Victorious HMS (1939)

[shipstamps]

Ordered: 13 Jan 1937
Builder: Vickers-Armstrong
Cost: £4.05million
Laid down: 4 May 1937
Launched: 14 September 1939
Commissioned: 14 May 1941
Decommissioned: 13 March 1968
Refit: 1950 - 1957
Fate: Scrapped 1969
Displacement: As built: 29,500 tons
Post-refit: 35,500 tons full load
Length: As built: 673 ft (205 m)
Post-refit 753 ft (230 m) waterline, 781 ft 238 m) overall
Beam: As built: 95 ft (29 m)
Post-refit 103 ft (31.4 m)
Draught: As built: 28 ft (8.5 m)
Post-refit 31 ft (9 m)
Propulsion: 3 Parsons geared turbines
6 Admiralty 3-drum boilers
111,000 shp, 3 shafts
Speed: 30.5 knots (56 km/h)
Range: 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) at 14 knots (26 km/h)
Complement: 2,200 (including air group)
Armament: 16 × 4.5 inch (8 × 2), 48 × 2 pdr (6 × 8), 21 × 40 mm AA (2 × 4, 2 × 2, 9 × 1)
45 × 20 mm AA (45 × 1)
Armour: flight deck: 3", hangar deck: 2", side belt 4", hangar sides: 4"
Aircraft carried: During World War II:
included: Albacore, Avenger, Barracuda, Corsair, Fulmar, Seafire, Sea Hurricane, Swordfish, Wildcat
1941:
36 Fulmar/Albacore
1945:
54 Corsair/Avenger
Post-refit aircraft included:
Gannet, Scimitar, Sea Fury, Sea Hawk, Sea Vixen, Buccaneer
Motto: Per coelum et aequorem victrix (Through air and sea victorious)
Honours and awards: Cape of Good Hope 1795 - St Lucia 1796 - Egypt 1801 - Walcheren 1809 - Rivoli Action 1812 - Bismarck Action 1941 - Norway 1941-42 - Arctic 1941-42 - Malta Convoys 1942 - Biscay 1942 - Sabang 1944 - Palembang 1945 - Okinawa 1945 - Japan 1945
Notes: Pennant numbers:38, R38, 38
HMS Victorious (R38) was the second Illustrious class aircraft carrier ordered under the 1936 Naval Programme. She was laid down at the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1937 and launched two years later in 1939. Her commissioning was delayed, however, until 1941 due to the greater need for escort vessels for service in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Her service in 1941 and 1942 included famous actions against the battleship Bismarck, several Arctic convoys and the Pedestal convoy to Malta. She was loaned to the United States Navy for a brief period in 1943 and served in the south west Pacific as "USS Robin". Victorious contributed to several attacks on the Tirpitz. The elimination of the German naval threat allowed her redeployment first to the Eastern Fleet at Colombo and then to the Pacific for the final actions of the war against Japan.

After the war, her service was broken by periods in reserve and an extensive rebuild in the 1950s. The reduction in Britain's naval commitment in the late 1960s prompted her final withdrawal from service and she was scrapped in 1969.

Wikipedia

Gibraltar SG MS748

[aukepalmhof]

The 31p stamp features the first-long sortie carried out by a Blackburn Buccaneer that took place on June 3, 1966. At 13.20 a Royal Navy Buccaneer S2 from 801 Naval Air Squadron took off from HMS Victorious in the Irish Sea, on a non-stop, roundtrip sorties to Gibraltar. The aircraft’s pilot was Lieutenant John Cross, a Fleet Air Arm test pilot from the Empire Test pilot School and the Observer was 801’s Senior Observer Lieutenant Commander George Oxley.