King George V-class battleship (1939)

The King George V class was a group of five battleships built for the British Royal Navy in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the most modern British battleships in commission during the Second World War. The ships were King George V, Prince of Wales, Duke of York, Anson and Howe. Design work began in 1928, and the class was shaped by the Washington Naval Treaty and the London naval treaties that limited battleship size, which led the Admiralty to choose 14-inch guns and to give the ships heavy armour and torpedo protection. The five ships were divided among British yards: Vickers-Armstrong on the Tyne, Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, John Brown at Clydebank, Swan Hunter at Wallsend and Fairfield at Govan, where Howe was laid down on 1 June 1937, launched on 9 April 1940 and completed in 1942. All five saw combat; King George V and Prince of Wales were in the action against the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941, and King George V and Howe later joined the British Pacific Fleet. Three of the class were scrapped in 1957.