HMS Resolution (pennant number: 09) was one of five s built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. Completed in December 1916, Resolution saw no combat during the war as both the British and German fleets adopted a more cautious strategy after the Battle of Jutland in May owing to the increasing threat of naval mines and submarines.
Resolution spent the 1920s and 1930s alternating between the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet. Whilst serving in the Mediterranean in the early 1920s, the ship went to Turkey twice in response to crises arising from the Greco-Turkish War, including the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922. She also saw limited involvement during the Franco-British intervention in the Russian Civil War in the Black Sea in 1920. The ship's interwar career was otherwise uneventful. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Resolution was assigned to the Channel Force before being transferred to convoy escort duties in the North Atlantic. In May 1940, she participated in the Battles of Narvik until German air attacks drove her off.
In June 1940, the ship was transferred to Force H, where she took part in the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in July after the French surrender to Germany. She was also involved in the Battle of Dakar, an attempt to neutralise the French battleship that ended with Resolutions torpedoing by the French submarine . Badly damaged, Resolution was repaired first in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and then the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard under Lend-Lease. Thereafter assigned to the Eastern Fleet, her age kept her from seeing action against the Japanese fleet, and she instead escorted convoys off the eastern coast of Africa. She returned to Britain in September 1943 and was decommissioned. Thereafter she saw service with the training establishment , a role she filled until February 1948, when she was paid off, sold for scrap and broken up at Faslane.
Design and description
The Revenge-class battleships were designed as slightly smaller, slower, and more heavily protected versions of the preceding s. 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they were intended to revert to the previous practice of using both fuel oil and coal, but First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher rescinded the decision for coal in October 1914.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.
Resolution had a length overall of , a beam of and a deep draught of . She had a designed displacement of and displaced at deep load. She was powered by two pairs of Parsons steam turbines, each driving two shafts, using steam from eighteen Yarrow boilers. The turbines were rated at and intended to give the ship a maximum speed of . During her sea trials on 22 May 1916, the ship only reached a top speed of from . She had a range of at a cruising speed of . Her crew numbered 910 officers and ratings in 1916. Her metacentric height was at deep load.
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. Twelve of the fourteen BL Mk XII guns were mounted singly 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 ship also mounted four 3-pounder () guns. Her 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. She was fitted with four submerged 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside.
Resolution was 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 in the spotting top above the tripod foremast. 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 were fitted in April 1917. A torpedo-control director with a 15-foot rangefinder was mounted at the aft end of the superstructure.
The ship's 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 ship's 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 13 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.
The ship was fitted with flying-off platforms mounted on the roofs of 'B' and 'X' turrets in 1918, from which fighters and reconnaissance aircraft could launch. In 1927 a rotating aircraft catapult was installed on Resolutions quarterdeck. It was removed during her 1929–1931 refit. The flying-off platforms were removed in 1932–1933. A catapult was added on the roof of 'X' turret by September 1936 as well as a crane to handle the aircraft.
Major alterations
Resolution was fitted with anti-torpedo bulges between late 1917 and May 1918. They were designed to reduce the effect of torpedo detonations and improve stability. They increased her beam by over 13 feet (4 m) to , her displacement to and reduced her draught to , all at deep load. They increased her metacentric height to . Later in 1918, a rangefinder was fitted in 'B' turret.
The gun shields for the shelter-deck six-inch guns were replaced by armoured casemates in 1922. Two years later, her anti-aircraft defences were upgraded by replacing the original three-inch AA guns with a pair of QF AA guns. Another pair of four-inch AA guns were added and the six-inch guns from the shelter deck were removed in 1927. During the ship's 1929–31 refit, a High-Angle Control System (HACS) Mk I director was installed on the spotting top and the aft pair of torpedo tubes on either side were also removed. An experimental 4-inch dual-purpose, twin-gun turret was installed in the place of the starboard forward AA gun for evaluation.
By September 1933 a pair of quadruple mounts for Vickers .50 machine guns were added abreast the conning tower. Three years later a HACS Mk II director replaced the Mk I on the roof of the spotting top. A platform for another director was added on the mainmast which was converted into a tripod to handle the additional weight. The torpedo director and its associated rangefinder were removed. In January 1938 the rear HACS was added, the existing AA guns were replaced with QF 4-inch Mk XVI guns in Mk XIX twin mounts and a pair of octuple mounts for two-pounder Mk VIII "pom-pom" guns were added with their directors. The forward pair of submerged torpedo tubes were also removed.
Wartime modifications for the Revenge-class ships were fairly minimal. In 1941 Resolution was fitted with a Type 279 early-warning radar and a pair of Type 285 anti-aircraft gunnery sets. The following year a Type 273 surface-search radar and a pair of Type 284 gunnery radars for the main guns were added. The quadruple .50-calibre mounts were replaced by nine 20 mm Oerlikons in September 1941. Two four-barrel "pom-poms" were added as in 1942 as well as another Oerlikon. To save weight and make more room available for the additional crew required to man the new equipment like the radars and Oerlikons, two 6-inch guns were removed in 1943.
Construction and service
First World War
Resolution was laid down at Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Jarrow on 29 November 1913, launched on 14 January 1915, and commissioned on 7 December 1916. On 30 December, she joined the Grand Fleet in Rosyth, assigned to the 1st Battle Squadron along with her sister ships and several other battleships. After the action of 19 August 1916, in which the Grand Fleet had lost two light cruisers to German U-boat attacks, Admiral John Jellicoe, the fleet commander, decided that the fleet should not be risked in further such sorties unless the German High Seas Fleet ventured north or the strategic situation warranted the risk. For its part, the German fleet remained in port or trained in the Baltic Sea through 1917, as both sides had largely abandoned the idea of a decisive surface battle in the North Sea. Both sides turned to positional warfare, laying fields of naval mines, and Germany resumed the unrestricted submarine warfare campaign early in the year. As a result, Resolution and the rest of the Grand Fleet saw no action during this period.
In 1917, Britain began running regular convoys to Norway, escorted by light forces; the Germans raided these convoys twice late in the year, prompting Admiral David Beatty, who had replaced Jellicoe the previous year, to send battle squadrons of the Grand Fleet to escort the convoys. The High Seas Fleet went to sea on 23 April to attack one of the escorted convoys, but after the battlecruiser suffered a serious mechanical accident the next day, the Germans were forced to break off the operation. Resolution and the rest of the Grand Fleet sortied on 24 April once they intercepted wireless signals from the damaged Moltke, but the Germans were too far ahead of the British, and no shots were fired. On 21 November 1918, following the Armistice, the entire Grand Fleet left port to escort the surrendered German fleet into internment at Scapa Flow.
Interwar years
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Resolution typically operated with her sister ships, apart from periods where they were detached for refit or modernisation. In April 1919, the ships were transferred to the Atlantic Fleet, still as part of the 1st Battle Squadron. They were then attached to the Mediterranean Fleet for operations in Turkey and the Black Sea as part of Britain's responses to the Greco-Turkish War and the Russian Civil War, respectively. On 10 April, the ship arrived in Constantinople from Malta, and two days later she and several other ships went to Prinkipo to conduct gunnery training. Resolution then went to Batumi in southern Russia, where she remained until mid-June, when she steamed back across the Black Sea to Constantinople, arriving on 18 June. The ship was then stationed in Chanak, along with her sister and the light cruiser . The two battleships embarked passengers and casualties bound for Britain before sailing for home waters, in company with a pair of destroyers.
In August 1920, the ships returned to the Atlantic Fleet. The 1st and 2nd Battle Squadrons merged in May 1921, with the Resolution and her four sisters forming the 1st Division and the five Queen Elizabeth-class battleships forming the 2nd Division. Resolution and three of her sisters were again sent to the Mediterranean Fleet in September 1922 during a crisis in Smyrna that culminated in the Great fire of Smyrna as the Greco-Turkish War came to its conclusion. The ships primarily operated in the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora, though Resolution also stopped in Mytilene and Smyrna in February 1923 in company with the battleship and several cruisers and destroyers. With the war over by November, the ships were free to return once again to the Atlantic Fleet.