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ARA Veinticinco de Mayo (V-2)

For other ships with the same name, see ARA Veinticinco de Mayo, HNLMS Karel Doorman, and HMS Venerable.

ARA Veinticinco de Mayo (V-2) was an aircraft carrier in the Argentine Navy from 1969 to 1997. The English translation of the name is Twenty-fifth of May, which is the date of Argentina's May Revolution in 1810.

Veinticinco de Mayo
History
United Kingdom
NameVenerable
Ordered7 August 1942
BuilderCammell Laird
Yard number1126
Laid down3 December 1942
Launched30 December 1943
Commissioned27 November 1944
DecommissionedApril 1947
IdentificationPennant number: R63
FateSold to the Netherlands, 1 April 1948
Netherlands
NameKarel Doorman
NamesakeKarel Doorman
Acquired1 April 1948
Commissioned28 May 1948
Decommissioned29 April 1968
Refit
  • 1955–1958
  • 1965–1966
IdentificationPennant number: R81
FateSold to Argentina, 15 October 1968
Argentina
NameVeinticinco de Mayo
Namesake25 May, date of the May Revolution
Acquired15 October 1968
Commissioned12 March 1969
Decommissioned1997
Out of serviceInoperable by 1990
Refit1969
HomeportPuerto Belgrano
FateProvided spare parts for Brazilian aircraft carrier Minas Gerais and remainder was scrapped in Alang, India in 2000
General characteristics
Class and typeColossus-class aircraft carrier
Displacement19,900 tons
Length192 m (629 ft 11 in)
Beam24.4 m (80 ft 1 in)
Draught7.5 m (24 ft 7 in)
Propulsion
  • 4 boilers with steam turbines
  • 2 shafts
  • 40,000 shp (30,000 kW)
Speed24 knots (44 km/h)
Complement1,300
Armament12 × 40 mm AA guns
Aircraft carried21

The ship previously served in the Royal Navy as HMS Venerable and the Royal Netherlands Navy as HNLMS Karel Doorman. She was deployed south during the Beagle Crisis in 1978 and in the first weeks of the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas), where her aircraft were deployed against the Royal Navy task force, but spent the bulk of the war in port.[1]

History

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ARA Veinticinco de Mayo badge with the motto "Juramos con gloria morir" which means "We swear to die gloriously", a reference to the Argentine National Anthem.

The ship was built for the Royal Navy by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead, England during the Second World War.[2] As a Colossus-class aircraft carrier, she was named HMS Venerable and saw service in the British Pacific Fleet. Venerable only served three years in the Royal Navy before being sold to the Netherlands as HNLMS Karel Doorman.

After a boiler room fire, the carrier was rebuilt, sold to Argentina, and renamed Veinticinco de Mayo.[2] The Argentine Navy already operated a carrier, ARA Independencia This ship was also a former Royal Navy Colossus class; however, Independencia's catapult was not powerful enough to launch jet aircraft,[3] while Veinticinco de Mayo had had a much more powerful catapult fitted during the Dutch rebuild. Independencia was decommissioned in 1970, leaving Veinticinco de Mayo as the sole remaining carrier in the Argentine fleet. She could carry up to 24 aircraft.

The air group started with F9F Panthers and F9F Cougar jets and later these were replaced with A-4Q Skyhawks supported by S-2 Tracker anti-submarine warfare aircraft and Sikorsky Sea King helicopters.

In September 1969, during the voyage of the recently bought Veinticinco de Mayo from the Netherlands, Hawker Siddeley demonstrated their Harrier GR.1 on board the carrier for a possible sale to the Argentine Navy.

 
A-4Q landing on Veinticinco de Mayo, circa 1982

During the 1970s the ship was refitted and updated several times, though in each case the duration of each repair period was never more than 3–5 months, allowing her to be available to deploy. Her last pre-Falklands refit occurred during 1981, when she received an update to her radar, arresting gear, steam catapult and (most noticeably) the forward edge of the port side angled deck was filled out via an enlarged sponson. These improvements would theoretically enable her to operate the Super Etendard strike aircraft purchased from France, but it was discovered during testing that the catapult had difficulties launching the aircraft type. As a result, her strike airwing was limited to the A-4Q Skyhawks.

Beagle Conflict

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Veinticinco de Mayo, between 1978 and 1980
Main article: Operation Soberanía

During Operation Soberanía, Veinticinco de Mayo was planned to support the invasion of the Picton, Nueva and Lennox islands.[citation needed]

Falklands War

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S-2G Tracker taking off from Veinticinco de Mayo

During the Falklands War, Veinticinco de Mayo was used in support of the initial Argentine landings on the Falklands.[4] On the day of the invasion, she waited with 1500 army soldiers outside Stanley harbour as the first submarine and boat-landed commandos secured landing areas and then Argentine marines made the main amphibious landing. Her aircraft were not used during the invasion.[5] Later, in defence of the occupation, she was deployed in a task force north of the Falkland Islands, with the cruiser ARA General Belgrano to the south. The British had assigned HMS Splendid (S106),[6] a nuclear-powered submarine, to track down Veinticinco de Mayo and sink her if necessary. Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, commanding the British task force from HMS Hermes stated in his book One Hundred Days that, had Splendid located the carrier, he would have "Recommended in the strongest possible terms to the Commander-in-Chief Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse that we take them both out this night".[7]

Following the outbreak of hostilities on 1 May 1982, the Argentine carrier planned an attack on the Royal Navy Task Force. Veinticinco de Mayo's S-2 Trackers detected the British fleet late that day, and a strike by all eight A-4Q Skyhawk jets was prepared, scheduled to take-off at dawn. The attack did not take place, because subsequent Tracker sorties had failed to relocate the British fleet.[8] After the British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror sank General Belgrano, Veinticinco de Mayo returned to port.[9] The naval A-4Q Skyhawks flew the rest of the war from the airbase in Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego.

Disposal

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In 1983, Veinticinco de Mayo was modified to carry the Super Étendard,[10] and her British-built CAAIS combat data system was replaced by a Dutch SEWACO system, which was compatible with the Argentine Navy's new Almirante Brown-class destroyers. From 1986, problems in her engines largely confined her to port; rendering her unserviceable.[11]

Work began in 1988 to refit the carrier, with it being planned to replace her steam turbines with gas turbines, while providing an auxiliary steam plant to power the ship's steam catapults. By 1994, the ship's machinery had been removed, but a shortage of funds led to work stopping.[11][12] In December 1996, the Argentine Navy announced that Veinticinco de Mayo would be discarded.[13] By this time, she had already been stripped of various major pieces of equipment, which were used as spares for the Brazilian carrier Minas Gerais, another Colossus-class ship which had been heavily modified in the Netherlands.[14] Finally, in 2000, she was towed to Alang, India for scrapping.[12]

Although Minas Gerais was offered to the Argentine Navy in 2000 as a replacement, she was rejected due to her poor condition and high restoration and maintenance costs. As of the 2020s, the Argentine Naval Aviation has lost the use of carrier-capable fixed-wing aircraft. While five refurbished Super Étendard aircraft were delivered to the Navy from France in 2019, these aircraft were missing key spare parts and therefore remained unserviceable.[15] In 2021, it was reported that the return of these aircraft to an operational configuration was also encountering problems as the ejector seats of the aircraft were the MK6, manufactured by British firm Martin-Baker.[16][17]

See also

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References

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Notes

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  1. ^ "The Falkland Islands – A history of the 1982 conflict". RAF. Archived from the original on 21 September 2008.
  2. ^ a b Ireland, p. 147
  3. ^ Polmar, Norman (April 2008). "Historic Aircraft-The Navy's Frontline in Korea". Naval History Magazine. Vol. 22, no. 2. U.S. Naval Institute.
  4. ^ "25 de Mayo". www.globalsecurity.org. Archived from the original on 24 April 2005.
  5. ^ "The Falkland Islands Conflict, 1982: Air Defense Of The Fleet". www.globalsecurity.org.
  6. ^ Lawrence Freedman (2005). The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: War and diplomacy. Psychology Press. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-7146-5207-8.
  7. ^ Admiral Sandy Woodward One Hundred Days, pages 207 and 208. ISBN 978-0-00-713467-0
  8. ^ Burden et al 1986, pp. 39–40, 49–50
  9. ^ Burden et al 1986, p. 50
  10. ^ Moore 1985, p. 11
  11. ^ a b Gardiner and Chumbley 1995, p. 6
  12. ^ a b Hobbs 2013, p. 195
  13. ^ Baker 1998, p. 7.
  14. ^ "History of the Colossus class carrier Minas Gerais (Ex HMS Vengeance)". 2002. Archived from the original on 29 February 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  15. ^ "Los Super Étendard argentinos estarían operativos en dos años" (in Spanish). Noticias Infodefensa América. 10 June 2020.
  16. ^ "Argentine Air Force faces another hurdle for its re-equipment plans". 26 May 2021.
  17. ^ "Argentina busca repuestos para los asientos eyectables de los Super Étendard Modernisé" (in Spanish). Noticias Infodefensa América. 5 July 2021.

Bibliography

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  • Baker, A. D. III, ed. (1998). The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World 1998–1999. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-111-4.
  • Burden, Rodney A.; Draper, Michael I.; Rough, Douglas A.; Smith, Colin R.; Wilton, David (1986). Falklands: The Air War. British Aviation Research Group. ISBN 0-906339-05-7.
  • Gardiner, Robert; Chumbley, Stephen, eds. (1995). Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1947–1995. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-132-7.
  • Hobbs, David (2013). British Aircraft Carriers: Design, Development and Service Histories. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-138-0.
  • Ireland, Bernard (2007). The Illustrated Guide to Aircraft Carriers of the World. London: Anness Publishing Limited, Hermes House. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-84477-747-1.
  • Moore, John, ed. (1985). Jane's Fighting Ships 1985–86. London: Jane's Yearbooks. ISBN 0-7106-0814-4.

Further reading

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