They were developments of the Queen Elizabeth -class battleships , with reductions in size and speed to offset increases in the armour protection whilst retaining the same main battery of eight inch mm guns. Completed in late , Ramillies saw no combat during the war as both the British and the German fleets had adopted a more cautious strategy by this time owing to the increasing threat of naval mines and submarines.
Ramillies spent the s and s alternating between the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet. Whilst serving in the Mediterranean and Black Seas in the early s, the ship went to Turkey twice in response to crises arising from the Greco-Turkish War , including the Great Fire of Smyrna in She also saw limited involvement during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.
The ship's interwar career was otherwise uneventful. In May , she was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet as war with Italy loomed. The ship returned to Atlantic escort duties in , during which time she prevented the two Scharnhorst -class battleships from attacking a convoy; she also joined the search for the battleship Bismarck. In late , Ramillies was transferred to the Eastern Fleet as tensions with Japan rose; the following year, she was the flagship for the invasion of Madagascar.
While moored there, she was torpedoed and badly damaged by Japanese midget submarines. The ship was updated for coastal bombardment duties in , which she performed later that year during the Normandy landings in June and the invasion of southern France in August. In January , the worn-out battleship was withdrawn from service and used as a barracks ship attached to the training establishment HMS Vernon.
She was ultimately broken up in The Revenge -class super-dreadnought battleships were designed as slightly smaller, slower, and more heavily protected versions of the preceding Queen Elizabeth -class battleships. As an economy measure they were intended to revert to the previous practice of using both fuel oil and coal, but First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher rescinded the decision to use coal in October Still under construction, the ships were redesigned to employ oil-fired boilers that increased the power of the engines by 9, shaft horsepower 6, kW over the original specification.
