HMS Prince Of Wales

HMS Prince Of Wales

HMS Prince of Wales (pennant number 53) was a King George V class battleship of the Royal Navy, built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, England. She was involved in various key actions of the Second World War, including the fight against the Denmark Strait, Bismarck, supervise activities convoys in the Mediterranean, and its last action, and sink into the Pacific Ocean in 1941.

HMS Prince Of Wales

Prince of Wales first encountered the Germans while she fitted her in dry dock, attacked and damaged by German aircraft. She was heavily involved in the initial contact with the German battleship Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen, and landed a critical hit on Bismarck, making them the ill fated decision to return to the harbor. Prince of Wales suffered heavy damage during the mission and had to return to Rosyth to be repaired. Prince of Wales carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Newfoundland conference with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

HMS Prince Of Wales

Prince of Wales and Repulse, the first capital ships to be sunk exclusively by air power on the open seas (albeit with land-based rather than based on carrier aircraft), a harbinger of the diminishing role of this class of ship was then to play in naval warfare. The wreck lies upside down in 223 feet (68 meters) of water, near Kuantan, the South China Sea.

HMS Prince Of Wales

The fourth ship was named was built at Portsmouth in June 1794. She was a three-class Boyne deck 98-gun Second Rate. Designed as a budget first class, the ship is treated badly, but served the Navy well, seeing a lot of action during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. She was present at the battle of the Ile de Groix in June 1795, the flagship at the capture of Trinidad in February 1797 and the flagship of force the surrender of the Dutch colony of Suriname delivered in 1799. The ship was Sir Robert Calder's flagship in July 1805, when his squadron intercepted Admiral Villeneuve's combined fleet from Ferrol, a few months before the great battle of Trafalgar.

HMS Prince Of Wales