page_title: HMS Colossus (1910)
section_title: Battle of Jutland
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Colossus (1910) / Construction and career / World War I / Battle of Jutland
caption_attribution_description: English: IWM caption&#160;: The superstructure of HMS COLOSSUS, showing damage done at the Battle of Jutland. COLOSSUS was the flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron (MARLBOROUGH, REVENGE, HERCULES, AGINCOURT, COLLINGWOOD, NEPTUNE, ST VINCENT, BELLONA). She was hit twice and suffered five casualties. Note the wooden beams being used to brace the metalwork.
context_page_description: HMS Colossus was the lead ship of her class of two dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy at the end of the first decade of the 20th century. She spent her whole career assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets, often serving as a flagship. Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and the inconclusive Action of 19 August, her service during World War I generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. Colossus was the only dreadnought from the main body of the Grand Fleet to be hit during the Battle of Jutland, although she suffered only minor damage. The ship was deemed obsolete after the war and was reduced to reserve and then became a training ship. Colossus was hulked in 1923 and sold for scrap in 1928.
context_section_description: In an attempt to lure out and destroy a portion of the Grand Fleet, the High Seas Fleet, composed of sixteen dreadnoughts, six pre-dreadnoughts and supporting ships, departed the Jade Bight early on the morning of 31 May. The fleet sailed in concert with Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's five battlecruisers. The Royal Navy's Room 40 had intercepted and decrypted German radio traffic containing plans of the operation. In response the Admiralty ordered the Grand Fleet, totalling some 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battlecruisers, to sortie the night before to cut off and destroy the High Seas Fleet.
  On 31 May, Colossus, under the command of Captain Dudley Pound, was the lead ship of the 5th Division and was the seventeenth ship from the head of the battle line after deployment. During the first stage of the general engagement, the ship fired three salvos from her main guns at a barely visible battleship at 18:30. Shortly afterward, she fired four salvos at the crippled light cruiser SMS Wiesbaden around 18:32. Colossus fired another three salvos at Wiesbaden at 19:00 and switched to the destroyer SMS G42, which was attempting to come to Wiesbaden's assistance, five minutes later with both her main and secondary armament. The destroyer was not hit, but the detonations of the near misses caused her condensers to spring leaks, which gradually reduced her speed. About 19:10 Colossus engaged several German destroyer flotillas with her forward turret and 4-inch guns without result.
  About 19:15, she engaged the battlecruiser SMS Derfflinger at a range of only 8,000–9,000 yards (7,300–8,200 m) with five salvos of armour-piercing, capped (APC) shells. She claimed four hits, but likely made five on the German ship. Only two of these were significant, destroying a pair of 15-centimetre (5.9 in) guns, knocking out two others, and causing some flooding. In return she was struck by two shells fired by the battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz at 19:16, but neither caused any significant damage, splinters igniting a few 4-inch propellant charges that were easily put out. Seven men, however, were wounded. A few minutes later, splinters from two near misses wrecked a searchlight and wounded two men. At 19:35, Colossus had to turn away from an approaching German torpedo. The ship did not fire her guns again and was not hit again, although her propellers were slightly damaged when she scraped over a wreck at 23:30. During the battle she fired a total of 93 twelve-inch shells (81 APC and 12 common pointed, capped) and 16 shells from her four-inch guns.
caption: The damage caused by one hit by Seydlitz in the superstructure
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