The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Great Britain Battle Cruiser Queen Elizabeth

Laid down on October 27, 1912, launched on October 16, 1913 and commissioned on January 1, 1915, the ship carried a main armament of eight of the new 15 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two centerline superfiring forward and two centerline superfiring aft. Queen Elizabeth was the name ship of a five-ship battleship class designed under the auspices of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston L. S. Churchill (yes, that Churchill – 1874 - 1965). Four ships had been authorized but the fifth ship in the class, the Malaya, was added and paid for by the Malayan States. These ships were the first battleships in the British Navy to have advanced turbine engines with oil-fired boilers and these gave the ships unprecedented power and enough speed to operate with the battle cruisers. The world’s first true "fast battleships," these ships, when launched, were undoubtedly the finest battleships afloat, featuring power, speed and protection in a nicely-balanced design. Their appearance signaled the end of the era of the battle cruisers. The Queen Elizabeth name honored Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) - "Good Queen Bess," "The Virgin Queen" and "Gloriana" herself - considered the greatest of all the monarchs of England and the one who defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. This was the first Royal Navy ship to bear this name. The ship participated in the Dardanelles campaign during the first half of 1915 and then transferred back to Britain. Like most British battleships, she spent most of the rest of World War One swinging at an anchor chain with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow, although she also operated with the Battle Cruiser Squadron. She missed the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916 due to a refit but became flagship of the Grand Fleet for Admiral David Beatty (1871 – 1936) shortly after and continued in this capacity until 1920. From 1920 she served in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets with major overhauls and conversions performed from 1926 to 1927 and from August 1937 through January 1941. These conversions (which were also made to sister ships Warspite and Valiant) included engine improvements, adding a torpedo blister (increasing the beam to 104 feet and standard displacement to 32, 450 tons), a new superstructure and an increased antiaircraft armament. Based in Alexandria, Egypt, Queen Elizabeth covered the evacuation of Crete and participated in several convoy operations to Malta. The British squadron in the Eastern Mediterranean suffered disaster in late 1941. Sister ship Barham, which had been damaged by a torpedo on December 28, 1939, was struck by three torpedoes from German submarine U-331 on November 25, 1941 and capsized and exploded in four minutes with a loss of 862 men. On December 19, 1941, Queen Elizabeth and her sister Valiant were seriously damaged in port in a daring raid by Italian human torpedoes. After makeshift repairs, she sailed to the United States for complete repairs at Norfolk, Virginia. After a spell with the Home Fleet, Queen Elizabeth arrived in the Indian Ocean in January 1944 and participated in convoy escort and shore bombardment missions there through May 1945, when she was ordered back to Great Britain. She was assigned to the Reserve Fleet March 1946, deleted in June 1948 and sold for scrap.

See other British battle cruisers: Indefatigable, Invincible, Tiger