HMS Centurion was attached upon completion to the 2nd Battle Squadron, led by sister-ship HMS King George V. She was present at the Battle of Jutland as part of the main body of Grand Fleet under the command of Captain Michael Culme-Seymour. She was third in line in the First Division of the Fleet behind HMS King George V and HMS Ajax.
After duty in the North Sea (where she was commanded for a time by Roger Keyes) she was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean in 1918 with HMS Superb to oversee the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire. In 1919 HMS Centurion was dispatched to the Black Sea in the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War.
With the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty HMS Centurion was decommissioned and made a target ship to replace HMS Agamemnon in 1924. She remained in this role at Portsmouth Harbour until April 1941, where she was fitted with a false superstructure so as to resemble the battleship HMS Anson then building at HM Dockyard, Portsmouth.
She began her new career as a false battleship in Apr 1941 based out of Gibraltar. She made a troublesome voyage from Gibraltar to Port Said around the southern tip of Africa, then participated in Operation Vigorous, one of the Malta-bound convoys, in Jun 1942. She also spent time off Suez to provide additional anti-aircraft weaponry to British task forces. She left the Mediterranean Sea in Jan 1944 for a return trip to Britain, where she ran aground and required repairs.
On 4 April 1941, the Admiralty suggested that a heavy naval bombardment of the Libyan city of Tripoli should be made by the Mediterranean Fleet and followed up by blocking the port with a block ship, HMS Centurion. Admiral Andrew Cunningham declined the offer due to her slow speeds and heavy enemy air cover, so this idea was shelved.
In June 1942, she sailed with Operation Vigorous in the eastern Mediterranean to simulate an operational battleship. Between 1942 and 1944 HMS Centurion was stationed off Suez as an anti-aircraft ship and to give pause to Regia Marina action in the area—the Italians thought that her false wooden 13.5-inch guns were real and kept their super-dreadnoughts away. Her final act after a long and somewhat understated career was to be sunk as a breakwater off the Normandy beaches after D-Day. Reportedly the Germans thought that the old vessel had been sunk by shore batteries of the German 352nd Division with great loss of life when only 70 crewmen were observed leaving the sinking vessel; in fact the 70 men were the entire crew.
HMS CENTURION
Builder: HM Dockyard, Devonport
Laid down: 16 January 1911
Launched: 18 November 1911
Commissioned: May 1913
Decommissioned: 1924
Fate: 7 June 1944 Sunk as a Mulberry harbour blockship off Arromanches,
General characteristics
Displacement: 25,500 tons (25,900 tonnes)
Length: 597 ft 6 in (182.12 m)
Beam: 89 ft (27 m)
Draft: 28 ft 8 in (8.74 m)
Speed: 21 knots (38.9 km/h)
Complement: 782 officers and men
Armament: 10 × BL 13.5-inch (342.9 mm) Mk V guns
16 × BL 4-inch (101.6 mm) Mk VII guns
4 × 47 mm
3 × 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (submerged)
Delandre label
Sources and links: Wikipedia.
http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_di ... turion.htm
http://ww2db.com/ship_spec.php?ship_id=325
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stor ... 4821.shtml
Peter Crichton