HMS Indomitable (92): Saved From Disaster by Running Aground

A Modified Illustrious

HMS Indomitable was ordered on 6 July 1937 and built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, laid down that November, launched on 26 March 1940 and commissioned on 10 October 1941, christened by Clementine Churchill.

A modified Illustrious-class carrier, she featured a second hangar deck positioned above the original, raising her flight deck by 14 feet and allowing her to carry between 48 and 55 aircraft rather than the standard 36 of her sister ships, a truly useful increase in striking power for a design already proven in combat.

Saved by a Coral Reef

HMS Indomitable's very first operational voyage, to the West Indies in November 1941, ended when she ran aground on a coral reef near Jamaica, a notably embarrassing early mishap that nonetheless turned out to have a remarkable silver lining: the resulting delay prevented her from reaching Southeast Asia in time to support Force Z, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse, both of which were subsequently sunk by Japanese aircraft off Malaya with heavy loss of life.

Had HMS Indomitable arrived on schedule, she would very likely have been present at that catastrophic action herself. In January 1942, she instead ferried RAF Hawker Hurricane fighters to Sumatra in a bid to reinforce Singapore's crumbling air defences before the city's fall to Japanese forces.

Operation Pedestal

HMS Indomitable took part in Operation Pedestal in August 1942, the desperate and famous convoy operation to resupply besieged Malta, during which she was struck by two 500-kilogram bombs and suffered further damage from near misses, losing 6 officers and 40 ratings killed and a further 70 ratings wounded, a heavy price paid in one of the most fiercely contested convoy battles of the entire war.

She underwent repairs at Liverpool's Gladstone Dock, completed in February 1943.

HMS Indomitable was back in action that July, supporting the invasion of Sicily under Operation Husky, when she was torpedoed by an Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 aircraft, requiring yet further repairs, this time in the United States, a punishing run of damage for a single carrier within the space of less than a year.

The Pacific and a Kamikaze

HMS Indomitable returned to the Eastern Fleet in early 1944, conducting bombing operations against Sumatra, the Nicobar Islands and Medan alongside her sister carriers, before joining the British Pacific Fleet in 1945 for the final campaign against Japan.

On 4 May that year, she was struck by a kamikaze, but her armoured flight deck once again proved its worth, preventing serious damage of the kind that would likely have crippled an unarmoured American carrier.

Her final combat missions came on 31 August and 1 September 1945, striking Japanese suicide boats during the liberation of Hong Kong, a fitting final action for a carrier whose entire war had been defined by absorbing heavy punishment and continuing to fight.

A Damaged Peace and the End

HMS Indomitable returned to the UK in November 1945 and underwent a lengthy three year refit between 1947 and 1950, becoming Home Fleet flagship in 1951.

On 3 February 1953, an internal fire and explosion caused significant damage that was, remarkably, simply covered in concrete and never properly repaired, a properly striking illustration of just how much of her original wartime fabric was, by that point, considered not worth the expense of restoring.

She nonetheless took part in the Coronation Fleet Review of Queen Elizabeth II and conducted early jet landing trials using prototype mirror landing systems, particularly important pioneering work for the coming jet age.

With the Admiralty declining to fund the full modernisation needed to properly operate jet aircraft, she was placed in unmaintained reserve in October 1953, sold for scrap, and arrived at Faslane for breaking up on 30 September 1955, closing out the career of a carrier whose survival, from a chance grounding off Jamaica through Pedestal, a torpedo strike and a kamikaze, had been truly remarkable from start to finish.