HMS Furious was initially a Courageous class
battlecruiser, commissioned in June 1917. She was modified and became an
aircraft carrier while under construction. Her forward turret was removed
and a flight deck was added in its place, so that aircraft had to
manoeuvre around the superstructure to land. Later in the war, the ship had her
rear turret removed and a second flight deck installed aft of the
superstructure. Furious was
briefly laid up after WWI before she was reconstructed with a full-length
flight deck in the early 1920s.
After
her conversion, Furious was used extensively for trials of
naval aircraft and later as a training carrier once the new armoured carriers
like Ark Royal entered service in the late 1930s. During the
early months of WWII she spent her time hunting for German raiders in the
North Atlantic and escorting convoys. This changed dramatically during the
Norwegian Campaign in early 1940 when her aircraft provided air support to
British troops ashore in addition to attacking German shipping. The first of
what would be a large number of aircraft ferry missions was made by the carrier
during the campaign. After the withdrawal of British troops in May, Furious made
several anti-shipping strikes in Norway with little result before beginning a
steady routine of ferrying aircraft for the RAF.
Furious began to ferry
aircraft to Gibraltar in 1941. Furious was given a
lengthy refit in the United States and spent a few months training after her
return in April 1942. She made several more ferry trips in mid-1942 before her
aircraft attacked airfields in Vichy French Algeria as part of the opening
stages of the invasion of North Africa in November 1942. The ship
remained in the Mediterranean until February 1943 when she was transferred to
the Home Fleet.
Furious spent most of
1943 training, but made a number of attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz and
other targets in Norway during the first half of 1944. By September 1944, the
ship was showing her age and she was placed in reserve. Furious was
decommissioned in April 1945, but was not sold for scrap until 1948
6 x 4 ins PHOTO