Film team finds wreck of Ark Royal

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Marcus
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Film team finds wreck of Ark Royal

#1

Post by Marcus » 18 Dec 2002, 19:18

Divers filming a BBC documentary have found the wreck of HMS Ark Royal, the famous wartime aircraft carrier.
The aircraft carrier became famous when its torpedo planes hit the German battleship Bismarck during the Second World War, allowing other British warships to close in and sink her.
But after that 1941 victory, the vessel herself was torpedoed by the German submarine U-81, 30 miles off Gibraltar.
A BBC spokesman said on Wednesday the wreck of the Ark Royal would not be raised.
Ministry of Defence personnel gave film makers a rough idea of the location of the Ark Royal.
Divers found her lying in 3,500ft of water - where she had been resting for the past 61 years.
When she sank she had been returning Hurricane aircraft fighter crews to Malta.
One sailor died while the rest of the 1,500 crew were picked up by other ships as the famous ship went down on November 13, 1941.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2585887.stm

/Marcus

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davethelight
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#2

Post by davethelight » 01 Jan 2003, 06:59

What a shame she was sunk. She was only two or three years old when she went down, and probably the best carrier of the war, from a design point of view.


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Musashi
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#3

Post by Musashi » 01 Jan 2003, 14:46

davethelight wrote:What a shame she was sunk. She was only two or three years old when she went down, and probably the best carrier of the war, from a design point of view.
For me the American carriers (for example Essex) were better. They colud carry much more aircrafts. However Ark Royal had good deck armour and it was her advantage

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davethelight
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#4

Post by davethelight » 01 Jan 2003, 16:26

From what I've read, the Ark Royal was a more advanced design than the American carriers, a smaller capacity, but design wise, still better.

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#5

Post by Aufklarung » 01 Jan 2003, 16:37

Pretty much all wartime US carriers have the British to thank for their effectiveness. The only thing the US didn't copy was armouring the flight deck. British carriers were much more able to shrug off damage from air and surface enemies than the US ones. In the Pacific the US was forced to eat crow when they asked for the British to provide the "fleet" carrier requirement for them due to their own carriers being damaged heavily from Japanese Kamikaze and air attack. Not a widely publicized event in US history books, I notice, but true none the less.

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subskipper
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#6

Post by subskipper » 01 Jan 2003, 17:13

Speaking of carriers, were there any nation in the world that could match the US in damage control and fire fighting? I've read quite a lot about the high quality of the US shipboard damage control parties, but know very little of the British capacity in the same regard. Anyone that can shed some light on the subject?



~Henric Edwards

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Lord Gort
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#7

Post by Lord Gort » 01 Jan 2003, 20:28

Interstingly enough if the Ark Royal had not been torpedoed then the carrier Illustrious would never have had to relieve it in the Western Med and the Illustrious would have sailed with the Battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse (the famous Force H) into the far east and the battleships might not have been sunk!


Such is the luck of war!

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#8

Post by Galahad » 05 Jan 2003, 11:21

Ark Royal owed more to the design features of the Lexington class than any WW II US carrier owed to the Ark Royal. If you doubt that, compare the Lexingtons to Britain's carriers at the time the Lexington and Saratoga were commissioned.

Or you can look at the Ark Royal's US contemporaries, Enterprise and Yorktown. The Essexes were simply larger and more polished Yorktowns.

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