HMS Illustrious (R87)

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Career

Ordered:	13 January 1937 1936 Naval Programme
Laid down:	27 April 1937
Launched:	5 April 1939
Commissioned:	25 May 1940
Decommissioned:	end of 1954
Fate:	Scrapped at Faslane.
Struck:	3 November 1956
General Characteristics
Displacement:	28,661 tons full load
Length:	743.75 feet (227 m)
Beam:	95 ft (29 m)
Draught:	28 feet (8.5 m) full load
Propulsion:	6 Admiralty 3-drum boilers 3 Parsons geared turbines producing 110,000 shp (82 MW) driving three shafts
Speed:	30.5 knots (56 km/h)
Range:	11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) at 14 knots (26 km/h)
Complement:	1200
Armament:	(1940) as laid down 16 × QF 4.5 inch naval gun (8 × 2) 48 x QF 2 pounder naval gun (6 × 8) (1945) post upgrades 16 × QF 4.5 inch naval gun (8 × 2) 40 x QF 2 pounder naval gun (5 × 8) 3 x Bofors 40 mm gun (3 x 1) 38 x Oerlikon 20 mm cannon (19 x 2), (14 x 1)
Aircraft:	1940: 15 Fulmar and 18 Swordfish 1945: 36 Corsair and 21 Avenger
Motto:	Vox Non Incerta

The fourth HMS Illustrious (R87) of the British Royal Navy was an aircraft carrier which saw service in World War II, the lead ship of the Illustrious class of carriers which also included HMS Victorious (R38), HMS Formidable (R67), and HMS Indomitable (R92).

Illustrious was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, launched in 1939, and commissioned in May 1940. She displaced 23,000 tonnes and had the capability to carry up to 36 aircraft, a number greatly reduced by her armoured deck. Perhaps predictably, she was nicknamed "Lusty" by the men who served on her.

Illustrious under Stukas attack

Illustrious joined the fleet in August 1940. Her first assignment was in the Mediterranean, where she was used to provide convoy cover, perform anti-shipping strikes, and raid positions in North Africa. On 31 August, she was used to launch a strike against airfields at Maritza. On 11 November 1940, she became the first carrier in history to launch a major strike against an enemy fleet in a daring attack against the Italian fleet at Taranto. Twenty-one aircraft from Numbers 813, 815, 819, and 824 Squadrons based on Illustrious attacked the Italian fleet at night. The Italians were caught off-guard, and one battleship was sunk and 2 were heavily damaged. On 11 January 1941 Illustrious was attacked while escorting a convoy east of Sicily by Axis Savoia and Stuka dive-bombers, being hit by 8 bombs and suffering extensive damage, destroying her sick bay and ward room. While in Malta receiving repairs for her battle damage she was again bombed, flooding her boiler room. On 23 January she sailed to Alexandria, Egypt for temporary repairs, arriving at noon on 25 January, and then sailed to Virginia for permanent repairs at the safer Norfolk Navy Yard.

She returned to service in May 1942, and was immediately dispatched to the Indian Ocean. Later in May, Illustrious and her sister ship Indomitable participated in Operation Ironclad, covering the landings at Diego Suarez in Vichy French controlled Madagascar. In 1943, she returned to the Mediterranean, for operations with Force H, based at the British territory of Gibraltar. She was used to help cover the Allied landings in Sicily in September 1943. In 1944, she joined the Eastern Fleet, where she participated in raids on the Indonesian islands of Sabang on 22 July 1944 and Palembang on 24 January and 29 January 1945. After this, Illustrious put into Fremantle, Australia, for rest and re-supply. She then sailed with the rest of the British Pacific Fleet on 4 March to Manus, and from there sailed on 19 March to Ulithi. Later in 1945, as part of the British Pacific Fleet, designated Task Force 57 by Admiral Nimitz she covered the landings at Okinawa with her sister ships Formidable and Victorious, where she won her last Battle Honour. While in the Pacific, she was hit by two kamikaze aircraft. Her armored flight deck absorbed the brunt of some hits, but the hull was progressively warped by damage that would have been confined to the superstructure in her American counterparts.

After the war she was given the role of training and trials ship, with a speed limited to 22 knots due to accumulated wartime damage. She was refitted and modernized from January through August 1948, decommissioned at the end of 1954, sold on 3 November 1956, and finally scrapped, after a successful career, at Faslane. Formidable and Indomitable were also scrapped in the 1950s; Victorious, the last of the class, was scrapped in 1969.

See HMS Illustrious for other RN ships of the same name.

[edit] Battle honours

Taranto 1940
Mediterranean 1940-41
Malta Convoys 1941
Diego Suarez 1942
Salerno 1943
Sabang 1944
Palembang 1945
Okinawa 1945

[edit] References

V.B. Blackman, ed., Jane's Fighting Ships 1950-51 (Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, London, 1951)
Roger Chesneau, Aircraft Carriers of the World, 1914 to the Present; An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1984)
Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1991) ISBN 0-393-02918-2
Richard Collier, War in the Desert (Caxton Publishing Group, London, 2000) ISBN 0783557213