HMS Victorious (R38): From Crippling the Bismarck to a Thirty Million Pound Rebuild

Built at Newcastle

HMS Victorious was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Newcastle upon Tyne, laid down on 4 May 1937 and launched on 14 September 1939, though her commissioning was delayed until 14 May 1941 as wartime priorities favoured escort vessels for the Battle of the Atlantic over completing a new fleet carrier.

A Hit on the Bismarck

After her first mission ferrying Hawker Hurricanes to Malta, Victorious joined the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941. Flying with only nine understrength Swordfish biplanes, her torpedo bombers still managed to score a hit, minor in itself but a genuine contribution to the chain of events that ended in Bismarck's destruction days later.

Operation Pedestal and Life as USS Robin

Victorious went on to serve on the Arctic convoy route and took part in Operation Pedestal, the critical August 1942 resupply of Malta, sustaining minor damage from Italian air attacks. That winter, the US Navy borrowed her outright, assigning her the radio call sign Robin and refitting her at Norfolk Navy Yard with American arrester gear and radar before she flew 614 sorties over twenty-eight continuous days of combat operations in the south-west Pacific in 1943.

Striking the Tirpitz and Surviving Kamikazes

Back home, Victorious attacked the German battleship Tirpitz in Norwegian waters during Operation Tungsten in April 1944, before transferring to the Eastern Fleet for strikes on Japanese installations in Sumatra and the Nicobar Islands. As part of Task Force 57 with the British Pacific Fleet, she supported the Okinawa campaign in 1945 and survived repeated kamikaze attacks on 1, 4 and 9 May, her armoured flight deck proving its worth even as the strikes killed three of her crew and wounded nineteen more, a loss this account records with due respect.

The Most Expensive Rebuild in Royal Navy History

Between 1950 and 1958, Victorious underwent the most extensive carrier reconstruction the Royal Navy ever attempted, entering Portsmouth's dry dock in October 1950 for work that dragged on for over seven years amid poor project management and constant design changes, with costs spiralling from an initial estimate of £5.4 million to just over £30 million. She emerged with a single unified hangar, a revolutionary angled flight deck, steam catapults and the first shipborne installation of Type 984 three-dimensional radar, effectively a new ship built around an old hull.

A Cold War Flagship

Recommissioned in January 1958, Victorious served as a training flagship, supporting Kuwait against Iraqi aggression during Operation Vantage in 1961 and deploying with the Far East Fleet to support Malaysia during the confrontation with Indonesia, a passage through the Sunda Strait in 1964 causing genuine diplomatic tension, before successfully trialling American F-4 Phantom jets in 1966.

A Fire, and a Sudden End

On 11 November 1967, a fire broke out in the chief petty officers' mess during refit preparations, killing one sailor and hospitalising two more, a loss this account acknowledges honestly. Though the damage itself was limited, the incident coincided with sweeping defence cuts and the decision to phase out fixed-wing naval aviation, and Victorious's captain reportedly learned that she would not recommission just one day before the scheduled ceremony. She was paid off in 1968, sold to British Shipbreakers and towed to Faslane on 13 July 1969 for scrapping.