The design of the King George V class of battleships began in a period
of uncertainty, when the inter-war naval treaties were coming to an end but
there was no clear direction to the future of global naval arms limitation.
Great Britain was pushing to limit the calibre of main guns to 14.0 in (356 mm),
while other nations had their own agendas. Discussions over a new naval treaty
to replace those that would lapse at the end of 1936 dragged on through the
mid-1930s.
The limiting step in capital ship construction time was the production of
main guns, including the mountings and turrets, which itself had to be preceded
by outline ship design work. While the Admiralty would have preferred to wait
for a new treaty to have been finalised, it needed to place gun contracts for
its new battleships before the talks had concluded in order to get them in
service in 1940 (to match the Bismarck and Tirpitz). This
deadline, and to keep them within Great Britain’s own policies on gun calibre
and existing treaty limits on tonnage during the talks, profoundly influenced
the ship’s design.
In mid-1936, while talks proceeded, the designers opted for 14.0-inch
(356-mm) main guns, in line with the British diplomatic moves intended to limit
all new capital ships to that calibre. The class was initially intended to carry
12 guns, but designers decided to thicken the armour surrounding the magazines
and in order to remain within the 35,000-long-ton (35,561-tonne) treaty
limitations, B turret was reduced from four to two guns. When, in late 1936,
naval treaty negotiations were abandoned without result, the Admiralty
considered the six or 12-month delay entailed in upgrading the design grossly
unacceptable and kept the original design.
The British followed the French example of fitting dual HA/LA (high angle/low
angle) secondary guns instead of the traditional separate secondary guns for
surface targets and smaller tertiary guns for air targets, as the Germans and
Italians were doing. This had the advantage of employing more guns for either
air defence or surface defence, provided that both were not required at the same
time. The British installed a new 5.25-in (133-mm) gun, fitting 16 into eight
power-operated turrets (four on each side).
Close-range anti-aircraft defence was light, in common with most ships at
that time. The eight-barrelled pom-pom was chosen as the primary close-range
weapon, and six were fitted to the first two ships in the class. This was
increased to eight in subsequent vessels. Several unrifled projector (UP) rocket
mounts, which fired an explosive charge attached to a parachute and a line, were
fitted in the first two ships but these were so clearly useless that subsequent
ships replaced them with 20-mm (0.79-in) machineguns. The anti-aircraft armament
increased considerably as the war progressed.
Armour protection gave the ships a theoretical immunity zone of 17,200 to
32,000 yd (15,700 to 29,300 m) against 15.0-in (381-mm) shells, meaning that at
ranges below 17,200 yd a shell that size could be expected to penetrate the side
armour, and above 32,000 yd it could be expected to penetrate the deck armour.
It must be stressed that this is theory only, as in practice several factors
(particularly the sea state) affect the actual resistance to shells at the
instant they hit, and the immunity zone is constantly changing as the ship
heaves, rolls, and pitches.
The British place great emphasis on the need for speed in these ships, as
existing Royal Navy battleships could not hope to catch new capital ships. The
class was designed to reach 27.5 kt (51 km/h) at deep load displacement, an
increase of 6.5 kt (12 km/h) over the previous class of British battleship. A
catapult and two hangars served a pair of Supermarine Walrus amphibious biplanes
used in a reconnaissance role and to spot the fall of shot. As radar became able
to fulfil these roles, the aircraft were removed, eliminating a major fire
hazard.
These ships gave magnificent service, and had a profound influence on the
war. The Prince of Wales inflicted the damage that caused the Bismarck
to abort her first and only sortie and the King George V helped destroy
that German ship in the final engagement. Elsewhere, damage inflicted by the Duke
of York forced the Scharnhorst to slow and be caught. The class
achieved such success despite an unacceptable number of stoppages in the newly
designed main guns and a flawed bow design that let spray interfere with the A
and B turret range-finders and sometimes let water into A turret. These problems
derived from the design process and were exacerbated by the Royal Navy’s
delicate strategic position; difficulties with the guns were identified during
design but could not be fixed due to Great Britain’s urgent need to counter
the new German capital ships. In the final analysis, the King George V
class ships were able to fulfil their defined roles despite their shortcomings
and proved equal to the task of containing the enemy surface threat.
The Anson was built by Swan Hunter. She was laid down on 22.07.1937, launched
on 24.02.1940 and completed 22.06.1942. She was the only one of the class never
to fire her main guns in anger. She saw service covering Arctic convoys until
June 1944, when she was sent to Plymouth for modification. In April 1945, she
and the Duke of York sailed to join the British Pacific Fleet, although they
arrived too late to see any action.