British battleships
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 act as a rapid response squadron to counter enemy capital ships, being the fastest warships at that time. Between 1913 and 1917 a further five superdreadnought battleships of the Revenge class were launched and as with the Queen
Elizabeth class, they were ordered during the pre-war arms race with Imperial Germany and were to be an updated design based on the Iron Duke blueprint with heavier armament. The Revenge class was originally intended to consist of eight vessels, but one was cancelled and the remaining two were redesigned as the Renown class with modifications to armament and protective armour.
The post-war years saw drastic restrictions to warship design imposed by the constraints of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The original G3 battlecruiser design, approved six months after the signing of the treaty, contravened the agreement and was adapted to become the lead ship of two, christened Nelson class battlecruisers. Although reduced in size, the ships were armed with 16in guns to maintain parity with the recent American Colorado and Japanese Nagato class warships. While the Nelson class were of a superior design to their predecessors, the trade-off for heavier armament was a reduced speed and the ships were considered ungainly. The 1922 moratorium on large shipbuilding was continued by the 1930 Naval Treaty of London and a design that had been commissioned in 1928 was suspended. In 1935 it was reactivated and updated to become the King George V class of battleships of which five were built. The plans proposed a ship with far heavier belt armour and, with a nod to the age of sub-surface weaponry, improved anti-torpedo protection. Perhaps the most revered of WWII Royal Navy ships, HMS Hood, was the only ship of the proposed four of the Admiral class battlecruisers to be realised. Despite its iconic status, Hood was acknowledged to be a flawed design on joining the fleet in 1920 and the remaining three were abandoned in favour of a new construction type. As Europe teetered on the precipice of a new global conflict, Britain’s Navy faced the threat of a more modern style of maritime warfare with a fleet that was already on the verge of obsolescence.