The final projected class of British battleship, the Lions originated in the fate 1930s
as planned successors to the King
George V class then building. Like their US North Carolina counterparts, the KGVs
were compromise ships, limited in displacement and main battery size by
the London Naval Treaty. The withdrawal of Japan from the Treaty and
reports of new German ships sparked fears of a renewed battleship
building race, and British designers began work on an enlarged version
of the KGVs, with better protection and nine 16-inch main guns in three
triple turrets. This was the same main armament as the North Carolinas,
but unlike the American vessels and the KGVS, the new ships would be
armored against 16-inch gunfire. The general lines of the King George Vs would be followed,
but the Lions would be longer, with more sheer ahead of the forward
turrets to improve seakeeping.
A total of six Lions were
projected, and the keels of the first two, Lion and Temeraire,
were laid down in the summer of 1939. However, as the war progressed,
the U-Boat threat came to far outweigh that posed by Axis surface
vessels, and since shipyards were hard pressed to keep up with the rate
of merchant ship sinking while also building needed escort vessels,
diverting men and material to completing the Lions could not be
justified. The second pair, Conqueror
and Thunderer, were not laid
down, and the last two ships were cancelled before they were even
formally named.
In an attempt to salvage something, a plan was proposed to finish the
ships as grotesque hybrids, with a flight deck from amidships aft and a
carrier style island offset to starboard, while the forward 16-inch
turrets and some of the 5.25-inch secondary mounts would be retained.
The advisability of such a scheme was highly questionable, as it would
have resulted in ships with less firepower and more vulnerability than
a conventional battleship, and a shorter flight deck and smaller
aircraft capacity than regular fleet carriers. Carriers were indeed
needed, but the light fleet ships then taking shape were much more
viable than the "battle-carrier" plan ever was.
The battleship/carrier plan was never enacted, and in 1943-44 the two
keels were broken up. By rights, this should have marked the end of the
whole program, but despite the battleship's eclipse there was still a
"big gun" lobby in the Royal Navy that pushed plans for using the Lion as the basis for a new
class of battleships. The revised Lion
design would retain the basic layout, but was to be much enlarged to
accomodate the needed protection. Eventually, it was acknowledged that
protecting the Lions against
aerial threats would involve fitting deck armor up to a foot thick.
This would have resulted in truly massive ships, and given postwar
economic problems, they could not have possibly been completed until
the 1950s.
HMS Vanguard (USN photo)
Despite the cancellation of the Lions,
the Royal Navy did indeed field one last battleship, HMS Vanguard. Another outgrowth of the KGVs, Vanguard
was laid down in 1941 as a fast battleship for service in the Pacific.
Construction was allowed to proceed, as the new ship was to use
existing 15-inch guns removed from the battlecruisers Courageous and Glorious two decades earlier.
Although old, these weapons were ready for service, unlike the
16-inchers for the Lions,
which had not finished the development process. The 15-inch design was
widely recognized as being one of the most successful battleship guns
ever fielded, and those fitted to Vanguard
were given additional
elevation capability and improved loading equipment.
Despite the availibility of the main battery, Vanguard's
projected 1943 completion date was not met, and the ship would not be
commissioned until 1946. Slightly larger and heavier than the initial
Lion design, Vanguard used
the same propulsion plant, and incorporated many of the wartime lessons
learned by the British and Americans. Although at thirty knots she was
slightly slower than the American Iowas,
Vanguard
otherwise compared quite favorably with the USN vessels. Vanguard was
decomissioned in the 1950s, and after a time in reserve was broken up
in 1960. She was the last modern Royal Navy battleship in existence.
