King George V class battleship (1939)

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One of the KGV battleships, HMS Prince of Wales (1941)

This is the 1939 class; for the 1911 class see King George V class battleship (1911)

The King George V class battleships (KGV) were the penultimate class of battleships completed for the Royal Navy (RN). Five ships of the class were commissioned: King George V (1940), Prince of Wales (1941), Duke of York (1941), Howe (1942), and Anson (1942).

The Washington treaty limiting both the quantity, size (in tonnage), and armament of post World War I battleship construction had been extended by the First London Naval Treaty, but the treaty was due to expire in 1936. With increased tension between the various major naval nations, it was expected by planners that the treaty might not be renewed and the KGV-class was designed with this loss of restriction in mind.

1 Anatomy
- 1.1 Armour
- 1.2 Armament
2 Service
3 Further reading
4 See also

[edit] Anatomy

[edit] Armour

Apart from the Japanese super battleships Yamato and Musashi, the class had probably the heaviest armour for warships of the period. The main belt was 391 mm thick amidships, 127 to 178 mm forward, and equal amount astern. The lower belt was 3 inches (76 mm) thick. Deck protection was 178 mm. The main gun turrets were protected by 406 mm to the front and 280 to 305 mm on the sides. The conning tower was relatively light in armour at about 100 mm, but the citadel was enclosed at either end by bulkheads, at its maximum 318 mm. The RN felt that a heavily armoured conning tower was of little use, as it restricted the view and hindered control of the ship; moreover, shock from a heavy calibre hit would probably disable the personnel in the tower anyway. Overall, the armour weight was estimated as high as 14,000 tonnes. However, the belt armour was not inclined, as it was on many contemporary battleship classes. Inclined armour presented a greater thickness to most inbound trajectories, and forced shells to glance off; however, a glancing shell would often be directed downward into the ship, potentially causing more damage. In addition, there were concerns of weak spots under the waterline but this class compared well with its contemporaries. The armoured belt was actually the deepest (tallest, from gunwale towards keel) ever fitted to any battleship, so that for a shell to pass under this belt, it would have to travel a considerable distance underwater. On examination of the Prince of Wales after its encounter with the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen, three damaging hits were discovered, one of which, fired from Prinz Eugen, had penetrated the torpedo protection outer bulkhead in a region very close to the primary weapons magazine. The armoured, inner bulkhead, however, remained intact. The German shells would have actually exploded in the water before striking the Prince of Wales, if their fuses had worked properly, showing the sound design of this class of battleship's armour.

[edit] Armament

British 14in Naval Gun as used on King George V class battleships. This example never installed, now on display at Royal Armoury Fort Nelson, Hampshire, UK

The King George V and the four other ships of the class as built carried 10 14 inch (356 mm) guns, in two four-gun turrets fore and aft and a single two-gun turret behind and above the fore turret.

While some argued that this gave the battleships an inferior broadside to the eight 15 inch (381 mm) guns of the German battleship Bismarck and her sister-ship Tirpitz, the designers of this class emphasised that the ten guns of the 14 inch (356 mm) class had advantages over the eight 15 inch (381 mm) of the Bismarck. They pointed out that at normal battle ranges the 14 inch (356 mm) gun could penetrate any practical naval armour, could shoot repeated rounds faster, and in the bad weather of the North Atlantic (hindrance to visibility and optical targeting), the extra range of bigger guns was not needed. Also, the ten guns of the British ship could fire larger salvos increasing hit probability.

The original design had called for nine 15 inch (381 mm) guns in three turrets, 2 forward and 1 aft. While this was within the capabilities of the British, they felt compelled to adhere to the Second London Naval Treaty signed in 1936 even though other signatory nations were already violating the limits, especially with regards to gun calibre. As a result, the design was changed to twelve 14 inch (356 mm) guns in three turrets and this configuration had a heavier broadside than the nine 15 inch (381 mm) guns. However, in the end the second forward turret was changed to a smaller two gun turret for better armour protection, reducing the broadside weight to below that of the nine gun arrangement.

In service, the quad gun arrangement of two of the turrets proved to be more of an operational curse than a larger salvo blessing. Placing four 14 inch (356 mm) guns into a single turret made it cramped, mechanically complex and difficult to service, leading to low reliability which plagued the class throughout its career. Improved firing patterns late in the war, worked out in conjunction with the Americans, who suffered similar problems in the tight triple 14-inch turrets in the Standard battleships (especially the Tennessee class), led to greater reliability in the quadruple turrets. Despite these issues, the King George V maintained sustained fire for the opening 30 minutes of Bismarck's final battle, and this is much longer than the average length of most battleship actions in either WWI or WWII. HMS Duke of York, the third of the class, fired more main armament rounds in one ship-to-ship action than any other battleship in history when she pursued the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst while in extremely heavy seas. In actual service these guns performed well.

[edit] Service

The King George V class was built in an era where the aircraft carrier was supplanting the battleship as focal point of maritime operations, but nonetheless King George V, Prince of Wales, and Duke of York all saw the battleship-to-battleship action for which they were designed. The KGV and the Prince of Wales both fought the Bismarck in late May 1941, while the Duke of York dueled with the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst in the battle of North Cape, contributing to the latter's sinking in December 1943.

Four of the five King George V-class ships survived World War II; Prince of Wales was sunk near Singapore by air attack in December 1941, a poignant foretelling of the rise of airpower over the conventional battleship. The remaining ships never suffered any serious wartime damage, except for King George V, which accidentally collided with and sank HMS Punjabi in May 1942. All of them, including the King George V, were scrapped in 1957.

The planned successors to the KGV class were to be the Lion class battleships of some 40,000 tonnes with nine 16 inch (406 mm) guns.