page_title: Revenge-class battleship
section_title: Interwar period
hierarchical_section_title: Revenge-class battleship / Service history / Interwar period
caption_attribution_description: British battleship HMS Ramillies. Date of photo not given, but most likely between 1916 (ship's launch) and mid 1920s. This is most probably on the way down the Clyde in 1916 when it was launched at Dalmuir.
context_page_description: The Revenge class, sometimes referred to as the Royal Sovereign class or the R class, was a group of five superdreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1910s. All of the ships were completed to see service during the First World War. There were originally to have been eight of the class, but two were later redesigned, becoming the Renown-class battlecruisers, while the other, which was to have been named HMS Resistance, was cancelled outright. The design was based on that of the preceding Queen Elizabeth class, but with reductions in size and speed to make them more economical to build.
  Two of the ships, Revenge and Royal Oak, were completed in time to see action at the Battle of Jutland during the First World War, where they engaged German battlecruisers. The other three ships were completed after the battle, by which time the British and German fleets had adopted more cautious strategies, and as a result, the class saw no further substantial action. During the early 1920s, the ships were involved in the Greco-Turkish War and the Russian Civil War as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.
context_section_description: Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Revenge-class battleships operated as a unit, alternating between the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet, typically trading places with the five Queen Elizabeth-class ships. While serving in the Mediterranean Fleet in the early 1920s, the ships were involved in the Greco-Turkish War and the Russian Civil War. Four of the ships (all but Resolution) landed Royal Marines to take part in the occupation of Constantinople in March 1920. Throughout June and July, the ships participated in the fighting in the collapsing Ottoman Empire; Ramillies and Revenge shelled Turkish troops around Ismid in June and both ships, joined by Royal Sovereign, assisted with Greek landings elsewhere in Turkey. Also in July, Royal Sovereign assisted in the escape of White émigrés fleeing from the Soviet Red Army. During this period, Resolution primarily operated in the Black Sea, including a period at Batumi in southern Russia.
  As the Revenges were refitted during the 1920s, their forecastle-deck six-inch guns were removed and they exchanged their pair of three-inch AA guns for QF four-inch (102 mm) Mk V guns, another pair of Mk V guns was added later. Each ship received an anti-aircraft control position with a 12-foot (3.7 m) rangefinder on its foremast, except for Revenge which was fitted with an anti-aircraft director HACS Mk I system instead. In addition the torpedo-control arrangements were improved and equipped with 12-foot rangefinders.
  After a stint in the Atlantic Fleet in 1921, the ships briefly returned to the Mediterranean in September 1922 during a crisis in Smyrna that culminated in the Great fire of Smyrna as the Greco-Turkish War came to its conclusion. The ships returned to the Atlantic Fleet in November. In 1924, Resolution accidentally rammed and sank the submarine HMS L24 during training exercises, killing all aboard. Royal Oak was involved in the so-called "Royal Oak Mutiny", between her commander, Captain Kenneth Dewar and Commander Henry Daniel, also an officer aboard the ship and Rear-Admiral Bernard Collard, the commander of the 1st Battle Squadron. The situation was ultimately resolved by Admiral Sir Roger Keyes removing all three from their posts.
  The ships remained in the Atlantic until 1927, when they once again transferred to the Mediterranean. The Revenges and Queen Elizabeths again traded places in 1935, and the five Revenge-class ships were present for the Coronation Review for George VI on 20 May 1937. Throughout this period, the ships underwent repeated refits as anti-aircraft suites were upgraded so that each ship had a pair of HACS Mk III systems in lieu of their anti-aircraft control positions, except for Ramillies which received Mk I directors, and QF four-inch Mk XVI AA guns in twin mounts replaced the single Mk V guns. They also received light AA guns for the first time in the form of two octuple two-pounder (40 mm (1.6 in)) Mk VIII "pom-pom" mounts, each with their own directors, and a pair of quadruple Vickers 0.5 in (12.7 mm) AA machinegun mounts. The submerged torpedo tubes were removed as was all of the torpedo-control equipment. Royal Oak was the exception as she had her submerged tubes replaced by above-water tubes. She was also the only ship to receive additional armour when 4-inch plates were added to the deck over her magazines and 2.5-inch (64 mm) over her engine rooms. This armour increased her displacement by 900 long tons (910 t). The Royal Sovereigns did not, however, receive the same extensive reconstructions that some of the Queen Elizabeth-class ships underwent, as the modernization program was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The war also forced the cancellation of a plan to add the same armour to Royal Sovereign and Ramillies.
caption: Ramillies, probably in the late 1910s or 1920s
exif: {}