1/700 HMS Courageous 1939 (HP Models)
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by Jerry Lloyd |
1/700 HMS Courageous 1939 (HP Models)
HMS Courageous was built by Armstrong Whitworth on the Tyne completing as a battlecruiser in 1916 at a cost of £7,185,940 and was converted to a carrier by Devonport Dockyard at cost of £ 2,135,944 recommissioning in 1928 her new top speed being 30 knots, in October 1929 her aircraft performed the first flying display over Constantinople, in 1930 she became the first Royal Naval carrier to be fitted with cross deck arrestor wires and spent most of the following year developing new landing procedures although she had no wire crash barrier as her aircraft were slowed by the rise of the flight deck alongside her island, in a pioneering Naval exercise in 1932 HMS Courageous and her sistership HMS Glorious struck the Med Fleet at anchor, in a 1934 refit she received two accelerators but unlike her sistership her flight deck was not extended aft so she retained her floatplane handling gear, the following year another refit added a prototype type 72 aircraft homing beacon on top of her mast and her armament became 16 x 4.7inch, 3 x octuple 2pdr pom-poms and a quad .303 MG mounted aft on the opposite side to her sistership, she was painted in 507A (called Home Fleet Grey by the media) for a Fleet Review in 1937 and the model depicts her in 1939 after being replaced as Home Fleet Flagship by HMS Ark Royal with her final air group of two Swordfish Squadrons 811 and 822, she was lost in the Atlantic in 1939.
