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HMS ''Furious'' was a modified built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the First World War. Designed to support the Baltic Project championed by the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, Lord John Fisher, the ship was very lightly armoured and armed with only a few heavy guns. ''Furious'' was modified and became an aircraft carrier while under construction. Her forward turret was removed and a flight deck was added in its place, so that aircraft had to manoeuvre around the superstructure to land. Later in the war, the ship had her rear turret removed and a second flight deck installed aft of the superstructure, but this was less than satisfactory due to air turbulence. ''Furious'' was briefly laid up after the war before she was reconstructed with a full-length flight deck in the early 1920s. After her conversion, ''Furious'' was used extensively for trials of naval aircraft and later as a training carrier once the new armoured carriers like entered service in the late 1930s. During the early months of the Second World War the carrier spent her time hunting for German raiders in the North Atlantic and escorting convoys. This changed dramatically during the Norwegian Campaign in early 1940 when her aircraft provided air support to British troops ashore in addition to attacking German shipping. The first of what would be a large number of aircraft ferry missions was made by the carrier during the campaign. After the withdrawal of British troops in May, ''Furious'' made several anti-shipping strikes in Norway with little result before beginning a steady routine of ferrying aircraft for the Royal Air Force. At first ''Furious'' made several trips to West Africa, but she began to ferry aircraft to Gibraltar in 1941. An unsuccessful attack on German-occupied ports on the Arctic Ocean interrupted the ferry missions in mid-1941. ''Furious'' was given a lengthy refit in the United States and spent a few months training after her return in April 1942. She made several more ferry trips in mid-1942 before her aircraft attacked airfields in Vichy French Algeria as part of the opening stages of Operation Torch in November 1942. The ship remained in the Mediterranean until February 1943 when she was transferred to the Home Fleet. ''Furious'' spent most of 1943 training, but made a number of attacks on the and other targets in Norway during the first half of 1944. By September 1944, the ship was showing her age and she was placed in reserve. ''Furious'' was decommissioned in April 1945, but was not sold for scrap until 1948. ==Design and description== During the First World War, Admiral Fisher was prevented from ordering an improved version of the preceding s by a wartime restriction that banned construction of ships larger than light cruisers. To obtain ships suitable for traditional battlecruiser roles, such as scouting for fleets and hunting enemy raiders, he settled on ships with the minimal armour of a light cruiser and the armament of a battlecruiser. He justified their existence by claiming he needed fast, shallow-draught ships for his Baltic Project, a plan to invade Germany via its Baltic coast.〔Burt 1986, p. 303〕〔Roberts, pp. 50–51〕 ''Furious'' had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of at deep load. She displaced normally and at deep load. She had a metacentric height of at deep load.〔Roberts, pp. 64–65〕 ''Furious'' and her half-sisters were the first large warships in the Royal Navy to have geared steam turbines. To save design time the installation used in the light cruiser , the first cruiser in the RN with geared turbines, was copied and simply duplicated to provide two sets of turbines. The four Brown-Curtis turbines were powered by eighteen Yarrow small-tube boilers that were designed to produce a total of . The ship's speed was an estimated , but she never ran her sea trials.〔Roberts, pp. 71, 76, 79〕 ''Furious'' was designed to normally carry of fuel oil, but could carry a maximum of . At full capacity, she could steam for an estimated at a speed of .〔Burt 1986, p. 306〕 The ship was designed to carry two BL 18-inch Mark I guns in two single turrets, one each fore ('A') and aft ('Y'). Her secondary armament consisted of 11 BL 5.5-inch Mk I guns. A pair of QF 3 inch 20 cwt〔"Cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 20 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.〕 anti-aircraft guns were mounted before the funnel. ''Furious'' also mounted two submerged tubes for 21-inch torpedoes and 10 torpedoes were carried.〔 Even as she was being built, ''Furious'' was modified with a large hangar capable of housing ten aircraft on her forecastle that replaced the forward turret. A 160-foot (49 m) flight deck was built along its roof. Aircraft were flown off and, rather less successfully, landed on this deck. Floatplanes like the Short Type 184 used a four-wheel trolley that ran down a track along the centre of the flight deck for take-off. Aircraft were lifted by crane from the hangar to the flight deck. Although the aft turret was fitted and the gun tested, it was not long before ''Furious'' returned to her builders for further modifications. In November 1917, the rear turret was replaced by a 300-foot (91 m) deck for landing aircraft over another hangar.〔Parkes, p. 622〕 Her funnel and superstructure remained intact, with a narrow strip of decking around them to connect the fore and aft flight decks.〔Burt 1986, p. 314〕 Turbulence from the funnel and superstructure was severe enough that only three landing attempts were successful before further attempts were forbidden.〔Parkes, p. 624〕 Her 18-inch guns were reused on s and during the war.〔Buxton, p. 73〕 ''Furious'' was laid down on 8 June 1915 at Armstrong Whitworth's Low Walker shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne. The ship was launched on 18 August 1916〔 and commissioned on 26 June 1917.〔Jenkins, p. 251〕 As completed, her complement numbered 737 officers and enlisted men.〔Burt 1986, p. 307〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS Furious (47)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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