The Greenland had built the one large aircraft carrier, Tanit, while the Sydyk class battleships were under construction. 1935 and Greenland started construction of the four ship Azizos class of battleships. That order was going to place a strain on the building resources and infrastructure of the Greenland Navies dockyards. At the same time the two ship Marquad class of battlecruiser was under construction. The design bureau took the hull design of the Marquad class and designed a new aircraft carrier class around it. There were many changes from the BC hull to the CV hull. Not least the reduction in the speed requirement from 32 knots down to 30 knots. While this does not sound much, 32 knots took 140,000shp while the 30 knots took only 100,000shp, a 40% saving. Replacing the 10" belt with a 3" belt, major weight saving. These savings went on throughout the ship to make them as inexpensive as possible to relieve the strain on the Treasury. Funnily enough, this paring down of major ship features had the effect of increasing the number of aircraft that could be carried. The design kept with the 5" dual purpose gun, but these were mounted on the Chemosh in single shield mountings in sponsons. The 40mm AA guns more than doubled from the 1939 version to the last 1943 versions. Radar and radar predictors sprouted form all sorts of nooks and crannies. The Chemosh had been the first Greenlandian aircraft carrier fitted with the aircraft homing beacon which was retrofitted to all of the older carriers as they became due for refits. The number of 20mm more than halved to provide extra space for the 40mm and their radar predictors.
Eventually eight of the class were laid down and completed. The first pair were laid down in 1936 with completion dates in 1939, the next pair were laid down in 1937 and completed in 1940. The last four ships were laid down under the 1939 Emergency budget with completion dates in late 1942 and 1943. No other large carriers were laid down during the war and the eight Chemosh class formed the post-war Aircraft section for over thirty years with the carriers slowly being retired, scrapped or sold. The last pair were forty years old and thought had been given to converting them to 'Harrier' carriers with the ski jump forward. But the ships were just too old and were replaced with new construction of a similar size and layout. A much better use of navy funds.
Only one of the ships was lost, the Haurun was sunk during fleet operations off the Philippines in October 1944. It was the first ship lost to Kamikaze attack when it was hit three times which started uncontrollable fires, the crew were taken off and the hulk torpedoed and sunk.
