List of British Dreadnought Battleships, 1906 - 1919

British dreadnought battleship Iron Duke, Adm. Jellicoe's flagship during WWI, completed in 1914. Seen here on a rambunctious North Sea patrol, her profile is the classic British dreadnought look for the time, with ten 13.5" guns in five twin turrets on the centerline, with superfiring pairs both fore and aft; a great tripod foremast; and a complicated control tower built around the tripod's legs. (The midships or Q turret can be seen behind #2 funnel; its guns are indistinct in this shot. The superfiring fore and aft turret pairs were denominated A - B and X - Y, respectively.) Flagship at the Battle of Jutland, the Iron Duke was a sentimental favorite with the public and was retained on the Royal Navy roster through the mid-1930s when most of her sisters and contemporaries had long been cut up for scrap.

NOTE: Dreadnought battlecruisers of the Royal Navy are listed separately. For complete statistics on the ships, (with no pictures), consult World Battleships List. For a class-by-class analysis with plans and limited photos, see World War 1.co.uk.

The Queen Elizabeth Class

Distant view of the Queen Elizabeth on trials reveals the balanced, symmetrical layout of this class. Schematic

HMS Queen Elizabeth, completed 1915, was the last word in WWI dreadnought technology, name ship of a five-ship class. Quite stoutly constructed, with easy-to-load oil fuel and super-powerful turbines, these were 23-kt ships. They stood up to an enormous pounding at Jutland: HMS Warspite suffered a hit on her rudder and spent half an hour circling within easy range and sight of the High Seas fleet, exposed to their full artillery; yet she was still game to continue the battle after her steering was jury-rigged. Despite a score of 11- and 12-in hits, Warspite made it back to base under her own power, and lived to fight in WWII. So did all the Queen Elizabeths and the Revenges. The Barham was sunk by U-boat torpedo in the Med; the Royal Oak by the same means at Scapa Flow; the QE and Valiant by limpet mines placed by Italian frogmen in Alexandria Harbour in 1942. In following days the QE's crew relied on "stiff upper lip" and went on living aboard, putting on a brave show of business as usual to deceive Axis spies. In fact, the ship was partly flooded and resting on the bottom. But within a few months she had been raised and patched up at Gibraltar, then sent on to Norfolk, VA for full repairs. She returned from the yard in time to continue the fight in the closing phases of the Pacific War. Less seriously damaged, the Valiant was refitted at Durban, S.A. Her guns assisted the invasion of Sicily and Salerno in 1943; later in the War she was damaged in an accident to the floating drydock at Trincomalee, Ceylon. Valiant was nursed home with damaged propeller shafts and impaired steering, and soon after scrapped. Through the entire conflict, the Warspite performed brilliantly in convoy escort, antiaircraft protection, and shore bombardment, particularly at D-Day and the later invasion of southern France. Nicknamed "The Old Lady," she proved reluctant to abandon her duties, being driven ashore at Prussia Cove near Penzance on her way to the scrapyard in April 1947. She was subsequently moved by four salvage tugs to a new beach at Marazion, where she was demolished in place over a ten-year period; two tugs and a scrap-metal freighter being casualties of the operation and the Cornish coast weather.

With the phased withdrawal of Britain from her imperial domains after the War, and the emphasis of the Labour government on social reform at home, the dreadnoughts' day was finished. For battleship aficionados the late 1940s were a sad time, as the rusty Elizabeths, R's, the Nelson and Rodney, and the five KGVs all went to the shipbreakers. To this day, battleship fans recall the great ships' dimensions and overt celebration of gunpower in paintings, models, and now in electronic games. For a wonderful photo archive of HMS Queen Elizabeth, click here. For a schematic of the name ship as built, click here.

The Queen Elizabeth depicted by Oscar Parkes in 1940 fit.

Relevant Web Resources

• The Cost of the Arms Race
• Detailed Analysis of German Naval Spending, 1891-1916
• Rigorous Analysis of British Naval Spending, 1889-1916
• British Dreadnought Battlecruiser List
• List of German Dreadnoughts of WWI
• Haze Gray's World Battleships List
• Battleships Class by Class with Plans: World War 1.co.uk
• The Jutland Wrecks Today
• Video About the King George V Class Battleships (1941)
• Big, Bad Battleships Global Site Nav