HMS
Valiant was a Queen Elizabeth
-class battleshipThe Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were a class of five super-dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy. The lead ship was named in honour of Elizabeth I of England...
of the Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
. She was laid down at the Fairfield shipyards, GovanGovan is a district and former burgh in the southwestern part of the City of Glasgow, Scotland...
on 31 January 1913 and launched on 4 November 1914. She was completed in February 1916.
World War I
The contract for the construction of the Valiant
was given to The Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Limited. She was laid down in the same berth where the battle cruiser HMS Indomitable
HMS Indomitable was an Invincible-class battlecruiser of the Royal Navy.Her builders were Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd, at Govan, and she was laid down in 1906, being launched relatively quickly the following year. She was commissioned in 1908 along with , though the nameship, was...
had been built. On the construction of Valiant by
AdmiraltyThe Admiralty was formerly the authority in the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy. Originally exercised by a single person, the office of Lord High Admiral was from the 18th century onward almost invariably put "in commission", and was exercised by a Board of Admiralty.In...
contract, Fairfields lost £78,836. Her turbines were manufactured by Fairfields, and her armour plate was provided by
William Beardmore and CompanyWilliam Beardmore and Company was a Scottish engineering and shipbuilding conglomerate based in Glasgow and the surrounding Clydeside area. It was active between about 1890 and 1930 and at its peak employed about 40,000 people...
. Upon completion on 19 February 1916 under Captain Maurice Woollcombe she joined the recently formed Fifth Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. At the
Battle of JutlandThe Battle of Jutland ; informally known by participants as Der Tag , was the largest naval battle of World War I, and the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war...
she fired 288 15-inch shells at the German High Sea Fleet. Despite the severity of damage suffered by her sister ships (bar
HMS Queen ElizabethHMS Queen Elizabeth was the lead ship of the Queen Elizabeth-class of Dreadnought battleships, named in honour of Elizabeth I of England...
which did not take part in the battle) she suffered no damage. One of her 15-inch guns which had been in Valiant
at Jutland was later removed and became one of the three guns of the Johore Battery at SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands. At , Singapore is a microstate and the smallest nation in Southeast...
. However, on 24 August that same year she collided with HMS Warspite
HMS Warspite was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the British Royal Navy. She was launched on 26 November 1913 at Devonport Royal Dockyard. She was, and is, one of the most famous and glamorous of names in the Royal Navy...
and was in repairs until 18 September.
Inter War Period
Between 1929 and 1930 she underwent a major refit. Anti-torpedo bulges were added, increasing beam to 31.70 m. The two funnels were trunked into one and a single octuple 2 pdr mountings were added. Two of the torpedo tubes removed, and the aircraft platforms were replaced by a single catapult. These modifications brought the maximum displacement up to 35,970 tons.
In 1931 her crew participated in the
Invergordon MutinyThe Invergordon Mutiny was an industrial action by around a thousand sailors in the British Atlantic Fleet, that took place on 15 September-16 September 1931...
.
In 1936 a second octuple 2 pdr mounting was added. Between March 1937 and November 1939 she underwent a second major refit at Devonport. The machinery was changed to eight Admiralty 3 drum boilers with four Parsons steam turbines producing a total of 80,000 shp. Fuel load was 3,393 tons oil, and maximum speed was reduced to 23.5 knots despite the increase in power, due to the increase in displacement and draught. The secondary armament was changed to 20 × 4.5 inch Mk I dual purpose guns in 10 twin mountings and four octuple 2 pdr "pom pom" mountings. The ship's fire control was modernized to include the
HACSHACS, an acronym of High Angle Control System, was a British anti-aircraft fire-control system employed by the Royal Navy from 1931 onwards and used widely during World War II...
MkIV AA fire control system and the
Admiralty Fire Control TableThe Admiralty Fire Control Table was an electromechanical, analogue computer Fire-control system that calculated the correct elevation and deflection of a Royal Navy cruiser or battleships' main armament, so that the shells fired would strike a surface target...
Mk VII for surface fire control of the main armament. These modifications increased draught to 10 m and maximum displacement to 36,513 tons.
World War II
On 21 April, 1941, under the command of Admiral
CunninghamAdmiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, KT, GCB, OM, DSO , older brother of General Sir Alan Cunningham, was a British admiral of the Second World War....
, Valiant
along with battleships Barham
and Warspite
, as well as the cruiser Gloucester
and various destroyers, attacked TripoliTripoli is the largest and capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million...
harbour.
She was one of three capital ships to take part in the Destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-KebirThe Attack on Mers-el-Kébir, part of Operation Catapult and also known as the Battle of Mers-el-Kébir, was an engagement off the coast of French Algeria on 3 July 1940. A British Royal Navy task force attacked and destroyed much of the French fleet, killing 1,297...
, and saw action at the Battle of Cape MatapanThe Battle of Cape Matapan was a World War II naval battle fought from March 27 to March 29, 1941. The cape is on the southwest coast of Greece's Peloponnesian peninsula...
; she participated in actions during the battle of CreteThe Battle of Crete was a battle during World War II on the Greek island of Crete. The battle began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Unternehmen Merkur Greek and Allied forces along with Cretan civilians defended the...
, and was struck by two bombs. Along with her sister ship Queen Elizabeth
HMS Queen Elizabeth was the lead ship of the Queen Elizabeth-class of Dreadnought battleships, named in honour of Elizabeth I of England...
, Valiant was
mined and seriously damagedThe Raid on Alexandria took place on 19 December 1941, in the Alexandria harbour.-The raid:On 3 December, the submarine of the Italian Royal Navy left the naval base of La Spezia carrying three manned torpedoes...
by Italian
human torpedoHuman torpedoes or manned torpedoes are a type of rideable submarines that were used as secret naval weapons in World War II. The basic design is still in use today. The name is most commonly used to refer to the weapons that Italy, and later Britain, deployed in the Mediterranean and used to...
s in
AlexandriaAlexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports...
harbour in December 1941.
Durand de la PenneLuigi Durand de la Penne was an Italian naval diver in Decima MAS during World War II. de la Penne was born in Genoa, where he also died.- "Iride" submarine crew rescue action :...
was the frogman who placed the
limpet mineA limpet mine is a type of naval mine attached to a target by magnets; they are so named because of their superficial similarity to the limpet, a type of mollusk....
on the Valiant. Being captured along with all other frogmen, he refused to inform the ship's captain of the mines until a few minutes of their detonation, to allow the British to evacuate. As one of the magnetic
minesA naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of or contact with an enemy ship...
had detached prior to exploding, her condition was far less critical than Queen Elizabeth: despite having a heavy trim forward the decks were above water, and she remained clear of the harbour bottom. Although nearly immobilised she was able to give the impression of full battlereadiness, a subterfuge exploited by the Royal Navy who allowed photographs of the seemingly undamaged ship to appear in the British press. She was repaired in
DurbanDurban is the third most populous city in South Africa, forming part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. It is the largest city in KwaZulu-Natal and is famous as the busiest port in Africa. It is also a major centre of tourism due to the city's warm subtropical climate and...
,
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
, and then returned to the Mediterranean to support the landings in Sicily (Operation Husky) and at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) in 1943.
She was sent to the Far East in 1944 as part of the Eastern Fleet, taking part in raids against
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese bases in
IndonesiaThe Republic of Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia comprises 17,508 islands. With an estimated population of around 237 million people, it is the world's fourth most populous country, with the world's largest population of Muslims.Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. On 8 August 1944 whilst in the floating dock at
TrincomaleeTrincomalee is a port city on the east coast of Sri Lanka, about 110 miles northeast of Kandy. The city is built on a peninsula, which divides the inner and outer harbours. It is one of the main centers of Tamil speaking culture on the island...
, Ceylon, she was severely damaged when the dock collapsed with the result that repairs were stopped. The two inner screws were jammed as well as one of her rudders. It was decided to sail her to Alexandria where there were suitable docking facilities, however she could not steer a straight course, and could not make more than 8 knots. She got as far as Suez Bay, but could not attempt the canal in that condition. Lt Cmdr Peter Keeble, the experienced diver and salvage expert personally supervised the removal of her two inner screw shafts near the gland. The A-brackets holding the shafts and screws were also cut, dropping both screws and shafts to the bottom. Keeble had perfected available underwater cutting torches by combining British and Italian technology to enable the thick propellor shafts to be cut away thereby allowing "Valiant" to proceed through the Suez Canal. She returned to the UK and was decommissioned in July 1945.
Post war
Valiant
formed part of the Imperieuse stoker mechanics' training establishment
HMS Imperieuse was the name given to a floating Training establishment of the Royal Navy during the Second World War.-History:There had been a previous floating establishment known as HMS Imperieuse. This was the old ironclad HMS Audacious which had borne the name whilst serving as a repair and...
at
DevonportHer Majesty's Naval Base Devonport , is one of three UK operating bases for the Royal Navy . HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth in Devon, England. It is the largest naval base in Western Europe and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the...
for the rest of her career. She was sold for scrapping on 19 March 1948. She left Devonport for the breakers of Arnott Young at
CairnryanCairnryan is a small Scottish village overlooking Loch Ryan and is notable today for its large modern ferry port which opened in 1973, originally operated by Townsend Thoresen and now by P&O Ferries, which links Scotland with Larne in Northern Ireland...
on 11 August of that year.
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