HMS Iron Duke

HMS Iron Duke

HMS Iron Duke was a dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class, named in honour of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

She was built by Portsmouth Dockyard, and her keel laid in January 1912.

Launched ten months later, she was commissioned into the Home Fleet in March 1914 as the fleet flagship.

She was armed with a main battery of ten 13.5-inch (340 mm) guns and was capable of a top speed of 21.25 knots (39.36 km/h; 24.45 mph).

Iron Duke served as the flagship of the Grand Fleet during the First World War, including at the Battle of Jutland.

There, she inflicted significant damage on the German battleship SMS König early in the main fleet action. In January 1917, she was relieved as the fleet flagship.
After the war, Iron Duke operated in the Mediterranean as the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet.

She participated in both the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in the Black Sea and the Greco-Turkish War.

She also assisted in the evacuation of refugees from Smyrna.

In 1926, she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, where she served as a training ship. Iron Duke remained on active duty for only a few more years;

in 1930, the London Naval Treaty specified that the four Iron Duke-class battleships be scrapped or otherwise demilitarised.

Iron Duke was therefore converted into a gunnery training ship; her armour and much of her armament were removed to render her unfit for combat.

She served in this capacity until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, when she was moored in Scapa Flow as a harbour defence ship. In October, she was badly damaged by German bombers and was run aground to avoid sinking.

She continued to serve as an anti-aircraft platform for the duration of the war and was eventually refloated and broken up for scrap in the late 1940s.

Media Storehouse Framed 16x12 Print of HMS Iron Duke and the Great Fire of Smyrna, 1922 (14169690)

HMS Queen Elizabeth

HMS Queen Elizabeth

HMS Queen Elizabeth was the lead ship of her class of dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the early 1910s and was often used as a flagship.

She served in the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet and participated in the inconclusive Action of 19 August 1916.

Her service during the war generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea.

She and the other super-dreadnought battleships were the first of their type to be powered by oil instead of coal.

Queen Elizabeth later served in several theatres during the Second World War and was ultimately scrapped in 1948.

The Queen Elizabeth-class ships were designed to form a fast squadron for the fleet that was intended to operate against the leading ships of the opposing battleline.

This required maximum offensive power and a speed several knots faster than any other battleship to allow them to defeat any type of ship.

Queen Elizabeth had a length overall of 643 feet 9 inches (196.2 m), a beam of 90 feet 7 inches (27.6 m) and a deep draught of 33 feet (10.1 m).

She had a normal displacement of 32,590 long tons (33,110 t) and displaced 33,260 long tons (33,794 t) at deep load. 

She was powered by two sets of Brown-Curtis steam turbines, each driving two shafts, using steam from 24 Yarrow boilers.

The turbines were rated at 75,000 shp (56,000 kW) and intended to reach a maximum speed of 24 knots (44.4 km/h; 27.6 mph).

Queen Elizabeth had a range of 5,000 nautical miles (9,260 km; 5,754 mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22.2 km/h; 13.8 mph).

Her crew numbered 1,262 officers and ratings in 1920 while serving as a flagship.

The Queen Elizabeth class was equipped with eight breech-loading (BL) 15-inch (381 mm) Mk I guns in four twin gun turrets, in two super firing pairs fore and aft of the superstructure, designated ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘X’, and ‘Y’ from front to rear.

Queen Elizabeth was the only ship of her class that mounted all sixteen of the designed BL 6-inch (152 mm) Mk XII guns in casemates.

Twelve of these were mounted along the broadside of the vessel amidships and the remaining four were grouped in the stern abreast ‘X’ and ‘Y’ turrets.

These latter guns were quickly found to be too close to the water and were frequently flooded at high speed or heavy seas.

Two were removed and the other pair were shifted to positions on the forecastle deck near the aft funnel, protected by gun shields, in May 1915.

The ships’ anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of two quick-firing (QF) 3-inch (76 mm) 20 cwt Mk I[Note 1] guns. She was fitted with four submerged 21 inches (533 mm) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside.

Queen Elizabeth was completed with two fire-control directors fitted with 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinders. One was mounted above the conning tower, protected by an armoured hood, and the other was in the spotting top above the tripod foremast.

Each turret was also fitted with a 15-foot rangefinder.

The main armament could be controlled by ‘B’ turret as well. The secondary armament was primarily controlled by directors mounted on each side of the compass platform on the foremast once they were fitted in March 1917, although one temporary director was fitted in November–December 1916.

The waterline belt of the Queen Elizabeth class consisted of Krupp cemented armour (KC) that was 13 inches (330 mm) thick over the ships’ vitals.

The gun turrets were protected by 11 to 13 inches (279 to 330 mm) of KC armour and were supported by barbettes 7–10 inches (178–254 mm) thick.

The ships had multiple armoured decks that ranged from 1 to 3 inches (25 to 76 mm) in thickness.

The main conning tower was protected by 13 inches of armour.

After the Battle of Jutland, 1 inch of high-tensile steel was added to the main deck over the magazines and additional anti-flash equipment was added in the magazines

H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth - Art Print - Medium - 28x35cm

HMS Dreadnought

HMS Dreadnought

HMS Dreadnought was the first dreadnought battleship, a classification to which she gave her name, and was born out of the minds of Vittorio Cuniberti and First Sea Lord Admiral Sir John Fisher and the results of the Russo-Japanese War.

She was the first to use steam turbines, of which Dreadnought had two, from the Parsons company, that supplied four shafts that all told gave the 527-foot (161 m) long warship a revolutionary top speed of 21.6 knots (40.0 km/h; 24.9 mph) in spite of her displacement of 18,120 long tons (18,410 t).

Dreadnought’s primary armament was a suite of ten 45-caliber Mk X 12-inch (300 mm) guns, arranged in such a way that only eight of her main guns could fire a broadside and a secondary armament of ten 50-caliber 12-pounder guns and five 18-inch (460 mm) torpedo tubes.

Her belt armour ranged from 4 inches (102 mm) to 11 inches (279 mm) of Krupp armour.

Dreadnought sparked a naval arms race that soon had all the world’s major powers building new and bigger warships in her image.

Although her concepts would be improved upon for decades, Dreadnought’s construction set an unbeaten record of 15 months for the fastest construction of a battleship ever.

From 1907 until 1911, Dreadnought served as the flagship of the Home Fleet until being replaced by HMS Neptune (1909) in March 1911.

Dreadnought was then assigned to the 1st Division of the Home Fleet and was present at the Fleet Review for the coronation of King George V.

In December 1912, the ship was transferred from the 1st Battle Squadron and became the flagship of the 4th Squadron until 10 December 1914.

While patrolling the North Sea on 18 March 1915, she rammed and sank U-29, becoming the only battleship to have sunk a submarine.

Dreadnought did not participate in the Battle of Jutland as she was undergoing a refit.

Two years later, she resumed her role as flagship of the 4th Squadron, but was moved into the reserve in February 1920 and sold for scrap on 9 May 1921.

She was broken up on 2nd January 1923

Trumpeter HMS Dreadnought 1918 Battleship by MMD Holdings, LLC

HMS Agincourt

HMS Agincourt

HMS Agincourt was a dreadnought battleship built in the United Kingdom in the early 1910s.

Originally part of Brazil’s role in a South American naval arms race, she holds the distinction of mounting more heavy guns (fourteen) and more turrets (seven) than any other dreadnought battleship, in keeping with the Brazilians’ requirement for an especially impressive design.

Brazil ordered the ship in 1911 as Rio de Janeiro from the British company Armstrong Whitworth.

However, the collapse of Brazil’s rubber boom and warming in relations with Argentina, the country’s chief rival, led to the ship’s sale while under construction to the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottomans renamed her Sultan Osman I, after the empire’s founder, and the ship was nearly complete when the First World War broke out.

The British government seized her for use by the Royal Navy, together with another Ottoman dreadnought being constructed in Britain.

This act caused resentment in the Ottoman Empire, as the payments for both ships were complete, and contributed to the decision of the Ottoman government to join the Central Powers.

Renamed Agincourt by the Royal Navy, she joined the Grand Fleet in the North Sea.

During the war, the ship spent the bulk of her time on patrols and exercises, although she did participate in the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

Agincourt was put into reserve in 1919 and sold for scrap in 1922 to meet the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty.

Media Storehouse A1 Poster of British battleships at sea, including HMS Agincourt, WW1 (7193633)