Fate of The Class
All four early ships were hard worked during WWII, with Illustrious and Formidable suffering and surviving heavy damage. Like their contemporary USS Enterprise they fought a long and consuming war and despite significant overhauls and repair of battle damage, were worn out by 1946 and were scrapped in the mid-1950s. Due to a variety of factors including Britain's dire post war finances, and the consequent reductions in the size of the Royal Navy post war modernization was limited to just the last of the class; Victorious, which after an eight year long and very expensive reconstruction (to enable her to operate Cold War-era jet aircraft), was retired in 1968 after a minor fire. Indomitable was given an extensive refit, including new boilers, from 1948 to 1950, then served as flagship of the Homefleet and also saw service in the Mediterranean. She suffered a hangar deck petrol explosion and fire in early 1953. She was placed in reserve after Queen Elizabeth II's October 1953 Coronation Review and was then scrapped in 1955.
Read more about this topic: Illustrious Class Aircraft Carrier
Famous quotes containing the words fate of, fate and/or class:
“Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy who can no longer threaten us!”
—Pierre Corneille (1606–1684)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)