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HMS Renown (1916)

The ship was built in 1915/16 at Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd.. Glasgow. The commissioning took place on 20 September 1916. She then joined the Grand Fleet. My first combat mission on 17 November 1917 was during the naval action off Heligoland.

James Foster
James Foster
Dec 26, 201310.1K Shares154.5K Views
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HMS Renown (1916)

The ship was built in 1915/16 at Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd.. Glasgow. The commissioning took place on 20 September 1916. She then joined the Grand Fleet. My first combat mission on 17 November 1917 was during the naval action off Heligoland.

Between the two world wars, it was, together with her ​​sister ship HMS Repulse, HMS Hood of modern and older to the battlecruiser HMS Tiger squadron of the Grand Fleet. In addition, it has been extensively remodeled, first in 1920 and 1921.

Finally, she was again wholly rebuilt from September 1936 to August 1939, whereby the outer appearance of the ship changed considerably. The conversion was broadly in accordance with the previous modernization of the battleships HMS Warspite, HMS Queen Elizabeth, and HMS Valiant.

The Renown was like a massive new bridge construction, behind an aircraft hangar with a catapult for seaplane e or E flying boat The AA armament was equipped exclusively with new guns of caliber 11.4 cm (4.5 inches), with ten turrets, each with two tubes were installed in two twos and two threes on either side of the superstructure.

Other measures related to the reconstruction of horizontal tanks, the propulsion system, and the newly installed Torpedowulst e When she returned to the fleet in September 1939, she was markedly different from their non-modernized sister ship, the Repulse. Their combat value had increased significantly.

World War II

The Renown was used in the first half of the Second World War, mainly in the Home Fleet and occasionally in the Mediterranean (Force H in Gibraltar). In late 1939, she was sent to the South Atlantic to operate against the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. She turned, accompanied by the cruiser HMS Sussex on 2 December 1939 against South Africa, the German passenger liner Watusi (9,552 GRT), which was able to avoid the application of self-absorption.

To ward off the German attack on Norway the Renown was established in April 1940 as security for remote minelayer (Operation Wilfred). On 9 April, they met before Ofotfjord on the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which should cover as remote backup, running towards Narvik's invasion fleet.

In the following battle, the Renown scored two or three hits, including a direct hit in the fire control center on the foretop Gneisenau and an impact in one of the two front turrets that put these out of action. Then, the two German ships turned away. The Renown itself also received two hits from the Gneisenau.

Towards the end of the Renown was moved to Gibraltar and operated mainly in the Mediterranean. She participated in the Battle of Cape Teulada in part on the 27th of November 1940 between the Italian Navy (Regia Marina) and the Royal Navy, which was held south of Sardinia. On 6 February 1941 was involved in the bombardment of the port of Genoa, the Renown. Here, four vessels lying at anchor were sunk, and 18 others were damaged.

In 1942 and 1943, the Renown was again stationed in the Home Fleet. She has been used several times in the fall and winter as a remote backup of convoys, which war material brought to Murmansk. In summer, on the other hand, performed operations in the Mediterranean to escort aircraft carriers from which aircraft were flown to Malta. Even with the Allied landings in North Africa (Operation Torch), the battlecruiser was part of the remote control.

At the end of 1943, she was transferred to the Eastern Fleet, where she remained until July 1945, and of Ceylon met strategic defensive duties in the Indian Ocean. The Renown was also repeatedly used as an escort ship for offensive thrusts of the aircraft carrier, especially against targets in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies.

After the war, they still served briefly as a training ship but were finally decommissioned in 1948 and scrapped in the same year as the last battlecruiser of the Royal Navy in Scotland’s Faslane-on-Clyde.

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