ark royal (kantai collection)
アーク・ロイヤル アーク・ロイヤル(艦隊これくしょん) アーク・ロイヤル(艦これ) アークロイヤル(艦隊これくしょん) アークロイヤル アークロイヤル(艦これ)
The Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal (91), as depicted in Kantai Collection. She was one of several ships named after the original HMS Ark Royal, the galleon that was the flagship of the Royal Navy as it defeated the Spanish Armada.
Similar to Warspite, she has a prim and proper bearing, and mixes significant amounts of (generally well-spoken) English into her Japanese, although compared to Warspite, she has a more diligent personality, compared to Warspite's "regal bearing". Her official lines depict her having an explicit fear of torpedoes (due to her history, below), getting jumpy upon the sight of any submarine. She also has lines explicitly mentioning Bismarck, whom she 'tries to get along with' in a manner like a hunter chasing prey, even launching planes after her.
Ark Royal has short red hair in a bob cut with blunt bangs and wears a tiara-like hairband. She has blue, tsurime-style eyes. She wears a white corset that forms an overskirt with a white jacket tied on with a red ribbon only covering the shoulders and the length of the arms, creating a cleavage cutout. On her hands, she wears brown fingerless gloves. She also wears white shorts and white pantyhose.
Her rigging involves an overskirt-like armored shell attached at her hips, which has a ship's bridge on her back, and small twin-cannon AA turrets at the sides. She carries a quiver to the right of her hip, and wields a composite bow with a distinct flight deck motif in her left hand. She also wears armored platform shoes with a keel-like heel.
The historic HMS Ark Royal (Pennant number 91) was built under the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty, which significantly limited her displacement, and was the reason she was not built an armored aircraft carrier as most of the British carriers were.
HMS Ark Royal was originally assigned to "hunter-killer" groups, focused upon hunting down and destroying German U-boats that were wreaking havoc upon Allied shipping across the Atlantic. Ark Royal participated in the sinking of the first U-boat lost in the war on September 14th, 1939, the U-39, although the fact that she had to evade a torpedo attack doing so convinced the Admiralty to reevaluate their tactics regarding risking valuable carriers.
11 days later, on the 25th, Ark Royal was spotted by German aerial patrols rescuing a floundered British submarine, and launched aircraft shooting one of those down, marking the first aerial kill of the war. After the Germans followed up with an aerial attack upon Ark Royal's battlegroup, three of four Ju 88 bombers were driven off, but the fourth managed to launch a near-miss bombing attack that Ark Royal narrowly avoided.
Following the French surrender, Ark Royal was part of the group that went to negotiate the surrender of the French battleships, and when the French admiralty refused, initiated attacks against the French battleships, incapacitating the Dunkerque, although the Strasbourg escaped.
Ark Royal then engaged against the Regia Marina in The Battle of Cape Spartivento while escorting a British convoy, which proved indecisive, but allowed the escape of the convoy.
In perhaps her most famous engagement, during May of 1941 Ark Royal was instrumental in sinking the German battleship Bismarck, both in finding her after British battleships lost track of her, and also when one of her Fairey Swordfish crippled the Bismarck, after which it was finished off by multiple Royal Navy battleships.
Ark Royal was finally sunk on 13 November 1941 from torpedoes that were launched by German submarine U-84. Inquiries were made regarding her sinking, as many attempts were made to save her from her fate. This inquiry concluded that design flaws lead to Ark Royal's sinking, which were rectified in later carriers built by the Royal Navy.