HMS Hermes was a British aircraft carrier built for the Royal Navy and was the world's first ship to be designed as an aircraft carrier, although the Imperial Japanese Navy's was the first to be commissioned.Milanovich, pp. 9, 13 The ship's construction began during the First World War, but she was not completed until after the end of the war, having been delayed by multiple changes in her design after she was laid down. After she was launched, the Armstrong Whitworth shipyard which built her closed, and her fitting out was suspended. Most of the changes made were to optimise her design, in light of the results of experiments with operational carriers.
Finally commissioned in 1924, Hermes served briefly with the Atlantic Fleet before spending the bulk of her career assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and the China Station. In the Mediterranean, she worked with other carriers developing multi-carrier tactics. While showing the flag at the China Station, she helped to suppress piracy in Chinese waters. Hermes returned home in 1937 and was placed in reserve before becoming a training ship in 1938.
When the Second World War began in September 1939, the ship was briefly assigned to the Home Fleet and conducted anti-submarine patrols in the Western Approaches. She was transferred to Dakar in October to cooperate with the French Navy in hunting down German commerce raiders and blockade runners. Aside from a brief refit, Hermes remained there until the fall of France and the establishment of Vichy France at the end of June 1940. Supported by several cruisers, the ship then blockaded Dakar and attempted to sink the by exploding depth charges underneath her stern, as well as sending Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers to attack her at night. While returning from this mission, Hermes rammed a British armed merchant cruiser in a storm and required several months of repairs in South Africa, then resumed patrolling for Axis shipping in the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.
In February 1941, the ship supported Commonwealth forces in Italian Somaliland during the East African Campaign and did much the same two months later in the Persian Gulf during the Anglo-Iraqi War. After that campaign, Hermes spent most of the rest of the year patrolling the Indian Ocean. She was refitted in South Africa between November 1941 and February 1942 and then joined the Eastern Fleet at Ceylon.
Hermes was berthed in Trincomalee on 8 April when a warning of an Indian Ocean raid by the Japanese fleet was received, and she sailed that day for the Maldives with no aircraft on board. On 9 April a Japanese scout plane spotted her near Batticaloa, and she was attacked by several dozen dive bombers shortly afterwards. With no air cover, the carrier was quickly sunk by the Japanese aircraft. Most of the survivors were rescued by a nearby hospital ship, although 307 men from Hermes were lost in the sinking.
The wreck of the ship was discovered in the Bay of Bengal some sixty years after she was sunk roughly 45 mile northeast of Batticaloa. Hermes is shallow enough to be visited by recreational divers and is frequently visited by tourists.
Development Like Hōshō, Hermes was based on a cruiser-type hull and she was initially designed to carry both wheeled aircraft and seaplanes. The ship's design was derived from a 1916 seaplane carrier design by Gerard Holmes and Sir John Biles, but was considerably enlarged by Sir Eustace d'Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), in his April 1917 sketch design. Her most notable feature was the seaplane slipway that comprised three sections. The seaplanes would taxi onto the rigid submerged portion aft and dock with a trolley that would carry the aircraft into the hangar. A flexible submerged portion separated the rear section from the rigid forward portion of the slipway to prevent the submerged part from rolling with the ship's motion. The entire slipway could be retracted into the ship, and a gantry crane ran the length of the slipway to help recover the seaplanes. The design showed two islands with the full-length flight deck running between them. Each island contained one funnel; a large net could be strung between them to stop out-of-control aircraft. Aircraft were transported between the hangar and the flight deck by two aircraft lifts (elevators); the forward lift measured and the rear . This design displaced and accommodated six large Short Type 184 seaplanes and six smaller Sopwith Baby seaplanes. The ship's armament consisted of six guns.Friedman, pp. 62–63, 67–68, 71–72, 83
The DNC produced a detailed design in January 1918 that made some changes to his original sketch, including the addition of a rotating bow catapult to allow the ship to launch aircraft regardless of wind direction, and the ship was laid down that month to the revised design. Progress was slow, as most of the resources of the shipyard were being used to finish the conversion of from a battleship to an aircraft carrier. The leisurely pace of construction allowed for more time with which to rework the ship's design. By mid-June the slipway had been deleted from the design and the ship's armament had been revised to consist of eleven guns and only a single anti-aircraft gun. By this time, the uncertainty about the best configuration for an aircraft carrier had increased to the point that the Admiralty forbade the builder from working above the hangar deck without express permission. Later that year the ship's design was revised again to incorporate a single island, her lifts were changed to a uniform size of , and her armament was altered to ten 6-inch guns and four 4-inch anti-aircraft guns. These changes increased her displacement to .Friedman, p. 73
Construction was suspended after Hermes was launched in September 1919 as the Admiralty awaited the results of flight trials with Eagle and . Her design was modified in March 1920 with an island superstructure and funnel to starboard, and the forward catapult was removed.McCart, p. 11 The logic behind placing the island to starboard was that pilots generally preferred to turn to port when recovering from an aborted landing.Friedman, p. 76 A prominent tripod mast was added to house the fire-control systems for her guns.
The last revisions were made to the ship's design in May 1921, after the trials with Argus and Eagle. The lifts were moved further apart to allow for more space for the arresting gear and they were enlarged to allow the wings of her aircraft to be spread in the hangar. Her anti-ship armament was reduced to six guns and her flight deck was faired into the bow.Friedman, pp. 83–84
Description Hermes had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of at deep load. She displaced at standard load.Friedman, pp. 365–366 Each of the ship's two sets of Parsons geared steam turbines drove one propeller shaft at a speed of . Steam was supplied by six Yarrow boilersPreston, p. 71 operating at a pressure of . The turbines were designed for a total of , but they produced during her sea trials, giving Hermes a speed of . The ship carried of fuel oil which gave her a range of at .Friedman, pp. 85, 366
The ship's flight deck was long and her lifts' dimensions were .Friedman, p. 84, 366 Her hangar was long, wide and high. Hermes was fitted with longitudinal arresting gear. A large crane was positioned behind the island. Because of her size, the ship was able to carry only about 20 aircraft. Bulk petrol storage consisted of . The ship's crew totalled 33 officers and 533 men, exclusive of the air group, in 1939.Friedman, p. 366
For self-defence against enemy warships, Hermes had six BL 5.5-inch Mk I guns, three on each side of the ship. All three of her QF Mk V 4-inch anti-aircraft guns were positioned on the flight deck. The ship's waterline belt armour was thick and her flight deck, which was also the ship's strength deck,Brown, p. 120 was thick. Hermes had a metacentric height of and handled well in heavy weather. However, she had quite a large surface area exposed to the wind and required as much as 25 to 30 degrees of weather helm at low speed when the wind was blowing from the side.Friedman, pp. 84–85
Service
Hermes was laid down by Sir W. G. Armstrong-Whitworth and Company at Walker on the River Tyne on 15 January 1918 as the world's first purpose-designed aircraft carrier,Milanovich, p. 13 and was launched on 11 September 1919. She was christened by Mrs. A. Cooper, daughter of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Walter Long. The shipyard was scheduled to close at the end of 1919 and the Admiralty ordered the ship towed to Devonport, where she arrived in January 1920 for completion.
1920s Captain Arthur Stopford was appointed as the ship's commanding officer in February 1923 and the ship began her sea trials in August. After fitting-out, Hermes was commissioned on 19 February 1924 and later assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. She conducted flying trials with the Fairey IIID reconnaissance biplanes for the next several months. Hermes participated in the fleet review conducted by King George V on 26 July in Spithead. Afterwards she was refitted until November and then transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet. She arrived at Malta on 22 November and needed some repairs to fix storm damage suffered en route.McCart, pp. 11, 13–16 At this time the ship embarked No. 403 Flight with Fairey Flycatcher fighters and 441 Flight with Fairey IIIDs.Sturtivant, pp. 466, 468 Hermes conducted flying exercises with Eagle and the rest of the Mediterranean Fleet in early 1925 before she began a seven-week refit in Malta on 27 March, then sailed for Portsmouth where she arrived on 29 May after her aircraft had flown ashore.McCart, pp. 16–17
Hermes sailed for the China Station on 17 June with 403 and 441 Flights aboard, but made a lengthy pause en route in the Mediterranean during which Captain Stopford was replaced by Captain C. P. Talbot. She arrived at Hong Kong on 10 August 1925. The ship made her first foreign port visit to Amoy in November. Hermes returned to the Mediterranean in early 1926 and was refitted at Malta between April and June.McCart, pp. 18, 20 441 Flight was transferred to Eagle at this time in exchange for 440 Flight which flew aboard in September. 442 Flight also joined the ship at this time; both flights were equipped with Fairey IIIs.Sturtivant, pp. 467–468 The ship exercised with the Mediterranean Fleet after her refit was completed and Captain R. Elliot relieved Captain Talbot on 14 August. Hermes returned to Hong Kong on 11 October and conducted routine training until she sailed to the naval base at Weihaiwei on 27 July 1927 to escape the summer heat. The ship rendezvoused in September with Argus, which was to replace her on the China Station. Before she departed the area, however, both ships attacked the pirate base at Bias Bay and their fleet of junks and sampans. Hermes reached the United Kingdom on 26 October and began a refit at Chatham Dockyard at the beginning of November.McCart, pp. 20–22 One of her 4-inch guns was removed at this time. Sometime after this refit, the ship was provided with two single 2-pounder "pom-pom" AA guns.Friedman, p. 89