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Frederic Logghe
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King George V


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The first HMS King George V was a King George V-class of 1911 dreadnought, with a displacement of 23,400 tonnes and an armament of ten 13.5-inch guns in twin gun turrets and a secondary armament of sixteen 4-inch guns and had a crew complement of 870, though this increased substantially by 1916 to 1,110, and had a length of 597 feet. She took part in the Battle of Jutland, being the lead ship of the 1st Division of the 2nd Battle Squadron.

King George V herself was decommissioned in 1919, used as a training ship between 1923-26 and scrapped in 1926.

Builder: HM Dockyard, Portsmouth
Laid down: 16 January 1911
Launched: 9 October 1911
Completed: November 1912
Operations: Battle of Jutland
Fate: Decommissioned in 1919 and scrapped in 1926

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Centurion



HMS Centurion was the second battleship of the King George V class, built at HM Dockyard, Devonport.

Centurion was attached upon completion to the 2nd Battle Squadron, led by sister-ship HMS King George V. She was present at the Battle of Jutland as part of the main body of Grand Fleet under the command of Captain Michael Culme-Seymour. She was third in line in the First Division of the Fleet behind HMS King George V and HMS Ajax. After duty in the North Sea she was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean in 1918 with HMS Superb to oversee the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire. In 1919 Centurion was dispatched to the Black Sea in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

With the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty Centurion was decommissioned and made a target ship to replace HMS Agamemnon in 1924. She remained in this role at Portsmouth Harbour until April 1941, where she was fitted with a false superstructure so as to resemble the battleship HMS Anson then building at HM Dockyard, Portsmouth.

In June 1942, she sailed with Operation Vigorous in the eastern Mediterranean to simulate an operational battleship. Between 1942 and 1944 Centurion was stationed off Suez as an anti-aircraft ship. Her final act after a long and somewhat understated career was to be sunk as a blockship off the Normandy beaches after D-Day.

Builder: HM Dockyard, Devonport
Laid down: 16 January 1911
Launched: 18 November 1911
Completed: May 1913
Operations: Battle of Jutland, Operation Neptune
Fate: converted to target ship 1927 Converted to decoy 1941/42. Sunk as a breakwater in June 1944

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Audacious


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HMS Audacious was a King George V class battleship of the Royal Navy. The vessel did not survive its first conflict, being sunk by a mine off northern Ireland.

At the beginning of World War I Audacious was part of the Second Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet. On 27 October 1914 the Second Battle Squadron, consisting of the 'super-dreadnoughts' King George V, Ajax, Centurion, Audacious, Monarch, Thunderer and Orion, left Lough Swilly to conduct gunnery exercises.

At around 08:45 Audacious ran upon a mine laid by the German auxiliary mine-layer Berlin, resulting in the flooding of several compartments. The ship tried to return to port, but an hour later water leaking through the bulkheads flooded the engine rooms, forcing them to be abandoned. This left Audacious without power and led to the evacuation of all non-essential crewmembers to the escorts and the nearby White Star Liner RMS Olympic. Throughout the afternoon Olympic and the cruiser HMS Liverpool attempted to take Audacious into tow, but the lines snapped time and again.

At 18:00 the ship was abandoned by the remaining crew and capsized at 20:45, becoming the first British battleship to be lost in World War I and the only one without loss of life (although when the Audacious exploded upon capsizing, a piece of debris flew 800 yards and killed a member of the crew of another ship, the Liverpool).

The Royal Navy tried to keep the loss a secret, officially listing the ship as in service during the entire war, but this proved to be a futile attempt, due to the fact that many American passengers on the Olympic had witnessed and photographed the sinking.

A Royal Navy review board judged that a contributory factor in the loss was that Audacious was not at battle stations, with water-tight doors locked and damage control teams ready. Note that HMS Marlborough, of the subsequent (and fairly similar) Iron Duke class, was torpedoed at Jutland and for a time continued to steam at 17 knots.

Builder: Cammell Laird
Laid down: March 1911
Launched: 14 September 1912
Commissioned: August 1913
Fate: Struck by mine off Northern Ireland, sank on 27 October 1914.

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Ajax



HMS Ajax was a King George V-class battleship (one of four ships of the class), built at Scotts' shipyard at Greenock on the River Clyde. She was completed in 1913 and saw action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and in the Mediterranean and Black Seas in 1919, before being decommisioned in 1924.

Builder: Scott's at Greenock
Laid down: 27 February 1911
Launched: 21 March 1912
Commissioned: 31 October 1913
Operations: Battle of Jutland
Fate: Decommissioned in 1924 and sold for scrap on 9 November 1926

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