HMS Vanguard (23)
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HMS Vanguard ( 23 ) was a British Royal Navy battleship . She entered service in 1946, making it the last battleship in the world to be built. She was also the largest and fastest battleship in the Royal Navy.
Actually, it was only a kind of emergency solution, because the British Navy had hardly any modern capital ships at the beginning of the Second World War and the planned new construction of four units of the Lion class could no longer be guaranteed within a reasonable time frame when the war broke out.
The stopgap solution consisted of installing four 38.1 cm twin towers in stock with eight guns from the First World War in a new hull that resembled the Lion class in most details . These turrets came from the light battle cruisers or "large light cruisers" Courageous and Glorious , which had been converted into aircraft carriers . So it came about that the main armament was almost 30 years older than the ship.
Under the impression of the steadily worsening situation, especially in East Asia, the project was seen as a valuable addition to the British fleet in the Far East. The keel-laying of the Vanguard took place after the award of the contract in March in October 1941. The initially strongly accelerated building program - it was hoped the ship to have completed and operational by 1943 - was under the impression of the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse by Japanese torpedo bomber in Kuantan on December 10, 1941 and the consequent defenselessness of battleships vis-à-vis air forces steadily reduced in the priority of construction and materials.
The launch took place in November 1944 and the commissioning took place barely a year after the end of the war in Europe, in April 1946. The design as such turned out to be very successful, as the Vanguard was considered an extremely seaworthy ship. During joint maneuvers in the Atlantic, she recorded only 15 ° heel , while on the American Iowa up to 26 ° were recorded.
During her first “big” mission in 1947, she played a more representative role when she accompanied the British royal couple to South Africa . In the first half of 1949 the Vanguard was assigned to the British fleet in the Mediterranean , but was moved to Portland as a training ship at the end of the year .
From 1955 she was the flagship of the reserve fleet and at the same time NATO headquarters ship . The decommissioning took place in the summer of 1960, immediately afterwards the scrapping work in Faslane-on-Clyde began .
