The Revenge class, sometimes referred to as the Royal Sovereign class or the R class, consisted of five Dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1910s. All of the ships were completed to see service during the First World War. There were originally to have been eight of the class, but two were later redesigned, becoming the s, and another, which was to have been named HMS Resistance, was cancelled outright. The design was based on that of the preceding , but with reductions in size and speed to make them more economical to build.
Two of the ships, and , were completed in time to see action at the Battle of Jutland during the First World War, where they engaged German battlecruisers. The other three ships were completed after the battle, by which time the British and German fleets had adopted more cautious strategies, and as a result, the class saw no further substantial action. During the early 1920s, the ships were involved in the Greco-Turkish War and the Russian Civil War as part of the Mediterranean Fleet. They typically operated as a unit during the interwar period, including stints in the Atlantic Fleet. All five members of the class were modernised in the 1930s, particularly to strengthen their anti-aircraft defences and fire-control equipment.
The ships saw extensive action during the Second World War, though they were no longer front-line units by this time and thus were frequently relegated to secondary duties such as convoy escort and naval gunfire support. Royal Oak was sunk at her moorings in Scapa Flow in October 1939 by a German U-boat, and two other ships of the class were torpedoed during the war; , hit by a Vichy French submarine off Dakar in 1940 and , attacked by a Japanese submarine in Madagascar in 1942; both survived. ended the war in service with the Soviet Navy as Arkhangelsk, but she was returned in 1949, by which time her three surviving sister ships had been broken up for scrap. She, too, was dismantled that year.
Design and description
In the early 1900s, Germany challenged Britain in a naval arms race under the direction of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz that was exacerbated by the dreadnought revolution. The Royal Navy embarked on a construction programme to out-build the Germans to maintain its dominance of the seas. Beginning with the launch of , the British had built or laid down twenty-seven all-big-gun battleships to the Germans' seventeen built or building by 1913; to cement their lead, the British ordered another group of battleships for the 1913 Estimates.
The Revenge-class ships (sometimes referred to as the "Royal Sovereign class" or the "R class") were designed as slightly smaller, slower, and more heavily protected versions of the preceding s. The design staff, led by Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction, had been charged by the Board of Admiralty with developing a version of the earlier armed with the same battery of guns used in the Queen Elizabeths, albeit with the same number as the Iron Dukes—ten rather than the eight of the Queen Elizabeth design. As an economy measure they were intended to revert to the previous practice of using both fuel oil and coal, but First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher rescinded the decision for coal in October 1914. Still under construction, the ships were redesigned to employ oil-fired boilers that increased the power of the engines by over the original specification.
The initial design completed by d'Eyncourt's team mounted only eight 15 in guns, despite the request from the Board, since he could not fit the fifth twin-gun turret in the specified displacement limit. The Board suggested triple turrets to solve the weight problem, but d'Eyncourt pointed out that no suitable design existed, which would significantly delay construction. He was also opposed to the idea since a single hit on a turret would disable more guns. As a result, the Board approved d'Eyncourt's proposal on 31 March 1913.
General characteristics and propulsion
The ships of the Revenge class were long between perpendiculars, long at the waterline, and had a length overall of . They had a beam of (which was increased to approximately with the addition of anti-torpedo bulges) and a deep draught of fully loaded without a bulge and with a bulge. They had a normal displacement without a bulge of approximately and at deep load. Equivalent figures for those ships fitted with a bulge were about or , depending on the type of bulge fitted. The ships' metacentric height was at deep load without a bulge fitted and with a bulge.
Their crew numbered between 909 and 940 officers and ratings in 1917; by the early 1920s, the number of crew had grown to 1,012 to 1,240. Each battleship carried a number of smaller boats, including a variety of steam and sail pinnaces, steam launches, cutters, whalers, dinghies, and rafts. These were handled by five boat derricks. The ships were fitted with eight searchlights, four on the bridge, two at the base of the funnel and two on the after superstructure.
They were powered by two sets of Parsons steam turbines, each driving two shafts with 3-bladed screws, using steam provided by eighteen Babcock & Wilcox boilers at a working pressure of in all but Resolution and Royal Oak, which received boilers manufactured by Yarrow. The boilers were ducted into a single funnel. 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.
The turbines were rated at and intended to give the ships a maximum speed of , although Revenge only reached a top speed of from during her sea trials on 24 March 1916. The other members of the class had similar performance, with only Royal Oak making on trials. The bulged Ramillies reached from during her sea trials on 20 September 1917, less than half a knot slower than the unbulged ships. Fuel storage amounted to of fuel oil and of coal as designed, but on conversion to only oil-fired boilers, the storage capacity was 3,400 long tons of oil. This enabled the ships to steam for at a cruising speed of , which fell to at full speed.
Armament and fire control
The Revenge class was equipped with eight breech-loading (BL) 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 eighty 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 turrets that allowed for elevation to 20 degrees and depression to -5 degrees. The guns 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.
The ships' secondary battery consisted of fourteen BL Mk XII guns, twelve of which were mounted in casemates along the broadside of the vessel amidships; the remaining pair were mounted on the shelter deck and were protected by gun shields. The casemate guns were moved further aft from the bow to reduce the tendency of the gun ports to ship water in heavy seas, a problem encountered with both the Iron Duke and Queen Elizabeth classes. The guns had a muzzle velocity of from their projectiles. At their maximum elevation of 15 degrees, they had a range of .
The ships also mounted four 3-pounder () guns. Their anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of two quick-firing (QF) 20 cwt Mk I"Cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 20 cwt referring to the weight of the gun. guns. They were fitted with four submerged torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. Each ship was supplied with a total of twenty-one torpedoes of the Mk II, Mk IV, and MK IVHB types.
The Revenge-class ships were completed with two fire-control directors fitted with rangefinders. One was mounted above the conning tower, protected by an armoured hood, and the other was aloft on the tripod mast. Each turret was also fitted with a 15-foot rangefinder. The main armament could be controlled by 'X' turret as well. The secondary armament was primarily controlled by directors mounted on each side of the compass platform on the foremast once they began to be fitted in March 1917. A torpedo-control director with a rangefinder was mounted at the aft end of the superstructure. The rangefinders in 'B' and 'X' turrets were replaced by models between 1919 and 1922.
Flying-off platforms were fitted on all the ships on the roofs of 'B' and 'X' turrets in 1918. Between them the ships carried two fighters and eight reconnaissance aircraft. These platforms were removed as the ships were refitted in the early 1930s. Resolution was briefly fitted with an aircraft catapult on the quarterdeck in early 1930 and Royal Sovereign had one in 1933–1936. All of the ships except Revenge and Royal Sovereign were equipped with a catapult atop 'X' turret in the mid-1930s. Resolution kept hers until late 1942 or early 1943.
Protection The ships' waterline belt consisted of Krupp cemented armour (KC) that was thick between 'A' and 'Y' barbettes and thinned to 4 to 6 inches (102 to 152 mm) towards the ships' ends, but did not reach either the bow or the stern. Above this was a strake of armour 6 inches thick that extended between 'A' and 'X' barbettes. Transverse bulkheads 4 to 6 inches thick ran at an angle from the ends of the thickest part of the waterline belt to 'A' and 'Y' barbettes. The gun turrets were protected by of KC armour, except for the turret roofs which were thick. The barbettes ranged in thickness from above the upper deck, but were only 4 to 6 inches thick below it. The Revenge-class ships had multiple armoured decks that ranged from in thickness. The main conning tower had 11 inches of armour on the sides with a 3-inch roof. The torpedo director in the rear superstructure had 6 inches of armour protecting it. After the Battle of Jutland, 1 inch of high-tensile steel was added to the main deck over the magazines and additional anti-flash equipment was added in the magazines.
Anti-torpedo Bulges Ramillies was the least advanced in construction when the Director of Naval Construction decided to fit bulges to the ship to improve her survivability against naval mines and torpedoes in March 1915, making her the first capital ship in the world to be bulged. Testing had revealed that a bulge filled with hollow tubes substantially reduced the effectiveness of a torpedo warhead. The bulge scabbed onto Ramilliess hull was long and high; it was divided into two watertight compartments with the upper and lower inner compartments filled with steel "crush" tubes with their ends plugged by wooden bungs. They were intended to absorb the force of an underwater detonation and prevent splinters and debris from penetrating the inner torpedo bulkhead. The watertight outer compartment was also divided longitudinally, but it was empty to allow the force of the detonation to disperse. The form of the bulge increased the ship's beam to , decreased her draught by about and increased her displacement by .
Resolution and Revenge were fitted with a different form of bulge in 1917–1918 that was intended to improve their stability as well as protect them against underwater threats. This discarded the crushing tubes to save weight and was only a single watertight compartment deep. It was divided into upper and lower compartments, of which the upper was filled with a mixture of concrete and scrap wood while the lower was empty. The bulge increased their beam to about , reduced their draught by and increased their displacement by .