Линкор типа «Кинг Джордж V»: конструкция и вооружение.

King George V class battleship of the Royal Navy

{|

King George V was equipped with eight Admiralty boilers. This configuration was a little more conventional than the preceding , with boiler rooms placed side by side and with each pair associated with a turbine room astern of them. The total heating surface of the boiler plants in King George V was The 416 ton boiler installation produced more than , giving a top speed of 28 knots. The eight boilers were more economic in space and fuel than the twenty four boilers in the battlecruiser Fewer, but larger, boilers lowered the weight per unit of heat delivered, as did increased boiler efficiency and consumption of fuel per unit area of heating surface. This made King George V the fastest battleship in the British fleet but slower than the German, French or the new Italian capital ships, or the battlecruisers HMS Hood, and
King George V had four sets of Parsons geared turbines. Two main turbines were arranged in series and drove a shaft through double helical gears. An astern turbine was incorporated in the exhaust casing of the low pressure turbine, and a cruising turbine was coupled directly to the high pressure turbine.

The tight limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty raised many challenges and required difficult compromises if they were to be met. To avoid the class being outgunned by the new ships of foreign navies, especially as by the mid 1930s the Treaty had been renounced by Japan and Italy, Churchill wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1936, voicing strong objections to the proposed armament of ten 14 inch guns. His proposal was for nine 16 inch guns. However, when completed King George V mounted ten guns. They were mounted in one Mark II twin turret forward and two Mark III quadruple turrets, one forward and one aft. They could be elevated 40 degrees and depressed 3 degrees. Training arcs were: "A" turret, 286 degrees; "B" turret, 270 degrees and "Y" turret, 270 degrees. Training and elevating was achieved through a hydraulic drive, with rates of two and eight degrees per second, respectively. A full gun broadside weighed 15,950 pounds; a salvo could be fired every 30 seconds. The quadruple turrets weighed 1,582 tons, the twin turret 915 tons. The turrets were designed by the Vickers Armstrong's Elswick Works, but sets of each type of equipment were manufactured by Vickers Armstrongs in Barrow. A considerable amount of design effort was expended to make the turrets as flashtight as possible. This complicated the mechanical design of the turrets, particularly the quadruple mountings. Due to insufficient clearances and slightly distorted link mechanisms, failures in the intricate safety interlocks in the loading sequence for antiflash precautions caused jams during drills and practice firing. During the summer of 1941 the King George V class battleships had their main armament turrets and turret linkages modified to correct the operational faults revealed during Bismarcks final operation. HMS King George V used an Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark IX to control her main armament.

The secondary armament consisted of sixteen guns in eight twin mounts, weighing 81 tons each. They were grouped at the four corners of the citadel, with a twin mount on the main deck and another superimposed above it nearer amidships. This disposition gave better arcs of fire, freedom from blast, more separation of the magazines and a better arrangement of the ammunition supply. The cupolas for these mounts revolved on either the upper or superstructure deck; between deck mountings travelled on roller paths on the armoured deck. This permitted a flat trajectory or high angle fire. Loading was semi automatic, normal rate of fire was ten to twelve rounds per minute. The maximum range of the Mk I guns was at a 45 degree elevation, the anti aircraft ceiling was 49000 feet (14935 m). The guns could be elevated to 70 degrees and depressed to 5 degrees. King George V introduced the High Angle Control System Mark IVGB anti aircraft fire control system to the Royal Navy, which, along with the Mk IV Pom Pom Director, pioneered the use of the Gyro Rate Unit.

The King George V design had four 0.5 inch quadruple machine gun mounts, but in 1939 these were replaced by two Mark VI pom pom mounts. In 1940, to combat air attack, four Unrotated Projectile mountings were fitted, on "B" turret, two on "Y" turret, one replaced a pom pom mount added in 1939 at the stern. The pom poms mounted in the King George V were designed and produced by Vickers Armstrongs as a result of a post First World War requirement for a multiple mounting which was effective against close range bombers or torpedo planes. The first model, tested in 1927, was superior to anything developed in other countries at the time and in 1938 the Mark VI* had a muzzle velocity of 2,400 feet per second, a 1.594 inch bore and a barrel length of 40 calibres. They fired a shell at a rate of 96–98 rounds per minute for controlled fire and 115 rounds per minute for automatic fire. The range of the Mark VI* was , at a muzzle velocity of 2,300 feet per second.

The first of her class to be completed, King George V was commissioned at her shipyard and sailed for Rosyth in Scotland on 16 October 1940; there she took on board her ammunition and began her sea trials. By the end of the year she had joined the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. She crossed the Atlantic early in 1941 to take Lord Halifax, the Ambassador to the United States, to Annapolis and covered an east bound convoy on her return, arriving back at Scapa Flow on 6 February. Her next task was to provide distant cover for Operation Claymore, the Royal Marines raid on the Lofoten islands off the north west coast of Norway. In March, she was assigned to escort two Atlantic convoys from Halifax, Nova Scotia, sailing from Scapa Flow on 9 March to escort HX 104 and HX 115 and arriving at Halifax, Nova Scotia on 15 March. King George V left Halifax the next day to search with HMS Rodney for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau who were attacking convoy ships south of Cape Race, Newfoundland as part of Operation Berlin. However fearing a gathering of British capital ships, the two German battleships broke off their attacks and returned to France. King George V joined Convoy HX115 to provide escort on 20 March and returned to Scapa Flow at the end of March.

When the German battleship Bismarck along with the heavy cruiser German cruiser Prinz Eugen broke out into the Atlantic Ocean, King George V sailed on 22 May 1941 with the aircraft carrier and eleven cruisers and destroyers in support of the cruiser patrols off Iceland. King George V was the flagship of Admiral Sir John Tovey, who commanded the force. King George V was still away on the morning of 24 May, when sister ship and Hood engaged both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Hood was sunk and Prince of Wales was damaged when taking fire from both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen and forced to retire. Bismarck, although damaged, continued south with Prinz Eugen. The British re located Bismarck at 10:30 on 26 May, when a Catalina flying boat of RAF Coastal Command sighted her, heading for the French port of Brest. Rodney and King George V were still about away. The aircraft carrier was ordered to launch an air attack, and at 22:25 her torpedo bombers, a flight of Fairey Swordfishes damaged Bismarck, slowing her down and jamming her rudder, forcing her to turn back out into the Atlantic, away from the safety of port. At 15:00 Rodney joined King George V and they maintained 22 knots – which was nearly maximum speed for Rodney. King George V had only 32 per cent of her fuel left while Rodney had only enough fuel to continue the chase at high speed until 8:00 the following day. At 08:15 the cruiser spotted Bismarck and turned away out of range. She soon sighted the other British ships off her starboard quarter, and informed them that Bismarck was roughly to the southwest. By 08:43 King George V had Bismarck in sight, at Four minutes later Rodney opened fire. King George V followed suit in less than a minute. Bismarck answered almost immediately, straddling Rodney on her second salvo. By 08:59 King George V had closed to and all her 14 inch guns were firing; Rodney was firing 16 inch salvoes. Bismarck concentrated all her remaining guns on King George V, but only an occasional shell came close. At 09:14 King George V, at , had opened fire with her 5.25 inch guns, and Rodney had moved to
At 09:27 a shell hitting Bismarck penetrated the hydraulic machinery in turret 'Anton' and disabled it, causing the guns to run down to maximum depression. Her topsides were wrecked, and a large fire burned amidships. After firing steadily for over 30 minutes, without any problems, King George V , by 09:27, began having trouble with her main battery, and from that point onward every gun missed at least one salvo due to failures in the safety interlocks for antiflash protection and from ammunition feed jams. At 10:21, with Bismarck silenced and obviously sinking, Admiral Tovey detailed the cruiser to finish her off with torpedoes. King George V fired 339 14 in (356 mm) and over 700 5.25 in (133 mm) shells during the action. As both Rodney and King George V were low on fuel they returned to port at , escorted by eleven destroyers to guard against German air or submarine attack. The next day, after the escort was reduced to three destroyers, four German aircraft did attack but scored no hits. Both King George V and Rodney returned to port safely, but the destroyer , sent ahead to refuel, was bombed and sunk.

After repairs and adjustments to her guns, King George V attacked German shipping in the Glom Fjord, Norway, in October 1941. She then covered convoys to Russia. On 1 May 1942 she was operating with Washington as an escort to Convoy PQ 15, and collided with the destroyer , which had manoeuvred to avoid a mine and crossed her bow in dense fog. Punjabi was cut in two and sank; King George V had 40 feet (12 m) of her bow badly damaged. King George V entered the Gladstone Dock in Liverpool on 9 May for repairs by Cammell Laird, and returned to Scapa Flow on 1 July 1942. The battleship did not leave Scapa Flow until 18 December when she finally resumed convoy escort duty, providing distant cover for the Arctic convoy JW 51A.

In May 1943, King George V was moved to Gibraltar in preparation for Operation Husky. King George V and her sister ship were allocated to the reserve covering group when the operation got under way on 1 July. The two ships bombarded Trapani in Sicily on 12 July and also helped defend against an air raid whilst in Algiers prior to departing for Operation Avalanche, (the Allied invasion of Italy). The battleship then escorted a naval force which occupied the Italian naval base at Taranto. She later escorted surrendered Italian ships from Malta to Alexandria. After bombarding German positions during the Salerno landings, King George V returned to the United Kingdom. The first stage of the voyage was covering the 11,000 nautical miles to Sydney; en route the force attacked oil refineries on Sumatra in Operation Meridian. They also practised replenishment at sea and beat off a Japanese air attack, with King George Vs anti aircraft crews shooting down one Mitsubishi Ki 21. With the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the surrender that followed, King George V moved with other units of the British Pacific Fleet into Tokyo Bay to be present at the surrender ceremonies.

During her career, King George V was refitted on several occasions in order to update her equipment. The following are the dates and details of the refits undertaken:
Dates Location Description of Work Early 1941 A Type 271 radar was added. December 1941 Removal of UP mountings; the addition of one 4 barrelled 2 pdr "pom pom" mounting, one 8 barrelled 2 pdr pom pom, and 18 × Oerlikon cannon; the UP directors were replaced with pom pom directors; the Type 271 radar was replaced by the Type 273; five Type 282 radars were also added. May–June 1942 Liverpool Damage from the collision with HMS Punjabi was repaired; the external degaussing coil was replaced with an internal coil; four Type 285 radars added; FM2 MF D/F added. Late 1943 20 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannon added. February–July 1944 Liverpool Removal of one 4 barrelled 2 pdr pom pom, 12 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannon, Type 273 radar and HF/DF; the addition of three 8 barrelled 2 pdr pom poms, six 2 barrelled 20 mm Oerlikon mounts and two 4 barrelled 40 mm Bofors guns; the Type 279 radar was replaced by the Type 279B, the Type 284 with the Type 274; addition of the Types 277, 293, 2 × 282, and 285 radars, and the RH2 VHF/DF; removal of aircraft and catapult equipment, replaced with new superstructure upon which the ship's boats were relocated, with the old boat deck given over to a significant portion of the new anti aircraft armament. 1945 Removal of two 20 mm Oerlikon cannon, two 40 mm Bofors guns added.