INDOMITABLE HMS 1941 aircraft carrier

[shipstamps]

Built as an aircraft carrier by Vickers Armstrong, Barrow, U.K. for the Royal Navy.
06 July 1937 ordered.
10 November 1937 laid down.
26 March 1940 launched under the name HMS INDOMITABLE, she was the last hull built of the Illustrious class.
Displacement 23.000 ton standard, 29.730 tons full load. Dim. 781 x 103.25 x 31ft.
Powered by geared Parsons steam turbines, 111.000 shp, three propellers, speed 31 knots.
Armament 8 – 4.5 inch AA, 48 – 2pdrs AA, 10 – 20mm AA.
Aircraft 45, which were during the war increased to maximal 55 aircraft.
Crew 1600 including Air Group.
10 October 1941 commissioned.

She had her building design plans revised, so that she could operate 45 aircraft instead of the 33 the other three ships of that class carried.
November 1941 she sailed for the West Indies for work up, due to grounding in Jamaica she did not join the battleship HMS PRINCE OF WALES and REPULSE at Singapore the following month. Most possible when she had joined she would have been sunk the next December, when both vessels of this group were sunk by the Japanese air force.
January 1942 she joined the eastern Fleet at Ceylon, and ferried on the end of that month 48 Hawker Hurricane fighter planes to Java for shipment to Singapore.
May 1942 she and HMS ILLUSTRIOUS took part in the Diego Suarez operation, to seize a French Navy base there in order to prevent the Japanese from using it as a submarine base. Her Sea Hurricanes in her first hostile operations were successful in their escort duties and destroyed 3 Morane Saulnier MS406 fighters on the ground.
June 1942 she exercised with the RAF off Ceylon, and returned to the Clyde in July 1942.

Then she was issued in the Mediterranean in Operation Pedestal a Malta convoy where her aircraft claimed 27 enemy aircraft destroyed by the loss of 4 of their own. The convoy sailed from the Clyde and Scapa Flow on 2 August 1942, the convoy passed in the night of 10 August Gibraltar.
40 Stuka dive-bombers attacked her later during the passage to Malta and three bombs hit the flightdeck, setting the flightdeck on fire. The stamp design is made of a photo taken from the HMS VICTORIOUS during the Operation Pedestal on 10 August 1942, the low flying plane is an Albacore, the higher one is included in the design. The aircraft carrier behind the INDOMITABLE is the HMS EAGLE that was lost in this operation.
She had to return to Gibraltar and from there she sailed to the U.S.A. for repairs, which took till February 1943, then she returned to the Mediterranean.
15 July when in the assault area off Sicily to cover the landings, she got hit by a aerial torpedo from a Ju-88, she went back to Malta for temporary repairs, before heading to the U.S.A. for repairs, which took to February 1944.
After repair she sailed to the Far East and joined the Eastern Fleet, and in June 1944 together with HMS VICTORIOUS she hit targets on Sumatra on 29 August and 18 September 1944, followed by air strikes against the Nicobar Islands on 17 and 19 October 1944.
20 December 1944 took part in the unsuccessful attack on Medan, Sumatra
04 January 1945 the HMS INDOMITABLE and INDEFATIGABLE and VICTORIOUS, planes from these aircraft carriers launched a major air strike against the Japanese oil refineries at Pangkalau Brandan, Sumatra.
February 1945 at Sydney, Australia, before returning to the battlegrounds. From March to April used in Operation Iceberg for air strikes against Japanese airfields on Sakishima Gunto and Formosa.
04 May 1945 hit by a Kamikaze plane, but received no damage, the Kamikaze plane hit the flight deck, but bounced off by her own speed and slid over the side.
June 1945 arrived at Sydney for a refit.
Mid-August sailed from Sydney for the re-occupation of Hong Kong, and her aircraft for the last time were used on 31 August and 1 September against Japanese suicide boats in Hong Kong.
She returned in the U.K. in November 1945 after first have ditched all her aircraft overboard off Sydney before embarking British citizens for the homebound voyage from Australia.
During 1946 she was used for two more repatriation voyages, before put in reserve.
Refitted between 1947 and 1950.
From 1950 till 1953 again active in the Home Fleet.
05 October 1953 reduced to reserve.
October 1955 sold for scrap and broken up at Faslane on the River Clyde.

Maldives 1974 10r sg?, scott 532
Sierra Leone 1995 1500le sgMS2324, scott 1805
Tanzania 1997 150sh sg?, scott 1651g only deck of the ship.

Source; Log Book. http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/Ships ... table.html
Jane’s Fighting Ships of World War II.

[aukepalmhof]

Togo 2020 800F sg?, Scott?