Cavendish was laid down at the
Harland & Wolff shipyard in
Belfast on 26 June 1916 and
launched on 17 January 1918. In June she was renamed
Vindictive, the fifth ship of that name in the RN, to perpetuate the name of the old
protected cruiser , which had distinguished herself in the
Zeebrugge Raid of April 1918 and had then been sunk as a
blockship at
Ostend in May. She commissioned on 1 October and, after briefly
working up, joined the Grand Fleet's Flying Squadron on 18 October only a few weeks before the
Armistice on 11 November. For the rest of the year she conducted flying trials and exercises, including those of the
Port Victoria Grain Griffin reconnaissance aircraft, of which two were lost in accidents. The only landing aboard the ship was made by
William Wakefield on 1 November in the fleet's last operational
Sopwith Pup. Experiments conducted earlier aboard the larger , with a similarly intact superstructure and funnels, had demonstrated that the turbulence from these was enough to make successful landings almost impossible at high speed. Wakefield minimised the problem by approaching the landing deck at an angle with the ship slowly moving.
Vindictive was dispatched to the
Baltic with a dozen aircraft, a mix of Griffins,
Sopwith 2F.1 Ship Camel fighters,
Sopwith 1½ Strutter and
Short Type 184 bombers, on 2 July 1919 to participate in the
British campaign in the Baltic in support of the
White Russians and the newly independent Baltic states. On 6 July she
ran aground on a
shoal near
Reval at speed. Stuck hard in the
tideless Baltic, all of her fuel was dumped overboard, and most of her ammunition as well. Some of stores were also off-loaded, but the ship could not be towed free by the combined efforts of the
light cruisers and and three
tugboats. Eight days after grounding a fortuitous westerly wind began that raised the water level by , just enough to pull the ship free. Unbeknownst to the British the entire operation had taken place in a
minefield. The carrier unloaded her air group, commanded by
Major Grahame Donald, at
Koivisto, Finland on 14 July. Their airfield was still under construction, but they were able to fly a reconnaissance mission over the major
Bolshevik naval base at Kronstadt on 26 July while
Vindictive sailed to
Copenhagen, Denmark, to load aircraft and spares left for her by the carrier . Four days later,
Rear Admiral Walter Cowan ordered Donald and his aircraft to attack Kronstadt at night. As their airfield was not yet finished, the ship's flying-off deck was extended to to better allow the bombers to take off with their bombs. Accurate
anti-aircraft fire kept the aircraft too high for an effective attack, but Donald's men claimed two hits on the
submarine tender Pamiat Azova. In reality one bomb struck the
oil tanker Tatiana, setting it on fire and killing one man. That same day eight RN
Coastal Motor Boat (CMB)s arrived;
Vindictive served as their
depot ship.
Vindictives aircraft continued to support British operations against the Bolsheviks until they left the Baltic in December, although no further missions were flown from the carrier. They shot down a
helium-filled
observation balloon and spotted for ships conducted
shore bombardments. Most importantly, nine of them attacked Kronstadt during the night of 17/18 August 1919 to provide a diversion for an attack by the CMBs on ships in Kronstadt harbour. As a result, the torpedo boats damaged the
battleship and sank
Pamiat Azova. In subsequent attacks on Kronstadt, they nearly hit
Andrei Pervozvanny while she was in
drydock, nearly hit a
minesweeper, killing one crewman from the explosion, and hit two
auxiliary ships. By December it was clear that the Whites' offensive against
Petrograd had failed and the British began withdrawing;
Vindictive left three Camels in Latvia, embarked the rest of her aircraft and sailed for home on 22 December. She was paid off into reserve at
Portsmouth Dockyard on 24 December and received permanent repairs of her damage from the grounding, at a cost of £200,000.
Furious and
Vindictive had proven that the idea of "cruiser-carriers" was unworkable due to the turbulence from their superstructures and that a complete flight deck was necessary to successfully operate aircraft at sea. The Admiralty had considered converting her to that configuration, with an
island, in July 1918 while still building, but had decided to wait on the results of tests conducted with
Argus evaluating different designs for the island.
Vindictive was thought to be too small to be an effective carrier and the financial restrictions in place after the war vitiated against such a major reconstruction.
As cruiser For the next several years the ship was either in reserve or used as a
troop transport, until she began reconversion into a cruiser at
Chatham Dockyard on 1 March 1923. The
flight decks were removed and she was mostly restored to her designed configuration, although her 3-inch AA guns were replaced by three
QF 4 inch Mk V AA guns. Two of these were mounted on a platform between the aft funnel and the mainmast and the third gun was positioned on the quarterdeck between the two 7.5-inch guns. The major exception was that No. 2 7.5-inch gun was not installed and she retained her hangar in the forward superstructure. The two derricks that serviced the hangar were replaced by a single
crane on the starboard side of the hangar roof. No. 2's position was occupied by a
prototype compressed-air Carey
aircraft catapult, the first British cruiser to mount a catapult.
Vindictive used it for the first time on 3 October when she launched a
Fairey IIID
floatplane. She also conducted catapult trials on float-equipped
Fairey Flycatcher fighters. She sailed for the China Station on 1 January 1926 with six Fairey IIIDs aboard for anti-piracy patrols and departed for home on 14 March 1928. She arrived in May and her catapult was removed in October, ending her career as an aviation ship.
Vindictive was again reduced to reserve in 1929, making occasional trooping voyages. In July 1935 the ship was briefly sailed from her reserve mooring to join in the
King George V's Silver Jubilee Fleet Review held on the 15th.
As training ship In 1936–1937,
Vindictive was demilitarised in accordance with the terms of the
London Naval Treaty and converted to a training ship for cadets. Her two inboard propellers were removed as were the inboard turbines; half of her boilers were removed and their compartments were converted into accommodation. The aft funnel was removed, the aft superstructure remodelled and enlarged and her hangar converted into more accommodation space. Her armament, including the above-water torpedo tubes, was replaced by a pair of guns forward and a quadruple
QF 2-pounder ("pom-pom") AA mount aft. In this form she displaced and was capable of a maximum speed of . She was recommissioned on 7 September 1937. The conversion was completed on 30 March 1940, just in time for the ship to be used with the Home Fleet as a troop transport during the Norwegian Campaign. She ferried British troops to
Narvik in late April and escorted an
evacuation convoy from
Harstad on 4 June.
Vindictive was transferred to the South Atlantic later in the year and remained there until late 1942, when she was ordered north. She remained with the
Mediterranean Fleet until 1944, when she was recalled to support the ships participating in
Operation Overlord. During this time she received her first
radars. By August 1943 she mounted a
Type 286 target indication set as well as a Type 285 anti-aircraft gunnery radar. By January 1944 she had received a
Type 291 air warning radar. Her light AA armament had also been augmented by six
Oerlikon 20 mm autocannon, three on each side of the roof of the large workshop abaft the funnel. In 1944
Vindictive was converted into a destroyer depot ship and her AA armament was reinforced by the addition of six more Oerlikons. Later that year, the 4-inch guns were removed and eight additional Oerlikons were added. In early August 1944, the ship was damaged by a long-range, circling, "Dackel" torpedo dropped by the
Luftwaffe off the coast of
Normandy. In 1945 she received an additional six Oerlikons. She was paid off into reserve on 8 September 1945 and was sold for scrap on 24 January 1946.
Vindictive was subsequently broken up at
Blyth. ==Notes==