The 'Veteran' British Battleship That Shelled Japan Out Of The Andaman Islands

The Italian frogmen sank HMS Queen Elizabeth at Alexandria on 19 December 1941. Or so Rome believed. Three and a half years later the same battleship was firing 15-inch shells at the Imperial Japanese naval base at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, in company with the Free French battleship Richelieu, during Operation Bishop in May 1945. This is the longevity story of the longest-serving 15-inch gunned dreadnought in Royal Navy history. Launched at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1913, settled on the harbour bottom by Decima Flottiglia MAS human torpedoes in 1941, refloated and refitted at Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia from 1942 to 1943, transferred to the Eastern Fleet at Trincomalee in January 1944, and firing on the Empire of Japan in 1945 — the arc of HMS Queen Elizabeth covers thirty-two years of British naval power and four enemies who at one point each counted her dead. In this deep-dive we trace her original 1913 specifications as the first oil-fired British capital ship and the first to mount 15-inch guns, the 1937 to 1941 Portsmouth reconstruction that made her a near-new ship, the Italian maiale attack at Alexandria with operators Antonio Marceglia and Spartaco Schergat, Admiral Andrew Cunningham's audacious deception that kept the ship's loss secret for months, the ten-month American refit, the Eastern Fleet operations of 1944 including Cockpit, Transom and Crimson, and finally Operation Bishop alongside the resurrected Free French battleship Richelieu — herself once attacked by the Royal Navy at Dakar in 1940. ›› TOPICS COVERED — HMS Queen Elizabeth full technical specifications as built in 1915 and after the 1941 reconstruction — The Raid on Alexandria, 19 December 1941, and the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS — The SLC maiale human torpedo and the submarine Scirè under Junio Valerio Borghese — Antonio Marceglia and Spartaco Schergat, the two-man team that crippled Queen Elizabeth — Admiral Andrew Cunningham's deception of the Axis after the attack — The refit at Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth Virginia, September 1942 to June 1943 — Eastern Fleet operations 1944, including Operation Cockpit, Transom and Crimson — Operation Bishop, 27 April to 9 May 1945, the bombardment of Port Blair and Car Nicobar — The Free French battleship Richelieu, from Dakar 1940 to the Andamans 1945 — Comparison with Queen Elizabeth's sister HMS Warspite and the wider Queen Elizabeth class — The scrapping of HMS Queen Elizabeth at Troon, 1948 ›› MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES — Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea 1939 to 1945, Volume III Part II (HMSO Official History) — Andrew Browne Cunningham, A Sailor's Odyssey, Hutchinson, 1951 — D K Brown, Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design and Development 1923 to 1945, Seaforth Publishing — R A Burt, British Battleships 1919 to 1945, second edition, Seaforth Publishing — Norman Friedman, The British Battleship 1906 to 1946, Seaforth Publishing — Director of Naval Construction, H M Ships Damaged or Sunk by Enemy Action 1939 to 1945, Admiralty, 1952 — East Indies Fleet War Diary, May 1945, The National Archives, Kew — Junio Valerio Borghese, Sea Devils, Italian commander's memoir of Decima MAS operations — John Jordan and Robert Dumas, French Battleships 1922 to 1956, Seaforth Publishing, 2009 — Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906 to 1921 and 1922 to 1946 ›› FURTHER READING — Mark Stille, British Battleships 1914 to 18 and British Battleships 1939 to 45, Osprey New Vanguard — Iain Ballantyne, Warspite: From Jutland Hero to Cold War Warrior, for the sister ship's parallel arc — H P Willmott, Grave of a Dozen Schemes: British Naval Planning and the War Against Japan, 1943 to 1945 — John Winton, The Forgotten Fleet, for the British Pacific and East Indies Fleet story — Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani, The Black Prince and the Sea Devils, on Borghese and Decima MAS — Naval History Net's East Indies Fleet War Diary section for the full operational record online If you enjoy rigorous, source-driven naval history from the Dreadnought to the Astute class, subscribe to British Naval History for weekly deep-dives into Royal Navy vessels, weapons and operations across the twentieth century and beyond. Like the video if the longevity arc surprised you, and tell us in the comments which Royal Navy veteran you would like to see covered next. #RoyalNavy #BritishNavalHistory #HMSQueenElizabeth