HMS Implacable was the name ship of her class of two aircraft carriers built for the Royal Navy during World War II.

The ship was used to repatriate liberated Allied prisoners of war (PoWs) and soldiers after the Japanese surrender, for the rest of the year.

They were designed to be 2 knots (3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph) faster, and to carry an additional dozen aircraft at the expense of reduced armour protection to remain within the 23,000 long tons (23,000 t) available from the tonnage allowed by the Washington Naval Treaty.

She carried a maximum of 4,690 long tons (4,770 t) of fuel oil which gave her a range of 6,720 nautical miles (12,450 km; 7,730 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph).

Both hangars had a height of only 14 feet which precluded storage of Lend-Lease Vought F4U Corsair fighters as well as many post-war aircraft and helicopters.

[11] The ship's main armament consisted of sixteen quick-firing (QF) 4.5-inch (110 mm) dual-purpose guns in eight twin-gun turrets, four in sponsons on each side of the hull.

[7] Her construction was temporarily suspended in 1940–41, in favour of higher-priority ships needed to fight in the Battle of the Atlantic, before she was launched on 10 December 1942 by Queen Elizabeth.

[19] She was commissioned on 22 May 1944, and began sea trials which revealed a significant number of problems that required rectification, so the ship was not formally completed until 28 August.

[7] Implacable was assigned to the Home Fleet and was working up over the next several months while the Fairey Fireflies of 1771 Squadron flew aboard on 10 September.

Implacable departed Scapa Flow on 16 October, and a section of her Fireflies spotted the battleship off Håkøya Island near Tromsø two days later.

No attack was mounted because the carrier lacked any single-seat fighters aboard to escort the strike aircraft, although they did damage a cargo ship before returning home.

[22] In late October she participated in Operation Athletic off the Norwegian coast, where her aircraft sank six ships and damaged a German submarine[23] for the loss of one Barracuda,[24] while conducting the Royal Navy's last wartime torpedo attack.

The next day, Admiral Sir Henry Ruthven Moore, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, hoisted his flag in Implacable and the ship set sail to hunt for a convoy that had been reported near Alsten Island (Operation Provident)[20] with the Seafires and Fireflies of 801, 880, and 1771 Squadrons aboard.

Bad weather prevented aircraft from being launched until 27 November, but they located the convoy and sank two merchantmen, including MS Rigel, and damaged six others.

On 15 December she began a refit at Rosyth preparatory to her transfer to the British Pacific Fleet, which included augmenting her light AA armament.

[26] Upon its completion on 10 March 1945, 801, 828, 880, and 1771 Squadrons reembarked with a total strength of 48 Seafires, 21 Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers and a dozen Fireflies, the largest air group aboard a British carrier thus far.

A week later Rear Admiral Sir Patrick Brind hoisted his flag in preparation for Operation Inmate, an attack on the Japanese naval base at Truk in the Caroline Islands that began on 14 June.

Having flown 113 offensive sorties over the two days of the attack, with only one loss of a Seafire to enemy action, the carrier and her escorts returned to Manus Island on 17 June.

A combination of bad weather, refuelling requirements and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima delayed the resumption of air operations until 9 August.

Having left her air group behind to maximize the numbers of passengers she could carry, the ship arrived at Manila on 25 September, where she loaded over 2,000 British, American and Canadian PoWs.

Opened for public tours, Implacable remained for a week before sailing to Hong Kong to pick up several hundred PoWs and continued onwards to Manila to load 2,114 more passengers.

She continued a relaxed schedule of training and port visits until she began a refit on 15 March in Sydney, that lasted until 29 April, when she put to sea to fly on her aircraft and to dump overboard the 16 Lend-Lease Avengers belonging to 828 Squadron (Britain had to either pay for them or dispose of them with the end of the war, and lacked the means to do the former).

After leaving the royals, she made port visits at Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Dakar, Senegal before arriving in the Western Mediterranean for more training.

She sailed for Gibraltar on 27 February 1949 and 801 Squadron flew aboard on 5 March with its de Havilland Sea Hornets, the day after she arrived there.

702 Squadron flew aboard with seven de Havilland Sea Vampires in September to conduct carrier evaluations with the new fighter jets that lasted until 11 November.

She resumed flight training in the Irish Sea and off the western coast of Scotland until she made a port visit to Copenhagen in mid-July.

King Frederik IX of Denmark inspected the ship on 18 July and Admiral Vian transferred his flag to Vanguard on 11 September.

On 5 September Rear Admiral H. L. F. Adams relieved Stevens and the ship joined Indefatigable for fleet exercises off the Scilly Isles and in the Bristol Channel the following month.