Britain's last serving aircraft carrier has left Portsmouth for the last time before being torn apart and sold off for scrap.

HMS Illustrious departed from her home port bound for a shipyard in Turkey, where she has been sold for £2.1m.

Attempts to save her failed - campaigners wanted her converted into a museum and hotel, but the Ministry of Defence dismissed the proposal as too expensive.

The 22,000-tonne ship was affectionately known as "Lusty".

Image: HMS Illustrious passing HMS Ark Royal under construction in Tyneside. Pic: file

She was rushed into service in 1982 to help recapture the Falklands, but arrived in the Southern Ocean just after the conflict was won.


She went on to help police the no-fly-zones over Bosnia and Iraq in the 1990s and led the Navy's deployment to Sierra Leone in that same decade.

In 2013 she deployed to the Philippines in a humanitarian role to help in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.

Image: The ship was launched on 4 December 1978 from Swan Hunter shipyard in Newcastle

In more than 30 years of service she sailed more than a million nautical miles.

The decision to scrap her was taken in the 2010 SDSR and she left service in 2014, leaving the Royal Navy with no aircraft carriers.

Britain is currently building two new aircraft carriers - HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.

The first of those, the Queen Elizabeth, will start sea trials early next year.