HMS Anson - A Battleship That Never Fought in Anger

Some battleships were destined to live a quiet life, even at war. HMS Anson is a classic example. In spite of the life or death struggle Britain was involved in, this ship never once fired her guns in anger. She spent her entire career on distant cover, be it aircraft carriers or convoys.
Does this mean she isn't worth looking at? No. Anson gave valuable service, even if it was quiet. That's worth remembering.
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[@colinmartin2921]

It is a pity that none of the KGV Class were preserved, what a wonderful museum they would have provided.

[@sls12III]

Warspite: First time?

[@fembotheather3785]

My dad, a dive bomber pilot in the US Navy in the Pacific spent time on her after being fished out of the water. For this, I salute her. I guess I would not have been born without her.

[@DragonShadowfire1]

I've always thought the King George V class battleships were very interesting looking battleships. I never knew there were five of them built, as like you stated, Howe and Anson are not known for their exciting careers. The thought of Anson squaring off against the Queen of the Fjords is something worth considering, because it could have every well happened, and the outcome of that duel could fall to either party. It's always a shame to hear about ships getting sent to the breakers, but it's also quite normal in the course of the life of a ship, especially a warship. I never realized this class of battleship was known for its armor. I had always thought it carried an average armor belt, but now I know better. Thanks again for another awesome vid! Keep it coming!

[@englishpassport6590]

Check out the Ansons extremely advanced 14 inch battery reload system. The Tirpitz and the Yamato were slow firing muzzle loaders by comparison

[@king_br0k]

The fact that the British had Battleships most notable for "doing nothing" shows their naval supremacy at that point of the war

[@bkjeong4302]

Given how little most WWII-gen battleships achieved, especially compared to what other warships might have accomplished in their place (with two notable exceptions), it says more about how strategically obsolete the battleship concept had become by then.

[@king_br0k]

@@bkjeong4302 I am curious about which 2 you think are the exceptions

[@VirgoShelter]

Carriers is were it at baby

[@king_br0k]

Duke of York, Bismarck, Washington, Prince of Wales, and Soulth Dakota all did battleship ship things

[@dovetonsturdee7033]

@@king_br0k How about Rodney, or the 'Old Lady?'

[@hauk65000]

The most incredible thing is that despite England's impressive former battleship fleet, they kept none of the .. Not a single one. It is, in short, a sad shame. They had so many modern ships that survived the war - it is inconceivable that one or two of them could not be preserved as a valuable naval history museum.

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

Sentimental value. Doesn't outweigh their cost in upkeep.

[@hauk65000]

@@WALTERBROADDUS And that includes HMS Victory too… (£40 - £45 million, and that only in recent years for new restoration. Only "sentimental value" costs there too ..?)

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

@@hauk65000 some of this is understandable. The United Kingdom had a Empire that was falling and had to spend 30 years rebuilding from war. Preservation of those memories was costly and not fondly ones for all. Nor are ship museums exactly Disney World. They don't draw a huge numbers of visitors who are going to come and make them self-sustaining. And as we stand on the 80th anniversary of D-Day; that entire generation is now nearly in past tense. Even now the Falklands War is 40 years in the past. Where are the great memorials to them? Let alone the other conflicts? Sadly, it's just for the amateur historians, Naval nerds and The Gamers who care anymore.🙇🏽‍♂️

[@hauk65000]

@@WALTERBROADDUS Spray and nonsense. Find another hobby, you understand nothing about history.

[@hauk65000]

@@WALTERBROADDUS Completely wrong.

[@skyneahistory2306]

Since I'm evidently going to need to acknowledge it: No, this has very little to do with AL. Believe it or not, I *do* have a list of ships to cover. Anson has been set for 'around now' for quite some time. I was actually going to do her sooner, but I decided to do the Enterprise Scrapping and Soviet Axis Ships videos instead. That doesn't mean I'm not *aware* of that entire mess, insofar as I know people who play the game. I, however, do not. Don't play any of them, actually, but if you pinned me down I prefer KC's design language. Sometimes, something actually is a coincidence. (Although, being honest, not fond of that choice for several reasons. That *did* push this up to today, instead of Thursday)

[@sls12III]

What a nice timing. I'm sure nothing that's related to her happened in the past few days....

[@Iron_Blood_Enjoyer1933]

*Cough* Azur Lane *Cough* .

[@delfieropasha]

Heh... 😅

[@vespelian]

Thanks for that. I've always been curious about Anson and Howe.

[@VirgoShelter]

Intriguing you released this days after that incident

[@TrickiVicBB71]

I commented to someone on Reddit on what happened if HMS Anson, Howe, Duke of York were not delayed. If things progressed normally or sped up. They would all have finished by end if 1941. So HMS Anson may have taken part in PQ17, Operational Pedestal and had things gone different in Battle of Barnets Sea. She would have sunk Lutzow & Admiral Hipper

[@anselmdanker9519]

Thank you for covering Anson

[@tomlindsay4629]

One of my favorite classes of British battleships.

[@karthus006]

Is the uploading of this video timed with the "current issues" the ship is facing?

[@RayyMusik]

What do you mean?

[@KosaiAvonej]

@@RayyMusikAzur Lane added her, fans hates her design and she got removed from the upcoming event.

[@lsp6032]

the design of "Anson" was more inline with a lower class submarine, not a high class KGV girl, unlike maya

[@sls12III]

I think the artist was told that they were gonna add HMS Sunfish but quickly changed their minds after she was drawn. The emblems clearly show a sunfish.@@lsp6032

[@englishpassport6590]

The Anson class had a very advanced vertically rotating drum 14 inch ammo delivery system which made it an extremely quick firing gun. The Royal Navy did have some problems with it to start with due to flexing of the hull.

[@tonystevens9278]

A good video thank you. I am sure that the HMS "Anson" would have performed well if she had been called upon to fight a surface action. There is an argument that the much maligned British' 14 inch gun was the most successful battleship rifle of WW2 given that it was the only weapon that "misiion killed" two contemporary dreadnoughts. The ship's bell is on display at the historic dockyard in Chatham. Although too large to enter the dockyard there she was I understand a Chatham' manned ship.

[@bkjeong4302]

The issue was that being called into a surface action was unlikely to happen in the first place.

[@mikebrase5161]

So.... You just completely ignore the Surigao straight? Or the the Big Mamie at Mers-El-Kebir?

[@tonystevens9278]

@@mikebrase5161- I am not sure whether your comment is a response to my post or not? The battleships involved in the Surigao Strait were of an older vintage than the KGVs and they were fighting ships of a similar age. That is, they were fighting contemporaries as opposed to more modern late generation battleships. The "Jean Bart" was engaged at Casablanca. Although a modern unit she was of course incomplete, stationary, and not a fully worked up vessel in open water. BB59 had a later model of sixteen inch gun. Yes, USS "Washington" used the same weapon to destroy a Japanese' battleship albeit it was a modernised older vessel and not a post Washington Treaty ship.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@mikebrase5161 Surigao involved old battleships, and Massachusetts needed Ranger to finish the job.

[@mikebrase5161]

@@bkjeong4302 how can the British 14 inch be the most successful BB Gun when it didn't kill any BB's, because unless I'm wrong the only time they had a chance they had to turn tail. The Bismarck was finally finished off by the Rodney. Furthermore the 14inch guns on the old Texas had to be relined they sent so many rounds down range in fire support. The idea the British 14 inch wasn't anything more than mediocre is hilarious. The 15's on the Warspite got more ass than any of the 14's KGV's

[@davidmcintyre8145]

The names Jellicoe and Beatty were in fact changed not because they were too recent but because of the acrimony over the Battle of Jutland

[@panic_2001]

I think a King George V battleship as an escort for Ranger or Furious is total overkill.

[@ScienceChap]

Love the KGVs. A successful, close range brawler of a design with guns designed to overwhelm an enemy with sheer volume of fire. Bismarck struggled to deal with KGV and PoW. Good fire control and solid protection rounded out good overall ships. Their successor design, the Lions, would have been largely identical in general appearance but armed with 9 x 16 inch guns. These would probably have been a direct correlation and contemporary of the Iowas. I love what ifs...

[@Datpanzerman45]

Just wishing everyone a wonderful day! 😁

[@PurpleRhymesWithOrange]

Does make for an interesting historical what if story. The Tirpitz attempts to break out. A British spotter plane sees it heading in the direction of the convoy. Anson steams at full speed to intercept, but can they get to Tirpitz before she is in range to start decimating the transports of the convoy ...

[@timandellenmoran1213]

Unfortunately, Britain did not keep any of her battleships as museums.

[@sls12III]

Warspite should've

[@ralfhtg1056]

What a disgrace to not preserve at least ONE of these ships! It would have made up for a great memorial/ museum.

[@hmskinggeorgev7089]

Great work lad keep it up!

[@alanh1406]

Better overlooked and alive then famous and dead.

[@RayyMusik]

13:04 Such pictures make me feel sad. 😞

[@1982nsu]

I agree.

[@nathanshoaf5452]

Would you be willing to do a video on the USS.Stewart a Clemson class destroyer that was captured by the Japanese and the recaptured by the Americans

[@dougerrohmer]

Ha! You won! He's just released a video on USS Stewart!

[@Iron_Blood_Enjoyer1933]

Ironic that you made this video after the Azur Lane Anson controversy broke over the last few days.

[@ironkeko4423]

Tbh I liked the design

[@Iron_Blood_Enjoyer1933]

@@ironkeko4423 I did too, but it was more fitting of a submarine than a battleship.

[@ironkeko4423]

@@Iron_Blood_Enjoyer1933 HMS Barham? Hahahahahahha

[@Derek-je6vg]

@@ironkeko4423USS Arizona? Hahahahaha

[@venn2001ad]

I'm gonna miss the smug sukumizu loli. 😢

[@bkjeong4302]

The entire WWII generation of battleships was cursed to enter service into a war that didn’t need them for the most part: the same can be said about the last generation of predreadnoughts or the last generation of first-rates.

[@lukedogwalker]

Have to disagree. At the start of the war most carriers and airforces were still largely limited to day flying in good weather, with only a few specialist night bombers. Battleships could and did fight in all conditions (e.g. Duke of York vs Scharnhorst). Bombing ships was absolutely not a tried and tested tactic prewar, so who on their right mind would bet the farm on it without the data that only five years of fighting could provide? Battleships escorted carriers because carriers were still considered vulnerable to surface attack. I'll stop here but consider that everyone thinks about carrier and aircraft tech from 1945, not 1939, which is 20:20 hindsight and skews points of view. But more importantly, consider that the people of the time making these decisions on what to build and when were not idiots and understood the limitations of these systems... and at the start of the war right through until about 1943, the battleship was undisputed king if it caught up to you, day or night, sun or rain.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@lukedogwalker IF it caught up….which is unlikely if you’re a fleet carrier and aren’t commanded by D’Oyles-Hughes.

[@simonwood1402]

Better to have too many ships than too few 😊...... as we do today!

[@Lord.Kiltridge]

I don't have a lot of nice things to say about the KGV class. The Brits _should_ have thrown out the treaty limitations, (like everyone else) and gone right to what would become the Lion class. If they had, the KGV's _could_ have been what they _should_ have been when they needed it. 9x15" (or 16") in 3 triples, 28-30 knots, and enough armour, electronics and AA to make them comparable with the Iowa class.

[@Ah01]

Escorting arctic convoys and fighting the airplanes etc does not count for "anger"? More accurate would have been "a battleship that never fired it's main guns against a naval target in anger"? (That same counts for Tirpitz too. All she ever did with her 381mm battery was to shred a Svalbard weather station to pieces and of course the useless AA - beehive shells against brits at 44, which RN pilots rightfully described as a mere firework. )

[@NAIAD49]

Like TIRPITZ except it was used and went to sea to fight.......ROYAL NAVY...THE BEST.

[@fredericksaxton3991]

At 7:56, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst bombarded Spitzbergen? What...?

[@dovetonsturdee7033]

Yes, the did. It was the only time Tirpitz fired her main armament in anger. If shelling a large shed can be called 'Anger.' Large numbers of medals were distributed among her crew. The whole operation seems to have been an attempt to raise the morale of her crew slightly above the floor level to which it had degenerated.

[@fredericksaxton3991]

@@dovetonsturdee7033 Thank you.

[@ironkeko4423]

I think He plays AL cuz yeah

[@venn2001ad]

Yeah, he probably does. It's too good to be true as a mere coincidence, lol.

[@dovetonsturdee7033]

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2 :- 'For he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally.' I submit that much the same would have applied to HMS Anson or HMS Howe.

[@Knight6831]

1:13--1:25 Sorry Skynea but i have to say that is total BS, you are pushing a myth the last 2 1939 KG5, the 4th ship HMS Jellicoe and 5th ship HMS Beatty were never going to be used on the 1939 KG5s as the Royal Navy was not going to favor one or the other and the Royal Navy ship naming committee is the most conservative organization known to mankind who would not skip precedent in Admirals, so the final 2 were always going to be HMS Howe and HMS Anson. The HMS Jellicoe and HMS Beatty would likely have been ships on the successor to the Lion Class Battleships in an Admiral naming scheme or maybe a pair of Vanguard Class Battleships would carry their names

[@Iron_Blood_Enjoyer1933]

Or if a new BC design was made after Hood was built. Basically a Queen Elizabeth in looks, but with the 16 inch guns and triple turrets of the Nelson's, the same turret layout of the Queen Elizabeth's and Revenge's, the same 32 knots as the Renown's and the Courageous' & Hood, and the mixed armor scheme of the Hood & the Queen Elizabeth's.

[@coolconfuzer]

A nice boring boat...well done sir.

[@McBruch]

I feel like someone has followed reddits feedback on a certain game to a certain character recently? Or is it just my imagination?😂👌

[@venn2001ad]

So Skynea plays Azur Lane too, eh? LOL. 🤣

[@Backwardlooking]

The equivalent of today’s deterrent. More fortunate than other British capital ships and the unfortunate crews who died on those sunk.