Queen Mary Class Battlecruiser

Queen Mary. Visually she was hard to distinguish from the Lion class but with the secondary armament on a single deck, the centre funnel was rounder than in the Lion class and she had a stern walkway that was lacking in her near sisters. Originally fitted with a pole mast this was later altered to a tripod mast.

HMS Queen Mary
Built Palmers, laid down March 1911, completed March 1912, cost £2,078,491

Size:
Length 698 feet waterline 703 feet 6 inches overall, beam 89 feet, draught 28 feet, displacement 26,780 normal 31,486 tons deep.

Propulsion:
4 shaft Parsons turbines, 75,000 shp, 27.5 knots.

Trials: 83,350 shp = 28.348 knots.

Armour:
9-4in belt, 9in barbettes, 9in turret faces, 2.5-1in decks

Armament:
8 x 13.5in 45cal MK V (4 x 2), 16 x 4in (16 x 1), 4 x 3 pounder, 2 x 21in TT

Comments:
Virtual copy of the Lion class for the following years construction programme. Slightly larger, slightly faster and with minor improvements in armour. Crew 999.

World War 1 Service:
1st Battlecruiser Squadron Grand Fleet.
28 August 1914 Battle of Heligoland Bight.
January-February 1915 refit at Portsmouth.
31 May 1916 sunk at the Battle of Jutland.

Queen Mary was sunk at the Battle of Jutland. Up until that point she had been firing more accurately than any of the other British battlecruisers (damned with faint praise) maintaining her reputation as the best gunnery ship of the force, mainly owing to being fitted with the most advanced fire control equipment of the force.

HMS Queen Mary