What Happened to the Battleship: 1945 to the Present by Chris Baker

Author:Chris Baker [Baker, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399070096
Google: MwxyEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0B195XFCY
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2022-07-29T21:00:00+00:00

Royal Sovereign takes Nelson’s place inboard of Revenge, 6 March 1950. (MTSC)

A storm in a teacup maybe, but aspects of the transfer were certainly bizarre. Almost nothing is known of Royal Sovereign’s four years of service in the Soviet Northern Fleet. Peter C Smith says that she undertook two trial voyages in June 1945, a longer circuit of the White Sea in July, two short trips in 1946, and that she ran aground in 1947.²⁹ The Admiralty had a fairly reliable report from July 1948 that she was lying off Rosta in an unpainted and unkempt condition with a list of 5 degrees, although her condition on return seems to have been significantly better than that.³⁰ On her return the British found that the Russians had loaded all the ship’s guns with live ammunition. Whether this was a contingency against some sneak attack that they felt the Royal Navy would perpetrate on its own returning fleet, or merely reflected standard Russian seagoing practice, or sloppiness, we cannot speculate. The last seems more likely as it was found that some of the 15in ammunition was rusted into place in the breaches, where it had obviously been for some years. In general the ship was found to be serviceable, but filthy. It mattered not, because, despite her brief recommissioning as a Royal Navy vessel, Royal Sovereign was already destined to join her sisters on the scrap heap. She was immediately sold to BISCO and also allocated to Thomas W Ward. She moved back under the Forth Bridge to join Nelson, Rodney and Revenge at Inverkeithing on 5 April 1949.

She remained anchored off shore for nearly a year while Nelson and Rodney were dismantled. During this period the forward 15in turrets were removed, before she joined Revenge at the jetty on 6 March 1950.

One substantial memento of her, and of Revenge, survives. The engineer designing Britain’s first steerable radio telescope for Sir Bernard Lovell was Charles Husband. He decided that the rack and pinion training mechanism from their 15in turrets could be put to work in the construction of the new 250ft radio telescope dish at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire. Their slow rates of movement and angular precision were ideal for controlling the elevation of the big dish antenna. Husband found the Admiralty Gunnery Establishment at Teddington very helpful with practical advice on the mechanical limitations associated with the driving of heavy gun turrets by electrical and hydraulic means. The methods of automatic angular control used in naval gunnery provided a close analogy to the movements required for the large telescope.

He agreed at an early stage of the design procedure to earmark two complete 27ft diameter internal racks and their driving pinions from the hydraulically operated 15in gun turrets. An inspection of the racks was made at Inverkeithing; they were found to be in perfect condition and were subsequently purchased at a nominal price. It was a happy coincidence that the strength of the teeth on the racks corresponded, with a reasonable factor of safety, to the anticipated maximum torque caused by wind loading on the telescope dish.

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