The Revenge class, sometimes referred to as the Royal Sovereign class or the R class, consisted of five Dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1910s. All of the ships were completed to see service during the First World War. There were originally to have been eight of the class, but two were later redesigned, becoming the s, while the other, which was to have been named HMS Resistance, was cancelled outright. The design was based on that of the preceding , but with reductions in size and speed to make them more economical to build.
Two of the ships, and , were completed in time to see action at the Battle of Jutland during the First World War, where they engaged German battlecruisers. The other three ships were completed after the battle, by which time the British and German fleets had adopted more cautious strategies, and as a result, the class saw no further substantial action. During the early 1920s, the ships were involved in the Greco-Turkish War and the Russian Civil War as part of the Mediterranean Fleet. They typically operated as a unit during the interwar period, including stints in the Atlantic Fleet. All five members of the class were modernised in the 1930s, particularly to strengthen their anti-aircraft defences and fire-control equipment.
The ships saw extensive action during the Second World War, though they were no longer front-line units by this time and thus were frequently relegated to secondary duties such as convoy escort and naval gunfire support. Royal Oak was sunk at her moorings in Scapa Flow in October 1939 by a German U-boat, and two other ships of the class were torpedoed during the war; , hit by a Vichy French submarine off Dakar in 1940 and , attacked by a Japanese submarine in Madagascar in 1943; both survived. ended the war in service with the Soviet Navy as Arkhangelsk, but she was returned in 1949, by which time her three surviving sister ships had been broken up for scrap. She, too, was dismantled that year.
Design and description
In the early 1900s, Germany challenged Britain in a naval arms race under the direction of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz that was exacerbated by the dreadnought revolution. The Royal Navy embarked on a construction programme to out-build the Germans to maintain its dominance of the seas. Beginning with the launch of , the British had built or laid down twenty-seven all-big-gun battleships to the Germans' seventeen built or building by 1913; to cement their lead, the British ordered another group of battleships for the 1913 Estimates.
The Revenge-class ships (sometimes referred to as the "Royal Sovereign class" or the "R class") were designed as slightly smaller, slower, and more heavily protected versions of the preceding s. The design staff, led by Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction, had been charged by the Board of Admiralty with developing a version of the earlier armed with the same battery of guns used in the Queen Elizabeths, albeit with the same number as the Iron Dukes—ten rather than the eight of the Queen Elizabeth design. As an economy measure they were intended to revert to the previous practice of using both fuel oil and coal, but First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher rescinded the decision for coal in October 1914. Still under construction, the ships were redesigned to employ oil-fired boilers that increased the power of the engines by over the original specification.
The initial design completed by d'Eyncourt's team mounted only eight 15 in guns, despite the request from the Board, since he could not fit the fifth twin-gun turret in the specified displacement limit. The Board suggested triple turrets to solve the weight problem, but d'Eyncourt pointed out that no suitable design existed, which would significantly delay construction. He was also opposed to the idea since a single hit on a turret would disable more guns. As a result, the Board approved d'Eyncourt's proposal on 31 March 1913.
General characteristics and propulsion
The ships of the Revenge class were long between perpendiculars, long at the waterline, and had a length overall of . They had a beam of (which was increased to approximately with the addition of anti-torpedo bulges) and a deep draught of fully loaded without a bulge and with a bulge. They had a normal displacement without a bulge of approximately and at deep load. Equivalent figures for those ships fitted with a bulge were about or , depending on the type of bulge fitted. The ships' metacentric height was at deep load without a bulge fitted and with a bulge.