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Ark Royal 1940

Ships

Name	No	Yard No	Builder	Laid down	Launched	Comp	Fate
Ark Royal	91	1012	Cammell Laird, Birkenhead	16.9.1935	13.4.1937	16.11.1938	sunk 14.11.1941

Technical data

Displacement standard, t	22000
Displacement full, t	27720
Length, m	208.8 pp 243.8 oa
Breadth, m	28.9 wl 29.0 deck
Draught, m	8.46 deep load
No of shafts	3
Machinery	3 sets Parsons geared steam turbines, 6 Admiralty 3-drum boilers
Power, h. p.	102000
Max speed, kts	31
Fuel, t	4620 oil
Endurance, nm(kts)	10300(16)
Armour, mm	belt: 114, bulkheads: 76 - 64, lower hangar deck: 89 over engines, magazines and aviation fuel tanks
Armament	8 x 2 - 114/45 QF Mk I, 4 x 1 - 47/40 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I, 4 x 8 - 40/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII, 8 x 4 - 12.7/62, 60 aircraft (Nimrod, Osprey, Sea Gladiator fighters, Skua diving bombers, Swordfish torpedo bombers, Walrus recon planes)
Complement	1580

Air group

Year	Fighters	diving bombers	torpedo bombers	Seaplanes
8.1939	---	18 Skua	42 Swordfish	---
10/1939	---	8 Skua	21 Swordfish	---
4/1940	5 Roc	18 Skua	21 Swordfish	1 Walrus
5.1940	---	23 Skua	21 Swordfish	---
6.1940	---	24 Skua	21 Swordfish	5 Walrus
8.1940	---	24 Skua	30 Swordfish	---
10.1940	12 Fulmar	---	---	---
4.1941	24 Fulmar	---	30 Swordfish	---
5.1941	18 Fulmar	---	30 Swordfish	---

Standard scale images

Graphics

Aircraft facilities

 (fd - 6,366 m², ha - 5,690 m² / 27,878 m³): Flight deck: 219.5 (useful length)x29.0m. Upper hangar: 173.1x18.3x4.9m, lower hangar: 137.8x18.3x4.9m. 3 lifts for both hangars each (2 lifts: 13.7x6.7m, 1 lift: 13.7x7.6m). 2 catapults (5.4t plane was launched at 122 km/h). Aircraft fuel stowage: 454,600l.

Project history

The most well-known aircraft carrier of Royal Navy of the Second World War.     Prominent features of architecture of Ark Royal were extremely high freeboard (17.1m) and the big aft overhang of a flight deck which at the expense of it significantly exceeded a hull length. The flight deck was a structural part of the hull and participated in providing of a longitudinal strength of the ship. Absence of diesels-generators (all electric power was produced by steam turbine-generators) was a significant lack of as a whole successful ship and has played a fatal role in her fate: after torpedo hit and incapacitation of boilers Ark Royal has lost the electric power, and the further struggle for the survival has appeared unsuccessful.     The AA armament was rather powerful to pre-war measures, however air defence abilities were reduced by absence of the radar: Ark Royal became last large ship of the Royal Navy without it.

Protection

  Main belt protected 45% of length by waterline and expanded to lower hangar deck abreast funnel, to upper deck fwd and aft from funnel and to main deck abreast magazines. Underwater protection depth was 4.08m, there were 38mm anti-torpedo bulkheads. This protection could resist exploding of 380kg TNT.

Modernizations 5.

1941: + 2 x 4 - 40/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII

Naval service

Ark Royal 13.11.1941 returned from the operation on carrying fighters to Malta and has received torpedo hit from German submarine U81. She has sunk next day, 14 hours after attack, in 25 miles E of Gibraltar.

Many thanks to Wolfgang Stöhr for additional information on this page.