Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "HMS Abdiel - Guide 207" video.

Those carriers are actually pretty fast. They list their speed as 33 knots but ... that's a lie ... Still - the Coral Sea was a WWII ship ... so yeah ... they might have been able to pass her. Of course - the idea that the US ships were increasing speed to lose the RN Cruiser ... may have been more in the minds of it's crew than their real reason for doing so. It's not like they weren't going anywhere where they'd prefer not to be late ... For that - you'd have to ask the Captain of the Coral Sea at the time. But then - having someone tailing them was hardly anything not done on other occasions. The Russians used to routinely assign a warship to just follow the American Carriers around. I knew a guy who served on one of the later models of CV's. He told this story about how - something happened somewhere and they wanted his ship there lickity split. So they put the pedal to the metal and the Russian warship just gradually fell further and further behind. Some time after they arrived at their destinations the Russian showed up belching a lot of smoke that indicated something was wrong ... Eventually (according to this story ... ) the Russian had to be towed away. I'm not sure a WWII RN Cruiser would have been able to keep up with that ship either ... .
1