HMS Warrior was a Colossus-class light aircraft carrier which was ordered in 1942 by the British Royal Navy during World War II.

The hangar was fully enclosed and could only be entered by air locks and the lifts, due to the hazardous nature of aviation fuel and oil vapours.

[4] The ship was powered by steam created by four Admiralty 3-drum type boilers driving two Parsons geared turbines, each turning one shaft.

[4][8] The engines were rated at 42,000 shaft horsepower (31,319 kW) and the vessel had a capacity for 3,196 long tons (3,247 t) of fuel oil, with a range of 8,300 nautical miles (15,372 km) at 20 knots (37 km/h).

[3] For anti-aircraft defence, the aircraft carrier was initially armed with four twin-mounted and twenty single-mounted 40 mm Bofors guns.

[citation needed] As the focus of future operations at sea during the Second World War shifted to the Pacific theatre, planning began in May 1944 that the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) would require a larger fleet both in numbers and in size of ships.

A formal approach was first made in July, with negotiations being finalised in April 1945 when Warrior and Magnificent were acquired on loan with the option to purchase them outright at a later date.

That same month, on 23 August while transiting the St. Lawrence River, Warrior ran aground at Pointe Sainte Antoine, near Montreal while en route to the city after her rudder jammed.

Tugboats got the aircraft carrier unstuck from the mud bank she had run into the same day and Warrior continued on to Montreal where she became the largest ship to visit that port to that date.

[17] The RCN experienced problems with the unheated equipment during operations in cold North Atlantic waters off eastern Canada during 1946.

The ship was transferred west to Esquimalt, British Columbia in November 1946, visiting Bermuda, Acapulco, Mexico and San Diego, California before arriving in December.

On 18 January 1947, Commodore Harry DeWolf took command of Warrior while the vessel was undergoing repairs to the damages to her hull that had been received during her August grounding.

It was during this period, that the RCN, facing reduced defence spending and manning constraints, came to the conclusion that they could not operate two aircraft carriers.

In February 1947, the aircraft carrier began her voyage back to Halifax, accompanied by the cruiser Uganda and destroyer Crescent.

The Canadian group stopped at San Pedro, California before the aircraft carrier transited the Panama Canal by herself, meeting the destroyers Nootka and Micmac on the other side.

In November, Magnificent's air group consisting of 826 and 883 Squadrons trained aboard Warrior off the coast of Nova Scotia.

[11] Warrior was reactivated in June 1950 and modified to carry troops and aircraft to the Far East during the Korean War, departing in August on the first such mission.

[22] Following a short period as a training ship, Warrior was dispatched to the Pacific Ocean, where the aircraft carrier took part in Operation Grapple, the first British hydrogen bomb tests, as the headquarters ship embarking a flight of Westland Whirlwind helicopters and Grumman Avenger AS4 aircraft to collect air samples from the tests and ferry them back for examination.

[citation needed] Considered surplus to requirements by the late 1950s, the Royal Navy decommissioned Warrior in February 1958 and offered her for sale.

The return voyage from the Grapple tests was via Argentina, with port visits and demonstrations to the Argentine Navy, to whom the Admiralty was trying to sell her.

[21] The air group, which had a maximum of 24 aircraft, was mainly formed from Vought F4U Corsairs, North American SNJ-5Cs Texans and Grumman S2F-1 (S-2A) Trackers.