After taking on replacement aircraft from Unicorn in Sasebo, Glory relieved the USS Badoeng Strait off western Korea on 28 November 1952. Much of the tasked flying was now intended to support Allied forces on the islands of Chodo and Sok-to as the NKPA tried to gain territorial advantage before a potential ceasefire but bad weather hampered operations Glory sailed for her last period of operations in 1952 on 15 December. Unfortunately her SAR helicopter was lost, together with its crew, a day later. It was an RN Dragonfly flown by Lieutenant A P Daniels RN and Aircrewman E R Ripley and was caught by a strong crosswind while taking off and crashed over the starboard side into the sea. Strike sorties concentrated on blocking railway tunnels and on 20 December a Firefly carried out the 10,000th deck landing since Glory had left the UK in May 1951. She left the operational area on 26 December to take on replacement aircraft from the AHU at Iwakuni which were ferried out to her by lighter.
A further war patrol began on 4 January 1953 with the emphasis placed on bombing attacks on villages where intelligence sources believed enemy troops to be billeted. Numerous cuts were also made in the railway network. A further patrol began on 19 January with similar tasking and on 6 February she began her sixth war patrol. Intelligence had warned of a possible pre-armistice submarine offensive against Allied warships and there were heightened anti-submarine precautions including visual searches by Fireflies and an enlarged screen of destroyers. Rivers and the ground froze so hard in January 1953 that trucks could drive round any damage inflicted on roads. It was well known that railway bridges could be repaired quickly and so attacks were directed at railway lines in the most inaccessible parts of their routes. Thirty-three such cuts were made in the month and, at first, repair rates were encouragingly slow but as NKPA engineers became aware of the tactic, repairs were made more quickly. On 5 January a Sea Fury, piloted by Lieutenant D G ‘Pug’ Mather RN, was hit by enemy fire after an attack on a railway line north of Chaeryon.21 His aircraft caught fire and he bailed out but the remainder of his section was unable to see where he landed and for 90 minutes aircraft searched for him without success. A USAF helicopter, escorted by two Sea Furies, was sent to the scene but, unfortunately, it was forced to turn back by bad weather and Mather was taken prisoner by the NKPA. He was tortured but eventually released after the armistice. One of the escorting Sea Furies, flown by Sub Lieutenant B E Rayner RN, lost radio contact and disappeared without trace and later in the day a Sea Fury flown by Sub Lieutenant B J Simonds RNVR spun from 3000ft and exploded on hitting the ground. Lieutenant Foster RN made a wheels-up landing in his Sea Fury at Pengyong-do with a rough-running engine and electrical failure. A day later a Firefly flown by Lieutenant W R Heaton RN was hit by ground fire and ditched north of Kirin-do. He was rescued from his dinghy by a USAF helicopter from Pengyong-do. On 10 February a section of Sea Furies was attacked by MiG-15s but the communist fighters failed to gain an advantage in their first firing pass and, unable to get into a firing position in a turning fight, they broke off the action and withdrew at high speed. After further replenishment in Kure, Glory sailed on 25 February for a further period of operations in some of the worst weather encountered during the entire war. Targets included troop concentrations and lorry convoys. As part of a pre-armistice ‘hearts and minds’ campaign, leaflet raids were carried out over the larger villages and towns in the north.
Pre-dawn strikes against lorry convoys resumed in March and war patrols with high-intensity rates of flying followed in March and April. On 5 April 1953 Glory equalled the record set by Ocean of 123 sorties flown in a single day. It could have been exceeded but the sensible decision was taken to equal it rather than risk lives by chasing statistics. As it was, the achievement required every pilot to fly four combat sorties in the day and Commander ‘Air’, the Flight Deck Officer and the Landing Signals Officer to fly two each. Weapons expended included 104 500lb bombs and 384 rocket projectiles fitted with the new shaped-charge warheads for use against hardened targets. Targets destroyed included seven road and railway bridges, twenty-eight buildings and five ‘exploding’ ox-carts with four further bridges and three gun positions damaged.
On 19 April Glory sailed for her tenth war patrol during this period of operations. By now sick and wounded prisoners of war were being exchanged at Panmunjon and target restrictions were particularly tight but close air support for the Commonwealth Division was given when requested. Her last war patrol began on 5 May; this was the eleventh of this tour of operations and her twenty-fifth overall. The Commander Seventh Fleet had signalled all carriers in theatre that the war was drawing to a close and no unnecessary risks were to be taken by aircraft attacking heavily-defended targets. Her last day of operational flying was 14 May 1953 after which she returned to Sasebo to pass personnel, aircraft and stores to Ocean which had arrived to relieve her. Since leaving the UK in May 1951 she had made an unrivalled contribution to the Korean War. This involved steaming 157,000nm and flying 13,700 sorties, 9500 of which were operational over Korea, using a million gallons of avgas. The ship had used 25,000 tons of furnace fuel oil. Her aircraft had destroyed seventy bridges, 392 vehicles and forty-nine railway trucks for the loss of twenty aircrew. The expenditure of ammunition amounted to 278 1000lb bombs, 7080 500lb bombs, 24,238 rocket projectiles and 1,441,000 rounds of 20mm ammunition. Once she had handed over operational duties, Glory returned to the UK, arriving in Portsmouth on 8 July 1953 to be de-commissioned for a major refit.
HMS Ocean – May 1953 to July 1953
Ocean returned to the Korean War zone in May 1953 after a spell in the Mediterranean. She had a new air group embarked which comprised 807 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 810 (Firefly FR 5s) NAS. After a few days in Sasebo she sailed for a war patrol on 19 May and provided close air support for the Commonwealth Division as well as interdicting enemy troop movements. She returned to Sasebo on 31 May but had been unable to disembark her Sea Furies to Iwakuni as planned because of fog and low cloud. This was unfortunate as they were intended to carry out a fly-past over Allied ships in harbour to mark the forthcoming Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II. Not to be put off, fourteen Sea Furies were launched from Ocean while she lay at anchor in Sasebo using Rocket-Assisted Take-off Gear (RATOG), so that they could carry out a fly-past from Iwakuni. This had never been done before and provided as great a spectacle for the ships in harbour as the subsequent fly-past a day later. On Coronation Day, 2 June 1953, Commonwealth ships dressed overall, there was a parade in Ocean’s hangar and the fly-past took place as planned.
Ocean sailed again on 8 June with tasking limited to close air support for the Commonwealth Division as the front line stabilised prior to the armistice. A replenishment period in Kure was followed by a further patrol but fog limited the number of close air support sorties that could be flown. A further operational period was carried out in early July and three Fireflies were disembarked to K6 airfield at Pyongtaek as night fighters to counter interdiction raids by North Korean aircraft that were too slow for jets to intercept. They proved to be a successful deterrent although no enemy aircraft were shot down. On 27 July 1953 the armistice was finally signed at Panmunjon but Ocean carried out a further four patrols off the west coast of Korea to monitor ceasefire arrangements and ensure that there were no infringements of the armistice terms. She left the area for Hong Kong flying her paying-off pennant on 31 October and was relieved as the FEF carrier by HMAS Sydney. On arrival back in Devonport in December she paid off for a refit.
HMS Unicorn – June 1950 to July 1953
Unicorn had been re-commissioned in 1949 to ferry aircraft, stores and equipment to the FEF so that a light fleet carrier could be fully supported on station.22 She was in Singapore Dockyard undergoing a refit to prepare for her passage back to the UK when the Korean War broke out and, with the BPF a recent memory and no British base nearer to