HMS Formidable was an Illustrious-class aircraft carrier built for the Royal Navy before World…

HMS Formidable was an Illustrious-class aircraft carrier built for the Royal Navy before World War II. She was briefly assigned to the Home Fleet after completion in late 1940 before she was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet as a replacement for her crippled sister ship Illustrious. Her aircraft played a key role in the Battle of Cape Matapan in early 1941. She provided air cover for the fleet as well as British convoys and attacked Axis forces for the next several months until she was badly damaged by German dive bombers in May. Formidable required repairs that lasted for the rest of the year.

Assigned to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean in early 1942, the ship was unable to engage the Japanese fleet when it attacked British forces in the Indian Ocean raid. The carrier covered the invasion of Diego Suarez in Vichy Madagascar in mid-1942 against the possibility of another sortie by the Japanese into the Indian Ocean. Formidable returned home for a brief refit before participating in Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa in November. She remained in the Mediterranean and covered the invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy in 1943 before beginning a lengthy refit in Belfast, Northern Ireland that lasted into 1944.

Formidable made several attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz in Norway in mid-1944 as part of the Home Fleet. She was subsequently assigned to the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) in 1945 where she played a supporting role during the Battle of Okinawa and later attacked targets in the Japanese Home Islands. The ship was used to repatriate liberated Allied prisoners of war (PoWs) and soldiers after the Japanese surrender and then ferried British personnel across the globe through 1946. She was placed in reserve the following year and sold for scrap in 1953.

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