Battleships of WWII

While the battles on the ground in WWII have rightly been recognised as key events in the war, those fought at sea had an equally important role. Sea was the route by which American matériel kept Britain and the Soviet Union fighting in the darkest days of WWII. Without those supplies the war effort would have run dry, the population out of food and the efforts of those on the ground and in the air would have been in vain. There were four key areas – the Atlantic crossing to Britain; the Arctic run to supply the Soviet Union; the Mediterranean where British, Italian and German forces fought it out; and the Pacific, where the Allies took on the naval might of Imperial Japan. In this special, 132-page collector’s edition…

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At the commencement of hostilities in 1939, the Royal Navy was still the largest and most powerful in the world, able to call on over 1,400 vessels. There had been significant developments in both air and sea power since World War I and it became obvious that a second war would severely test the fighting capacity of the Royal Navy across the oceans of the globe, yet it was not until the late 1930s that the Admiralty set to work to upgrade Britain’s ageing fleet. Until the late 1930s Britain had relied upon a fleet of previous generation capital ships, most of which had seen service during WWI. The Queen Elizabeth class of five dreadnought battleships was completed during the first two years of the war and was designed to…

HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH HMS Queen Elizabeth was the lead ship of her class of five dreadnoughts designed to act as fast response ships which would confront the most powerful warships of opposing European navies. The Queen Elizabeth class was based on the blueprint of an original dreadnought, HMS Iron Duke, but with a radical increase in armament and propulsion, and an intended speed of 25 knots. Named after the last Tudor monarch of England, her keel was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard in October 1912 and the ship launched a year later. On completion in January 1915, she headed to the Mediterranean to conduct sea trials which were interrupted by the Admiralty’s decision to deploy Queen Elizabeth as the flagship to the Commander Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton,…

HMS REVENGE Revenge gave her name to a new class of warship intended as a smaller and slower variant of the Queen Elizabeth class, but featuring heavier protective armour and retaining the 15in guns of the preceding ships. Commissioned in May 1915, she had completed sea trials and was at full battle readiness when the Grand Fleet faced Germany’s High Seas Fleet at Jutland the following year. During the fighting, Revenge fired over 100 shells at enemy ships but registered no hits and did not sustain any damage. On 21 November 1918 as part of the Grand Fleet, Revenge sailed out to meet the surrendering ships of the German High Seas Fleet and escort them into internment at Scapa Flow. The inter war period was divided between service in the…

HMS NELSON The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was signed by the WWI Allied powers with the intention of limiting naval forces to prevent a global arms race. The first British battleships built to conform to the treaty were the two ships of the Nelson class. Named after Britain’s greatest naval hero, HMS Nelson was the third Royal Navy ship to bear the name and was laid down by Armstrong Whitworth on North Tyneside at Newcastle, launching on 3 September 1925. After sea trials, Nelson entered service in October as the Atlantic Fleet’s flagship, retaining the role until 1941. In September 1931 the ship gained a certain notoriety as members of her crew were involved in the Invergordon mutiny which had been initiated by drastic cuts in naval rates of…