HMS Ark Royal (1914)

HMS Ark Royal

Ship data flag  United Kingdom other ship names HMS Pegasus Ship type Aircraft mother ship Shipyard Blyth Shipbuilding Company, Blyth Keel laying November 7, 1913 Launch September 5, 1914 Commissioning December 10, 1914 Decommissioning February 1944 Whereabouts Wrecked in 1949

Ship dimensions and crew length 111.6 m ( Lüa ) width 15.5 m Draft Max. 5.7 m displacement 7,450 tn.l.   crew 180 men

Machine system machine 2 steam boilers 1 compound machine Machine performance 3,000 PS (2,206 kW) Top speed 11 kn (20 km / h) propeller 1

Armament 4 × 7.6 cm L / 40 Sk 2 × machine gun 5 seaplanes 2 land planes

HMS Ark Royal was converted from an unfinished merchant ship into an aircraft mother ship for seaplanes in 1914 .

The ship was bought by the Royal Navy soon after the keel was laid and built based on the Hermes model . Because there was no runway on the ship, the planes had to be started with catapults and, after they had landed , taken back on board with a crane.

commitment

In 1915 the ship was used in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Dardanelles campaign. There were u. a. two Wight Pusher Seaplane aircraft in action as reconnaissance aircraft. In January 1918 two Ark Royal aircraft were used in a bomb attack on the German large cruiser SMS Goeben .

After the end of the war, the ship was in the Black Sea and transported, among other things, planes to Batumi to support White Guard troops . She was also present when the British colonial troops landed in Somalia . Also during the Crimean offensive in 1920 she helped the White Guard troops. In September 1922, during the Chanak crisis in the Dardanelles, it was also used in the Mediterranean. In 1923 it was overhauled and rebuilt in Malta .

In December 1934, the ship was renamed HMS Pegasus to free the previous name for the newly ordered aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal . The Pegasus only played a subordinate role in World War II . On October 14, 1939, she was lying in the bay of Scapa Flow next to the battleship HMS Royal Oak , when it was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U 47 . According to the Royal Navy, a stray shot at the Royal Oak hit and damaged the Pegasus . According to other sources, the second ship hit was the HMS Iron Duke , the former British flagship in the Battle of the Skagerrak , which was used as a training ship in Scapa Flow in 1939. This was not made known because of the symbolic meaning of the Iron Duke .

Whereabouts

The ship was sold in 1946. It was planned to convert it into a merchant ship named Anita I , but this had to be abandoned due to structural problems. The ship was scrapped in 1949.

Footnotes

1. ^ Owen Thetford: British Naval Aircraft 1912-58 , Putnam, London, p. 404
2. ↑ Korganoff: Prien against Scapa Flow. 1989, pp. 222-226.

literature

Korganoff, A .: Prien versus Scapa Flow . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-87943-497-2 .

Web links

Commons : HMS Ark Royal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files