The Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were a group of five dreadnoughts built for the Royal Navy during the 1910s. 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 . The corresponding ships were generally considered competitive, although the Queen Elizabeth class were faster and outnumbered the German class 5:2. The Queen Elizabeths are generally considered the first fast battleships of their day.
The Queen Elizabeths were the first battleships to be armed with 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. was lost to a U-boat attack in 1941, but the others survived the wars and were scrapped in the late 1940s.
Background and design
The early design history of the Queen Elizabeth class is not well known because not many records have survived in the files of the Admiralty. When Winston Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty in October 1911, the ships of the 1911–1912 Naval Programme, the four s and the battlecruiser were being ordered and preliminary design work had begun on the new class of battleships scheduled for the 1912–1913 Naval Programme. Each class received its own alphabetical designation with the Iron Dukes being MIV, the fourth major iteration of Design M. Presumably the improved 1912–1913 ships were Design N, but no details of it have been found in Admiralty records. The letter O was not used during this time. Naval historian Norman Friedman believes that Design P was a slow ship armed with ten guns based on a passing reference in the official history of naval construction during the First World War that such a ship was a precursor to the Queen Elizabeths.Friedman 2015, pp. 134–135 and footnote 5
Churchill and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, the retired First Sea Lord, corresponded at length during this time with Fisher advocating for a fast (probably ) ship armed with eight guns and nearly as well armoured as a battleship, something that he sometimes called a "super-Lion", referring to the battlecruiser . Friedman believes that the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), Sir Philip Watts, designated Fisher's concept as Design Q with a slower version being the Queen Elizabeth class as Design R. "The destruction of papers may thus have concealed the reality that instead of being a spectacular advance on previous battleships, the Queen Elizabeths were a slow version of a ship which Fisher and probably Churchill badly wanted. Much of the fragmentary evidence for the fast ship is to be found in Fisher's letters to Churchill."Friedman 2015, pp. 134–135 and footnote 7
The tactical mission of these ships is portrayed as being fast enough to manoeuvre to catch the head of the enemy's battleline and concentrate fire against it,Burt 2012b, p. 277 but they were actually intended to prevent the German battlecruisers, which were more heavily armoured than their British equivalents, from doing the same to the British fleet. A memo from Churchill to Rear-Admiral Gordon Moore, Third Sea Lord, on 27 October 1912, stated "the speed and power of the Queen Elizabeths ... is sufficient to protect the battle fleet against any turning movement by German battlecruisers.Friedman 2014, p. 190 and footnote 5
Influenced by Fisher, Churchill ordered development of the 42-calibre BL 15-inch Mk I gun using the codename "14inch Experimental" in January 1912. This was a risky decision as development of new heavy guns and their turrets was normally a multi-year project, and a failure would seriously delay the completion of the ships. The first gun turret was successfully tested on 6 May 1914, likely much to the relief of the Admiralty.Friedman 2015, p. 135
The Admiralty decided on the design of the Queen Elizabeths on 15 June 1912, with the decision on whether they would solely use fuel oil deferred to a subsequent meeting. That meeting must have happened very shortly afterwards because the design that received the Board's stamp the following day was oil-fueled. The design had not been optimised to burn oil instead of coal and the fuel tanks had different requirements than the coal bunkers previously planned. Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt, the DNC who followed Watts, estimated that the change so late in the design process cost some that could have been put to better use. To guarantee a supply of oil in wartime, Churchill negotiated the Anglo-Persian Oil Convention.Friedman 2015, pp. 136–137
Fisher also believed that the 1912–1913 ships should all be battlecruisers instead of the usual mix of three battleships and a battlecruiser. Churchill initially agreed with him, but was persuaded to go back to the original plan, much to Fisher's fury. Given the speed of the new ships, envisaged as , 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, the Admiralty decided to add a fifth unit to the class, .
In some respects, the ships did not quite fulfil 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 knots. In the event, the combination of oil fuel and more boilers provided for a service speed of about , still a useful improvement on the traditional battle line speed of and just fast enough to be thought of as the first fast battleships.Greger, p. 101 After Jutland Admiral John Jellicoe was persuaded that the slowest ship of this class was good only for about , 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.
Description The ships of the Queen Elizabeth class were long between perpendiculars, long at the waterline, and had a length overall of , excluding the sternwalk fitted on several ships. They had a beam of and a draught of at deep load. They had a normal displacement of approximately and at deep load. The ships had a metacentric height of at deep load. Their crew numbered between 923 and 951 officers and ratings as completed; by 1920, the number of crew had grown to 1,016 then to 1,025. Service as a flagship increased these numbers from 1,249 to 1,262 that same year.Burt 2012b, pp. 281, 284–285Raven & Roberts, p. 36
They were powered by two sets of direct-drive steam turbines, Parsons units were fitted in , and Malaya while and had Brown-Curtis turbines. The latter pair were not equipped with the cruising turbines to improve fuel economy at slow speeds used in the first three ships. Each turbine set drove two shafts with , three-bladed propellers, using steam provided by 24 Babcock & Wilcox boilers at a working pressure of in all but Warspite and Barham, which received boilers manufactured by Yarrow. The boilers were ducted into a pair of funnels. The turbines were divided into three watertight compartments arranged side by side; the low-pressure turbines driving the inner pair of shafts were in the centre engine room together, while the high-pressure outboard turbines were in the rooms on either side.Burt 2012b, pp. 284, 286–287
The turbines were rated at at overload and were intended to give the ships a maximum speed of ,Burt 2012b, p. 284 although they fell short of that. Due to the war only Barham ran her sea trials on a measured course; in August 1916 she reached a top speed of from at deep load.Friedman 2015, p. 138 Fuel storage amounted to of fuel oil which enabled the ships to steam for at a cruising speed of , which fell to at full speed.
Armament and fire control The Queen Elizabeth class was equipped with eight breech-loading (BL) 15-inch Mk I guns in four twin-gun turrets, in two superfiring pairs fore and aft of the superstructure, designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from front to rear. The guns were initially supplied with 80 shells per gun, but the magazines were later modified to allow for up to one hundred shells per gun. The ships carried the guns in Mk I mounts that allowed for elevation to 20 degrees and depression to -5 degrees. The mounts had a weight of 782 t and a train of to +150 degrees. The guns themselves had a weight of 101 t. l They could be loaded at any angle, but the crews typically returned to +5 degrees, since the guns could be cleared faster that way. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of to a range of . Their designed rate of fire was one shot every 36 seconds.Friedman 2011, pp. 43–47
The gun even remained competitive in the Second World War 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 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 charge.ADM 186/216 The Sight Manual, 1916, pp. 20–22, 108
The ships' secondary battery consisted of sixteen 45-calibre BL Mk XII guns. The guns had a muzzle velocity of from their projectiles. At their maximum elevation of 15 degrees, they had a range of .Friedman 2011, p. 84 As designed twelve of these were mounted in casemates on the upper deck, six of each on the broadside of the vessel amidships; the remaining four guns were on the main deck aft abreast 'Y' turret. In an effort to ameliorate the flooding problems that the casemated guns in the Iron Duke-class ships had in heavy seas, the guns in the Queen Elizabeths were moved back from abreast 'A' turret to 'B' turret, but this made little difference in service. The aft guns were more prone to flood and were virtually useless even in moderate seas. Only Queen Elizabeth was completed with them; one pair was removed and the other was repositioned on the forecastle and protected by gun shields in May 1915. The casemates were plated over to improve their seaworthiness. The other ships were similarly modified while fitting-out.Burt 2012b, p. 281
Each gun was provided with 130 rounds. Stowage was provided for 30 rounds at each gun as the only ammunition hoists for them were located at the forward end of the battery. Captain Morgan Singer, commander of the RN's gunnery school , criticized this arrangement, saying that it had been proven inefficient in the pre-dreadnought battleships and he recommended using dredger hoists as they were much faster. His comments were rejected as the Admiralty believed that the guns would only intermittently be in use as destroyers attempted to close to torpedo range and they desired to maintain a break in the cordite supply between the magazines and the battery. In service this led to the gun crews keeping additional rounds immediately available at the guns in case they were needed.Raven & Roberts, pp. 20, 26 This resulted in an ammunition fire aboard Malaya during the Battle of Jutland that nearly resulted in the loss of the ship.Campbell 1998, p. 132
The ships also mounted four 3-pounder () saluting guns. Their anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of two quick-firing (QF) 20 cwt Mk I guns. They were fitted with four submerged torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. Each ship was supplied with a total of 20 Mk II or Mk IV torpedoes.