Dads Navy Days - HMS Warrior

Dads Navy Days - HMS Warrior - the planes (1)

HMS Warrior - the planes

These are photos that are in dads albums, unless stated otherwise, of HMS Warrior of some of the ships planes. I've got no idea what he was doing on the flight deck to take these photos other than he must have been off watch at the time, either that or they were taken by someone else. Either way, I think that they're pretty spectacular.

In November 2000, Tony Pearce who was one of the two meteorologists, emailed me saying that there were two photographers, Kingsley Jones and Norman Ford, on HMS Warrior, it is more than likely that these took the photographs.

I can't thank Mr Vic Flintham enough for naming the aircraft that appear on these pages. Vic writes the Post-war Military Aviation site.

HMCS Warrior - 1945

HMCS Warrior ~ 1945
(Post-war Firefly Mk I)

In December 2002, Albert Gauthier sent me this great photo of HMCS Warrior. His dad served on her from her launch in 1944 to the end of the war. Albert writes "My dad joined the Canadian Navy in 1943, immediately after turning 18 years old. He was immediately shipped to Halifax, Nova Scotia and shortly thereafter, shipped to London and a place called Macrihanish in Scotland, where he trained as a Aircraft Maintenance Mechanic while the Warrior was under construction. He basically trained until the end of 1944 until the Warrior was ready and they got the ship about that time."

The photo was taken in mid 1945 when he was on the ship and they were headed to Japan to set up a naval blockade prior to the bomb dropping.

Ship's helicopter - 1953