It dived out of the clouds on the port bow and from the time it emerged from the clouds until the time it hit the water was only 11 seconds. Clearing the mines and the ships sunk by them was a slow process and Illustrious did not reach Suez Bay until 20 March. The attack was very successful at heavy cost; between the two air operations, her squadrons lost five Corsairs to enemy flak or fighters and one due to a mechanical problem on take-off as well as three Avengers to enemy action. [31] The fire destroyed three Swordfish and heavily damaged two others, but they were replaced by aircraft from Eagle, whose contaminated fuel tanks prevented her from participating in the attack. [80], She arrived on 10 February and repairs began when she entered the Captain Cook Dock in the Garden Island Dockyard the next day, well before it was officially opened by the Duke of Gloucester, the Governor-General of Australia on 24 March. 4 Squadron and No. Once the convoy was out of range of German aircraft, the Illustrious left the convoy and arrived back at Greenock on 8 August. 21 TBR Wing were landed to make room for the additional fighters. She transferred to Greenock at the end of the month and sailed on 5 August to provide air cover for the ocean liner RMSQueen Mary as she conveyed Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Quebec Conference. On 3 November she began loading the 39th Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division in response to the riots in Cyprus that broke out when Egypt abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. A Hawker Sea Fury crashed while landing on 15 May, killing the pilot and two members of the deck crew. She sailed four days later, having embarked twenty-one Swordfish, nine Martlet IIs of 881 Squadron and six Martlet Is of 882 Squadron,[61] and two Fulmar fighters[62] prior to escorting a troop convoy carrying some of the men allocated for the assault. She arrived at Greenock on 21 December and permanent repairs were made from 30 December to late February 1942 at Cammell Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead. De Trafford, Stretford, on 3 December 1983. While off Malta two days later, six of the carrier's fighters engaged an equal number of Fiat CR.42 Falco biplane fighters, shooting down one and damaging two others. When the aircraft approached the target on the morning of 20 December, it was obscured by clouds so they diverted to the secondary target of the port at Belawan Deli. If so, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Admiral Sir Reginald Henderson, Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy, was determined not to simply modify the previous unarmoured Ark Royal design. 15 Naval Fighter Wing with the Vought Corsairs of 1830 and 1833 Squadrons were still training ashore and flew aboard before the work up was finished on 27 December. One Fulmar was damaged and forced to return to the carrier, while the other two exhausted their ammunition and fuel during the combat and landed at Hal Far airfield on Malta. Illustrious was not struck during these attacks but was near-missed several times and the resulting shock waves from their detonations dislodged enough hull plating to cause an immediate 5-degree list, cracked the cast-iron foundations of her port turbine, and damaged other machinery. [45] On the night of 16/17 December, 11 Swordfish bombed Rhodes and the island of Stampalia with little effect. HMS Illustrious arrived at Alexandria, Egypt. Germans records show the loss of three Stukas, with another forced to make an emergency landing. The American bombers attacked the shipping in the harbour while the British aircraft attacked the shore installations. Her length was 640 feet with a beam of over 90 feet and a draught reaching 23 feet. The carrier, steering only by using her engines, was attacked several more times before she entered Grand Harbour's breakwater at 21:04, still on fire. Clark John Thomas. For this operation, her fighters were reinforced by a detachment of three Fulmars from 805 Squadron. Lava's technical capabilities. Aircraft from 819 Squadron laid six mines in the harbour entrance while those from 815 Squadron sank the destroyer Borea and two freighters totalling 10,192gross register tons(GRT). A Z.501 searching for the fleet was shot down on 10 November by a Fulmar and another on the 11th. The Germans had laid mines in the canal earlier. [35] Three Swordfish crashed shortly after take-off on 10 and 11 November, probably due to fuel contamination, and the maintenance crewmen spent all day laboriously draining all the fuel tanks and refilling them with clean petrol. We hope that visitor conversations at WW2DB will be constructive and thought-provoking. This included the battleships Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Giulio Cesare, Caio Duilio, Andrea Doria, and Conte di Cavour, the first two of those being brand new, along with several cruisers and destroyers. THE AIRPLANE SCRAPED . Later in the day her Corsairs intercepted 10 Ki-43s and shot down two of them while driving off the remainder. . The ship ultimately arrived at the Norfolk Navy Yard in the United States on 12 May for permanent repairs. The weather was too bad for Illustrious to rescue the steamer's crew, but she pumped fuel oil overboard to flatten the seas until a tug arrived to rescue the ship on 27 October. She was reunited with the four other carriers that served with the BPF for the first time since the war for the Coronation Fleet Review of Queen Elizabeth II on 15 June at Spithead. [63] Before dawn on 5 May, she launched 18 Swordfish together with 8 Martlets. The design was unique in the sense that the flight deck was armored, unlike many of her contemporaries outside her class; however, the added protection also limited the total number of aircraft she was capable of carrying. The ship completed 1,051 deck landings and steamed 4,037 nautical miles (7,477km; 4,646mi) by April. On the night of 15/16 December, Illustrious collided with Formidable in a moderate storm. It also blew a hole in the hangar deck, damaging areas three decks below. Captain C. T. Jellicoe relieved Carlill on 27 August and the ship ferried 10 Fireflies of 814 Squadron to Malta beginning on 1 October. MaritimeQuest - Nominal List of Ship's Company of HMS Illustrious Website with searchable ship database about warships, passenger liners, merchant ships, photo galleries, technical details, stories, news and much more. On the afternoon of 6 April, four kamikaze aircraft evaded detection and interception by the CAP, and one, a Yokosuka D4Y3 "Judy" dive bomber, attacked Illustrious in a steep dive. [75], On 10 June, the Illustrious and the escort carrier Atheling put to sea to simulate another airstrike on Sabang as a means of distracting the Japanese while the Americans were attacking airfields in the Mariana Islands and preparing to invade the island of Saipan. Her own losses were two Avengers and three Corsairs lost in action and one Avenger and six Corsairs due to non-combat causes. A single hydraulic aircraft catapult was fitted on the forward part of the flight deck. She conducted her last landings on 3 December and arrived at Devonport four days later to begin decommissioning. As the fleet was withdrawing, Illustrious's CAP intercepted and shot down a Nakajima Ki-43 (codenamed "Oscar") fighter and a Mitsubishi Ki-21 "Sally" medium bomber on reconnaissance missions. The ship was docked in Clydeside for a minor refit the following day; she arrived in Scapa Flow on 15 August, and became the flagship of Rear Admiral Lumley Lyster. They were low on ammunition and out of position, as they chased the Italian aircraft over 50 miles (80km) from Illustrious. The oil storage tanks were destroyed and the port facilities badly damaged by the Barracudas. Later in the month she hosted the Sea Furies of 802 and the Fireflies of 814 Squadrons for Exercise Winged Fleet. En route, the carriers of the 1st ACS attacked Palembang on 24 January and 29 January (Operation Meridian). A week later, Illustrious and Indomitable sortied to attack an oil refinery at Pangkalan Brandan, Sumatra (Operation Outflank); the former's airgroup now consisted of 36 Corsairs of 1830 and 1833 Squadrons and 21 Avengers of 857 Squadron. The light AA guns managed to sever its port wing so that it missed the ship, although its starboard wingtip shattered the Type 272's radome mounted on the front of the bridge. After the tour's conclusion on 12 May, she sailed for Scottish waters for more deck-landing practice with the destroyer Rocket as her planeguard. HMS Illustrious, which served in the Falklands War, Bosnia and the Gulf, has been put up for sale for scrap by the Ministry of Defence. She was captured by. The blitz on HMS Illustrious 70 years ago. Boyd was promoted to rear admiral on 18 February and relieved Lyster as Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers. [51], The ship was hit five more times in this attack, one of which penetrated the un-armoured aft lift and detonated beneath it, destroying it and the surrounding structure. Today in Naval History - Naval / Maritime Events in History 19 December 1796 - HMS Courageux (1753/1761 - 74), Lt. John Burrows (Act. HMS Illustrious was launched on 5th April 1939, where she was christened by Lady Henderson, wife of the recently retired Admiral Sir Reginald Henderson, Third Sea Lord of the Royal Navy. [85], On 1 February, she joined the other ships of the Home Fleet as they rendezvoused with the battleship Vanguard, which was serving as the royal yacht to escort King George VI as he set out for the first royal tour of South Africa. On 22 November she was assigned to the newly formed British Pacific Fleet (BPF), commanded by Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser. The hangar deck itself was 2.5 inches (64mm) thick and extended the full width of the ship to meet the top of the 4.5-inch waterline armour belt. "[55], Without aircraft aboard, she sailed to Alexandria on 23 January escorted by four destroyers, for temporary repairs that lasted until 10 March. Second of the Invincible class aircraft carriers, she was in the latter stages of construction at Swan Hunters on the Tyne during Falkland's war of 1982. [88], She was refitted and modernised from January to August 1948. The prototype of the turboprop-powered Fairey Gannet anti-submarine aircraft made its first carrier landing aboard on 16 June. A Chance-Vought Corsair JT208 buckles a wing on . 7.3 The distribution of the surviving lists. The high-angle director atop the island was replaced with an American SM-1 fighter-direction radar, a Type 293M target-indication system was added, and the Type 281M was replaced with a prototype Type 960 early-warning radar. With HMS Invincible laid down during July of 1973, HMS Illustrious followed when ordered during May of 1976. Find An Object; IWM Collections; Stories & Videos . [12], The Illustrious-class ships had a flight deck protected by 3 inches (76mm) of armour and the internal sides and ends of the hangars were 4.5 inches (114mm) thick. Home. The MOD has announced today that, following an open competition, the former aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious is to be recycled. 17, 19; Shores, Cull & Malizia 1987b, pp. pilot and ground crew aboard HMS Illustrious April 1945. With both Illustrious and Eagle under his command, Admiral Cunningham could now take the offensive. The Japanese aircraft diving on the ILLUSTRIOUS. The opportunity was too good to pass up. The BPF joined the American Fifth Fleet there two days later, under the designation Task Force 57 (TF 57), to participate in the preliminary operations for the invasion of Okinawa (Operation Iceberg). [33] She sailed from Alexandria on 6 November, escorted by the battleships Warspite, Malaya, and Valiant, two light cruisers, and 13 destroyers, to provide air cover for another convoy to Malta. 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