in January 1970
Eagle started
Sea trials on 31 October 1951, with initial flying trials starting on 14 February 1952 and the ship being accepted into service on 1 March 1952. In early 1953
Eagle visited the Mediterranean, before returning to home waters when in June she took part in the
Fleet Review at
Spithead to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She joined the Mediterranean Fleet in February 1954, before returning to British waters in May.
Eagles first wartime service came in 1956, when she took part in the
Suez Crisis with Captain H C D MacLean, DSC in command. The ship's aircraft of that period included
Westland Wyverns,
Douglas Skyraiders,
Hawker Sea Hawks and
de Havilland Sea Venoms.
Rebuild AEW of 849 Naval Air Squadron
Fleet Air Arm overflying HMS
Eagle in the early 1970s The
Admiralty had originally planned to give
Eagle a complete rebuild on the lines of , but due to high costs, plans to fit new geared steam turbines and a stretched hull were abandoned.
Eagle was instead given a more austere but extensive modernization that provided greater radar and processing capability than the systems fitted to
Victorious. The changes included major improvements to the accommodation, including the installation of air conditioning. The island was completely rebuilt and a 3D
Type 984 radar was installed, with processing capacity to
track and rank 100 targets, twice the capability of the early 984 system fitted to
Hermes and
Victorious. The flight deck was modified and included a new 2½ inch armoured deck with a full 8.5 degree angle, two new steam catapults (BS5s, stroke on the port side forward and stroke in the waist) were fitted as well as new arrester gear (DAX I) and mirror sights. As well as an overhaul of the DC electrical systems, AC generators were also fitted to give additional power. It was decided that
Eagle would have her anti-aircraft guns removed and replaced by the
Seacat missile system, though her aft four 4.5 inch gun turrets were retained, and all of her original machinery and equipment would be fully overhauled. In 1959
Eagle entered Devonport Dockyard to begin this extensive refit, and by May 1964 it was complete. Standard displacement had increased to around 44,100 tons (full load displacement was 54,100 tons) and
Eagle was now the largest aircraft carrier in the Royal Navy. Total cost of the refit was £31 million. The refit was intended to extend her operational life for another 10 years, and she now operated
Blackburn Buccaneer,
de Havilland Sea Vixen,
Supermarine Scimitar and
Fairey Gannet aircraft, but water-cooled jet blast deflectors (needed to operate the RN
Phantom fighters) were not fitted, and therefore the full potential of the ship was not realized. In 1964–1965 it was claimed
Eagle and the proposed
CVA01 and half sized
Hermes would be a viable three carrier fleet until 1980.
Victorious would have been replaced by CVA01 in 1973. In reality the 1958 Royal Navy assessment was that with affordable modernization of the existing carrier fleet, only HMS
Hermes would be effective after 1975, and she was too small. These assessments by the Director of Naval Construction in November 1958 were very accurate, taking into account the slower than expected pace of reconstruction, corrosion of war-built hulls, the obsolete power trains except in
Victorious, and the cheap unsatisfactory mix of DC electrics with AC add-on generators where needed in
Eagle and
Ark Royal.
Refit landing on
Eagle, c.1971 In early 1966
Eagle was refitted at Devonport once more and was fitted with a single DAX II arrestor wire (no.3, her other wires were DAX I). She was recommissioned in 1967.
Eagle was originally intended to receive a further refit that would have enabled her to comfortably operate the
McDonnell Douglas Phantom (she had already successfully operated them in trials). Her two BS5 catapults fitted in her 1959–64 refit were already powerful enough to launch fully laden F-4s, but her Jet Blast Deflectors were still of the older steel plate design, and the reheated exhaust of the Phantom's
Rolls-Royce Spey engines required water-cooled deflector plates. It was also planned to fit
bridle catchers to the catapults as a cost-saving measure, as the bridles would otherwise be lost after a single launch. During the Phantom FG1 trials (involving three newly delivered aircraft operated by 700P NAS) the longer waist catapult was used, and a thick steel plate was chained to the deck behind the catapult to absorb the heat of the Phantom's afterburners. The JBD was not used as it would have been damaged, and after each launch
fire hoses sprayed water on the deck plate to cool it down before the next aircraft could be loaded onto the catapult. While fitting adequate blast deflectors and other minor changes for Phantom operation were estimated to cost no more than £5 million in 1968, refitting the ship to operate with a modern airgroup of Phantoms into the late 1970s was clearly going to cost much more, and the new Conservative government in 1970 confirmed plans to convert to a Commando carrier and withdraw
Eagle. In February 1972, the
Secretary of State for Defence,
Lord Carrington, estimated refitting
Eagle to operate Phantoms would cost £25–30 million, and the overall manpower and cost requirements of operating two large strike carriers were beyond Britain, particularly as
Ark Royal was expected to serve to the end of the 1970s with only two short refits. To preserve
Eagle in maintained or unmaintained reserve would require refits, estimated at around £4 million, every 3–4 years, and maintenance crew of 350–400 Navy personnel for £1.5–2 million a year. Reactivation would take four and a half months to a year, while maintaining a Sea Vixen squadron was unjustified expense for aircraft that were obsolete. The refit of
Ark Royal cost £32 million to allow operations of a fully modern airwing, though it was generally accepted that even after her return to service she considered to be in a significantly worse overall material state in comparison to
Eagle. Of the 48 Phantom FG1s ordered for the FAA, 20 were diverted to the RAF equipping
43 Sqn, though some were loaned back to the Navy to equip the Phantom FG1 training unit
767 NAS which trained both RN and RAF Phantom crews until it was disbanded in 1972.
Decommissioning The 1966 decision to run-down the RN fixed wing carrier fleet (
Centaur had already been laid up as an accommodation ship, and
Victorious was soon to be prematurely scrapped, following a minor fire) meant
Eagles days were numbered.
Eagle was paid off in January 1972 at Portsmouth after 20 years and 4 months of service, and was stripped of reusable equipment (radars and missile systems primarily), after which she was towed to Devonport where she was placed in reserve and moored in a stretch of the
River Tamar known as the
Hamoaze. In 1974, she was released from her moorings, towed up river, and secured in number 10 Dock, Devonport Dockyard, where she was further stripped of essential spares for
Ark Royal, before being towed back to her mooring position. Up until 1976 she was officially still in reserve, but having been exhausted as a source of spares for
Ark Royal,
Eagle was then sold for scrap and towed from Devonport on 14 October 1978 to
Cairnryan near Stranraer to be broken up, clearing her mooring space for her sister and arriving there five days later. The lower hull of
Eagle was still being broken up when her sister
Ark Royal arrived at Cairnryan for demolition on 28 September 1980. One of her anchors (along with one of
Ark Royals) stands guard at the entrance to the
Fleet Air Arm Museum in
Yeovilton. == See also ==