Courageous Class Aircraft Carrier

Courageous Class Aircraft Carrier

The Courageous class, sometimes called the Glorious class, was the first multi-ship class of aircraft carriers to serve with the Royal Navy. The three ships—Furious, Courageous and Glorious—were originally laid down as "large light cruisers" (battlecruisers) to be used in the Baltic Project during the First World War. While very fast, their minimal armour and few guns limited their long-term utility in the post-war Royal Navy and they were laid up after the war. They were considered capital ships by the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty and were included in the total amount of tonnage allowed to the Royal Navy. Rather than scrap them, the Navy decided to convert them to aircraft carriers as permitted under the Treaty.

Furious, already partially converted during the war, began her reconstruction in 1921, before the Treaty came into effect. She was given a three-quarters-length flight deck. In attempt to minimize air turbulence she was given no superstructure or "island". This was not entirely satisfactory and a small island was added in 1939. Another problem was that she lacked a standard funnel; instead, her boiler uptakes ran along the sides of the ship and exhausted out of gratings on the rear of the flight deck, or the sides of the ship if landing operations were in progress. The long ducts reduced her aircraft capacity and the exhaust gases were as much of a problem for landing aircraft as the turbulence would have been. Her half-sisters, Courageous and Glorious, began their conversions to aircraft carriers as Furious neared completion. They drew upon the experience gained by the Royal Navy since Furious had been designed and incorporated an island with a funnel, increasing their aircraft capacity by one-third and making it safer to land.

As the first large, or "fleet", carrier completed by the Royal Navy, Furious was extensively used to evaluate aircraft handling and landing procedures, including the first-ever carrier night-landing in 1926. Courageous became the first warship lost by the Royal Navy in the Second World War when she was torpedoed in September 1939 by a German submarine. Glorious unsuccessfully hunted the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the Indian Ocean in 1939. She participated in the Norwegian Campaign in 1940, but was sunk by two German battleships in June when she was unwisely allowed to sail home with minimal escort. Furious spent the first months of the war hunting for German raiders and escorting convoys before she began to support British forces in Norway. She spent most of 1940 in Norwegian waters making attacks on German installations and shipping, and most of 1941 ferrying aircraft to West Africa, Gibraltar and Malta before refitting in the United States. She ferried aircraft to Malta as part of the Malta Convoys during 1942 and provided air support to British forces during Operation Torch. Furious spent most of 1943 training with the Home Fleet, but made numerous air strikes against the German battleship Tirpitz and other targets in Norway in 1944. The old ship was worn out by late 1944, so she was reduced to reserve status in September before being paid off in 1945 and sold for scrap in 1948.