Hermes was an unusually recent preservation failure after a career that began in British service and continued for decades with the Indian Navy. Her 1944 laying-down, Falklands service, Cold War career, and Centaur-class design linked several periods of carrier development. She also survived longer than the Invincible-class carriers. Either Britain or India could have provided a credible museum home. A preservation petition reached India's Supreme Court, but the process came too late: roughly forty percent of the ship had already been dismantled.
Notable Point · 1:01:23-1:05:20
HMS Hermes, later INS Viraat, and a lost Anglo-Indian museum ship
The long-lived carrier HMS Hermes, later India's INS Viraat, could have preserved a rare link from a late-war British carrier design through the Cold War and Falklands War to decades of Indian naval service.