HMS Glorious

1940

Norway, Scharnhorst's 11-inch guns, Ardent and Acasta charging Location: Norwegian Sea, 200 nmi west of Harstad, Norway · Coordinates: 69.00°N 4.25°E · Casualties: 1,519 · Survivors: 42 · Depth: 460 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Intercepted off northern Norway on 8 June 1940 by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in clear weather. Had failed to launch search aircraft, had her boilers cold for economy, and was surprised at 50 nautical miles. Her escorts HMS Ardent and HMS Acasta were destroyed within an hour; Scharnhorst's 11-inch shells then reached Glorious at 24,000 metres. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: aircraft carrier · Courageous class · Tonnage: 22,500 tons · Crew: 1561 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1916 Royal Navy aircraft carrier, returning from the Norwegian campaign with a deck of Hurricane fighters. Intercepted off northern Norway on 8 June 1940 by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in clear weather; her two destroyer escorts charged the battleships to lay smoke but were destroyed, and Scharnhorst's 11-inch shells reached the Glorious from 24,000 metres. 1,519 dead of 1,561 aboard. The last engagement in naval history in which a battleship sank an aircraft carrier by gunfire. The Vessel HMS Glorious was originally a Courageous-class "large light cruiser" of the Royal Navy, laid down at Harland and Wolff in Belfast on 1 May 1915 as part of Admiral Jacky Fisher's late-war "Baltic Project" of ships designed to force the Danish Straits. The Baltic Project never happened; Fisher was replaced; the ships were completed with little operational function. Glorious and her sisters Courageous and Furious were rebuilt as aircraft carriers during the interwar period as the Royal Navy experimented with naval aviation. Glorious's conversion was carried out at Devonport between 1924 and 1930; she emerged as a full-deck aircraft carrier of 22,500 tons, capable of operating 48 aircraft. She served through the 1930s in the Home and Mediterranean Fleets, participating in the International Naval demonstration at Corfu in 1923 and in the Royal Navy Jubilee Review of 1935. She was the fleet's principal carrier in the Mediterranean in the mid-1930s. By 1939 she was one of seven fleet carriers in Royal Navy service, with an operational record of solid but unremarkable peacetime service. Her master at the beginning of the war was Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes, a former submarine officer who had transferred to the surface fleet in 1925 and had joined Glorious in May 1939. He had no prior aircraft carrier experience. His relationship with his air staff became a source of friction from the outset: he believed carrier flying was excessively cautious, and he dismissed at sea Commander Slessor The Disaster The two ships were the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, sortieing from Trondheim under Admiral Wilhelm Marschall on Operation Juno, a raiding mission against the Allied evacuation force at Narvik. They had engaged and sunk the British oiler Oil Pioneer and the trawler Juniper earlier in the day. The sighting of Glorious at 17:00 on 8 June 1940 was the moment Marschall had been hoping for: an isolated British carrier at long range, in clear weather. Scharnhorst opened fire from 24,000 metres at 17:30. Glorious was almost immediately bracketed by 11-inch shells. Captain D'Oyly-Hughes had no fighters airborne, no strike aircraft ready to launch, and no tactical option beyond fleeing under smoke. Ardent and Acasta made an attempt to lay smoke between the German battleships and the carrier; the smoke was blown away faster than it could be generated in the fresh conditions. Ardent was overwhelmed by Scharnhorst's 11-inch fire at 18:00 and sank at 18:25 with 152 of her 160 crew lost. Glorious was hit in the hangar deck by the fourth German salvo, ignited her aircraft and their fuel, and was burning uncontrollably by 18:30. She was hit successively on the main deck, in the engine room, and in the bridge; the bridge hit killed Captain D'Oyly-Hughes and most of his staff. She settled by the bow and capsized at 19:10. Acasta, the surviving British destroyer, made a torpedo attack from 15,000 metres as the German battleships were finishing Glorious. Her torpedoes struck Scha