HMS Hermes (R12): Laid Down as HMS Elephant, Reborn as the Falklands Flagship

A Wartime Order, Decades in the Making

HMS Hermes began life under an entirely different name: she was laid down by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness during the Second World War as HMS Elephant, part of the wartime Centaur-class carrier programme. Construction was halted in 1945 as the war ended and the urgent need for more carriers evaporated, and the incomplete hull sat unfinished for years before work finally resumed in 1952.

She was launched, by then renamed Hermes, on 16 February 1953, but remained unfinished for a further four years, not entering service until 18 November 1959, some sixteen years after she was first laid down, a remarkably extraordinary gestation period reflecting just how much naval aviation, and naval priorities generally, had changed in the years between.

That long delay proved something of a blessing: HMS Hermes was completed to a heavily revised design incorporating a Type 984 three dimensional radar system, an angled flight deck with a deck edge lift, and steam catapults, technology that would have been unimaginable when she was first ordered as HMS Elephant, giving her a modern specification despite her wartime origins.

From Strike Carrier to Commando Ship

HMS Hermes initially operated Supermarine Scimitar and de Havilland Sea Vixen fighters alongside Fairey Gannet aircraft, before being converted between 1971 and 1973 into a commando carrier, a role reflecting the Royal Navy's shift away from fixed wing strike carriers as budgets tightened. She was converted again in 1976 for anti-submarine warfare duties, and received a final refit between 1980 and 1981 that fitted her with a ski jump ramp specifically to support the new Sea Harrier jump jet, technology that would prove absolutely decisive within barely a year of that refit's completion.

More to Explore

Flagship of the Falklands Task Force

HMS Hermes was actually scheduled for decommissioning in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a retirement that never came: instead, she sailed just three days after the invasion as flagship of the entire task force sent to retake the islands, carrying 12 Sea Harrier FRS1 aircraft and 18 Sea King helicopters. By the time the campaign was in full swing, her air wing had grown to 16 Sea Harriers, 10 RAF Harrier GR3s and 10 Sea Kings, a formidable and hard-worked air group that provided the backbone of British air power throughout the conflict, given that Britain had no land base anywhere near the islands from which to operate conventional aircraft.

A Second Life as INS Viraat

HMS Hermes was finally decommissioned on 12 April 1984, having outlasted her originally planned retirement by two years and a war. She was sold to India in 1986, and after refit and recommissioning, sailed as INS Viraat in 1987. The Indian Navy went on to operate her for another three decades, finally decommissioning her in 2017 and sending her for scrapping at the Alang ship-breaking yard, closing out a particularly remarkable career that had begun during the Second World War under a different name entirely, and ended nearly three quarters of a century later under a different flag.

You Might Also Like