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HMS Vindictive (1918)
Encyclopedia
HMS Vindictive was a Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
warship built between 1916 and 1918. Originally designed as a Hawkins-class
Hawkins class cruiser
The Hawkins class was a class of five heavy cruisers of the Royal Navy designed in 1915 and constructed throughout the First World War. All ships were named after Elizabethan sea captains...
heavy cruiser
Heavy cruiser
The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range, high speed and an armament of naval guns roughly 203mm calibre . The heavy cruiser can be seen as a lineage of ship design from 1915 until 1945, although the term 'heavy cruiser' only came into formal use in 1930...
and laid down under the name Cavendish, she served in several different roles and underwent several conversions in a remarkably varied career that lasted until she was scrapped in 1946.
Design and construction
The design of the Hawkins-class cruisers was finalized in late 1915 and four ships were ordered in December of that year. The fifth and last was ordered in April 1916. As all the class were named after famous Elizabethan seafarers, this fifth ship was named Cavendish after the adventurer and circumnavigator Thomas CavendishThomas Cavendish
Sir Thomas Cavendish was an English explorer and a privateer known as "The Navigator" because he was the first who deliberately tried to emulate Sir Francis Drake and raid the Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and return by circumnavigating the globe...
. She was laid down at the Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
yard of Harland & Wolff in July 1916. Following the promising flight trials aboard in 1917, the Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
decided that Cavendish should be converted and completed as an experimental aircraft carrier
Aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
. She was therefore redesigned with a hangar
Hangar
A hangar is a closed structure to hold aircraft or spacecraft in protective storage. Most hangars are built of metal, but other materials such as wood and concrete are also sometimes used...
on the forecastle
Forecastle
Forecastle refers to the upper deck of a sailing ship forward of the foremast, or the forward part of a ship with the sailors' living quarters...
with capacity for six aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
which could be hoisted through a hatch to the roof, which formed a flying-off deck. This was connected by a catwalk on the port side to a landing-on deck constructed abaft the funnels, while buffer nets prevented overruns that could have collided with the superstructure. Though six aircraft were allowed for, it was found that two fighter
Fighter aircraft
A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...
s and six scout plane
Scout plane
The term scout plane refers to a type of surveillance aircraft, usually of single-engined, two/three seats, shipborne type, and used for the purpose of discovering an enemy position and directing artillery...
s could be carried. The original cruiser armament was reduced to four 7.5 in (190.5 mm) guns. Cavendish was launched on 17 January 1918. In June 1918, she was renamed Vindictive, since it was desired to perpetuate the name of the old Arrogant-class cruiser which had distinguished herself in the Zeebrugge Raid
Zeebrugge Raid
The Zeebrugge Raid, which took place on 23 April 1918, was an attempt by the British Royal Navy to neutralize the key Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge...
of April 1918 and had been sunk as a blockship
Blockship
A blockship is a ship deliberately sunk to prevent a river, channel, or canal from being used.It may either be sunk by a navy defending the waterway to prevent the ingress of attacking enemy forces, as in the case of HMS Hood at Portland Harbour; or it may be brought by enemy raiders and used to...
at Ostend
Second Ostend Raid
The Second Ostend Raid was the latter of two failed attempts made during the spring of 1918 by the United Kingdom's Royal Navy to block the channels accessing the Belgian port of Ostend as a part of their conflict with the German Empire during World War I...
in May.
As aircraft carrier
The modifications had made the ship lighter than the rest of the Hawkins-class, at 9394 LT (9,544.8 t) light displacement. Vindictive completed her trials on 21 September 1918 (ahead of the four other Hawkins-class ships) and achieved a trial speed of 29.12 kn (35.5 mph; 57.1 km/h) with 63600 shp of engine output. She commissioned on 1 October and proceeded to Scapa FlowScapa Flow
right|thumb|Scapa Flow viewed from its eastern endScapa Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, United Kingdom, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay and Hoy. It is about...
to work up, joining the fleet in the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
only a few days before the Armistice
Armistice with Germany (Compiègne)
The armistice between the Allies and Germany was an agreement that ended the fighting in the First World War. It was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not technically a surrender...
. Her first (and apparently only) deck landing did not take place until November.
In July 1919, Vindictive was dispatched to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
with 12 aircraft to support the British activities in the Baltic in support of the White Russians and independent Baltic states. The principal concern was the major Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
naval base at Kronstadt
Kronstadt
Kronstadt , also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt |crown]]" and Stadt for "city"); is a municipal town in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of St. Petersburg, Russia, located on Kotlin Island, west of Saint Petersburg proper near the head of the Gulf of Finland. Population: It is also...
, which protected Petrograd. On 6 July, she ran aground on a shoal near Reval at 15 kn (18.3 mph; 29.4 km/h) and after more than a week was towed clear by tugs and two other cruisers. On 17–18 August 1919, eight aircraft flying from the Vindictive carried out bombing and strafing attacks on gun and searchlight crews protecting the naval base. This diversionary raid distracted the defences and enabled Royal Navy Coastal Motor Boat
Coastal Motor Boat
During the First World War, following a suggestion from three junior officers of the Harwich destroyer force that small motor boats carrying a torpedo might be capable of travelling over the protective minefields and attacking ships of the German Navy at anchor in their bases, the Admiralty gave...
s to attack naval vessels in Kronstadt harbour. As a result, two battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
s and the submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
depot ship
Depot ship
A depot ship is a ship which acts as a mobile or fixed base for other ships and submarines or supports a naval base. Depot ships may be specifically designed for their purpose or be converted from another purpose...
Pamiat Azova were sunk. Vindictive remained in the area until December acting as a "mother ship" for aircraft and the CMBs. She paid off into reserve on 24 December 1919. Her damage from grounding required extensive repairs at Portsmouth Dockyard at a cost of £200,000.(£ as of ), The Admiralty had decided to abandon the idea of separate flying-off and flying-on decks in favour of flush deck carriers, and thus Vindictive was already obsolete in her brief carrier role.
As cruiser
The flight deckFlight deck
The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is the surface from which its aircraft take off and land, essentially a miniature airfield at sea. On smaller naval ships which do not have aviation as a primary mission, the landing area for helicopters and other VTOL aircraft is also referred to as the...
s were removed and Vindictive was reconfigured back to a cruiser
Cruiser
A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...
in 1924. Her appearance still differed from that of her half-sisters in the Hawkins-class as she retained a large hangar as accommodation for four aircraft plus a lattice-type handling crane, and her main armament was six 7.5 in (190.5 mm) guns to their seven. In the Autumn of 1925 she became the first Royal Navy cruiser with aircraft catapult
Aircraft catapult
An aircraft catapult is a device used to launch aircraft from ships—in particular aircraft carriers—as a form of assisted take off. It consists of a track built into the flight deck, below which is a large piston or shuttle that is attached through the track to the nose gear of the aircraft, or in...
gear: her first catapult launch was on 31 October. She served on the China Station until August 1928, then joined the Atlantic Fleet. On 23 July 1929, she suffered an explosion in a gun at Chatham Dockyard
Chatham Dockyard
Chatham Dockyard, located on the River Medway and of which two-thirds is in Gillingham and one third in Chatham, Kent, England, came into existence at the time when, following the Reformation, relations with the Catholic countries of Europe had worsened, leading to a requirement for additional...
in which one man was killed. She paid off into reserve on 30 December 1929. The catapult was then removed. From 1930-1933, she was recommissioned four times in order to make trooping voyages to Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, each round trip taking up to six months, and was then in reserve apart from appearing at the Silver Jubilee Naval Review at Spithead
Spithead
Spithead is an area of the Solent and a roadstead off Gilkicker Point in Hampshire, England. It is protected from all winds, except those from the southeast...
in July 1935.
As training ship
As fleet repair ship
From the summer of 1939-March 1940, Vindictive was converted once more, as a fleet repair ship, her seaplaneSeaplane
A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...
crane and lecturer spaces (easily convertible to machine shops) proving assets. In this role, she had a standard displacement of 10060 LT (10,221.5 t) (full load 12250 LT (12,446.6 t)) and an armament of six 4 in (101.6 mm) AA
Anti-aircraft warfare
NATO defines air defence as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures. It may be to protect naval, ground and air forces...
guns. She served in the Norwegian Campaign
Norwegian Campaign
The Norwegian Campaign was a military campaign that was fought in Norway during the Second World War between the Allies and Germany, after the latter's invasion of the country. In April 1940, the United Kingdom and France came to Norway's aid with an expeditionary force...
with the Home Fleet, then in July 1940 she transferred to Freetown
Freetown
Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean located in the Western Area of the country, and had a city proper population of 772,873 at the 2004 census. The city is the economic, financial, and cultural center of...
, South Africa, serving in the South Atlantic until December 1942. She then moved to Mers el Kebir for a stint in the Mediterranean Fleet until 1944.
As destroyer depot ship
She was converted to her final role at Malta in 1944, departing Malta on 15 October 1944. By December she was serving the flotillas of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. She paid off into reserve in June 1945 and was scrapped at BlythBlyth, Northumberland
Blyth is a town and civil parish in southeast Northumberland, England. It lies on the coast, to the south of the River Blyth and is approximately 21 kilometres northeast of Newcastle upon Tyne...
in February 1946.