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HMS ''Iron Duke'' was a dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class, named in honour of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. She was built by Portsmouth Dockyard, and her keel laid in January 1912. Launched ten months later, she was commissioned into the Home Fleet in March 1914 as the fleet flagship. She was armed with a main battery of ten guns and was capable of a top speed of . ''Iron Duke'' served as the flagship of the Grand Fleet during the First World War, including at the Battle of Jutland. There, she inflicted significant damage on the German battleship early in the main fleet action. In January 1917, she was relieved as fleet flagship. After the war, ''Iron Duke'' operated in the Mediterranean as the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. She participated in both the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in the Black Sea and the Greco-Turkish War. She also assisted in the evacuation of refugees from Smyrna. In 1926, she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, where she served as a training ship. ''Iron Duke'' only remained on active duty for a few more years; in 1930, the London Naval Treaty specified that the four ''Iron Duke''-class battleships be scrapped or otherwise demilitarised. ''Iron Duke'' was therefore converted into a gunnery training ship; her armour and much of her armament was removed to render her unfit for combat. She served in this capacity until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, when she was moored in Scapa Flow as a harbour defence ship. In October, she was badly damaged by German bombers and was run aground to avoid sinking. She continued to serve as an anti-aircraft platform for the duration of the war, and was eventually refloated and broken up for scrap in the late 1940s. ==Design== (詳細はlong overall and had a beam of and an average draught of . She displaced as designed and up to at combat loading. Her propulsion system consisted of four Parsons steam turbines, with steam provided by eighteen Babcock & Wilcox boilers. The engines were rated at and produced a top speed of . Her cruising radius was at a more economical . ''Iron Duke'' had a crew of 995 officers and enlisted men, though during wartime this grew to up to 1,022.〔Gardiner & Gray, p. 31〕 ''Iron Duke'' was armed with a main battery of ten BL 13.5-inch Mk V naval guns mounted in five twin gun turrets. They were arranged in two superfiring pairs, one forward and one aft; the fifth turret was located amidships, between the funnels and the rear superstructure. Close-range defence against torpedo boats was provided by a secondary battery of twelve BL 6-inch Mk VII guns. The ship was also fitted with a pair of QF 3-inch 20 cwt anti-aircraft guns and four 3-pounder guns.〔"Cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 20 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.〕 As was typical for capital ships of the period, she was equipped with four torpedo tubes submerged on the broadside. ''Iron Duke'' was protected by a main armoured belt that was thick over the ship's vitals. Her deck was thick. The main battery turret faces were thick, and the turrets were supported by thick barbettes.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS Iron Duke (1912)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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