HMS Rodney (1925)

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Career (UK)

Ordered:	1922
Laid down:	28 December 1922
Launched:	December 17, 1925
Commissioned:	November 10, 1927
Decommissioned:	1946
Struck:	1947
Status:	Sold for scrap March 26, 1948
General Characteristics
Displacement:	33,950 tons (38,000 full load)
Length:	710 ft (216.5 m) overall
Beam:	106 ft (32.3 m)
Draught:	33 ft (10 m)
Propulsion:	8 Admiralty 3-drum oil-fired boilers, 2 Brown-Curtis geared turbines, 2 shafts 45,000 hp (33.6 MW)
Speed:	23.8 knots (44.1 km/h) (trials)
Range:	7,000 nautical miles at 16 knots (13000 km at 30 km/h)
Complement:	1,640
Armor:	14.12 inch (358.6 mm) belt 6.32 inch (161 mm) deck 12 inch (300 mm) torpedo bulkhead 16.24 inch (412.5 mm) turret face 14 inch (360 mm) conning tower side
Aircraft carried:	2; 1 catapult on C turret 1934-39
Motto:	Non Generant Aquilae Columbas (Latin) "Eagles do not breed doves"

HMS Rodney was a Nelson-class battleship of the Royal Navy. She was named for Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney. She carried the pennant number I.29.

Built under the constraints of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the design was limited to 35,000 tons and showed certain compromises. To accommodate 16 inch (406 mm) main guns in three turrets, all of the turrets were placed forward and the vessel's speed was reduced and maximum armour was limited to vital areas. Even with the design limitations forced on the designers by the treaty, the Rodney and Nelson were regarded as the most powerful battleships afloat until the new generation of all big gun ships was launched in 1936.

Rodney was laid down on 28 December 1922, the same date as her sister ship Nelson. She was built at Birkenhead by Cammell-Laird shipyard. Launched in December 1925, she was commissioned in November 1927, three months behind her sister. Her construction cost £7.617 million.

From commissioning until World War II broke out in September 1939, Rodney spent her entire time with the British Atlantic Fleet or Home fleet. In 1931, the crews of both ships took part in the Invergordon Mutiny. In late December 1939, she was under refit and repair because she was having steering gear problems.

She was damaged by German aircraft at Karmo Island, near Bergen on April 9, 1940 when hit by a 500 kg (1103lb) bomb that pierced the armored deck, but did not explode. On 13 September 1940, she was transferred from Scapa Flow to Rosyth with orders to operate in the English Channel when the expected German invasion was about to start. In November and December, she did convoy escort duties between Britain and Halifax, Nova Scotia. In January 1941, she participated in the chase of the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, with no success. On 16 March, however, while escorting a convoy in the North Atlantic, she made contact with the German battlecruisers, but no battle followed as the German ships turned away when they realized that they were facing superior firepower.

In May 1941 while commanded by Captain Dalrymple-Hamilton, Rodney and two destroyers were escorting the troop ship Britannic to Canada; the Britannic was taking civilians over to Canada, and would be bringing Canadian troops back to Britain. It was during this run on 24 May that she was called to join in the pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck. On 26 May, she joined up with King George V; Admiral Sir John Tovey sent the destroyers home because they were low on fuel, and had Rodney fall in behind King George V for the battle against the Bismarck the next day. On the early morning of 27 May 1941, along with the battleship King George V and the cruisers Norfolk, and Dorsetshire, she engaged the Bismarck, which had had its rudder machinery damaged by an airplane launched torpedo the day before. After Bismarck's guns were knocked out, Rodney closed with Bismarck until she was firing essentially a flat trajectory, and spotters could actually follow the shells to the target. One 16 inch shell was tracked from the gun to where it hit the face of Bismarck's #2 gunhouse (turret Bertha) and exploded, blowing out the back of the gunhouse. She later broke off action and was ordered home because of her low fuel status, though not before firing torpedoes into both sides of the stricken German battleship. This is believed to be the only naval battle in history of one battleship torpedoing another battleship.

After this, she went to Boston, Massachusetts, for engine repairs. In September, she was stationed with Force H in Gibraltar, escorting convoys to Malta. In November, she returned home, and was stationed in Iceland for a month. Then she underwent refit and repair until May 1942. After the refit, she returned to Force H where she again escorted Malta convoys and took part in Operation Torch, the invasion of Northwest Africa. Later, she was involved with landings in Sicily and Salerno. From October 1943, she was in the Home Fleet, and took part in the Normandy invasion in June 1944, destroying targets at Caen and Alderney. In September 1944, she performed escort duties with a Murmansk convoy.

During the entire war, she steamed over 156,000 nautical miles with no engine overhaul after 1942. Because of her frequent machinery problems and the fact that she had not been upgraded to the extent that her sister Nelson had, starting in December 1944, she was put in reserve in Scapa Flow, with her crew assigned to new construction. She remained there until she was sold for scrap in February 1948. She was scrapped starting 26 March 1948 at Inverkeithing.

[edit] References

Siegfried Breyer, Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-1970 (Doubleday and Company; Garden City, New York, 1973) (originally published in German as Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer 1905-1970, J.F. Lehmanns Verlag, München, 1970). Contains various line drawings of the ship as build and as modified.

See HMS Rodney for other ships of this name.