page_title: HMS Howe (32)
section_title: Pacific operations
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Howe (32) / Operational history / Pacific operations
caption_attribution_description: The Royal Navy battleship HMS Howe (32) at Auckland, New Zealand. The flagship of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, Commander in Chief British Pacific Fleet, visited Auckland 2-10 February 1945.
context_page_description: HMS Howe was the last of the five British King George V-class battleships of the Royal Navy. Built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, she was laid down on 1 June 1937 and launched 9 April 1940. She was originally to have been named Beatty but this was changed to Howe, after Admiral Richard Howe.
  Howe was completed on 29 August 1942 after her building time was extended, as supplies were diverted to work of a higher priority such as the construction and repair of merchant ships and escort ships. Like her sister-ship HMS Anson, Howe spent most of her career in the Arctic providing cover for Russian convoys.
  In 1943 Howe took part in Operation Husky and bombarded Trapani naval base and Favignana in support of the Allied landings. Along with King George V, Howe escorted two surrendered Italian battleships to Alexandria. Howe was also sent to the Pacific and attached to the British Pacific Fleet, where she provided naval bombardments for the Allied landings at Okinawa on 1 April 1945.
  After the war, Howe spent four years as flagship of the Training Squadron at Portland, before she was placed in reserve in 1950.
context_section_description: On 8 August 1944, Howe arrived at Trincomalee in Ceylon to join the Eastern Fleet.  She was the first modern British battleship to be deployed in eastern waters since the loss of Prince of Wales in December 1941. Howe was put into action quickly, providing cover for carrier based air operations against targets in Sumatra. In December she moved to Sydney, where she sailed to Auckland, New Zealand, for a flag-waving visit. In February 1945, Howe and King George V sailed from Sydney to begin operations in earnest in the Pacific theatre; together with four carriers, five cruisers and fifteen destroyers, they made up Task Force 113.
  The first major undertaking for Task Force 113 (now redesignated TF.57) was Operation Iceberg-offshore support for the US landings at Okinawa-which got under way on 1 April 1945. The force was subjected to sporadic Japanese kamikaze attacks, but the two ships emerged unscathed from these actions. Howe's anti-aircraft batteries also succeeded in shooting down an attacking kamikaze plane. The two ships' principal roles were air defence and land bombardment, the latter being carried out very accurately, particularly by Howe against anti-aircraft installations on the island of Miyako, half way between Okinawa and Formosa.
caption: Howe while visiting Auckland, 1945
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