. Her design differed from previous aircraft carriers.
.
. She served during a period that first saw the extensive use of naval air power;
served in some of the most active naval theatres of the Second World War. She was involved in the
Ark Royal survived several near misses and gained a reputation as a 'lucky ship'. She was
torpedoed on 13 November 1941 by the
German submarine U-81 and
sank the following day; one of her 1,488 crew members was killed. Her sinking was the subject of several inquiries; investigators were keen to know how the carrier was lost, in spite of efforts to save the ship and tow her to the naval base at
Gibraltar. They found that
several design flaws contributed to the loss, which were rectified in new British carriers. The
lack of backup power sources was a major design failure, which contributed to the loss:
Ark Royal depended on electricity for much of her operation, and
once the boilers and steam-driven dynamos were knocked out, the loss of power made damage control difficult. The committee recommended the
design of the bulkheads and boiler intakes be
improved to decrease the risk of widespread flooding in boiler rooms and machine spaces, while the
uninterrupted boiler room flat was criticised. The design flaws were rectified in the
Illustrious- and
Implacable-class carriers, under construction at the time.
The wreck was discovered in December 2002 by an American underwater survey company using sonar mounted on an autonomous underwater vehicle, under contract from the
BBC for the filming of a documentary about the ship, at a depth of about 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) and approximately
30 nautical miles (56 km; 35 mi) from Gibraltar.
