HMS Glorious was the second of the Courageous-class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy during the First World War.
Glorious was paid off after the end of the war, but was rebuilt as an aircraft carrier during the late 1920s. She could carry 30% more aircraft than her half-sister Furious which had approximately the same tonnage. After recommissioning she spent most of her career operating in the Mediterranean Sea. After the start of the Second World War, Glorious spent the rest of 1939 unsuccessfully hunting for the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee in the Indian Ocean before returning to the Mediterranean. She was recalled in April 1940 to support British operations in Norway. While evacuating British aircraft from Norway in June, the ship was sunk by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the North Sea with the loss of over 1,200 lives.
- Comments