HMS Nelson

1. Lead

HMS Nelson was the Royal Navy’s most distinctive battleship, and one of the most recognisable warships ever built. Commissioned in 1927, she was the first British battleship designed under the Washington Naval Treaty, and her designers solved the treaty’s 35,000-ton limit in a way no other navy attempted: they placed all three of her 16-inch gun turrets forward of the superstructure, with the bridge, funnel and machinery grouped aft, producing a ship whose silhouette — three turrets in a row, then a tower, then a single funnel — was unlike any other battleship in the world. Nelson and her sister Rodney were the only battleships ever built with all their main guns forward, and they remained in service through the Second World War, fighting in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Pacific, escorting the Malta convoys, bombarding Normandy, and witnessing the surrender of Japan.

Nelson‘s story is the story of the Royal Navy’s battleship force between the wars and in the Second World War: a ship built for a war that never came, in the form the treaty allowed, and then used, for six years, in a war for which she had not been designed. She was slow, at 23 knots, and she was wet in heavy seas, but she was heavily armed and heavily protected, and she was, for most of the war, the flagship of the Home Fleet. This article describes Nelson‘s background and development, her design, her variants, her operational history, her performance, her operators, her legacy and the fate that awaited her after the war.

2. Key Facts

Type	Battleship (treaty battleship)
Origin	United Kingdom
Designer	Admiralty; Director of Naval Construction
Builder	Armstrong Whitworth, Newcastle upon Tyne
Laid down	December 1922
Launched	September 1925
Commissioned	August 1927
Decommissioned	February 1948; scrapped 1949
Displacement	About 33,313 tons standard; about 38,000 tons full load
Length	710 ft (216.4 m)
Beam	106 ft (32.3 m)
Draught	About 30 ft (9.1 m)
Propulsion	2 steam turbines, 45,000 shp; 2 shafts
Speed	About 23 knots
Range	About 16,500 nautical miles at 18 knots
Crew	About 1,314 (wartime up to 1,640)
Armour	Belt 13–14 in; deck 6.25 in; turrets up to 16 in; conning tower 14 in
Armament	9 × 16-in guns; 12 × 6-in guns; 6 × 4.7-in anti-aircraft guns; 40 mm and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns (wartime)
Most famous action	Malta convoys 1941–1942; Normandy bombardment, June 1944; surrender of Japan, 1945

3. Background and Development

The Washington Treaty and the G3 design

HMS Nelson was born of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which limited new battleships to 35,000 tons and guns of 16 inches, and which forced Britain to cancel the battlecruisers and battleships it had planned. The Royal Navy’s designers had, before the treaty, drawn up a design for a fast battleship — the G3 battlecruiser — with nine 16-inch guns, all forward, and a speed of 32 knots, on a displacement of about 48,000 tons.

The treaty made the G3 impossible, but its designers did not abandon it: they took the G3’s most distinctive feature — all the main guns forward, which shortened the armoured citadel and saved weight — and fitted it into a 35,000-ton hull, producing the Nelson class.

The result was a ship that was slower than the G3, at 23 knots against 32, but that kept the G3’s armament and much of its protection, and that was, in the words of one historian, “a G3 cut down to treaty size”.

Building Nelson and Rodney

Nelson was laid down at Armstrong Whitworth in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1922, launched in September 1925, and commissioned in August 1927. Her sister Rodney was built at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead and commissioned in November 1927. The two ships were the only battleships Britain built between the First World War and the King George V class of the late 1930s, and they were, for a decade, the most powerful ships in the Royal Navy.

Their construction was slow, because the treaty had forced the Navy to rethink its designs and because the British shipbuilding industry was in decline, but the ships that emerged were, in the Navy’s view, worth the wait: nine 16-inch guns, the heaviest armament of any British battleship, and armour thick enough to resist their own shells.

The inter-war years

Between the wars, Nelson served as the flagship of the Home Fleet, and she was the ship on which the Navy’s officers learned their trade. She visited the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Far East, and she was present at the great naval reviews that marked the Navy’s public face.

In 1931, she was the scene of the Invergordon Mutiny, when sailors of the Atlantic Fleet refused duty over pay cuts — a mutiny that began aboard Nelson‘s sister ships and that spread through the fleet, and that forced the government to reconsider its pay policy.

The mutiny was a low point in the Navy’s history, and Nelson‘s part in it is still remembered, but the ship herself emerged from the inter-war years as the Navy’s flagship and as a symbol of British sea power, ready — as ready as any ship of her generation — for the war that came in 1939.

4. Design

All guns forward

Nelson‘s design was dominated by a single decision: all nine of her 16-inch guns were placed forward of the superstructure, in three triple turrets — “A”, “B” and “X” — in a row along the centreline. The decision had three advantages: it shortened the armoured citadel, because the magazines for all three turrets could be grouped together; it allowed the machinery spaces to be placed aft, where they were protected by the same belt; and it gave the ship a full broadside forward, which was useful when chasing an enemy.

It had two disadvantages: the ship could not fire her main guns aft, which mattered when retreating, and the blast from the forward turrets, when fired at certain angles, damaged the superstructure and the bridge. The arrangement was never repeated by any other navy, and it remains Nelson‘s most famous feature — the reason she is instantly recognisable in any photograph.

Armour and secondary armament

Nelson‘s armour was the heaviest the Royal Navy had yet put on a battleship. The belt was 13 to 14 inches thick, inclined at 18 degrees, and it protected the machinery spaces and magazines from the waterline to the main deck. The deck armour was 6.25 inches thick over the magazines and 3.75 inches over the machinery, and the turret faces were up to 16 inches thick.

The conning tower was 14 inches thick. The secondary armament was twelve 6-inch guns, in six twin turrets aft, which could fire at surface targets, and six 4.7-inch anti-aircraft guns, which were later supplemented by dozens of 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm Oerlikon guns in wartime refits.

The 6-inch guns were a weakness: they were mounted in turrets that were hard to work, and they were later criticised as a poor choice, but they were the standard secondary armament of British battleships of the time.

Machinery, speed and habitability

Nelson was powered by two steam turbines, of 45,000 shaft horsepower in total, driving two shafts, and she could make about 23 knots — slow by the standards of the fast battleships that followed her, and too slow to keep up with the aircraft carriers that became the fleet’s principal weapon.

Her range was about 16,500 nautical miles at 18 knots, which gave her the reach to operate from Britain to the Mediterranean and back. Her crew was about 1,314 men in peacetime and up to 1,640 in wartime, and they lived in conditions that were cramped but, by the standards of the time, comfortable — with a proper galley, a bakery, a laundry, and a sick bay.

The ship’s fire-control system, with its Admiralty Fire Control Table and its rangefinders, was the best in the Royal Navy, and it allowed Nelson to fire accurately at long range, in the tradition of British gunnery.

5. Variants

Ship	Laid down	Commissioned	Fate
HMS Nelson	December 1922	August 1927	Decommissioned 1948; scrapped 1949
HMS Rodney	December 1922	November 1927	Decommissioned 1946; scrapped 1948

Two sisters, two careers

The Nelson class consisted of two ships, Nelson and Rodney, built to the same design and differing only in the details of their fittings and in the campaigns they fought. Nelson served as the flagship of the Home Fleet for most of the war, escorted the Malta convoys, bombarded Normandy, and witnessed the surrender of Japan. Rodney fought in the Atlantic, escorted convoys, and played the decisive part in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck on 27 May 1941, firing her 16-inch guns at Bismarck at close range and silencing her guns.

The two ships’ careers were complementary: Nelson was the flagship and the Mediterranean ship, Rodney was the Atlantic ship and the Bismarck killer, and together they were the Royal Navy’s most powerful battleships for the first half of the war.

Wartime refits

Both ships were refitted repeatedly during the war, and the refits changed their appearance and their capabilities. The most important change was the addition of anti-aircraft guns: the ships commissioned with a handful of 4.7-inch guns and a few pom-poms, and by 1945 they carried dozens of 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm Oerlikon guns, which made them formidable anti-aircraft platforms.

Radar was also improved, with Type 273 surface-search radar and Type 284 fire-control radar replacing earlier sets, and the ships’ fire-control systems were upgraded to allow them to fire accurately at night. Nelson was also fitted with a hangar and catapult for a Supermarine Walrus seaplane, which was used for spotting and for reconnaissance, and which was removed later in the war as the aircraft became obsolete.

The refits added weight, and the ships’ displacement grew from 33,313 tons standard to about 38,000 tons full load by the end of the war.

No post-war career

Neither ship had a post-war career. Rodney was decommissioned in 1946 and scrapped in 1948, and Nelson was decommissioned in February 1948 and scrapped in 1949. The ships’ scrapping was a consequence of Britain’s post-war exhaustion: the country could not afford to maintain a large battleship force, and the battleship itself had been superseded by the aircraft carrier. The Nelson class’s story is therefore a story of a ship that fought only one war, and that died in the peace that followed it — a fate shared by almost every battleship built before the Second World War.

The scrapping of Nelson and Rodney was part of a wider scrapping of the Royal Navy’s battleship force after the war. Britain, exhausted by six years of war and facing the costs of reconstruction, could not afford to maintain the battleships it had built, and the ships were sold for scrap to pay for the new Navy — a Navy built around aircraft carriers, submarines and frigates. The decision was economic, not sentimental, and it is a measure of how completely the battleship era had ended.

6. Operational History

The early war: mine, torpedo and the Atlantic

Nelson‘s war began badly. In December 1939, only three months after Britain declared war on Germany, she struck a magnetic mine in the Firth of Forth, off the east coast of Scotland, and was badly damaged — her hull was holed, her machinery was damaged, and she had to be repaired at Portsmouth for six months.

The mine was one of the first German magnetic mines laid in British waters, and Nelson‘s damage was a warning of the danger the new weapon posed. In September 1941, Nelson was torpedoed by an Italian aircraft while escorting a Malta convoy, and she was again badly damaged, with flooding in her forward compartments, and again she had to be repaired — this time for eight months, in South Africa and in Britain.

The two incidents, a mine and a torpedo, were the worst damage Nelson suffered in the war, and they kept her out of action for more than a year in total, but they also showed that her armour and her damage control could save a ship that had been hit hard.

The Malta convoys

Operation Halberd and the convoys of 1941–1942

Nelson‘s most important wartime service was in the Mediterranean, escorting the convoys that supplied Malta — the island fortress that was, in 1941 and 1942, the key to the Mediterranean war. Malta was besieged by the Axis, bombed daily, and supplied only by convoys that had to run the gauntlet of German and Italian aircraft, submarines and surface ships. Nelson, as flagship of the escort force, took part in Operation Halberd in September 1941, in which a convoy of nine merchant ships reached Malta with the loss of one ship, and in the convoys of 1942, in which the losses were heavier and the fighting harder.

The convoys were the hardest service in the Royal Navy, and Nelson‘s part in them — her 16-inch guns deterring Italian surface ships, her anti-aircraft guns shooting down German and Italian aircraft, and her presence as a flagship giving the convoy confidence — was central to Malta’s survival. The island was awarded the George Cross in 1942, and Nelson‘s service in the convoys is part of the reason it survived.

The torpedoing of September 1941

On 27 September 1941, during Operation Halberd, Nelson was torpedoed by an Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 aircraft, which dropped a torpedo that struck her bow and caused extensive flooding. The ship’s damage-control parties contained the flooding, and Nelson was able to continue with the convoy, but she was badly damaged and had to be repaired in South Africa and then in Britain, where she remained until May 1942.

The torpedoing was a reminder that a battleship’s greatest danger in the Mediterranean was not the enemy’s battleships — which rarely left port — but its aircraft, which could strike from the air and disappear. Nelson‘s survival, after a torpedo hit that flooded her forward compartments, was a testament to her underwater protection and to the damage control of her crew, and it became one of the most famous damage-control stories in the Royal Navy.

Normandy and the Pacific

In June 1944, Nelson took part in the Normandy landings, bombarding the German defences on the coast of France in support of the Allied troops ashore. Her 16-inch guns fired at targets around Caen and Le Havre, and she remained off Normandy for weeks, firing in support of the army as it fought inland.

In August 1944, she was damaged by a mine off Normandy, and she had to be repaired again, but she returned to service in time to sail for the Pacific, where she joined the British Pacific Fleet in 1945 and took part in the bombardment of Japanese-held islands and in the operations that preceded the surrender.

On 2 September 1945, Nelson was present in Tokyo Bay for the surrender of Japan, and her officers witnessed the signing of the surrender aboard the American battleship USS Missouri. Nelson‘s war, which had begun with a mine in the Firth of Forth, ended in Tokyo Bay, six years later.

Rodney and Bismarck

Nelson‘s sister Rodney fought the action that made the class famous in Britain: the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck on 27 May 1941. Rodney, with the battleship King George V, engaged Bismarck at close range — at times less than 3,000 yards — and fired her 16-inch guns into Bismarck‘s superstructure, silencing her guns and destroying her bridge. Rodney fired more than 380 16-inch shells in the action, and her gunnery was credited with the destruction of Bismarck‘s fighting power, after which the German ship was finished off by torpedoes and scuttled by her crew.

The action was the last time a British battleship sank a German battleship in a gun action, and it made Rodney a legend in the Royal Navy. Nelson herself did not take part in the action, but the class’s reputation was made by it, and Nelson‘s own service — in the Mediterranean, at Normandy, and in the Pacific — was the other half of the class’s story.

7. Performance and Specifications

Specifications in full

The figures in the table below are the standard Nelson figures, taken from Admiralty records and from the ship as completed. Displacement, speed and range varied slightly over her career, because wartime refits added anti-aircraft guns and radar, increasing the full-load displacement from about 33,313 tons standard to about 38,000 tons.

The armour figures are the design figures: the belt was 13 to 14 inches thick, inclined at 18 degrees, and the deck armour was 6.25 inches over the magazines. The 16-inch guns fired a 2,048-pound shell to a range of about 38,000 yards, and the 6-inch guns fired a 100-pound shell to a range of about 25,000 yards.

The ship’s speed of 23 knots was slow by the standards of the fast battleships that followed her, and it was the price the designers paid for the armour and armament they fitted into a 35,000-ton hull.

Specification	HMS Nelson
Displacement (standard)	About 33,313 tons
Displacement (full load)	About 38,000 tons
Length	710 ft (216.4 m)
Beam	106 ft (32.3 m)
Speed	About 23 knots
Range	About 16,500 nautical miles at 18 knots
Main armament	9 × 16-in guns
Secondary armament	12 × 6-in guns
Anti-aircraft guns	6 × 4.7-in; 40 mm and 20 mm (wartime)
Belt armour	13–14 in (330–356 mm)
Deck armour	6.25 in (159 mm) over magazines
Turret armour	Up to 16 in (406 mm)
Crew	About 1,314–1,640
Ships completed	2 (Nelson and Rodney)

Comparison with other battleships

Compared with the American South Dakota class, Nelson was slower — 23 knots against 27.5 — and more lightly armed in secondary guns, but she was similarly well protected and her 16-inch guns were comparable in power. Compared with the German Bismarck, Nelson was slower and less well protected in some respects, but her 16-inch guns were larger than Bismarck‘s 15-inch guns, and her fire control was better.

Compared with the Japanese Nagato class, Nelson was similar in armament and protection, but slower. In her own time, Nelson was the most powerful battleship in the Royal Navy, and her design — all guns forward, heavy armour, and a short citadel — was the most original battleship design of the treaty era.

Her weakness was her speed, and it was a weakness that mattered more as the war went on, because the fleet’s principal weapon became the aircraft carrier, and Nelson could not keep up with it.

8. Operators

The Royal Navy

HMS Nelson was built for, and served only in, the Royal Navy, which operated her from her commissioning in August 1927 until her decommissioning in February 1948. In British hands she served as the flagship of the Home Fleet, as the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet at times, and as a bombardment ship at Normandy and in the Pacific.

Her crew were British, her officers were British, and her story is a British story: the story of a navy that built the most original battleship of the treaty era and then used it, for six years, in a war for which it had not been designed.

The ship’s officers included some of the most famous men in the Royal Navy — Admiral Sir John Tovey, who flew his flag in her, and the captains who commanded her in the Mediterranean and at Normandy.

No foreign operators

No other navy ever operated Nelson, and no ship of her design was ever built by another navy. The class consisted of two ships, Nelson and Rodney, and both were scrapped after the war. The ship’s story is therefore an entirely British story, from the G3 design that inspired her to the scrapyard at Inverkeithing where she was broken up in 1949. The name Nelson — after Admiral Lord Nelson, the victor of Trafalgar — has been given to later British ships, including a shore establishment and a destroyer, but no battleship has borne the name since, because Britain has built no battleship since the Second World War.

The absence of foreign operators also reflects the Nelson class’s age. By 1948, when Nelson was decommissioned, she was twenty-one years old, slow, and in need of a refit that would have cost more than the ship was worth. No navy wanted a slow, twenty-one-year-old battleship, and the Royal Navy, which had built her, had no use for her either. The class’s story is therefore a story of a ship that was built for one era and that died in the next, and whose only memorial is in photographs and in models.

9. Legacy and Influence

The most original treaty battleship

Nelson‘s legacy is her design. She was the most original battleship design of the treaty era — the only battleship ever built with all her main guns forward — and her design influenced every battleship that followed her, even though none of them repeated it.

The idea of grouping the main guns forward to shorten the citadel and save weight was studied by every navy, and the Nelson class’s armour scheme — a short, heavily protected citadel, with the machinery and magazines grouped together — became the standard for battleship design in the 1930s.

The class also proved the value of the 16-inch gun: Nelson‘s guns were the largest the Royal Navy had ever mounted, and they remained the largest British naval guns until the end of the battleship era.

The human legacy

Nelson also left a human legacy. The ship’s service in the Malta convoys, at Normandy, and in Tokyo Bay is remembered in the Royal Navy, and her name — after Admiral Lord Nelson — is one of the most honoured in British naval history.

The ship’s crew, about 1,640 men at wartime strength, served in every major theatre of the war, and their names are remembered on the naval memorials at Portsmouth and Plymouth. The class’s story is also the story of Rodney and Bismarck, and the two ships together are remembered as the Royal Navy’s most powerful battleships of the Second World War’s first half. Nelson herself is gone, scrapped in 1949, but her silhouette — three turrets in a row, then a tower, then a funnel — is still instantly recognisable to anyone who knows warships, and it remains the most distinctive silhouette of any battleship ever built.

10. Surviving Examples

No ship survives

No part of HMS Nelson survives as a ship. She was decommissioned in February 1948 and scrapped at Inverkeithing in Scotland in 1949, and her sister Rodney was scrapped in 1948. The scrapping of the two ships was a consequence of Britain’s post-war exhaustion and of the battleship’s supersession by the aircraft carrier, and it is a loss that naval historians still regret: Nelson, with her unique all-forward armament, would have been the most interesting battleship to preserve, and her loss leaves the Nelson class with no physical memorial. The ships’ bells, nameplates and some fittings survive in museums, and the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich holds models and plans of the class, but there is no Nelson to visit.

The loss of Nelson is particularly regretted because of her unique design. No other battleship was ever built with all its main guns forward, and Nelson’s silhouette — three turrets in a row, then a tower, then a funnel — was the most distinctive of any battleship ever built. Had she been preserved, she would have been the most interesting battleship museum in the world, and her loss leaves the Royal Navy’s battleship heritage with a gap that no other ship can fill.

Memorials and models

Nelson is remembered at the naval memorials at Portsmouth and Plymouth, where the names of the men who served in her and died in the war are recorded, and in the museums that tell the story of the Royal Navy in the Second World War.

The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich holds a large model of Nelson, and the Imperial War Museum holds photographs and film of the ship in service. For anyone who wants to understand the Nelson class, the best introduction is not a ship — because there is none — but the photographs: the silhouette, three turrets in a row, then a tower, then a funnel, is unlike any other battleship, and it tells the story of a design that was, in its own way, as bold as any warship ever built.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is HMS Nelson?
HMS Nelson was a British battleship of the Second World War, commissioned in 1927, armed with nine 16-inch guns, all mounted forward of the superstructure. She was the flagship of the Home Fleet and served in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Pacific.

Why were all of Nelson’s guns forward?
The designers placed all three 16-inch turrets forward to shorten the armoured citadel and save weight within the Washington Treaty’s 35,000-ton limit. The arrangement was unique: no other battleship was ever built with all its main guns forward.

What happened to HMS Nelson in the war?
Nelson was mined in December 1939 and torpedoed in September 1941, escorted the Malta convoys, bombarded Normandy in June 1944, and was present in Tokyo Bay for the surrender of Japan in September 1945.

Did HMS Nelson sink Bismarck?
No. Nelson‘s sister Rodney, with HMS King George V, sank the German battleship Bismarck on 27 May 1941. Nelson herself did not take part in that action.

Where can I see HMS Nelson today?
Nowhere as a ship: Nelson was scrapped in 1949 and Rodney in 1948. Models, plans and photographs survive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and the Imperial War Museum.

How fast was HMS Nelson?
About 23 knots. She was slow by the standards of the fast battleships that followed her, and too slow to keep up with aircraft carriers, but she was heavily armed and heavily protected.

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Sources

1. Wikipedia, “HMS Nelson (28)” — all-forward guns, specifications, mine and torpedo damage, Malta convoys, Normandy, scrapping 1949.
2. Norman Friedman, British Battleships of World War Two (Seaforth, 2011) — treaty design, armour and the G3 origins.
3. Robert O. Dulin and William H. Garzke, Battleships: Allied Battleships in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 1980) — service history and refits.
4. Naval History and Heritage Command and Royal Navy histories — Nelson and Rodney, Malta convoys and Normandy.
5. Ludovic Kennedy, Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Bismarck (Collins, 1974) — Rodney and the sinking of Bismarck.
6. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich — models, plans and photographs of the Nelson class.