Liberty Trip for Ark Royal

Britain's newest capital warship, HMS Ark Royal, will be one of the star participants in an international naval review off New York to celebrate the unveiling of the refurbished Statue of Liberty.

The Ark, accompanied by the Leander-class frigates HMS Cleopatra and HMS Sirius, leaves Portsmouth on June 17 and is due to arrive in the States nine days later.

She will take part in official in New York, appear in the review of over 100 ships in the Lower Hudson River on July 2, and the next day will anchor opposite the great stature for the unveiling by President Regan.

It is the Ark Royal's most important visit abroad sine her career in the Royal Navy began almost a year ago.

Since then most of her time has been taken up in exhaustive trials and work-up, the routine being relieved by her commissioning at Portsmouth in November in the presence of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and deployment to the Mediterranean where the ship visited Gibraltar, Marseilles and Crete.

Early this year further trials took the carrier to the North Sea - and to Amsterdam. Sea training took place off Portland in February and March, while on April 8 the Queen Mother - who launched the ship in 1981 - made her second visit.

This time she went to sea in the Ark and witnessed a flying display by embarking aircraft from all three of the carrier's squadrons - Nos. 801, 820 and 849.

Later that month the Ark completed aviation work-up off the West Coast of Scotland, coming under simulated attack from submarines and from aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm, RAF and USA.

HMS Ark Royal is the third and so far the most up to date of the Navy's three Invincible-class carriers. Built by Swan Hunter, she contains many equipment improvements which will be fitted to her sister-ships in due course.

Her steeper, 12-degree takeoff ramp allows more deck space for aircraft, and she carries the most comprehensive communications suite ever fitted to a Royal Navy ship.

The latest radars and sonar are fitted, and in May she received three 20mm Phalanx radar controlled air defence guns which can produce a rapidly-fired " curtain" of metal in the path of approaching aircraft or missiles.

Those guns supplement her Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles, two 20mm visually aimed guns, and her Sea Gnat chaff system to deflect enemy missiles.

Her complement of aircraft includes Sea Harriers and Sea King anti-submarine and airborne early warning helicopters.


Staring Role in History

For more than 50 years of this century ships bearing the name Ark Royal have served the Navy, charting the birth and development of Britain's seabourne air power in war and peace.

Only one Ark Royal saw service before the age of flight - yet she, too, occupies a place of prominence in maritime history. She was no less a vessel than the flagship of the Lord High Admiral, Howard of Effingham, who led the British Fleet to victory over Spain's Armada in 1588.

Under James I the ship was reconstructed and renamed the Anne Royal, but she saw very little further active service and in 1636 was broken up after running aground in the Thames.

Almost 300 years passed before another Ark Royal joined the Fleet . She was acquired by the Admiralty in 1913 while still undergoing construction as a merchant ship at Blyth. After extensive modification she was launched as a 7,400-ton seaplane carrier and within two months of commissioning her aircraft were in action in the Dardanelles campaign.

With the arrival of U-boats in the area, the Ark retired to a protected anchorage from which she acted as a support ship for anti-submarine patrols for the rest of the war.

After 1918 she was used to transport aircraft to trouble sports in British Somaliland and Iraq, and in 1928 retired to home waters to become a trials ship for aircraft catapult equipment. Six years later, with the decision to build a fully fledged aircraft carrier named Ark Royal, the seaplane ship was renamed HMS Pegasus.

But that was not the end of her story: In the Second World War she operated three Fairey Fulmer fighter in her role as escort for convoys to Gibraltar and across the Atlantic.

Sold in 1946, she was scrapped in 1950 - thus the Pegasus survived by nine years the ship which usurped her name. That vessel's career, if relatively brief, was packed with activity ...

Launched in 1937, she won five Battle Honours for the name during the Second World War and endured many close calls while under attack from enemy air and naval forces.

Her most famous action was against the Bismark, brought to book by Royal Navy battleships after her steering gear had been wrecked by Swordfish torpedo bombers from the Ark.

The carrier's luck ran out in the Mediterranean on November 13 when she was hit by a torpedo from a U-boat. Happily, only one life was lost out of her complement of almost 1,600, but although the ship remained afloat for 14 hours after the attack, efforts to tow her to Gibraltar failed. She sank almost within sight of the Rock.

In 1955 the name Ark Royal returned with the launch of a 31,600-ton Audacious-class armoured fleet carrier, destined to become the most famous ship of the Navy in the 1970s.

Britain's last strike carrier, the "Mighty Ark" was the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief at the Queen's Silver Jubilee Fleet Review in 1977, and became a household name through the filming of board of the BBC Television series "Sailor".

She paid off finally in 1979 and despite efforts to preserve her she was scrapped.

Facts and Figures
Displacement:	20,000 tonnes
Length:	680 ft
Beam:	114 ft
Draught:	26ft (screws)
Propulsion:	Four Rolls-Royce Olmpus gas turbines driving through reversing gearboxes on twin shafts with fixed propellers, 1000,000 ship
Speed:	In excess of 30 knots
Range:	5,000 miles at 18 knots
Aircraft:	22 (typically eight Sea Harriers, 11 Sea Kings ASW helicopters, three Sea King AEW helicopters)
Armament:	Sea Dart twin launcher, three Phalanx radar controlled 20mm air defence guns, two 20mm visually aimed guns.
Full complement:	1,105 (including 405 air group personnel)

Related Sites

www.arkroyal.org.uk

(Ship of the Month June 1986)

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