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HMS Furious (British Aircraft Carrier, 1917-1948)

HMS Furious was laid down as a battle-cruiser but became operational as an aircraft carrier in 1917 by removal of her forward gun-turret. The Royal Navy’s contributions to the development of the aircraft carrier are often cited — from the development of HMS Furious, the world’s first carrier, to the armored flight deck that proved its worth in both the Mediterranean and in later withstanding Japanese kamikaze attacks in the Pacific War, and culminating in the angled deck and mirror landing system in the post-war period.

On 2 March 1911, three Royal Navy officers and one Marine officer began taking flying instruction given by a civilian enthusiast. The first of the four to solo was Lt. Charles R. Samson who, in the next ten years, built a distinguished reputation for being a flamboyant man of action. In 1912, Horace Short produced Britain’s first seaplane (Churchill has been credited with coining this oneword description of the aircraft) and it was successfully flown by Samson. Only months earlier, Samson demonstrated the potentials of naval aviation when in December 1911, he testlaunched a Short S.27 biplane from rail platforms on the foredeck of HMS Africa while the warship was atanchor at Chatham. He made a safe landing alongside, using flotation bags strapped to the wheels of his plane.

In the summer months of 1914, Prime Minister Lloyd George appointed Winston Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty. Aviation fascinated Churchill. He flew at every opportunity and encouraged the development of aircraft for the Navy’s use. In this respect, he was militant. In a series of sudden decisions, Churchill immediately called out of retirement brilliant Lord Fisher, a cantankerous admiral who advocated great changes in the Royal Navy. He was made First Sea Lord. At that time, Great Britain had only one vessel that could even remotely be referred to as an aircraft carrier, the Hermes. Her wartime activity was cut short, however. On the evening of 30 October 1914, she was torpedoed and sunk. Fortunately, most of her crew survived.

Fisher’s “Hush! Hush!” ships have fascinated naval architects and historians since they were uncovered. Officially described as large light cruisers, all three were eventually converted into carriers, Courageous and Glorious after the war. Originally, they were built as cruisers of a sort under the war emergency program. These ships are probably the most controversial and criticised ships to serve in any navy. Conceived by Admiral Fisher to support his plan for an attack on the German coast along the shallow waters of Baltic, they had a shallow draft and high speed. The class used turrets ordered for cancelled battleships of the 1914 programme built rather than use them on a conventional battlecruiser they were used on these Large Light Cruisers - necessary to get around a ban by the British cabinet on the construction of new capital ships.

Until the Japanese monster battleships of the Yamato class in World War II, Fisher's HMS Furious had the distinction of mounting the world's largest naval guns. With only two 18-inch instead of her sisters' four 15-inch, however, it is unlikely that she would ever have hit a moving target, while trials with the after mounting strained her fragile hull. Known as 'Outrageous' throughout the Grand Fleet, the Courageous Class were really enormous light cruisers. Their battleship armament was ineffective - even four guns were not enough for adequate spotting. In a cruiser clash in November 1917 Courageous and Glorious fired nearly 400 rounds but achieved no hits.

"Ships of the Royal Navy" describes them as white elephants. “In design,” it states, “they suffer from being too strong and too weak. For light cruiser work, they are ludicrously overgunned, while the absence of armour precludes their being employed as battlecruisers.” Apparently, the First Sea Lord wanted powerfully armed ships of high speed, capable of navigating very shallow waters.

Furious was, by stages, converted as an aircraft carrier - as were Courageous and Glorious - releasing three barrels (one was a spare) for alternative service. Before Furious was commissioned in July 1917, she underwent the first of several conversions and emerged from the shipyard initially as an awkward-looking aircraft carrier.

Advances in British naval aviation were rapid in the closing years of the war. In 1917 HMS Furious added the world's first operational flight deck to her forward superstructure. HMS Furious, a 19,513-ton aircraft carrier, was built at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. Begun as a light battle cruiser (or "large light cruiser") of modified Courageous class, she was modified in the latter stages of construction and completed in July 1917 with a single 18-inch gun aft and an aircraft launching platform forward. HMS Furious was refitted with a flying deck that was 228 feet long and 50 wide. Hangars beneath held seaplanes and landplanes.

Once Furious joined the fleet, experiments on landing aircraft aboard were conducted. The first attempt was successful, though unorthodox; no mechanical arresting gear was used. On 2 August 1917, Squadron Commander Dunning landed a Sopwith Pup biplane on HMS Furious in Scapa Flow. It was the first time an aircraft had touched down on the deck of a moving ship and marked the dawn of aviation from aircraft carriers. On deck, handlers grasped hold of lines from the plane’s wingtips as soon as the motor was cut and the plane was skidding to a stop. In the next attempt two days later, a tire burst upon touchdown, the plane folded over the side, and pilot E. H. Dunning was killed. Further studies were conducted and a primitive arresting arrangement was installed, along with netting to protect the ship’s bridge.

Dunning's death helped convince the Admiralty that Furious needed a landing deck aft. Furious went back to the yards where she was fitted with a 300-foot landing deck in place of her 18-inch guns. Another hangar for 10 aircraft was provided under this deck. To facilitate the fore and aft movement of aircraft from landing to takeoff platforms, the shipyard installed a trackway around both sides of the ship's funnels and superstructure. This trackway worked satisfactorily but now the pilot who landed aft had a short landing platform. An even more serious drawback was the presence of hot stack gasses, from the tunnels over the landing platform, which produced hazardous air currents during recovery operations. pilots found that these air currents were very difficult to deal with. On 19 July 1918 the British conducted the first carrier strike in history. Seven planes took off from the HMS Furious and attacked Zeppelin sheds at Tondern, Germany. The planes, however, had to ditch in the ocean because the Furious’ deck was not set up for landing. Three of the planes landed in Denmark, three ditched in the sea near Furious where they rested on air bags until picked up by destroyers, and one vanished without a trace. Nevertheless the attack on Tondern destroyed two Zeppelins in their sheds and demonstrated the power of a true air strike from the sea. Furious was a big step in the development of the aircraft carrier.

After several months' experience with the Grand Fleet, she was further modified. With the completion of that work in March 1919, Furious returned to the North Sea, providing important experience in the operation of combat landplanes at sea. On 19 July 1918, she launched a historic air strike that destroyed two enemy airships and their support facilities at Tondern, in northern Germany. A month earlier, in another historic incident, she had used both anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft to thwart an attack by German seaplanes. Following the end of the Great War, the carrier operated in the Baltic Sea.

Her wartime aircraft landing arrangements having proved very unsatisfactory, Furious was laid up in reserve in late 1919. After futher experience with other aircraft carriers, she was massively reconstructed, emerging in August 1925 as a 22,450-ton ship with upper and lower hangars, topped by a long flight deck clear of obstructions, with a shorter aircraft launching deck at the bow. This configuration established a pattern for other British and Japanese aircraft carriers of that era. The British equated carrier capacity to hangar size. In one US Navy analysis, the Furious and her two half-sisters were credited with 72 aircraft, whereas their rated capacities were 36 for Furious and 54 for Courageous and Glorious — and even that was considered extreme.

Furious operated actively through the inter-war years, continuing her pioneering work as a platform for developing seagoing aviation techniques and combat doctrine, as those applied to the situations confronting the Royal Navy. In the later 1930s, her small forward aircraft flying-off deck was converted to a gun platorm and she was refitted with a small "island" superstructure amidships on the starboard side of the upper flight deck.

Through the first five years of World War II, Furious served with the Home Fleet in the Atlantic area, operating against the threat of German U-boats. At 0400 on 11 Apr 1940, 18 Swordfish aircraft from 816 and 818 Squadrons took off from her flight deck, intending to attack German cruiser Hipper and four destroyers with 1,700 troops onboard in Trondheimsfjord, Norway, however Hipper and one of the destroyers had already sailed out to sea; all torpedoes expended failed to hit the two remaining destroyers, but all returned to Furious safely.

HMS Furious was active in one of the first efforts to help the Soviet Union after it had been invaded by Hitler's armies in the summer of 1941. The Royal Navy dispatched a task force to strike at German forces in two key ports in Nazi-occupied Norway close to the Soviet border: Petsamo and Kirkenes. The two-dozen aircraft launched by Furious found the harbour at Petsamo almost empty of shipping, but the attackers claimed a small steamer sunk and several jetties smashed. One Albacore bomber and two Fulmars were lost.

She was then transferred to the Mediterranean Sea and participated in several convoy missions to Malta. After refitting in the United States, she took part in the Operation Torch landings in November 1942. In 1943, she attacked German naval forces in Norway.

By mid-war, she was quite elderly, limited in capabilities, and required continual maintenance. In the period from the Belfast air-raids of 1941 until a year later, Royal Navy carrier strength was reduced from six to three. Harland and Wolff’s Formidable (launched October 31, 1940, gross tonnage 28,095) Furious, and Victorious were still active. In 1941-1942 HMS Furious played a crucial role in the defence of Malta and in battles near the North Cape supporting convoys to Murmansk. HMS Furious was in Belfast Lough undergoing repairs following her role in destroying 10 German destroyers and one cruiser prior to the Battle of Britain.

She took part in an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in April 1944. Because of the progression of the European War, the need for naval forces in west was dramatically reduced after the successful conclusion of the Normandy Campaign; therefore, the venerable Furious, now nearing obsolescence, was placed in reserve in September 1944.

After post-war employment in target trials, HMS Furious was sold for scrapping in January 1948.