HMS Ramillies (07)
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| career |
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| Builder: | William Beardmore and Company , Dalmuir ( Scotland ) |
| Laid on the keel: | November 12, 1913 |
| Launch: | September 12, 1916 |
| Commissioning: | September 1, 1917 |
| Fate: | Scrapped in 1949 |
| Technical specifications | |
| Displacement : | Normal: 28,000 ts Maximum: 31,200 ts |
| Length: |
Water line : 189 m over all: 190.3 m |
| Width: | before conversion: 27 m after conversion: 31.2 m |
| Draft: | 8.9 m (33 ft 7 in) |
| Drive: | 4 sets of steam turbines with Parson gears 18 Yarrow steam boilers 40,000 shp (30 MW) |
| Speed: | originally 23 kn (approx. 43 km / h) |
| Range: | 4000 nm (7400 km) |
| Bunker amount: | 1,040–1,146 t |
| Armament: as a new building |
Guns: 8 × 381 mm (15 in ) 14 × 152 mm (6 in) |
| Armament: from 1938 |
8 × 381 mm (15 in) |
| Armor: | Belt: 330 mm Deck: 64 mm Towers: 330 mm Command post: 254 mm Citadel: 152 mm |
HMS Ramillies (ID: 07) was a battleship of the Revenge-class battleship of the Royal Navy . It was named after the Battle of Ramillies in 1706.
history
Construction and commissioning
The Ramillies was in 1913 Kiel down and left three years later as the last ship of the class from the stack. An incident during the launch, by which the rudder was damaged, delayed the commissioning of the ship by several months. Due to the late commissioning, the ship was no longer used in combat during the First World War . Instead, the Ramillies was equipped with torpedo bulbs and a catapult for seaplanes of the Fairey Flycatcher type.
Interwar period
In the interwar period , the Ramillies were used on various occasions to demonstrate British presence in crisis areas and to secure trade routes. She was active in the Atlantic , the Mediterranean and the Marmara Sea . In 1920, during the Greco-Turkish War , the ship was involved in shelling Turkish positions.
Retrofits
In addition, minor modifications took place. In 1928 four 4-inch anti-aircraft guns were mounted aft instead of two 6- inch cannons . Further modifications were made in 1937 and again concerned the AA armament, with the heavy flak being converted to 8 × 4 inches (102 mm) and the light flak being expanded by 40 mm guns (so-called "pom-pom"). At the same time, the aircraft catapults were removed. Technically, the Ramillies and their sister ships were outdated at the beginning of the Second World War . The maximum speed of the ships had dropped to 18 knots and it was difficult to modernize the machinery. Therefore, these ships were postponed and mostly used as escort security .
Operations at the beginning of the Second World War
When the war began on September 1, 1939, the Ramillies belonged to the Home Fleet and was stationed in Scapa Flow . Your first missions included patrols between Scotland, Iceland and Norway, on which returning German merchant ships and blockade breakers should be intercepted. Her next assignment consisted of escorting troop transports to Alexandria , for which the Ramillies was stationed in Gibraltar in October 1939 . Then the Ramillies ran into the Indian Ocean and briefly took part in the hunt for the Admiral Graf Spee before she was transferred to New Zealand and accompanied two troop transports from Wellington and Melbourne to Suez .
With the Italian entry into the war in June 1940, the Ramillies was moved to the Mediterranean. There she served as escort for convoys between Crete , Malta and Alexandria as well as during coastal bombardments. On November 27th of that year she took part in the sea battle at Cape Teulada .
In 1941, the Ramillies was relocated to the Atlantic, where they were again used as escorts. On February 8, the convoy WS 5B escorted by the Ramillies was sighted by the two German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , but not attacked. On May 24th of that year the Ramillies was ordered by an escort on an intercept course against the battleship Bismarck . However, the German ship changed course towards France and was sunk a few days later.
Later missions
The Ramillies remained active in the Atlantic until March 1942 and was then relocated to the Indian Ocean to secure the sea routes to India against Japanese warships in a battle unit. In May of that year she assisted the Allied invasion of Madagascar ( Operation Ironclad ). On May 29, she was anchored in Diego Suarez , the target of a Japanese attack with small submarines and hit by a torpedo . The damaged battleship was towed to Durban for short-term repairs, after which it went on to Plymouth on its own in August . The repairs continued until June 1943; The deck armor was also improved and the anti-aircraft armament expanded.
The next big mission of the Ramillies took place as part of Operation Overlord from June 6, 1944. They fired at positions near the landing zone Sword Beach and Caen . With 1002 grenades fired from the main batteries, it was the ship that fired the most grenades during the landing operation. In addition, she was able to repel attacks by German torpedo boats and speedboats .
The Ramillies provided similar artillery support from August 15 of that year as part of Operation Dragoon in southern France. The main targets were the port batteries of Toulon .
The End
From January 31, 1945, the Ramillies was assigned to the reserve and was based in Portsmouth . The ship was sold to scrap dealers in 1946 and dismantled in 1949.
In the Imperial War Museum in London a 15 "-Geschütz is Ramillies issued as an exhibit.