Ark Royal to be scrapped.

I wonder if it will be scrapped in Alang. They could use the money they’d get from dismantling another aircraft carrier.;)

No, she has been purchased by Leyal Ship Recycling of Turkey, and will ba scrapped in the same Turkish facility in Izmir that is scrapping HMS Invincible as we speak!
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/defence/mod-confirms-ark-royal-to-be-scrapped-1-4244563

There is little reason for this choice (other than pure money), as there is a ship-scrapping industry in both Europe and the UK that is perfectly capable of handling her! In my opinion, the return to the UK in taxes, wages, and the economic boost from supporting the work and workers should have been taken into account (but wasn’t).

HMS Fearless (LPD) was scrapped in Ghent, Belgium by Van Heyghen Recycling from October 2007 onwards.

HMS Intrepid (LPD) was scrapped by Leavesley International in Liverpool, UK starting in September 2008*.

The French carrier Clemenceau has been scrapped by Able UK’s Teesside Environmental Reclamation & Recycling Centre, Graythorp, Hartlepool, commencing 19 November 2009 and completing by the end of 2010.

As Clem was longer, wider, and heavier than Ark Royal, there is no reason why Ark (or Invincible) should have had to leave the UK as anything other than loads of cut-up steel.

* Daily Mail article from January 2009 with photos

I wonder if it will be scrapped in Alang. They could use the money they’d get from dismantling another aircraft carrier.;)

And the second HMS Ark Royal was renamed HMS Pegasus when the third one was building.

Not forgetting that HMS Hermes was originally HMS Elephant!!

Steve

I wouldn’t be surprised if PoW becomes Ark Royal. Remember the current Ark Royal was going to be Indomitable. They can’t rename QE as she is lead of class but the second ship being renamed would save some face.

HMS Eagle was originally to be called HMS Audacious and she was nameship of her class.

I would have rather Invincible be saved over these two, it has more meaning for national pride, *******ing politicians!!!!

Yup.

I don’t understand this obsession with the name Ark Royal. The original was famous in her time, but so were other ships whose names have dropped out of use, so that’s no explanation. The second one, centuries later, was a carrier conversion from a merchant ship, & had a respectable but unspectacular career before being renamed to make way for number three, which achieved much in her wartime career, but which seems to have caught the public imagination more for incorrect German claims to have sunk her than for anything else. And she was, of course, sunk eventually, in 1941.

I suspect that’s the origin of the Ark Royal myth: two years of not being sunk despite several near misses & German claims, reinforced by post-war television programmes featuring her successor. Personally, I don’t think that justifies the mythic status of the name, & I’d be perfectly happy to see it go the way of Royal Sovereign, a name which has been attached to more ships, at least two of which had glorious careers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if PoW becomes Ark Royal. Remember the current Ark Royal was going to be Indomitable. They can’t rename QE as she is lead of class but the second ship being renamed would save some face.

When I hear ‘Ark Royal’ it always conjures up images of Phantoms, Buccaneers and Gannets – to me the other one seems brand new!

I would have rather Invincible be saved over these two, it has more meaning for national pride, *******ing politicians!!!!

No, the only thing the MOD is promising is to “try” to preserve her.

Apparently Lusty is being preserved in some form though when she goes out of service in 2014.

There was a fantastically whimsical concept, by a developer by the name of Nicholas Tubbs, to convert her into a heliport/tourist attraction moored up in East London near the City Airport.

This piece would seem to suggest that the UKs political bureaucracy has, once again, proven the most implacable foe RN vessels face and that plan is sunk.

I thought she had already been turned into tin cans ! So she lives……sort of !