The End
In 1968, shortly before re-commissioning after her refit, there was a relatively minor fire, which was rapidly extinguished, in the Chief Petty Officers' mess (resulting in one death and two hospitalisations)and the ship was operating normally the next day. This coincided, however, with a reduction of the defence budget and together with the 1966 decision to phase out British fixed-wing naval aviation, it was decided at very short notice not to recommission Victorious. Her captain was told of this just one day before the scheduled recommissioning ceremony. The ceremony was held by the ship's crew anyway as a "wake" for the ship. She was paid off in 1968 and subsequently placed on the Disposal List in 1969. She was sold later that year to British Shipbreakers and towed to Faslane Naval Base on 13 July 1969, where she was broken up.
During her service, HMS Victorious had been deployed in most parts of the world and had given outstanding service in peace and war.
Final Air Group:
- 801 NAS - Buccaneer S.2
- 893 NAS - Sea Vixen FAW.2
- 814 NAS - Wessex HAS.1
- A Flight 849 NAS - Gannet AEW.3
Read more about this topic: HMS Victorious (R38)
Famous quotes related to the end:
“There is no calm philosophy of life here, such as you might put at the end of the Almanac, to hang over the farmer’s hearth,—how men shall live in these winter, in these summer days. No philosophy, properly speaking, of love, or friendship, or religion, or politics, or education, or nature, or spirit; perhaps a nearer approach to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place of the literary man, than of anything else.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)