The 'Outdated' British Monitor That Fought Three Wars — And Was Still Shelling Germans In 1944

HMS Erebus: the "outdated" Royal Navy monitor that fought three wars and was still shelling German batteries on D-Day and at Walcheren in 1944. Launched in 1916, the year of Jutland, HMS Erebus was never built to be elegant. She was a monitor, a slow, shallow-draught gun platform carrying two 15-inch guns, the same calibre as a battleship, on a hull that cost a fraction of one. Critics dismissed the whole type as a slow, lightly armoured floating target. Across three decades, Erebus proved them wrong. In the First World War she shelled the German-held Belgian coast with the Dover Patrol, and in October 1917 she survived a direct hit from FL-12, the only successful attack by a German remote-controlled explosive motorboat in the entire war, her anti-torpedo bulge soaking up the blast. In 1919 she duelled Bolshevik shore forts in North Russia. And in 1944 she returned to the same coastline a generation later, bombarding the German batteries behind Utah Beach on D-Day and then cracking open the reinforced casemates of Walcheren to help open the vital port of Antwerp. This video tells her full story: the engineering logic behind the 15-inch monitor, her combat record across three wars, the failure of her turret under fire at Walcheren, and the fate of her sister ship HMS Terror, built to the same drawings and lost off Libya in 1941. The contrast between the two ships is the proof of what made Erebus a survivor. TOPICS COVERED → Why the Royal Navy built 15-inch monitors and how the Erebus class was designed → The 15-inch BL Mark I gun and its service from 1915 into the 1950s → HMS Erebus in the First World War and the Dover Patrol bombardments → The FL-12 attack of October 1917 and how her anti-torpedo bulge saved her → North Russia 1919 and the inter-war years → D-Day, 6 June 1944, and the bombardment behind Utah Beach → Operation Infatuate and the bombardment of Walcheren in November 1944 → HMS Terror and the contrast that proved the monitor doctrine → Monitors versus battleships in the shore-bombardment role MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES Ian Buxton, Big Gun Monitors: Design, Construction and Operations 1914-1945 Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 and 1922-1946 Norman Friedman, The British Battleship 1906-1946 NavWeaps, technical data on the 15-inch BL Mark I naval gun naval-history.net, Royal Navy ship histories of the Second World War Captain S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea 1939-1945, HMSO Official History Contemporary action reports from the Walcheren landings, including Commander Sellars' report on the Support Squadron Eastern Flank FURTHER READING Ian Buxton, Big Gun Monitors, the definitive study of the monitor type D. K. Brown, The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922 D. K. Brown, Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design and Development 1923-1945 Norman Friedman, Naval Weapons of World War One and Naval Weapons of World War Two Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 and 1922-1946 ABOUT THE CHANNEL British Naval History explores the ships, weapons, and battles of the Royal Navy from 1900 to the present day, the engineering, the tactics, and the combat record that built and defended Britain's power at sea. Subscribe for new naval history every week. #HMSErebus #RoyalNavy #NavalHistory #DDay #WW2