HMS Centurion (1911)

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Career	Image:RN-White-Ensign.svg
Image:HMS Centurion.jpg
Ordered:	1910
Laid down:	January 1911
Launched:	November 18, 1911
Commissioned:	May 1913
Decommissioned:	1924
Fate:	Sunk in June 1944
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	23,400 tons
Length:	597 ft 6 in
Beam:	89 ft
Draught:	28 feet 8 in
Propulsion:	18 Babcock & Wilcox Boilers, 4 Parsons turbines producing 31,000 shp, driving 4 screws
Speed:	21 knots
Range:	6730 nautical miles at 10 kts
Complement:	782 men
Armament:	10 x 13.5 inch guns 12 x 4 inch guns 4 x 47 mm 3 x 21 inch torpedo tubes (submerged)

HMS Centurion was the second battleship of the King George V class, built at HM Dockyard, Devonport.

1 The Great War
2 Interwar, World War II
3 See also
4 External link

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The Great War

Centurion was attached upon completion to the Second Battle Squadron, led by sister-ship King George V class. She was present at Jutland as part of the main body of The Grand Fleet under the command of Captain Culme-Seymour. She was third in line in the first division of the squadron which led the fleet into battle. After duty in the North Sea she was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean in 1918 with HMS Superb to oversee the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire. In 1919 Centurion was dispatched to the Black Sea in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

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Interwar, World War II

With the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty Centurion was decommissioned and made a target ship to replace HMS Agamemnon in 1924. She remained in this role at Portsmouth Harbour until April 1941, where she was fitted with a false superstructure so as to resemble the battleship HMS Anson then building at HM Dockyard, Portsmouth. Between 1942 and 1944 Centurion was stationed off Suez as an anti-aircraft ship. Her final act after a long and somewhat understated career was to be sunk as a blockship off the Normandy beaches after D-Day.

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