HMS Bulwark (R08): Nine Years Building, Then a Carrier for Suez, Rescue and Commando Assault

A Very Long Build

HMS Bulwark was built by Harland and Wolff at Belfast, her keel laid on 10 May 1945, just days before the war in Europe ended, launched on 22 June 1948, but not commissioned until 4 November 1954, a build spanning nearly a decade as postwar defence priorities and budgets repeatedly slowed her construction, much as happened with several of her Centaur-class contemporaries.

A light fleet aircraft carrier displacing 22,000 tons standard and up to 27,000 tons at full load, HMS Bulwark carried a complement of 850 crew, capable of embarking 200 naval air squadron personnel or, in her later commando carrier configuration, up to 800 Royal Marines.

Six Hundred Sorties Over Suez

HMS Bulwark saw her first combat action in November 1956, during the Suez Crisis, launching approximately 600 sorties as part of Operation Musketeer, the Anglo-French intervention following Egypt's nationalisation of the Suez Canal, a substantial operational tempo for a carrier still relatively new to frontline service and a genuine baptism of fire for her air group.

Her embarked 804 and 810 Naval Air Squadrons flew Sea Hawk jets against airfields, troop concentrations, vehicles and oil facilities, often through heavy anti-aircraft fire, destroying some forty Egyptian aircraft on the ground. Lieutenant G. B. Hoddinott of 810 Squadron was credited with an attack on an Egyptian E-boat during the campaign.

A Daring Rescue in the Gulf

On 13 September 1958, while exercising with the frigate HMS Loch Killisport in the Gulf of Oman, HMS Bulwark, affectionately nicknamed "Rusty B" by her own ship's company, responded to a maritime disaster in the Persian Gulf, when the tankers Melika and Fernand Gilabe collided and caught fire.

Her Whirlwind helicopters from 845 Naval Air Squadron flew rescue missions to save those aboard, landing firefighting parties directly onto the burning tankers' decks, and HMS Bulwark, working with the frigate HMS Puma, towed the stricken Melika to safety at Muscat, a particularly impressive piece of seamanship and humanitarian effort.

In recognition of the squadron's role in the rescue, 845 Naval Air Squadron was awarded the Boyd Trophy, one of the Fleet Air Arm's most prestigious honours.

A New Role, and Confrontation With Indonesia

HMS Bulwark was converted to a commando carrier from November 1958 and recommissioned on 23 January 1960 at Portsmouth, with 42 Commando Royal Marines and 848 Naval Air Squadron, flying Whirlwind helicopters, embarked, transforming her from a conventional fixed-wing carrier into a dedicated amphibious assault platform built around helicopters rather than jets.

In 1961, she deployed to Kuwait as part of Operation Vantage, a rapid British military response to Iraqi threats against the newly independent state. That October, she recommissioned at Singapore, becoming the first Royal Navy warship commissioned outside the United Kingdom since the Second World War, and went on to serve as one of only two commando carriers committed throughout the Indonesian Confrontation, ferrying troops, helicopters and equipment between Singapore and Borneo and deploying her embarked Royal Marines commandos in the dense jungle and coastal terrain there.

She also took part in Exercise Common Assault 3 off Hong Kong and further commando landings in Malaysia, part of a decade spent almost permanently deployed East of Suez with the Far East Fleet, before returning home in 1966 to take part in the Kestrel and Harrier jump jet trials, helping to prove the aircraft that would go on to define British naval aviation for decades.

Headquarters for the Withdrawal from Malta

HMS Bulwark suffered a boiler room fire while anchored off Trieste in September 1971, and repairs were still being completed by her own ship's company when, in January 1972, she sailed for Malta to serve as headquarters ship for Operation Exit, the British military's emotionally fraught final withdrawal from the island. She remained at anchor in Valletta Harbour for eleven weeks, during which her own 845 Naval Air Squadron carried out more than 1,000 helicopter landings supporting the pull-out.

The departure proved short-lived. Barely three months after the final withdrawal, amid a diplomatic crisis between the British and Maltese governments, HMS Bulwark returned to Malta in July 1972 carrying 41 Commando Royal Marines, the first British troops to set foot back on the island, a striking coda to an already dramatic chapter in Anglo-Maltese relations.

Fires, and a Final Stopgap

Further fires struck HMS Bulwark in March 1980 at Philadelphia, destroying one boiler, and again in November 1980, when a major fire damaged her forward hangar and some of her messdecks.

Rather than undertake full repairs, only minimal restoration work was carried out, sufficient to keep HMS Bulwark in service until HMS Invincible commissioned in the spring of 1981, a deliberate stopgap decision that reflected just how close to the end of her useful life HMS Bulwark had come.

Decommissioned, and Left to Deteriorate

HMS Bulwark was finally decommissioned on 27 March 1981 and placed into unmaintained reserve, with no further repairs attempted, and a subsequent survey found her condition had deteriorated too far to justify preservation.

She was scrapped at Cairnryan in April 1984, bringing to a close a career that had spanned Suez, a dramatic Gulf tanker rescue, the Indonesian Confrontation and the early trials of the Harrier jump jet, a notably full and varied service life for a ship that had taken almost a decade simply to be built.