The King George V-class battleships:

• 5 ships - King George V, Prince of Wales, Duke of York, Howe, Anson
• Designed around the 35,000 ton displacement limit of the interwar naval treaties
• Completed displacement was 36,727 tons standard. At deep load they displaced >42,000 tons.
• 10 x 14‟ guns main armament
• 16 x 5.25” guns secondary battery
• 15‟ main belt maximum thickness
• 6” main deck maximum thickness
• Armour was ~34% of standard displacement. Comparison: Dreadnought 28%, Iron Duke 30%, Queen Elizabeth 32%. This excludes the turrets. Comparison for other navies are difficult due to different methodologies, but the USS North Carolina (36,600 tons standard displacement) was around 31% armour by British methods.
• Top speed was about 28.5 knots.
• Endurance was meant to be at least 14,000nm at 10 knots, based on fuel consumption of 2.4 tons per hour. Actual fuel consumption was around 6.4 tons, giving a realistic endurance of 6,000nm at 10 knots

Bah, 14‟ guns only?

The London Naval Treaty of 1930 had extended the ’battleship building holiday’ until 1937. Design studies had shown that on a 27 knot ship with sufficient armour protection 9 x 16”, 9 x 15‟ and 12 x 14” were all possible. The 16‟ variant’s armour was on the light side though and so the decision was made to go with 15” guns. However, in late 1935 it was learned that the Americans might accept at 14‟ gun limit if Japan agreed. The RN wanted to order the guns by the end of 1935 and so had to make a decision. It proceeded with the 14”. The decision to reduce to 10 guns was made to make weight savings.

The 14‟ gun itself proved a perfectly adequate weapon during the war. The problem was with the mounting/turret, the design of which was fairly rushed, mechanically complex and did not allow sufficient flex to account for the ship bending due to wave action.

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Prince of Wales sinking:

Princes of Wales is well known as being sunk by air attack on 10 December 1941, as part of Force Z. She took 4 torpedo hits, although it was the first that was fatal. It struck her port side aft, where the outer shaft exited the hull. This damaged the struts connecting the shaft to the hull and blew a hole 6 x 4 metres in the ship. At the time Prince of Wales was steaming at 25 knots and the shaft was doing 204 RPM. The shaft continued to turn but was now off-centre, which damaged the bulkheads and watertight glands in the transverse bulkheads for most of it is length. This caused progressive flooding throughout the port side of the ship as far forward as B engine room, located approximately midships. Ultimately the last 17m of shafting (and propeller) failed and broke away from the ship. The first torpedo struck at 1144. At approxoimately 1220 she had taken 3 more torpedo hits on her starboard side. By 1250 she had taken onboard approximately 18,000 tons of water. She rolled over and sank at 1318.