HMS King George V (pennant number 41) was the lead ship of the five British battleships of the Royal Navy. Laid down in 1937 and commissioned in 1940, King George V operated during the Second World War in all three major naval theatres of war, the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific, as part of the British Home Fleet and Pacific Fleets. In May 1941, along with , King George V was involved in the hunt for and pursuit of the , eventually inflicting severe damage which led to the German vessel's sinking. On 1 May 1942 the destroyer sank after a collision with King George V in foggy conditions. King George V took part in Operation Husky (the allied landings in Sicily) and bombarded the island of Levanzo and the port of Trapani. She also escorted part of the surrendered Italian Fleet, which included the battleships and , to Malta. In 1945 King George V took part in operations against the Japanese in the Pacific.

King George V was made flagship of the British Home Fleet on 1 April 1941, she remained so during the rest of the war and became a training battleship in November 1947.

Design

General characteristics King George V was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Walker Naval Yard, Newcastle upon Tyne; she was laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 21 February 1939 and commissioned on 11 December 1940.Chesneau, p. 15 The ship had an overall length of , a beam of and a draught of . She displaced 38,031 tons at normal load and 42,237 tons at full load. After her refit in 1944, she displaced 39,100 tons at standard load, and 44,460 tons at full load.Garzke, p. 250 She could carry 3,918 tons of fuel oil, 192 tons of diesel oil, 256 tons of reserve feed water and 444 tons of freshwater.Garzke, p. 253 Based on the designed fuel consumption, range was: at , at and at . However, in practice fuel consumption was much higher, and at the actual range was about with a five per cent reserve allowance. Designed within the tight 35,000 ton limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty, wartime service necessitated increases over the design displacement, seriously reducing freeboard and affecting seaworthiness. This was most acute at the already low bow. With too little buoyancy forward the bows were easily buried even in moderate seas, with spray washing up over both forward turrets. Heavy seas could flood 'A' turret, drenching both men and machinery within.Tarrant, p. 30

Propulsion King George V was equipped with eight Admiralty boilers. This configuration was a little more conventional than the preceding , with boiler rooms placed side by side and with each pair associated with a turbine room astern of them. The total heating surface of the boiler plants in King George V was . The 416-ton boiler installation produced more than , giving a top speed of 28 knots. The eight boilers were more economic in space and fuel than the twenty-four boilers in the battlecruiser . Fewer but larger boilers lowered the weight per unit of heat delivered, as did increased boiler efficiency and consumption of fuel per unit area of heating surface. This made King George V the fastest battleship in the British fleet but slower than the German, French or the new Italian capital ships,Garzke, p. 237 or the battlecruisers HMS Hood, and .

King George V had four sets of Parsons geared turbines. Two main turbines were arranged in series and drove a shaft through double helical gears. An astern turbine was incorporated in the exhaust casing of the low-pressure turbine, and a cruising turbine was coupled directly to the high-pressure turbine. A speed of 28.5 knots was expected at standard displacement and 27.5 knots at full-load displacement on normal output; corresponding speeds at overload condition were 29.25 and 28.25 knots respectively. The turbine unit was a low-speed type (2,257 rpm) coupled to a single reduction gear which produced 236 rpm at the propeller shaft.Garzke, p. 238

Armament

Main battery

The tight limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty raised many challenges and required difficult compromises if they were to be met. To avoid the class being outgunned by the new ships of foreign navies, especially as by the mid-1930s the Treaty had been renounced by Japan and Italy, Churchill wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1936, voicing strong objections to the proposed armament of ten 14-inch guns. His proposal was for nine 16-inch guns.Tarrant, p. 17

When completed King George V mounted ten guns. They were mounted in one Mark II twin turret forward and two Mark III quadruple turrets, one forward and one aft. They could be elevated 40 degrees and depressed 3 degrees. Training arcs were: "A" turret, 286 degrees; "B" turret, 270 degrees and "Y" turret, 270 degrees. Training and elevating was achieved through a hydraulic drive, with rates of two and eight degrees per second, respectively. A full gun broadside weighed 15,950 pounds; a salvo could be fired every 30 seconds. The quadruple turrets weighed 1,582 tons, the twin turret 915 tons.Garzke, p. 227

The turrets were designed by the Vickers Armstrong's Elswick Works, but sets of each type of equipment were manufactured by Vickers Armstrongs in Barrow. A considerable amount of design effort was expended to make the turrets as flashtight as possible. This complicated the mechanical design of the turrets, particularly the quadruple mountings. Due to insufficient clearances and slightly distorted link mechanisms, failures in the intricate safety interlocks in the loading sequence for antiflash precautions caused jams during drills and practice firing.Garzke, p. 228 During the summer of 1941 the King George V-class battleships had their main armament turrets and turret linkages modified to correct the operational faults revealed during Bismarcks final operation.Tarrant, p. 84 HMS King George V used an Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark IX to control her main armament.

Secondary battery

The secondary armament consisted of sixteen guns in eight twin mounts, weighing 81 tons each. They were grouped at the four corners of the citadel, with a twin mount on the main deck and another superimposed above it nearer amidships. This disposition gave better arcs of fire, freedom from blast, more separation of the magazines and a better arrangement of the ammunition supply. The cupolas for these mounts revolved on either the upper or superstructure deck; between deck mountings travelled on roller paths on the armoured deck. This permitted a flat-trajectory or high-angle fire. Loading was semi-automatic, normal rate of fire was ten to twelve rounds per minute. The maximum range of the Mk I guns was at a 45-degree elevation, the anti-aircraft ceiling was . The guns could be elevated to 70 degrees and depressed to 5 degrees. However, the guns could only practically fire seven to eight rounds per minute, due to the heavy weight of the shell and the fact that the 5.25-inch round was semi-fixed, requiring the crew to separately load the cartridge and shell into the breech.Garzke, p. 229 King George V introduced the High Angle Control System Mark IVGB anti-aircraft fire control system to the Royal Navy, which, along with the Mk IV Pom-Pom Director, pioneered the use of the Gyro Rate Unit.

Anti-aircraft battery The King George V design had four 0.5-inch quadruple machine gun mounts, but in 1939 these were replaced by two Mark VI pom-pom mounts. In 1940, to combat air attack, four Unrotated Projectile mountings were fitted, on "B" turret, two on "Y" turret, one replaced a pom-pom mount added in 1939 at the stern. The pom-poms mounted in the King George V were designed and produced by Vickers Armstrongs as a result of a post-First World War requirement for a multiple mounting which was effective against close-range bombers or torpedo planes. The first model, tested in 1927, was superior to anything developed in other countries at the time and in 1938 the Mark VI* had a muzzle velocity of 2,400 feet per second, a 1.594-inch bore and a barrel length of 40 calibres. They fired a shell at a rate of 96–98 rounds per minute for controlled fire and 115 rounds per minute for automatic fire.Campbell 1985, p. 71. The range of the Mark VI* was , at a muzzle velocity of 2,300 feet per second. The Mark VI octuple mount weighed 16 tons. The Mark VII quadruple mount weighed 10.8 tons if power operated; it could be elevated to 80 degrees and depressed to 10 degrees at a rate of 25 degrees per second which was also the rate of train. The normal ammunition supply on board for the Mark VI was 1,800 rounds per barrel. King George V introduced the Mk IV Pom-pom director to the Royal Navy in 1940, becoming the first ship in the world to feature gyroscopic target tracking in tachymetric anti-aircraft directors.Campbell 1985, p. 33.Raven & Roberts, p. 291

Operational history The first of her class to be completed, King George V was commissioned at her shipyard and sailed for Rosyth in Scotland on 16 October 1940; there she took on board her ammunition and began her sea trials. By the end of the year she had joined the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. She crossed the Atlantic early in 1941 to take Lord Halifax, the Ambassador to the United States, to Annapolis and covered the east-bound convoy BHX 104 on her return, arriving back at Scapa Flow on 6 February. Her next task was to provide distant cover for Operation Claymore, the commando raid on the Lofoten islands off the north-west coast of Norway. In March, she was assigned to escort the Atlantic convoy HX 115, sailing from Scapa Flow on 9 MarchChesneau p. 7 and arriving at Halifax, Nova Scotia on 15 March. King George V left Halifax the next day to search with HMS Rodney for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau who were attacking convoy ships south of Cape Race, Newfoundland as part of Operation Berlin. However fearing a gathering of British capital ships, the two German battleships broke off their attacks and returned to France. King George V joined Convoy HX 115 to provide escort on 20 March and returned to Scapa Flow at the end of March.Geoffrey B Mason, " HMS KING GEORGE V - King George V-class 14in gun Battleship including Convoy Escort Movements", SERVICE HISTORIES of ROYAL NAVY WARSHIPS in WORLD WAR 2 (2003)

Action with Bismarck

When the German battleship Bismarck along with the heavy cruiser broke out into the Atlantic Ocean, King George V sailed on 22 May 1941 with the aircraft carrier and eleven cruisers and destroyers in support of the cruiser patrols off Iceland. King George V was the flagship of Admiral Sir John Tovey, who commanded the force. King George V was still away on the morning of 24 May, when sister ship and Hood engaged both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Hood was sunk and Prince of Wales was damaged when taking fire from both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen and forced to retire. Bismarck, although damaged, continued south with Prinz Eugen.Garzke p. 209

The British re-located Bismarck at 10:30 on 26 May, when a Catalina flying boat of RAF Coastal Command sighted her, heading for the French port of Brest. Rodney and King George V were still about away. The aircraft carrier was ordered to launch an air attack, and at 22:25 her torpedo bombers, a flight of Fairey Swordfishes damaged Bismarck, slowing her down and jamming her rudder, forcing her to turn back out into the Atlantic, away from the safety of port. At 15:00 Rodney joined King George V and they maintained 22 knots – which was nearly maximum speed for Rodney. King George V had only 32 per cent of her fuel left while Rodney had only enough fuel to continue the chase at high speed until 8:00 the following day.

Admiral Tovey signalled his battle plan to Rodney just before sunrise on 27 May; she was free to manœuvre independently as long as she conformed generally to the movements of King George V. Both ships were to close the range to as quickly as possible, then turn for broadside fire.Garzke p. 210