Queen Elizabeth-class battleship

The Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were a class of five super-dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy commissioned in 1915–16. The lead ship was named after Elizabeth I of England. These battleships were superior in firepower, protection and speed to their Royal Navy predecessors of the as well as preceding German classes such as the, although the corresponding  ships were competitive except for being 2 kn slower. As such, the Queen Elizabeths are generally considered the first fast battleships.

The Queen Elizabeths were the first battleships to be armed with 15 in guns, and were described in the 1919 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships as "the most successful type of capital ship yet designed." They saw much service in both world wars. HMS Barham was lost to U-boat attack in 1941, but the others survived the war and were scrapped in the late 1940s.

Design
Following the success of the, the Admiralty decided to develop a 15 in/42 gun to equip the battleships of the 1912 construction programme. The move to the larger gun was accelerated by one or two years by the intervention of Winston Churchill, now at the Admiralty. Rather than waiting for prototype guns, the entire design was optimized on paper for the new weapon, and construction commenced immediately. In making this decision, the Admiralty ran a considerable risk, as a forced reversion to the 12 in or 13.5 in gun would have resulted in a ship with weakened striking power.

The initial intention was that the new battleships would have the same configuration as the preceding, with five twin turrets and the then-standard speed of 21 kn. However, it was realised that, by dispensing with the so-called "Q" turret amidships, it would be possible to free up weight and volume for a much enlarged powerplant, and still fire a heavier broadside than the Iron Duke. The original 1912 programme envisaged three battleships and a battlecruiser, possibly an improved version of HMS Tiger (1913) named Leopard. However, given the speed of the new ships, envisaged as 25 kn, it was decided that the battlecruiser would not be needed and a fourth battleship would be built instead. When the Federation of Malay States offered to fund a further capital ship, it was decided to add a fifth unit to the class (HMS Malaya).

The Director of Naval Construction (DNC) advised that the concept would be feasible only if the ships were powered solely by oil. Previous classes, including those still in construction, used fuel oil, which was still relatively scarce, as a supplement to coal, of which the UK then commanded huge reserves. However, the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, undertook to guarantee a supply of oil in wartime, thereby allowing the programme to proceed. The oil eventually was guaranteed by the negotiation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Convention.

Meanwhile, an investigation led by Admiral Jackie Fisher had worked through all the logistical problems associated with oil fuel instead of coal, and so oil fuel was installed. Oil has a much greater energy density, vastly simplified refuelling arrangements, requires no stokers, and emits much less smoke to obscure gun laying, and makes the ships less visible on the horizon.

A further ship was authorized in 1914 and would have been named Agincourt (a name later applied to a dreadnought expropriated from Turkey). Although most sources and several official papers in the class's Ships Cover describe her as a further repeat of the Queen Elizabeth design, one historian has suggested that Agincourt would have been built on battlecruiser lines. This design would have kept the Queen Elizabeth armament, but substituted thinner armour [down to 10 in instead of 12 in, for example] in order to gain a 28 kn top speed. Whatever the case, Agincourt was cancelled at the outbreak of war in 1914.

In some respects, the ships did not quite fulfill their extremely demanding requirement. They were seriously overweight, as a result of which the draught was excessive and they were unable to reach the planned top speed of 25 kn. In the event, the combination of oil fuel and more boilers provided for a service speed of about 23 kn, still a useful improvement on the traditional battle line speed of 21 kn and just fast enough to be thought of as the first fast battleships. However, after Jutland Admiral John Jellicoe was persuaded that the slowest ship of this class was good only for about 23 kn, he concluded that, since this should be considered as the speed of the squadron, it would not be safe to risk them in operations away from the main battlefleet.

Despite these problems, most of which were mitigated in service, the ships were well received and proved outstandingly successful in combat. The savings in weight, cost and manpower made possible by oil fuel only were convincingly demonstrated, as were the benefits of concentrating a heavier armament into fewer mountings.

The class was followed by the, which took the Queen Elizabeth configuration and economized it back down to the standard 21 kn battle line.

The intended successor to the Queen Elizabeths was to be an unnamed fast battleship with high freeboard, with secondary armament mounting clear of spray, a shallow draught and a top speed of at least 30 kn; however, First Sea Lord Fisher changed it to an even faster but less armoured battlecruiser. Out of the class of four ships, only HMS Hood (51) was completed. Though armour was hastily added during construction that would have made her theoretically on a par with the Queen Elizabeths, the Royal Navy were well aware of the flawed reworking and always considered Hood a battlecruiser and not a fast battleship.

Armour
Armour protection was modified from the previous, with a thicker belt and improved underwater protection. The scale of deck armour was less generous, though typical of contemporary practice. However, four of the ships survived a considerable pounding at the Battle of Jutland while serving as the 5th Battle Squadron, so it should be judged as sufficient for its time.

Main armament
The 15 in gun turned out to be a complete success in service. It was reliable and extremely accurate, being able to drop tight groups of shells at 20000 yd. Poor shell design reduced its effectiveness at the Battle of Jutland, but this was addressed with the arrival of the superior "Green Boy" shells in 1918. The gun even remained competitive in World War II after receiving further shell upgrades and mountings with greater elevation, and HMS Warspite would eventually record a hit during the Battle of Calabria which to this day is one of the longest-range naval gunnery hits in history.

The guns could elevate to 20° and to depress to −5°, but the turret sights could only elevate 15°, effectively limiting the range that could be achieved unless firing under director control. The sights were equipped to permit the guns to fire at full charge or with $3/4$ charge.

Secondary armament
As designed, and implemented on Queen Elizabeth, the 6-inch Mk XII guns were mounted in hull casemates, with six guns under director control on each side in casemates on the upper deck between B turret and the second funnel and two more in hull casemates on each side on the main deck aft below X and Y turrets, for a total of sixteen guns.

The mounting of the 6 in secondary armament in hull casemates drastically reduced the reserve of buoyancy, since the casemates could take on water if submerged. In practice, the casemates would be flooded even in normal steaming if the sea was heavy. In addition, the ammunition supply arrangements for the 6-inch guns were relatively exposed; during the Battle of Jutland this resulted in an ammunition fire aboard Malaya that nearly resulted in the loss of the ship.

The aft four casemate guns in Queen Elizabeth were soon found to be of little use and were removed and the casemates plated over, and the other ships were completed without them. The aft casemates were replaced in all ships with two guns protected by shields mounted on the forecastle deck, one on each side. The ten guns which were hence no longer required for the Queen Elizabeths (two from each ship) were used in 1915 to arm the five s.

The forecastle-mounted guns were removed in late 1916, leaving the final configuration as twelve 6-inch guns in hull casemates until the 1930s. The secondary armament of the five ships received differing degrees of modernisation in the 1930s and is hence discussed on the individual ships' pages.

World War I
In World War I, Queen Elizabeth was detached from the squadron and took part in the Dardanelles Campaign, but missed Jutland as she was undergoing dock maintenance.

At the Battle of Jutland, four of the ships formed Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas's 5th Battle Squadron, and in the clash with the German 1st Scouting Group under Admiral Franz von Hipper they "fired with extraordinary rapidity and accuracy" (according to Admiral Scheer, commander of the High Seas Fleet), damaging SMS Lützow and SMS Seydlitz and a number of other German warships. These battleships were able to engage German battlecruisers at a range of 19,000 yards (17,400 m), which was beyond the maximum range of the Germans' guns. Three of the Queen Elizabeths received hits from German warships during the engagement, yet they all returned home. Warspite was the most heavily damaged, with her rudder jammed and taking fifteen hits, coming close to foundering.

Between the wars
Between the wars, the ships received considerable upgrades, including new machinery, small-tube boilers, deck armour upgrades, torpedo belt armour, trunked funnels, new secondary armament and anti-aircraft armament, and many gunlaying and electronics upgrades. Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Warspite were the most modernized, receiving the new "Queen Anne's mansion" block superstructure for the bridge, and dual-purpose secondaries in turret mountings.

World War II
By World War II, the class were showing their age, and the battleship was becoming increasingly obsolescent in the face of air power.

Barham and Malaya, the least-modernized of the class, were at a disadvantage compared to modern battleships. In spite of this, Malaya prevented an attack on a transatlantic convoy by the modern German battlecruisers GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau by her presence. Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, and Valiant, the more modernized of the class, fared better. With her modern fire control equipment, Warspite scored a hit on an Italian battleship during the Battle of Calabria at a range of more than 26,000 yards, one of the longest range naval artillery hits in history.

Modern torpedoes outclassed their torpedo belt protection: in November 1941, Barham, the least modernized of the quintet, was torpedoed by a U-boat and sank in five minutes, with the loss of over 800 of her crew, when her magazines detonated. Warspite survived a direct hit and two near-misses by a German glider bomb, while Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were repaired and returned to service after being badly damaged by limpet mines placed by Italian frogmen during a raid at Alexandria Harbour in 1941.

HMS Queen Elizabeth
HMS Queen Elizabeth (1913) took part in the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915 bombarding forts, but missed Jutland in 1916. She became the Admiral Beatty's flagship when he assumed command of the Grand Fleet. In World War II she was mined by Italian frogmen and grounded in the shallow water of Alexandria Harbour in 1941. She was subsequently repaired, and served in the Far East until 1945.

HMS Warspite
HMS Warspite (03) suffered severe damage at Jutland, being hit by at least 15 heavy shells. She lost 14 dead and 32 wounded, firing a total of 259 shells. In World War II, she took part in many battles, including Narvik, Cape Matapan, Crete, and Salerno, where she was hit by a glider bomb. She was never fully repaired, and became a coastal bombardment ship, covering the Normandy landings, further operations in other parts of France and the Walcheren landings.

HMS Valiant
HMS Valiant (1914) received no hits at Jutland but suffered one wounded and fired 288 shells. In World War II, she took part in the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, and was mined and damaged at Alexandria in 1941. She was repaired, and served in the Far East until 1944. On 8 August 1944 whilst in the floating dock at Trincomalee, Ceylon, she was severely damaged when the dock collapsed with the result that repairs were stopped.

HMS Barham
HMS Barham (04) was named after Lord Barham, First Lord of the Admiralty. The Barham received five hits at Jutland, suffering 26 dead and 46 wounded and fired 337 shells. In World War II, she fought at Cape Matapan. On 25 November 1941 she was struck by three torpedoes from GS U-331, commanded by Lieutenant Hans-Dietrich von Tiesenhausen, and went down with 850 of her crew. The filming of her turning over onto to her port side and subsequent explosion, is one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions caught on film.

HMS Malaya
HMS Malaya was hit eight times at Jutland, suffering 63 dead and 68 wounded and fired 215 shells. In World War II she escorted convoys and was damaged by a torpedo from GS U-106 (1940) in 1941. Subsequently she escorted several convoys and supported various operations following the Normandy invasion until she was decommissioned in 1945.

HMS Agincourt
HMS Agincourt was to be the sixth member of the Queen Elizabeth class. She was authorized in 1913, and intended for completion in late 1916, but was cancelled after the outbreak of the First World War. She is not to be confused with the HMS Agincourt (1913) that was ordered by Brazil, sold to the Ottoman Empire while under construction, and seized for use by the Royal Navy before the beginning of the first World War.

Other ships
The Canadian Naval Aid Bill of 1913 intended to provide the funds for three modern battleships, which most likely would have been three more members of the Queen Elizabeth class, in much the same way as Malaya had been funded. The bill met with stiff opposition in Parliament, and was not passed. It is unclear if these ships would have served in the Royal Navy (as with outright gifts like Malaya or the battlecruiser New Zealand), or if they would have served in the Royal Canadian Navy (HMAS Australia (1911), an, served with the Royal Australian Navy).