--HMS Ark Royal 1938--

The first ship to be described by the New York Times as a supercarrier was HMS Ark Royal in 1938; with a length of 685ft and a displacement of 22,000 tons, she was designed to carry 72 aircraft. In 1943 the superlative was transferred to the 45,000-ton carriers of the Midway class, as a step-up from the 27,000-ton Essex class. The post-war standard for supercarriers was set by the proposed USS United States and USS Forrestal.
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HMS Ark Royal (pennant number 91) was an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that served in the Second World War. She was torpedoed on 13 November 1941 by the German submarine U-81 and sank the following day.
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Designed in 1934 to fit the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty, Ark Royal was built by Cammell Laird and Company, Ltd. at Birkenhead, England.
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Completed in November 1938, she served in some of the most active naval theatres of the Second World War, and was involved in the first aerial and U-boat kills of the war, operations off Norway, the search for the German battleship Bismarck, and the Malta Convoys. Ark Royal survived several near misses and gained a reputation as a 'lucky ship'. The Germans incorrectly reported her as sunk on multiple occasions.
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Her design differed differed from previous aircraft carriers. Ark Royal was the first ship on which the hangars and flight deck were an integral part of the hull, instead of an add-on or part of the superstructure. Designed to carry a large number of aircraft, she had two hangar deck levels. She served during a period that first saw the extensive use of naval air power; a number of carrier tactics were developed and refined aboard Ark Royal.
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Her sinking was the subject of several inquiries; investigators keen to know how the carrier was lost, given there were efforts to save the ship and tow her to the naval base at Gibraltar. They found several design flaws contributed to the loss, which were rectified in new British carriers. Although recorded as sinking 22 nautical miles (41 km) from Gibraltar, Ark Royal was located in December 2002, approximately 30 nautical miles (56 km) from Gibraltar.
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~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercarrier
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~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ark_Royal_(91)