page_title: HMS Ark Royal (91)
section_title: With the hunter-killer groups
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Ark Royal (91) / Service history / With the hunter-killer groups
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the naval message sent by the C in C H.F. (Commander in Chief Home Fleet) upon Britain's entrance into the Second World War. This particular copy is the one received by the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. The time of receipt (1219) and date (3/9/39) are visible at the bottom of the message.
context_page_description: HMS Ark Royal was an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that served during the Second World War.
  Designed in 1934 to fit the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty, Ark Royal was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, England, and completed in November 1938. Her design differed from previous aircraft carriers. Ark Royal was the first ship on which the hangars and flight deck were an integral part of the hull, instead of an add-on or part of the superstructure. Designed to carry a large number of aircraft, she had two hangar deck levels. She served during a period that first saw the extensive use of naval air power; several carrier tactics were developed and refined aboard Ark Royal.
  Ark Royal served in some of the most active naval theatres of the Second World War. She was involved in the first aerial and U-boat kills of the war, operations off Norway, the search for the German battleship Bismarck, and the Malta Convoys. Ark Royal survived several near misses and gained a reputation as a 'lucky ship'. She was torpedoed on 13 November 1941 by the German submarine U-81 and sank the following day; one of her 1,488 crew members was killed.
context_section_description: The outbreak of the Second World War on 3 September 1939 had been presaged by Germany's U-boat fleet taking up positions off the British coast, where they could intercept British shipping. Within hours of the war starting, the passenger ship SS Athenia was torpedoed by U-30, the first of over 65,000 tons of shipping sunk by U-boats during the first week of the war. Ark Royal was deployed with the Home Fleet in the North Western Approaches as part of a "hunter-killer" group, consisting of a flotilla of destroyers and other anti-submarine vessels grouped around an aircraft carrier; either Courageous, Hermes or Ark Royal. Carrier-borne aircraft could increase the area searched for U-boats, but made the carriers tempting targets.
  On 14 September, Ark Royal received a distress call from SS Fanad Head, which was 200 nautical miles (230 mi; 370 km) away under pursuit from the surfaced U-30. Ark Royal launched aircraft to aid the merchant ship, but was spotted by U-39, which launched two torpedoes. Lookouts spotted the torpedo tracks and Ark Royal turned towards the attack, reducing her cross-section and causing the torpedoes to miss and explode harmlessly astern. Three F-class destroyers escorting the carrier began to depth charge U-39, and forced her to the surface. The German crew abandoned ship before U-39 sank—the first U-boat lost during the war. Ark Royal's aircraft reached Fanad Head, which was in the hands of a German boarding party. The Skuas unsuccessfully attacked U-30: two crashed when caught by the blast of their own bombs. The U-boat escaped after rescuing the boarding party and the pilots of the downed aircraft (both observers had drowned), and torpedoing the Fanad Head.
  Ark Royal returned to base in Loch Ewe, where she and her crew were inspected by Winston Churchill. The sinking of U-39 was hailed as important to morale. However, the failed attack on Ark Royal, and the successful attack on Courageous on 17 September, convinced the Admiralty it was too dangerous to risk aircraft carriers in this way, and carrier-centred hunter-killer groups were abandoned.
caption: The message sent to the ship informing her of the commencing of hostilities on 3 September 1939
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