The Argentine aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo (May 25, Veinticinco de Mayo) is a ship with a very ironic fate. Built in Great Britain, he fought against his former homeland, after which he went for recycling to the former British colony - India. Another irony is that all the states under whose flag he managed to serve, experienced the decline of their navies: Britain, Holland, Argentina. He did not bring military success to any country.
The Venable (the future Veintisinco de Mayo) was a Colossus-class and in many ways looked more like a rebuilt civilian vessel than a ship originally built for the needs of the Royal Navy. It had extremely weak armor and a small displacement even for aircraft carriers of that time - only 16,000 tons. Such savings arose in the conditions of World War II, when Britain (like other powers that fought at sea) needed the simplest possible aircraft carrier as soon as possible.
In January 1945, the new ship entered service. Its wing was made up of British "Barracuda" and American fighter "Corsair" in deck modification. Since the fate of Germany by that time was practically decided in land battles, the Venable was supposed to fight in the Pacific against the Japanese Empire. But even here he did not have a chance to participate, except perhaps in the capture of Hong Kong by the British - with almost complete absence of Japanese resistance.
After the war, Great Britain found itself in a difficult situation: its empire was crumbling, its finances collapsed and many ships went under the hammer, including the Venable, which was sold to Holland, where it underwent a radical modernization and was renamed Karel Doorman. If initially the Netherlands used it as an escort aircraft carrier, then in the last years of service it rather resembled an anti-submarine one due to a large bias towards helicopters and PLO aircraft.
The only relatively serious operation in which Karel Doorman managed to take part under the Dutch flag was a "show of force" in 1960 off the coast of Western New Guinea, which Indonesia claimed in those years. The Netherlands planned to grant independence to this colony and unite it with the Australian part of the island, so it was customary to intimidate Jakarta and make it in awe of the power of the Dutch spirit. The aircraft carrier, accompanied by two destroyers and a tanker, nevertheless, did not cause much fear among the Indonesians, and Western New Guinea was captured and annexed by them.
Other notable episodes in the Dutch part of the ship's life include the visit to Japan in honor of the 350th anniversary and the establishment of relations between the countries and the fire, which became the formal reason for the sale of the ship to Argentina.
It is worth mentioning that the Dutch have invested serious money in the modernization of the ship, radar and air defense systems have been replaced, the deck and mechanisms of the aerofinishers have been reinforced, and the "island" has been completely rebuilt. However, after the loss of the Pacific possessions, such a ship became too expensive for a small country and in 1968 it was sold to Argentina, where it again changed its name to "Vaintisinco de Mayo". In Buenos Aires, the purchase was considered a success. They got a relatively new and recently modernized carrier of carrier-based aircraft, the basis of which was now the carrier-based attack aircraft A-4 Skyhawk.
The first conflict for a new ship under the flag of Argentina could have taken place as early as 1978, when the leadership of this country planned to use it in the war against Chile for the islands of Picton, Lenox and Nueva. But then the war between the two military juntas was miraculously avoided.
By the early 1980s, Argentines, with good reason, considered the British lion weakened enough to be escorted out of the South Atlantic. And first of all from the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claimed from the moment of its inception. "Vaintisinco de Mayo" in this conflict had to play one of the main roles, first with the support of the landing, then while patrolling the water area adjacent to the islands. Already after it became known about the withdrawal of the British squadron, plans for strikes against enemy aircraft carriers by Skyhawks began to be worked out. But on May 1, 1982, when the strike was planned, a gale wind prevented the attack aircraft from taking off. The ensuing disaster with the torpedoing of the cruiser General Belgrano finally convinced the Argentine command of the futility of a naval duel and the aircraft carrier was withdrawn from the combat zone. After that, the outcome of the conflict was actually a foregone conclusion.
After the war, Buenos Aires never found the money to upgrade the ship. In 1997, the aircraft carrier was removed from the fleet. Separate mechanisms were sold to Brazil. For example, the catapult was used on the Brazilian aircraft carrier Minas Gerais. Ultimately, Veintisinko de Mayo was sold and shattered in Alang, India. Replacing the decommissioned Vaintisinco de Mayo with a new aircraft carrier proved too expensive.
