Warspite

by Iain Ballantyne

  He claimed to have prime ministerial support for putting forth Cromwell again. But, with senior naval officers warning Churchill they would take a dim view of a name so unpopular with the King being foisted upon them, Churchill eventually realized he had to concede defeat. In the end the only one of the four new warships to bear a name put forward by Churchill was the lead ship in the class, HMS Queen Elizabeth. The rest of the names were provided by the King – King Richard I became Warspite, Henry V was Barham, Oliver Cromwell became Valiant. The fifth Queen Elizabeth Class vessel, HMS Malaya, was so named because she was built with funds provided by the Malay Federated States.

  Despite this early dispute over suitable names, the Queen Elizabeth Class vessels were to be the crowning glory of a British naval supremacy established at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

  The four Orion Class battleships – ordered under the 1909-10 naval construction programme – were the first of the super dreadnoughts, armed with ten 13.5-inch main guns and sixteen 4-inch secondary. They had belt armour up to twelve inches thick. These were followed by four King George V Class, ordered in the 1910-11 programme, and four Iron Duke Class, ordered in the 1911-12 programme, both classes with ten 13.5-inch guns. The former had sixteen 4-inch guns and the latter twelve 6-inch secondary armament. The King George V Class had two 3-inch high-angle anti-aircraft guns, the first time a British battleship had been fitted with AA weapons. Belt armour for the King George Vs and Iron Dukes was up to twelve inches thick.

  HMS Iron Duke, lead ship of the super dreadnought class which immediately preceded construction of Warspite and her sisters. Iron Duke was flagship of the Grand Fleet at Jutland. By the Second World War she was a depot ship at Scapa Flow. Goodman Collection.

  Until Warspite, the biggest guns mounted on British battleships were 13.5-inch guns like these belonging to the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary. Queen Mary was to be blown apart by German shells at Jutland in 1916. Taylor Library.

  But for every advance Britain made, the Germans were close behind. In 1911 they laid down four König Class battleships, armed with ten 12-inch main guns, fourteen 5.9-inch secondary armament and with belt armour of up to fourteen inches. In 1912, two tough Derfflinger Class battlecruisers were laid down. They carried eight 12-inch and twelve 5.9-inch guns, with belt armour up to twelve inches thick, compared with a nine inch maximum for most British battlecruisers.

  To retain its lead the British fleet had to pull something big out of the hat, but had the parameters of battleship design gone as far as they safely could?

  At a time of maximum danger words never failed Winston Churchill. And so it was in May 1912 when he went to the House of Commons to justify his gamble on a new class of super dreadnoughts mounting untried guns and using a foreign fuel.

  The First Lord carefully explained the new vessels would carry 15-inch guns as main armament, 6-inchers as secondary and would be heavily protected, with armour up to thirteen inches thick. They would be fast thanks to oil-burning boilers. In order to inspire the House of Commons to give its broad support for these new leviathans Churchill employed vivid language to illustrate their killing power. To grasp the concept of a dreadnought duel he advised MPs to imagine,

  a battle between two egg shells striking each other with hammers. The importance of hitting first, hitting hardest and keeping on hitting...really needs no clearer proof.

  The 1912 programme of naval construction was changed to accommodate the new super dreadnoughts. Plans for a further three 13.5-inch gun battleships and a battlecruiser were amended in their favour. Intelligence suggested the Germans were working on a new class of bigger gunned ships. There were also reports that the Americans and the Japanese were building vessels mounting 14-inch guns.

  Warspite was laid down on the last day of October at Devonport, ten days after Queen Elizabeth at Portsmouth. Valiant was laid down at the end of January 1913, Barham towards the end of February and Malaya at the end of October that year. A sixth member of the class, called Agincourt, was ordered and destined to be built by Portsmouth Dockyard, but was ultimately cancelled at the end of August 1914. It was thought the war would be over before she could be finished. The name Agincourt was immediately given to a battleship originally built for Brazil in the UK, sold to Turkey at the beginning of 1914 but seized for service in the Royal Navy while fitting out at Devonport. The crew of the seventh Warspite would later have good cause to salute Agincourt’s astounding armament of fourteen 12-inch guns for they helped save the super dreadnought from destruction.

  Churchill himself gives a vivid account of how he embarked on the gamble of Warspite and her sisters in The World Crisis. Originally the idea was to have a battleship that would carry ten 15-inch guns and do twenty-one knots. However, it was realized that, even with the number of main guns reduced to eight, a broadside heavier than ten 13.5-inch guns could still be achieved. With fewer guns to carry, the new super dreadnoughts could probably achieve battlecruiser speeds. But, as Churchill explains in The World Crisis, achieving a bigger, faster battleship was all very well as an exercise in naval architecture, but once it hit the water would it be of any use to the Admirals?

  He reveals he asked of himself: ‘Was it wanted? Was it the right thing to make? Was its tactical value sufficient to justify the increase in costs and all the changes in design?’ The answer was yes. A division of fast battleships would be able to outpace an enemy battle fleet and, as Churchill himself explained, ‘curl around the head of the enemy’s line’ and concentrate awesome firepower, shattering those vessels and throwing all the ships behind them into absolute disarray. The War College was asked to divine how fast the new super dreadnoughts would have to be to enable them to achieve this. The answer was at least twenty-five knots. But to nail that high speed down would require the First Lord to take a decision sure to arouse great passions in Britain.

  Today oil fuels the world economy but, in 1912, coal turned the wheels of industry and commerce. It had also, since the advent of steam propulsion, pushed warships through the water.

  Coaling a ship was time consuming, manpower intensive and the saving in weight achieved through burning oil would enable bigger guns to be carried, more room for boilers (to increase speed) and better accommodation for the crew. Studies carried out by the Navy had also proved coal could not possibly provide the intensity of heat needed to push a battleship of 27,500 tons (the designed displacement of Warspite) through the water at twenty-five knots.

  Oil was very responsive to the demands of a warship. Speed could be piled on simply by increasing the number of sprayers ignited in the boiler, instead of depending on the exertions of stokers shovelling coal as fast as they could. Conversely speed could be cut easily by reducing the sprayers. A ship could also be made more stable, as it is easier to pump oil from tank to tank to achieve better ballasting than shift coal around.

  Aside from the sheer convenience of enabling swift refuelling at sea, instead of having to call in at coaling stations, oil also meant the manpower aboard a capital ship could be used where it was most needed – in ensuring the killing power was fully inflicted on an enemy.

  In The World Crisis Churchill refers to the sheer effort of feeding coal burning boilers as a poor use of manpower. He observes:

  As a coal ship used up her coal, increasingly large numbers of men had to be taken, if necessary from the guns, to shovel the coal from remote and inconvenient bunkers to bunkers nearer the furnaces or to the furnaces themselves, thus weakening the fighting efficiency of the ship perhaps at the most critical moment in the battle.

  Oil made undeniable sense.

  Many oil-fired torpedo-boat destroyers had been built for the Royal Navy and proved such a success that, by 1905, the Admiralty decided to invest in a flotilla of several tankers to transport oil back to the UK from the Middle East and to supply it to the Royal Navy’s bases around the empire. In 1903 the Majestic Class battleships Mars and Hannibal had oil-fired boilers installed alongside their coal-fired ones t
o make comparative tests. It was becoming evident oil offered many benefits.

  This was all very well, but for Britain to go the whole hog and start building whole classes of capital ships that depended on oil, there needed to be concrete assurances plentiful supplies could be found and secured. Naturally there was considerable opposition to the idea of abandoning coal not only in the government but in the country as a whole. Thousands of jobs depended on coal mining. There were those who could not understand why the Navy would reject a natural resource abundantly available beneath the homeland’s soil, in favour of a fuel with its source several thousand vulnerable miles away. It seemed distinctly unpatriotic and a vicious betrayal of the British coal miner.

  Coaling a battleship was time consuming and a sheer waste of manpower. One of the benefits of Warspite’s oil fuel was the eradication of this chore. Taylor Library.

  A rare shot of HMS Warspite near to completion at Devonport early in the First World War, with dockyard workers swarming over her. Goodman Collection.

  A Royal Commission on Oil Fuel was to be formed to weigh up the pros and cons of new battleships, and indeed the whole Royal Navy, using oil. In the meantime the Warspite and Queen Elizabeth were rapidly taking shape on the slipways of Portsmouth and Plymouth around oil-fired boilers.

  Churchill’s decision to proceed with their construction several months before the Royal Commission gave its verdict, was a considerable gamble. He decided to mark the cards by dragging out of retirement the man who had inspired the whole concept of oil-burning battleships in the first place. Sailing to Naples aboard the Admiralty yacht Enchantress to meet Lord Fisher, Churchill wanted to know for certain if the Admiral would agree to chair the Royal Commission on Oil Fuel. For Churchill it was the first face-to-face meeting with the former First Sea Lord since Fisher had sent him a virulent letter condemning him for appointing to high posts in the Navy people he regarded as unsuitable.

  After an initially frosty atmosphere, Fisher and Churchill set their differences aside and entered into energetic discussion. They agreed, not for the first time, that at stake was the Royal Navy’s mastery of the seas and the security of Britain and her empire. Churchill noted in The World Crisis: ‘A decision like this involved our national safety as much as a battle at sea. It was as anxious and as harassing as any hazard in war.’

  As Geoffrey Penn notes, opposition to the Royal Navy’s use of oil fuel at the time was bitter:

  Not only did foreign governments and commercial interests try to thwart the scheme, but at home, coal owners and mining unions joined in an unlikely alliance to prove it a retrograde step, arguing that it was suicidal to depend on fuel supplies unavailable from home, and attempting to prove that vast dangers from explosion existed.1

  The matter was finally settled in favour of oil by the Commission in 1913. It recommended all new warships should be oil-burners and fuel reserves large enough to last four years should be created. Ten million pounds for building the appropriate storage tanks was voted by the House of Commons. Churchill went back to the House in July 1914, just days before the outbreak of war with Germany, and got approval for Britain to buy a controlling interest in the newly founded Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The company had access to vast supplies of oil in what is today Iran and the Gulf States. The fifty-one per cent interest acquired cost Britain £2 million which was less than the cost of building HMS Warspite. Even then fears that oil would not be accessible during a war led to battleships constructed after those of the Queen Elizabeth Class initially being coal burning.

  However, while these Royal Sovereign Class battlewagons may have started coal-fired, during construction they were converted to oil-burners. The majority of other Royal Navy warships also had oil nozzles installed in their boilers.

  The issue of main guns for the Queen Elizabeth Class was equally complex and caused Churchill more than a few anxious nights. He had most energetically pushed the idea of the new vessels mounting 15-inch guns – the largest calibre ever proposed for a battleship – but it was by no means certain they would be a success. The dreadnought design envelope had already been stretched to its limits by earlier classes of battleship. These new beasts threatened to rip it asunder. A vessel packing a 15-inch punch would have to be much bigger than anything which had previously gone down the slipway. It was simple; the bigger the guns, the bigger the ship, and these weapons would each weigh 100 tons. Basically made of two gigantic tubes – an inner and an outer, with 170 miles of steel wire sandwiched between – the turrets they would be mounted in each weighed 550 tons. If all that wasn’t enough, Churchill was informed that a full load of 900 15-inch shells to feed the new battleship’s eight guns would reach 1,000 tons. To give the reader some idea of the sheer enormity of it all, it is interesting to note the total weight of guns, turrets and ammunition in Warspite (4,000 tons) was more than the entire tonnage of a Type 42 destroyer (or six Hunt Class minesweepers) in today’s frontline British fleet. Despite the frightening dimensions, and egged on by Fisher in the background, Churchill authorized the design and production of the new calibre of gun.

  Of course the easy way out would have been to stick with a smaller gun – a 14-incher perhaps, which would at least be equal to the calibres mounted in the new Japanese and American vessels and would certainly better the Germans. But being merely equal could cause uproar in the nation – since Trafalgar the British fleet had been undisputed controller of the oceans and the man who destroyed that unchallenged superiority may as well go hang himself.

  The punch – a 15-inch shell. Iain Ballantyne.

  The breech of a mighty 15-inch gun. Iain Ballantyne.

  To the British people of the early twenty-first century it may seem bizarre that the building of warships and the creation of their big guns, could raise such passion. But, in 1912, it did, for the dreadnoughts were the ultimate expression of imperial virility and prosperity.

  More than thirty dreadnoughts, super dreadnoughts and battlecruisers were built between 1906 and 1921, providing good honest heavy engineering work for thousands of people from the Clyde to the Tamar, from the Tyne to the Solent. These great metal beasts were crewed by sailors belonging to a fleet whose White Ensign was universally feared and respected. With other countries, chiefly Germany, challenging for the seapower crown at the turn of the century, the fiercely competitive British had risen to the challenge. And if the only way to secure a clear unassailable lead over the Kaiser’s fleet was to go into the unknown, and take a leap of faith with untried and untested 15-inch guns, then so be it.

  To make sure Churchill understood exactly what was at stake, Lord Fisher had described any other course of action as ‘treason to the empire’. But still the First Lord of the Admiralty fretted. He was to write in The World Crisis:

  No such thing as a modern 15-inch gun existed. None had ever been made. The advance to the 13.5-inch had in itself been a great stride. Its power was greater; its accuracy was greater; its life was much longer. Could the British designers repeat this triumph on a still larger scale and in a still more intense form?

  Churchill relates that the Ordnance Board had been tasked with investigating the feasibility of the proposed calibre and had duly produced a design. Indeed Churchill reported the Director of Naval Ordnance was ‘ready to stake his professional existence upon it.’

  This was no time to be timid, and Churchill reflected that losing his nerve at that moment would have been a disaster. Some were counselling Churchill that it would be madness not to carry out full trials before mounting the guns. He noted: ‘I hardly remember ever to have had more anxiety about any administrative decision than this.’

  When Warspite and her sisters went to sea their 15-inch guns were still an unknown quantity. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill took a gamble on the success of the 15-inch guns, such as this one belonging to a Queen Elizabeth Class battleship. Taylor Library.

  Starting to lose his nerve, Churchill went back to Fisher for advice which he duly rec
eived, in typical blistering tones. Churchill recalled in World Crisis: ‘He was steadfast and even violent. So I hardened my heart and took the plunge.’ Churchill gulped at the sheer enormity of it all, having only been in place as First Lord for a matter of weeks. ‘Fancy if they failed. What a disaster. What an exposure. No excuse would be accepted.’

  He imagined his career in ruins, with critics enjoying his downfall with relish, labelling his decision a ‘ghastly fiasco’ which caused the ‘mutilation’ of the new warships so badly needed to retain Britain’s lead over the Germans.

  But the Elswick Ordnance Company was supremely confident it could do the job, assuring Churchill the guns were perfectly feasible and would work without needing proving trials before being mounted in the battleships. The best they could offer was delivery of one of the weapons four months early to allow test firing and the compilation of calibration tables.

  Churchill’s relief at the safe launch of Queen Elizabeth and then Warspite was short lived. Yes, they were in the water, to be swiftly followed by the rest of the class, but the gunnery trials would not start for some time.

  If the guns of Warspite and her sisters proved useless, Britain would have squandered precious ship-building resources almost on the eve of war with her greatest naval rival.

  Notes

  1 Geoffrey Penn, Fisher, Churchill and the Dardanelles.

  Chapter Three

  JUTLAND