Farewell Rusty Lusty. Now for the scrapyard
WITH crowds lining the harbour to bid it farewell, HMS Illustrious leaves port for the final time.
The aircraft carrier, known as ‘Lusty’, left Portsmouth Naval Base yesterday for a Turkish scrapyard.
The 22,000-ton ship was a shadow of its former glory, with paint peeling and engines ripped out, as it was pulled into the Solent by a tug.
Illustrious was formally decommissioned in August 2014 and sold to Turkish firm Leyal Ship Recycling Ltd for £2.1million.
The sale came despite proposals to turn the warship into a floating hotel or museum.
Its departure has left the Navy without a fixed-wing aircraft carrier until the first of its next generation of carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is commissioned next year.
Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, former First Sea Lord and commanding officer of Illustrious, said it was a sad day. But he added: ‘It’s better to describe it as a day of reflection and to think about your time on the ship concerned, and I was lucky enough to command her for two years.’
Illustrious, which was built at the Swan Hunter shipyard on the Tyne, was one of the Invincible class of aircraft carrier – alongside the Ark Royal and Invincible – brought into service in the 1980s. Following the retirement of the Harrier aircraft in 2010, Illustrious went on to serve as a helicopter carrier.
Launched by Princess Margaret in 1978, its 1982 deployment to the Falklands was so rushed that its commissioning had to take place at sea en route.
David Stares, 51, from Fareham, Hampshire, served as an able seaman aboard Illustrious between 1982 and 1985. He said: ‘She was a lovely ship, she was cutting-edge technology.
‘Now she’s gone despite a lot of people wanting to save her. She was a brilliant ship, great crew, she was a large family.’