HMS Ark Royal (R07): The Last of a Storied Name to Wear the Flag

The Last of Her Class

HMS Ark Royal was built by Swan Hunter on the Tyne, her keel laid on 7 December 1978 and launched on 2 June 1981, sponsored by the Queen Mother. Commissioned on 1 November 1985, she was the third and final Invincible-class carrier, displacing 22,000 tons and powered by four Rolls-Royce Olympus gas turbines delivering over 28 knots, with a crew complement of just over a thousand including her embarked Fleet Air Arm personnel. She could carry up to 22 aircraft, principally Harrier jump jets alongside Sea King and later Merlin helicopters, defended by a trio of Phalanx close-in weapon systems.

The Adriatic and a Modern Makeover

Ark Royal deployed to the Adriatic Sea in 1993 under Captain Terry Loughran in support of operations during the Bosnian War, part of the broader NATO and UN naval presence enforcing sanctions and providing air support during the Yugoslav conflicts. She underwent her first major refit between 1999 and 2001, which saw her Sea Dart missile system removed and her foredeck enlarged to increase her aircraft capacity, keeping her relevant as naval aviation requirements continued to evolve.

Tragedy Off Iraq

In 2003 Ark Royal sailed to the Persian Gulf for the invasion of Iraq under Captain Alan Massey, operating a primarily helicopter-based air wing for the campaign. The deployment was marred by tragedy when two of her Sea King helicopters collided, killing seven personnel, six British and one American, a devastating loss that stood as a sober reminder of the risks inherent in even the support and logistics side of carrier aviation, quite apart from combat itself.

She underwent a second major refit between 2004 and 2007, an £18 million modernisation completed that March, and went on to serve as the Royal Navy's flagship from May 2007, a role she held for the following four years. She took part in Exercise Joint Warrior in 2008 and assisted with Operation Cunningham during the 2010 volcanic ash crisis, when the eruption of an Icelandic volcano grounded much of European air travel.

An Early Retirement

Ark Royal was decommissioned on 11 March 2011, considerably earlier than her originally planned 2016 retirement, a casualty of defence budget cuts rather than any fault of her own, with HMS Albion taking over as the Royal Navy's flagship in her place. She was sold for scrap to the Turkish company Leyal Ship Recycling for £2.9 million in September 2012, finally departing Portsmouth on 20 May 2013 and arriving under tow at the scrapyard in Aliağa, Turkey, on 10 June that year, bringing to a close the career of the last ship to carry a name that had, across several very different vessels, become one of the most famous in the Royal Navy's history.