WORLD OF WARSHIPS HMS ALBION R 07 CONVERTED TO ASSAULT SHIP LHA (landing helicopter assault)

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Albion was ordered from Swan Hunter on 12 July 1943 and laid down at Wallsend-on-Tyne on 23 March 1944. Work slowed after 1945. The hull was launched on 6 May 1947 and then laid-up with machinery installed; construction resumed after August 1949. She was commissioned on 26 May 1954 as the first carrier ever to be completed with both an angled flight deck - an interim 5.5-degree one - and mirror landing aids. She participated in Operation Musketeer during the Suez Crisis in 1956.

Albion was to have been modernized with steam catapults after Centaur, but this was cancelled after the 1957 defence policy review. Instead, she became the second ship of the class - after Bulwark - to be converted into a helicopter assault ship; the refit was done at Portsmouth Dockyard from February 1961 to July 1962. Albion could carry 900 troops, a greater number than her sister's due to a more extensive conversion; Bulwark was later refitted to a similar standard. Another defence review in 1973 led to Albion being discarded - rather than being refitted - to pay for HMS Invincible (R05). She was decommissioned for the last time on 2 March 1973, to be replaced by HMS Hermes (R12) when the latter's conversion to a helicopter assault ship was completed in August 1973 Albion was sold on 22 October 1973 to be converted into a heavy-lift crane to support the North Sea oil industry; the scheme fell through and the hull was sold for scrapping a few weeks later.