HMS Invincible (R05) (Rosyth)

United Kingdom / Scotland / Rosyth
 historical layer / disappeared object  Add category
HMS Invincible was a British light aircraft carrier, the lead ship of three in her class in the Royal Navy. She was launched on 3 May 1977 and is the seventh ship to carry the name. She saw action in the Falklands War when she was deployed with HMS Hermes, she took over as flagship of the British fleet when Hermes was sold to India. Invincible was also deployed in Yugoslavia and Iraq. She was decommissioned in 2005. In February 2011 she was sold to Turkish Leyal Ship Recycling.

Invincible was built at Barrow-in-Furness by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering. She was laid down in 1973 and launched on 3 May 1977. On 11 July 1980 she was commissioned and joined the fleet's other carriers Hermes and Bulwark in service.

On 6 June 2005 the Ministry of Defence announced that Invincible would be inactive until 2010, available for reactivation at 18 months' notice. She was decommissioned on 3 August 2005, only 20 months after an extensive modernization/refit which had been intended to give her ten more years of service. Illustrious succeeded Invincible as the service's flagship. The Royal Navy maintained that Invincible could have been deployed had the need arose and that navy policy assumed that she was still an active aircraft carrier. According to Jane's, however, because she was stripped of some parts for her sisters it would require not only 18 months but also the removal of systems from the other ships to bring her to a state of operational readiness.

In March 2010, she was tied up and minimally maintained with other decommissioned ships up-river of the Portsmouth Naval Base. Invincible was struck off the Naval Reserve List on 10 September 2010, and offered for sale by the Disposal Services Authority from December 2010, with tenders due by 5 January 2011-08-02.

On 8 January 2011 the British press announced an earlier report in the South China Morning Post that a £5 million bid had been made for the ship by the UK-based Chinese businessman Lam Kin-bong, who planned to moor the vessel at Zhuhai or Liverpool as a floating international school - doubts were raised as to whether this sale would go ahead, in the light of the EU arms embargo on China and of China's possible re-arming of other old carriers such as the former Russian Varyag. BBC News reported on 8 February 2011 that the Ministry of Defence had announced the sale of Invincible to Leyal Ship Recycling in Turkey. She was towed out of Portsmouth on Thursday 24 March and arrived at Leyal's Aliağa yard on 12 April 2011 to be broken up.

Alas a history of veritable vincibility ? see wikipedia article for further details and references.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Invincible_(R05)
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   56°1'31"N   3°26'56"W

Comments

  • Wikipedia, has this as the illustrious, on refit, the strange part of this is the Deck code for this carrier. Below describes what the deck code is and what it is for some royal navy ships Aircraft carriers and vessels operating aircraft have a deck code painted on the flight deck to aid identification by aircraft attempting to land. This is in a position clearly visible on the approach path. The Royal Navy uses a single letter (typically the first letter of the ship's name) for aircraft carriers and large vessels operating aircraft, and pairs of letters (usually letters from the ship's name) for smaller vessels. The United States Navy, with its larger fleet, uses the numeric part of the hull classification number (a system analogous to pennant numbers). Deck codes used by contemporary major British naval warships include: * RFA Argus — AS * HMS Albion — AB * HMS Bulwark — BK * HMS Ocean — O * HMS Invincible — N * HMS Illustrious — L * HMS Ark Royal — R * HMS Intrepid — ID * HMS Edinburgh — EB * HMS York — YK * HMS Manchester — MR According to this the Illustrious is "L", but the ship in dock is sporting "N", for Invincible. Can anyone describe this
  • Surely. I'll give it a go. Clearly the original author checked neither the ship's identifying markings, nor even the correct date of the current default GE satellite image, which is 31 Dec 2005, not 2003.
This article was last modified 6 years ago