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HMS ''Hermes'' was an aircraft carrier built for the Royal Navy. The ship began construction during World War I and finished after the war ended. She was the world's first ship to be designed as an aircraft carrier, although the Imperial Japanese Navy's was the first to be commissioned and launched.〔Milanovich, pp. 9, 13〕 The ship's construction was delayed by multiple changes in her design after she was laid down. After she was launched, her shipyard closed and her construction was suspended. Most of the changes were made to optimise her design in light of the results of experiments with the existing carriers. Commissioned in 1924, ''Hermes'' served briefly with the Atlantic Fleet before spending the bulk of her career assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and the China Station. In the Mediterranean, she worked with other carriers developing multi-carrier tactics. While showing the flag at the China Station, she helped to suppress pirates in Chinese waters. ''Hermes'' returned home in 1937 and was placed in reserve before becoming a training ship in 1938. When World War II began in September 1939, the ship was briefly assigned to the Home Fleet and conducted anti-submarine patrols in the Western Approaches. She was transferred to Dakar in October to cooperate with the French Navy in hunting down German commerce raiders and blockade runners. Aside from a brief refit, ''Hermes'' remained there until Vichy France was established at the end of June 1940. Supported by several cruisers, the ship then blockaded Dakar and attempted to sink the by exploding depth charges underneath her stern, as well as sending Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers to attack her at night. While returning from this mission, ''Hermes'' rammed a British armed merchant cruiser in a storm and required several months of repairs in South Africa, then resumed patrolling for Axis shipping in the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. In February 1941, the ship supported Commonwealth forces in Italian Somaliland during the East African Campaign and did much the same two months later in the Persian Gulf during the Anglo-Iraqi War. After that campaign, ''Hermes'' spent most of the rest of the year patrolling the Indian Ocean. She refitted in South Africa between November 1941 and February 1942 and then joined the Eastern Fleet at Ceylon. ''Hermes'' was berthed in Trincomalee on 8 April when warning of an approaching Japanese fleet was received and sailed that day for the Maldives with no aircraft on board. She was spotted on 9 April near Batticaloa by a Japanese scout plane and attacked by several dozen dive bombers shortly afterwards. With no air cover, the carrier was quickly sunk by the Japanese aircraft. Most of the survivors were rescued by a nearby hospital ship, although 307 men from ''Hermes'' were lost in the sinking. ==Development== Like ''Hōshō'', ''Hermes'' was based on a cruiser-type hull and she was initially designed to carry both wheeled aircraft and seaplanes. The ship's design was derived from a 1916 seaplane carrier design by Gerard Holmes and Sir John Biles, but was considerably enlarged by Sir Eustace d'Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), in his April 1917 sketch design. Her most notable feature was the seaplane slipway that comprised three sections. The seaplanes would taxi onto the rigid submerged portion aft and dock with a trolley that would carry the aircraft into the hangar. A flexible submerged portion separated the rear section from the rigid forward portion of the slipway to prevent the submerged part from rolling with the ship's motion. The entire slipway could be retracted into the ship, and a gantry crane ran the length of the slipway to help recover the seaplanes. The design showed two islands with the full-length flight deck running between them. Each island contained one funnel; a large net could be strung between them to stop out-of-control aircraft. Aircraft were transported between the hangar and the flight deck by two aircraft lifts (elevators); the forward lift measured and the rear . This design displaced and accommodated six large Short Type 184 seaplanes and six smaller Sopwith Baby seaplanes. The ship's armament consisted of six guns.〔Friedman, pp. 62–63, 67–68, 71–72, 83〕 The DNC produced a detailed design in January 1918 that made some changes to his original sketch, including the addition of a rotating bow catapult to allow the ship to launch aircraft regardless of wind direction, and the ship was laid down that month to the revised design. Progress was slow, as most of the resources of the shipyard were being used to finish the conversion of from a battleship to an aircraft carrier. The leisurely pace of construction allowed for more time with which to rework the ship's design. By mid-June the slipway had been deleted from the design and the ship's armament had been revised to consist of eleven guns and only a single anti-aircraft gun. By this time, the uncertainty about the best configuration for an aircraft carrier had increased to the point that the Admiralty forbade the builder from working above the hangar deck without express permission. Later that year the ship's design was revised again to incorporate a single island, her lifts were changed to a uniform size of , and her armament was altered to ten 6-inch guns and four 4-inch anti-aircraft guns. These changes increased her displacement to .〔Friedman, p. 73〕 Construction was suspended after ''Hermes'' was launched in September 1919 as the Admiralty awaited the results of flight trials with ''Eagle'' and . Her design was modified in March 1920 with an island superstructure and funnel to starboard, and the forward catapult was removed.〔McCart, p. 11〕 The logic behind placing the island to starboard was that pilots generally preferred to turn to port when recovering from an aborted landing.〔Friedman, p. 76〕 A prominent tripod mast was added to house the fire-control systems for her guns.〔 The last revisions were made to the ship's design in May 1921, after the trials with ''Argus'' and ''Eagle''. The lifts were moved further apart to allow for more space for the arresting gear and they were enlarged to allow the wings of her aircraft to be spread in the hangar. Her anti-ship armament was reduced to six guns and her flight deck was faired into the bow.〔Friedman, pp. 83–84〕 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 Hermes (95)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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