HMS Campania (D48)

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Career

Laid down:	12 August 1941
Launched:	17 June 1943
Commissioned:	9 February 1944
Decommissioned {post-war}:	30 December 1945
Decommissioned {final}:	December 1952
Fate:	Various post-war duties. Scrapped 1955.
General Characteristics
Displacement:	16,000 tons
Length:	540 ft
Beam:	70 ft
Draught:	25 ft
Propulsion:	Diesel, 10,700 bhp
Speed:	18 knots
Complement:	639
Armament:	2 x 4" guns, 16 x 2pdr guns (4x4), 16 x 20mm guns (8x2)
Aircraft:	18

HMS Campania was an escort aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that saw service during and after World War II. She was built at Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast, Northern Ireland. When construction started in 1941 she was intended as a merchant ship, but was completed and launched as an escort carrier, entering service in early 1944.

The ship was of a similar, but not identical design to the ships of the Nairana Class.

Campania operated escorting convoys and doing anti-submarine work in the Atlantic and Arctic theatres. In December 1944 her Swordfish aircraft sank the German submarine U-365 while the Campania was escorting the arctic convoy Convoy RA-62.

The ship survived the war, and unlike other Royal Navy escort carriers was not immediately scrapped or sold. She was briefly used as an aircraft-transport before being decommissioned and placed in the reserves in December 1945. In 1951 she was involved in the Festival of Britain, touring the country as the "Festival Ship Campania". In 1952 she was reactivated for a very different role, being used as a command ship for the Operation Hurricane atomic-bomb tests.

The ship was decommissioned for the final time in December 1952, before being sold and scapped in Blyth in 1955.

See HMS Campania for other ships of this name.