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    King George V Class Battleships
    King George V Class Battleships
    King George V Class Battleships
    Ebook134 pages56 minutes

    King George V Class Battleships

    By Roger Chesneau

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    About this ebook

    The ShipCraft series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites.The five battleships of the class covered by this volume were the most modern British capital ships to serve in the Second World War. They were involved in many famous actions including the sinking of both Bismarck and Scharnhorst, while Prince of Wales suffered the unfortunate distinction of being the first capital ship sunk at sea by air attack.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 23, 2011
    ISBN9781473815773
    King George V Class Battleships

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      Book preview

      King George V Class Battleships - Roger Chesneau

      SHIPCRAFT 2

      King George V

      CLASS BATTLESHIPS

      Contents

      Design

      Careers

      Model Products

      Modelmakers’ Showcase

      Schemes

      Appearance

      Plans

      Selected References

      ShipCraft 2: King George V Class Battleships

      Copyright © Chatham Publishing 2004

      Plans and camouflage schemes

      copyright © John Roberts 2004

      This edition published in Great Britain 2011 by

      Seaforth Publishing,

      Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church Street, Barnsley,

      S Yorkshire S70 2AS

      www.seaforthpublishing.com

      And in the United States of America by

      Classic Warships Publishing, PO Box 57591.

      Tucson, Arizona 85732

      www.classicwarships.com

      First published in 2004 by Chatham Publishing.

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      available

      ISBN: 978 1 84832 114 4

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

      be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

      means, electronic or mechanical, including

      photocopying, recording, or any information storage

      and retrieval system, without either prior permission

      in writing from the publisher or a licence permitting

      restricted copying.

      Written, typeset and designed by Roger Chesneau

      www.rogerchesneau.com

      Plans and camouflage schemes by John Roberts

      Printed and bound in China through Printworks

      International Ltd

      Acknowledgements

      The author and publishers would like to record their gratitude to John Roberts, who very kindly loaned a large number of his historic photographs for publication in this book; to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, for permission to reproduce the two photographs on page 28; and to all the modelmakers and companies (mentioned in the text) who participated in this project by supplying information about, and photographs of, their work.

      Design

      THE five battleships of the King George V class were the most modern to serve the Royal Navy during the Second World War, and all rendered invaluable service in the promotion of the war effort. The first two ships, in particular, can be credited with influencing the course of the war: they were instrumental in the sinking of the battleship Bismarck , the strategic result of which was a fundamental shift in German naval policy involving the promotion of the U-boat arm at the expense of heavy surface ships. This is not, of course, to claim that they directly brought about the Allied victory; but by their action they fundamentally changed the policy of the Kriegsmarine , confirming the final burial of the ‘Z-Plan’ programme of German naval construction which had been killed off shortly after war broke out in favour of further U-boat building.

      The design origins of the class lie in the Washington Treaty of 1922, which stipulated that future capital ships should displace no more than 35,000 tons and be armed with gun calibres no greater than 16in, and to which Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy were signatories— limitations which were carried through at the London Naval Conference of 1930, which also confirmed that no new battleships would be laid down until 1937 at the earliest. However, neither France nor Italy signed up, and the news that both countries were laying down new battleship construction with individual vessels built up to the Washington Treaty limits brought about a realisation in Britain that a response of comparable fighting strength was required.

      King George V in 1941, showing her prominent external degaussing coil—the only ship of the class to have this feature. The censor has busied himself with this photograph: something has been deleted from the background, aft of the ship.

      Warship design is an evolutionary process, and it never ceases, even though no hardware may be in immediate prospect, and during the late 1920s and early 1930s British naval architects prepared a number of studies and sketch designs. There was no desire to evolve the Nelson class battleships: this pair had been designed to sail at the standard battlefleet speed and shipped the heaviest guns and armour possible, and the new French capital ships—Dunkerque and Strasbourg—emphasised speed at the cost of firepower. A large number of studies were completed, four of which are shown in the table opposite; the last entry, ‘14P’, would become the final design for the King George Vs.

      Prince of Wales in early 1941. Other than the absence of a degaussing cable, a feature distinguishing her from King George V was the provision of only three UP mountings, that on the quarterdeck being replaced by a 40mm Bofors gun—a considerably more useful weapon. The paintwork appears to be in the process of renewal: as with King George V, the original coating has taken something of a battering.

      The final ship of the class, Howe, as completed, late summer 1942.

      Armament

      From these it can be seen that the Board of Admiralty leant in favour of strong armour protection at the cost of armament calibre and a small sacrifice in speed. The projectile for the 14in gun, at under 1,6001b, compared very unfavourably with that for the standard 15in (1,9201b) and 16in gun (2,0501b) which equipped the Royal Navy’s existing capital ships; thus a lin (6.5 per cent) decrease in calibre resulted in a

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