High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! HMS Ark Royal (R09) was an Audacious-class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy and, when she was decommissioned in 1978, was the Royal Navy`s last remaining conventional catapult and arrested-landing aircraft carrier. She was the world`s first aircraft carrier to be commissioned with an angled flight deck, preceding the first American carrier commissioned with this feature, USS Forrestal, by eight months.