Foreign Service
As Britain was unable to maintain the size of her wartime fleet after the end of World War II, several Colossus class ships were placed into reserve, while work on the Majestic class was initially halted at the end of World War II, then restored to a low-priority status. Demands for fiscal cutbacks, combined with the rapid obsolescence of the carriers by the development of jet aircraft, saw four of the eight Colossuses and all five completed Majestics sold off to other nations.
The majority of the Light Fleets in foreign service were modernised, either during construction or afterwards, to operate jet aircraft. This usually consisted of the installation of an angled flight deck, upgrading the aircraft catapult to be steam-powered, and installing an optical landing system: Australian Majestic class carrier HMAS Melbourne was the third aircraft carrier in the world, after HMS Ark Royal and USS Forrestal, to be constructed with these features instead of having them added later.
Read more about this topic: 1942 Design Light Fleet Carrier
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“Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful tone is silenced.”
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