ara veinticinco de mayo (v-2) was an aircraft carrier in the argentine navy from 1969 to 1997.the english translation of the name is twenty-fifth of may, which is the date of argentina's may revolution in 1810.the ship previously served in the royal navy as hms venerable and the royal netherlands navy as hnlms karel doorman.she was deployed south during the beagle crisis in 1978 and in the first weeks of the falklands war (spanish: guerra de las malvinas), where her aircraft were deployed against the royal navy task force, but spent the bulk of the war in port.as a colossus-class aircraft carrier, she was named hms venerable and saw service in the british pacific fleet.venerable only served three years in the royal navy before being sold to the netherlands as hnlms karel doorman.after a boiler room fire, the carrier was rebuilt, and sold to argentina.the argentines already operated a carrier, ara independencia, also a former royal navy colossus class.after independencia was decommissioned in 1970, veinticinco de mayo was the sole remaining carrier in the argentine fleet.she could carry up to 24 aircraft.the air group started with f9f panthers and f9f cougar jets and later these were replaced with a-4q skyhawks supported by s-2 tracker anti-submarine warfare aircraft and sikorsky sea king helicopters.in september 1969, during the voyage of the recently bought veinticinco de mayo from the netherlands, hawker siddeley demonstrated their harrier gr.1 on board the carrier for a possible sale to the argentine navy.during the 1970s the ship was refitted and updated several times, though in each case the duration of each repair period was never more than 3–5 months, allowing her to be available to deploy.her last pre-falklands refit occurred during 1981, when she received an update to her radar, arresting gear, steam catapult and (most noticeably) the forward edge of the port side angled deck was filled out via an enlarged sponson.these improvements would theoretically enable her to operate the super etendard strike aircraft purchased from france, but it was discovered during testing that the catapult had difficulties launching the aircraft type.as a result, her strike airwing was limited to the a-4q skyhawks.on the day of the invasion, she waited with 1500 army soldiers outside stanley harbour as the first submarine and boat-landed commandos secured landing areas and then argentine marines made the main amphibious landing.her aircraft were not used during the invasion.later, in defence of the occupation, she was deployed in a task force north of the falkland islands, with the cruiser ara general belgrano to the south.the british had assigned hms splendid (s106), a nuclear-powered submarine, to track down veinticinco de mayo and sink her if necessary.rear admiral sandy woodward, commanding the british task force from hms hermes stated in his book one hundred days that, had splendid located the carrier, he would have 'recommended in the strongest possible terms to the commander-in-chief admiral sir john fieldhouse that we take them both out this night'.following the outbreak of hostilities on 1 may 1982, the argentine carrier planned an attack on the royal navy task force.veinticinco de mayo's s-2 trackers detected the british fleet late that day, and a strike by all eight a-4q skyhawk jets was prepared, scheduled to take-off at dawn.the attack did not take place, because subsequent tracker sorties had failed to relocate the british fleet.after the british nuclear-powered submarine hms conqueror sank general belgrano, veinticinco de mayo returned to port.the naval a-4q skyhawks flew the rest of the war from the airbase in río grande, tierra del fuego.
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