 1940 when, on the ship's return north, her aircraft were instrumental in the interception of no less than

five out of six enemy merchantmen that were endeavoring to reach home from internment in Spain,

When Germany invaded Norway in April 1940, the Ark Royal was in the still-quiet Mediterranean for a spell of training. Two of her Skua squadrons, however, were in the UK and on 10 April 15 of these aircraft, working from the Orkneys to the limit of their range, dive-bombed and sank the German cruiser Konigsberg in the port of Bergen. This was another naval record, being the first instance of a major warship sunk in action by air attack.

With HMS Furious the only carrier in home waters, both the Ark Royal and HMS Glorious were returned with all dispatch. Throughout the whole melancholy campaign until the inevitable Allied evacuation during June, their aircraft were active over land as well as sea, the attrition rate being high. During the withdrawal, the Glorious was sunk by enemy surface action, but though the Ark Royal was at sea she was unable to intervene~ as she was escorting a vital troop convoy.

The enemy gained Norway, but his fleet suffered severely in the process, so the Ark Royal. could reasonably be spared to proceed to Gibraltar, for in the same month the Mediterranean balance had changed completely with the fall of France and Italy's entry into the war.

Thus, following a valedictory raid on Trondheim on 13 June, when a Skua put a 227-kg (500-lb) bomb into the Scharnhorst (the weapon failed to explode), the carrier went south in company with HMS Hood to join Admiral Somerville's Force H.

The position of the French Mediterranean fleet was confusing. Its bulk lay in Toulon, immobilized under the eye of the newly-installed Vichy regime, but powerful elements lay in various ports in French African territories. At Mers-el-Kebir, near Oran, lay a force including two modern battle-cruisers and a couple of elderly battleships. Under no circumstances could the already-outnumbered British allow these powerful units to fall into enemy hands, yet French pride would not permit accession to the British alternatives of placing the ships beyond hostile reach or of destroying them.

The British cut short prevarication with an ultimatum, backed up by the arrival off the port on 3 July of Somerville's forces, including three '381-mm (15-in) gunned capital ships and the Ark Royal. Moored behind a substantial mole and with the town at their backs, the French worked furiously to raise steam while discussions dragged on. To prevent their sudden exit the Ark Royals aircraft mined the marked channel, a move which unfortunately seemed to stiffen French intractability. Concerned about attack from without, the waiting British became edgy and, though the French made concessions, these did not go far enough. A final demand was not met and the British heavy units opened fire at 1'1.54, with aircraft spotting. Amid the vertical columns of smoke from a dozen funnels grew the masthead-high splashes of the big shells from 13'115 m (15,000yards). Moored end-on, unable either to flee or to fight, the French suffered little more than ritual execution: the new battle-cruiser Dunkerque took a three-shell salvo and had to be beached; the old Bretagne exploded and capsized; and the Bretagne's sister Provence had also to be beached to prevent her foundering. The power of the shells was immense, the complete after end of the large destroyer Mogador being amputated by one hit. Of the major units, only the battle-cruiser Strasbourg made her escape, by cutting the boom and keeping close inshore. Two bomb and torpedo strikes were mounted by the Ark Royal but the ship succeeded in escaping to Bizerta.

As the beached Dunkerque was still thought to be a threat, the carrier returned three days later, her Fairey Swordfish aircraft carrying out a different torpedo drop within the shallow confines of the port. One hit the target without exploding but a second sank a patrol craft close aboard, this wreck then absorbing a third which triggered a full load of depth charges adjacent to the battle-cruiser's hull. The whole Oran affair was acutely distasteful to the British, but the desperate post-Dunkirk situation demanded resolute action.

A busy couple of months of operations against the Italians were followed by another against a French base, this time Dakar in Senegal. The force here had Vichy sympathies and included the brand new battleship Richelieu, damaged by an earlier strike from the veteran carrier HMS Hermes. Negotiations began, with a view to installing a Free French administration. These failed and force again had to be used, though the whole affair was a failure. Despite the Ark Royals aircraft being used widely for spotting, reconnaissance and ground support, the planned French landing did not succeed and the operation was abandoned with several ships damaged. As sole source of aerial support, the Ark Royal had achieved another 'first', but her aircraft had been badly outclassed by the French land based machines and suffered nine losses.

A short refit in the UK included the necessary updating of her fighter complement from Skuas to Fairey Fulmars, but the Ark Royal was back with Force H in early November, spotting for the bombardment of Genoa, softening-up Italian airfields before the Taranto raid, ferrying fighters and escorting convoys to Malta, and having a direct brush with the Italian fleet, which retired immediately on observing the presence of the carrier.

In March 1941 Force H narrowly missed apprehending a particularly sought-after quarry, the German fast battleships (or battle cruisers) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, returning after a successful commerce raid. Though an aircraft from the Ark Royal actually sighted them some 965 km (600 miles) off Cape Finisterre, a combination of communication problems and evasive manoeuvring on the part of the enemy prevented further contact.

Two months later another German raider brought Force H into the Atlantic again. This time it was the Bismarck. Early on 24 May the enemy sank the Hood while breaking out of the Denmark Strait but, damaged in the process, had to make for home shadowed by two British cruisers. These were able to vector in the new carrier HMS Victorious whose aircrews, despite their inexperience, succeeded in putting a torpedo into the battleship's midship section. Unfortunately, the injury was insufficient to stop the ship, which then managed to shake off the cruisers. With a dawn air search from the Victorious failing to re-establish contact, there began an anxious 32 hours until a Consolidated Catalina sighted her, trailing oil but clear of the Home Fleet and well on her way to Brest. Force H had, however, been brought north for just such an eventuality and was well placed. An Ark Royal aircraft was in touch by noon on 26 May and, despite appalling weather conditions, an aerial torpedo strike was launched. It was bad luck that the radar-fitted cruiser HMSSheffield had gone on ahead, for the Swordfish leader also attacked by radar through the low cloud base, wasting the torpedoes on the wrong ship, which skillfully avoided them. A further five hours elapsed before another strike could be mounted. In conditions that would have aborted flying in peacetime, the aircraft took off and flew via the Sheffield to the target. 'two hits were scored, one severely damaging a rudder and propeller shaft. Now slowed significantly, the Bismarck was harried throughout the night by destroyers before being sunk after a gunnery duel on the following morning. Success was a close-run thing and would not have been possible without carrier support.

A more mundane but hazardous task was the constant ferrying of fighters to Malta. Between April and September 1941, sometimes in company with another carrier, the ark Royal carried about 170 Hawker Hurricanes to the island at a period of high attrition. She also covered two major convoys, one in July ('Substance') and one in September ('Halberd') which, despite every enemy effort, lost only one merchantman out of the 25 involved.

On 13 November 1941 the Ark Royals luck ran out. Returning to Gibraltar from yet another ferrying trip to Malta, she was hit by a single torpedo from U 81. Only 80 km (50 miles) from harbor, she had a good chance initially but all power failed, leading to uncontrolled flooding.

The resultant alarming list brought about a premature abandonment. Neither of her escorting destroyers essayed a tow and, when salvage tugs finally arrived, they were too late to reverse the situation, the ~Irk Royal rolling over and sinking in the early hours of 14 November, some 141/z hours after being hit and only 40 km (25 miles) from safety.

The loss of one of the UK's few modern carriers was to have a profound impact on the conduct of naval operations.