George Whyler

HMS Illustrious

HMS Illustrious was the lead ship of her class of aircraft carriers built for the Royal Navy before World War II. Her first assignment after completion and working up was with the Mediterranean Fleet, in which her aircraft's most notable achievement was sinking one Italian battleship and badly damaging two others during the Battle of Taranto in late 1940. On 7 January 1941, Illustrious set sail to provide air cover for convoys to Piraeus, Greece and Malta as part of Operation Excess.

On January 10th at 12.35, Illustrious was hit just forward of the aft lift by Stukka dive bombers. The ship was hit five more times in this attack, one of which penetrated the un-armoured aft lift and detonated beneath it, destroying it and the surrounding structure. One bomb struck and destroyed the starboard forward "pom-pom" mount closest to the island, while another passed through the forward most port "pom-pom" mount and failed to detonate, although it did start a fire. One bomb penetrated the outer edge of the forward port flight deck and detonated about 10 feet (3.0 m) above the water, riddling the adjacent hull structure with holes which caused flooding in some compartments and starting a fire.

The most damaging hit was a large bomb that penetrated through the deck armour forward of the aft lift and detonated 10 feet above the hangar deck. The explosion started a severe fire, destroyed the rear fire sprinkler system, bent the forward lift like a hoop and shredded the fire curtains into lethal splinters. It also blew a hole in the hangar deck, damaging areas three decks below. The multiple hits at the aft end of the carrier knocked out her steering gear although it was soon repaired.

Another attack by 13 Ju 87s at 13:20 hit the ship once more in the aft lift well, which again knocked out her steering and reduced her speed to 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). This attack was intercepted by six of the ship's Fulmars which had rearmed and refuelled ashore after they had dropped their bombs, but only two of the dive bombers were damaged before the Fulmars ran out of ammunition. The carrier, steering only by using her engines, was attacked several more times before she entered Grand Harbour's breakwater at 21:04, still on fire. The attacks killed 126 officers and men, including Sub Lieutenant Charles Buxton from Besthorpe and Petty Officer Leslie Tomlinson from Sutton in Ashfield. 91 were wounded. (Wikipedia)

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