McCart N. Anatomy of the Ship. HMS 'Vanguard', 1944-1960. Britain's last Battleship

Maritime Books, 2001. - 113 p.
This book is dedicated to one of the most famous ships in the naval history. Without any doubt HMS Vanguard was the most handsome battleship ever built for the Royal Navy. When, in 1946, Vanguard was eventually commissioned she was given a prestige role - that of a "Royal Yacht". It was the illness and subsequent death of King George VI which prevented her from keeping the role in the years that followed. There were even plans that she should carry Sir Winston Churchill across the Atlantic Ocean for a summit meeting with the President of the United States. There is something rather sad in seeing this leviathan of the sea, the last of the Royal Navy's magnificent battleships, being reduced to carrying VIPs round the world, or acting as a floating saluting platform for state visits to this country of foreign heads of state. The reality of the situation was, however, that the day of the battleship was over and, in the words of a distinguished US Navy Admiral, it was as "dead as the dodo". Over the years countless numbers of books have traced the careers of the earlier battleships of the Royal Navy, through both the First and Second World Wars, but little has been written about Vanguard. Perhaps this is because, during her short career, she never had occasion to fire her guns in anger. I hope this book helps to set the record straight as for the first time Vanguard's story is told. On Thursday 2 October 1941, at the shipyard of John Brown & Company on the River Clyde, the keel was laid for what was to be the Royal Navy's last battleship. This Clydebank yard had seen many such leviathans take to the water, including the illustrious names Hindustan, Inflexible, Tiger, Repulse, the mighty Hood and, in February 1940, the great battleship Duke of York which was launched from the company's East Yard. In October 1941, so strong was the image of the battleship as the Royal Navy's ultimate weapon, that few people could have predicted that this vessel, with her massive 15-inch guns, would be the last capital ship of her type.