HMS Courageous (50)

HMS Courageous was the lead ship of her class of three battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy in the First World War. Designed to support the Baltic Project championed by First Sea Lord John Fisher, the ship was very lightly armoured and armed with only a few heavy guns. Courageous was completed in late 1916 and spent the war patrolling the North Sea. She participated in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917 and was present when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered a year later. Courageous and Glorious were decommissioned after the war and laid up, then rebuilt as aircraft carriers in the mid-1920s. Courageous and Glorious could carry 48 aircraft, compared with 36 carried by their half-sister Furious on about the same displacement. After recommissioning Courageous spent most of her career operating off Great Britain and Ireland. She briefly became a training ship, but reverted to her normal role a few months before the start of the Second World War in September 1939. Later that month, the German U-boat U-29 torpedoed Courageous, which sank with the loss of more than 500 of her crew.