BY AIR AND SEA VICTORIOUS HMS VICTORIOUS
In the final hours of 24 May 1941 a squadron of Swordfish torpedo bombers flew off the flight deck of the brand-new aircraft carrier HMS Victorious and disappeared into a leaden sky. Their mission was to avenge the battlecruiser Hood, lost in action with the German battleship Bismarck earlier that day. In the face of intensive anti-aircraft fire, the Swordfish attack failed to inflict a decisive hit. It was, nonetheless, a brave effort from a ship that had only been delivered weeks before and a foretaste of a long and active career.
AN INNOVATIVE DESIGN
Victorious was one of the Royal Navy’s armoured Illustrious class aircraft carriers designed by the Admiralty in the run-up to World War II. It was recognised that carriers operating in the confined waters of the Mediterranean and North Sea would be particularly vulnerable to attack by land-based aircraft.
These attacks could not be reliably intercepted by carrier-based fighters at a time when sea-based radar was in the early stages of development. It was therefore decided that
