HMS Warrior (R31): The Carrier With a Rubber Flight Deck

The Last of Her Class

HMS Warrior was built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, laid down on 12 December 1942 and launched on 20 May 1944, becoming the final Colossus-class light fleet carrier to complete construction as the war drew to a close.

Too Cold for Canada

Warrior was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy, commissioning as HMCS Warrior on 24 January 1946, but her equipment proved poorly suited to the harsh cold of the North Atlantic, lacking adequate heating for reliable operation. Judged unsuitable for Canadian service, she was returned to the Royal Navy in March 1948, a rare case of a warship being sent back for simply being the wrong fit for the climate.

A Particularly Strange Experiment

Back in British service, Warrior took part in one of the more unusual experiments in naval aviation history, trialling a flexible rubber flight deck between November 1948 and March 1949 to test whether aircraft with their landing gear removed could land safely by simply belly-flopping onto a giant rubber mat, a bold if ultimately impractical idea born of postwar efforts to squeeze more aircraft onto smaller carriers.

The Only Angled Deck in Her Class

Between 1955 and 1956, Warrior received a five-degree angled flight deck for trials, making her the only Colossus-class carrier ever to receive the upgrade, part of the broader revolution in carrier design that the angled deck concept brought to naval aviation worldwide.

Headquarters Ship for Britain's Hydrogen Bomb Tests

In 1957, Warrior served as headquarters ship during Operation Grapple, Britain's hydrogen bomb tests at Christmas Island, equipped with helicopters and aircraft used to collect radioactive samples in the aftermath of the detonations, a striking and significant Cold War role for a carrier already well into her second decade of service.

Sold to Argentina

Declared surplus by the late 1950s, Warrior was sold to Argentina in 1958, renamed ARA Independencia and commissioned into Argentine service on 8 July 1959. She moved into reserve in 1970 and was finally scrapped in 1971, closing out a career that had taken her from the frigid North Atlantic to the irradiated waters off Christmas Island.