King George V-class battleship (1911)

Uncommon card · No. 159459

The King George V-class battleships were a group of four dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy (RN) in the early 1910s that were sometimes termed super-dreadnoughts. The sister ships spent most of their careers assigned to the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Home and Grand Fleets, sometimes serving as flagships. In October 1914, Audacious struck a mine and sank. Aside from participating in the failed attempt to intercept the German ships that had bombarded Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in late 1914, the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and the inconclusive action of 19 August, the surviving ships' service during the First World War generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. The three surviving ships were briefly reduced to reserve in 1919 before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1920–1921 where they played minor roles in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and the Chanak Crisis of 1922. The first ship to return to Britain, King...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Presumably an unknown photographer with the Bain News Service, Public domain