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HMS Nairana |
| Career (UK) |
 |
| Name: |
HMS Nairana |
| Builder: |
John Brown & Company |
| Laid down: |
7 November 1941 |
| Launched: |
20 May 1943 |
| Commissioned: |
12 December 1943 |
| Decommissioned: |
1946 |
| Fate: |
Transferred to the Royal Netherlands Navy |
| Career (The Netherlands) |
 |
| Name: |
HNLMS Karel Doorman |
| Commissioned: |
23 March 1946 |
| Decommissioned: |
28 May 1948 |
| Fate: |
Sold into merchant service as Port Victor. Scrapped 1971. |
| General characteristics |
| Class and type: |
Nairana class escort carrier |
| Displacement: |
17,000 tons (full load) |
| Length: |
524 feet (160 m) |
| Beam: |
68 feet (21 m) |
| Draught: |
25 feet (7.6 m) |
| Propulsion: |
Diesel, 10,700 bhp |
| Speed: |
16 knots (30 km/h) |
| Complement: |
728 |
| Armament: |
2 × 4 inch guns
16 × 2 pdr guns (4×4)
16 × 20 mm guns (8×2) |
| Aircraft carried: |
15-20 |
HMS Nairana was an escort aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that saw service in World War II. She was built at John Brown & Company shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland. When construction started in 1941 she was intended as a merchant ship, but was completed and launched as an escort carrier, entering service at the end of 1943.
Nairana operated escorting convoys and doing anti-submarine work in the Atlantic and Arctic theatres. She survived the war, and in 1946 was transferred to the Dutch Navy as the Karel Doorman, the first Dutch aircraft carrier. In 1948 she was replaced in the Dutch Navy by another Karel Doorman (previously HMS Venerable). Nairana was returned to the Royal Navy, and immediately sold to Port Line, becoming the merchant ship Port Victor. In 1971 she was scrapped at Faslane.
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