Lion-class battleship
The Lion class was a class of six fast battleships designed for the Royal Navy in the late 1930s. They were a larger, improved version of the preceding King George V class, with 16-inch guns. Only two ships were laid down before the Second World War began in September 1939. A third was ordered during the war, but their construction was suspended shortly afterwards. The design was modified in light of war experience in 1942, but the two ships already begun were scrapped.
About Lion-class battleship in brief
The Lion class was a class of six fast battleships designed for the Royal Navy in the late 1930s. They were a larger, improved version of the preceding King George V class, with 16-inch guns. Only two ships were laid down before the Second World War began in September 1939 and a third was ordered during the war, but their construction was suspended shortly afterwards. The design was modified in light of war experience in 1942, but the two ships already begun were scrapped later in the year. None of the other ships planned were laiddown, although there was a proposal in 1941 to modify one of the suspended ships into a hybrid battleship-aircraft carrier. Preliminary work for a new design began in 1944 and continued for the next year or so until the RN realised that they were unaffordable in the post-war financial environment. The Lion class closely resembled that of the KGVs, but included a transom to improve efficiency at high speed. The ships would have had four sets of geared steam turbine sets housed in separate engine rooms, with a total of 130,000 shaft horsepower at 30 knots. The Admiralty intended them to be powered by eight-shaft turbines, but they were intended to be eight-drum powered by three-shrum turbines. They would have displaced 40,550 long tons at standard load and 46,400 deep tons at deep sea port. The crew was estimated to be about 1,680 officers and ratings and estimated to have 1, 680 officers and officers and crew ratings of about 1.5 tonnes each.
The Royal Navy would not have been able to afford a battleship of this size in the 1930s or 1940s, so the Admiralty decided to build a smaller vessel instead. The new design was prepared with more armour, more powerful machinery, the two twin 5.25-inch gun turrets restored, and four aircraft added. It was intended that the ships would be able to dock at the major Royal Navy dockyards at Rosyth or Portsmouth. The ship would have a waterline length of 780 feet, an overall length of 785 feet, a beam of 105 feet, and a maximum draught of 33 feet 6 inches. The lions would have been about 40,000 long tons standard displacement and a main armament calibre of 14 inches. This dictated the choice of the main battery of the King George Vs. The treaty contained an “Escalator Clause” that would increase the maximum allowable calibre to 16 inches if the Japanese government failed to sign; this was triggered in April 1937. The three signatories, Britain, France and the United States agreed to limit the size and gun calibre for the battleships that would be built by the signatories. The limit was eventually settled at 45,000 because the Americans would accept only that figure or none at all. In an effort to remain within treaty limits, the overall weight of armour was slightly reduced and two twin gun turrets as well as aircraft and their facilities were eliminated.
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This page is based on the article Lion-class battleship published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
