HMS Centaur R06 Centaur Class Carrier 1962 Photo Print

HMS Centaur (R06), a Royal Navy Centaur Class carrier, is seen from the air on her starboard quarter in 1962, during the NATO exercise Riptide III. Her ship’s company is fallen in along the flight deck in long, neat ranks, and a line of jets with their wings folded is parked along the deck edge and right aft by the round-down. Her island rises amidships, and a low, dark shoreline runs across the background beyond the calm water. Centaur was the first of her class, laid down at Harland and Wolff in Belfast in 1944 and launched on 22 April 1947. Soon after commissioning in 1953 she was given an interim angled flight deck, completed in April 1954, which made her the Royal Navy’s first angled-deck carrier in service. In 1962 her Scimitar squadron was disbanded and she went to sea with an enlarged squadron of Sea Vixens. Two years later, in January 1964, she carried Royal Marines of 45 Commando to Dar es Salaam to put down an army mutiny in Tanganyika. She paid off in 1965, served as an accommodation ship for other carriers in refit and was sold for breaking up at Cairnryan in 1972. This print is ideal for those who served in HMS Centaur in the early 1960s, Sea Vixen aircrew and maintainers, and anyone with a connection to 45 Commando’s 1964 Tanganyika operation. Product Details Image Taken: 1962 Photographer: USN © Public Domain - Restored by Hampshire Prints