HMS Courageous (50)

HMS Courageous was the lead ship of the three Courageous class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy in the First World War, designed for the First Sea Lord's Baltic Project and very lightly armoured. She was launched on 5 February 1916 and completed on 4 November, and her four 15 inch guns were carried in two twin turrets. Four sets of geared steam turbines, the first in large Royal Navy warships, and eighteen Yarrow boilers drove her, with a normal load of 750 long tons of fuel oil. She patrolled the North Sea, took part in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917, and was laid up after the war. She and Glorious were rebuilt as aircraft carriers in the mid-1920s, and Courageous could carry 48 aircraft. On 17 September 1939 the German submarine U-29 torpedoed her, and she sank with the loss of more than 500 of her crew.