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HMS ''King Edward VII'', named after King Edward VII, was the lead ship of her class of Royal Navy pre-dreadnought battleships. She was commissioned in 1905, and entered service with the Atlantic Fleet as Flagship, Commander-in-chief (by request of the King, she was always to serve as a Flagship). Rendered obsolete in 1906 with the commissioning of the revolutionary , she underwent a refit in 1907, following which she was assigned to the Channel Fleet and then to the Home Fleet. In 1912, she, together with her sister ships, formed the 3rd Battle Squadron. During the early phase of World War I, the 3rd Battle Squadron was attached to the Grand Fleet and served on the Northern Patrol. In January 1916 she struck a mine while in transit to a scheduled refit at Belfast and sank. All but one of her crew were safely evacuated. ==Technical characteristics== HMS ''King Edward VII'' was laid down at Devonport Dockyard on 8 March 1902, the first plate was laid by King Edward VII who with his wife Queen Alexandra had just attended the naming and launching ceremony of . She was launched by the King on 23 July 1903, and completed in February 1905. Although ''King Edward VII'' and her seven sister ships of the were a direct descendant of the ; they were also the first class to make a significant departure from the ''Majestic'' design, displacing about more and mounting for the first time an intermediate battery of four guns in addition to the standard outfit of guns. The 9.2-inch incher was a quick-firing gun like the 6-incher, and its heavier shell made it a formidable weapon by the standards of the day when ''King Edward VII'' and her sisters were designed; it was adopted out of concerns that British battleships were undergunned for their displacement and were becoming outgunned by foreign battleships that had begun to mount intermediate batteries. The four 9.2-inchers were mounted in single turrets abreast the foremast and mainmast, and ''King Edward VII'' thus could bring two of them to bear on either broadside. Even then, ''King Edward VII'' and her sisters were criticised for not having, a uniform secondary battery of 9.2-inch guns, something considered but rejected because of the length of time it would have taken to design the ships with such a radical revision of the secondary armament layout. In the end, it proved impossible to distinguish 12-inch and 9.2-inch shell splashes from one another, making fire control impractical for ships mounting both calibres, although ''King Edward VII'' had fire-control platforms on her fore- and mainmasts rather than the fighting tops of earlier classes.〔''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860–1905'', p. 38〕 Like all British battleships since the ''Majestic''s, the ''King Edward''s had four guns in two twin turrets (one forward and one aft), the first five ''King Edward''s, including ''King Edward VII'' herself, mounted the Mark IX 12-inch gun. Mounting of the 6-inch guns in casemates was abandoned in the ''King Edward''s, the 6-inch instead being placed in a central battery amidships protected by armoured walls. Otherwise, ''King Edward VII''s armour was much as in the ''London''-class battleships, although there were various differences in detail from the ''London''s.〔 ''King Edward VII'' and her sisters were the first British battleships with balanced rudders since the 1870s and were very manoeuvrable, with a tactical diameter of at . However, they were difficult to keep on a straight course, and this characteristic led to them being nicknamed "the Wobbly Eight" during their 1914–1916 service in the Grand Fleet. They had a slightly faster roll than previous British battleship classes, but were good gun platforms, although very wet in bad weather.〔 Primarily powered by coal, ''King Edward VII'' had oil sprayers installed during her construction, as did all of her sisters except , the first time this had been done in British battleships. These allowed steam pressure to be rapidly increased, improving ''King Edward VII''s acceleration. The eight ships between them were given four different boiler installations for comparative purposes; ''King Edward VII'' is variously reported to have had 10 Babcock and Wilcox boilers and six cylindrical boilers〔 or 10 Babcock and Wilcox boilers and three cylindrical boilers.〔urt, p. 232〕 She exceeded her designed speed on trials.〔 ''King Edward VII'' was a powerful ship when she was designed, and completely fulfilled the goals set for her at that time. However, she was unlucky in that the years of her design and construction were ones of revolutionary advancement in naval guns, fire control, armour, and propulsion. She joined the fleet in early 1905, but was made obsolete in less than two years by the commissioning of the revolutionary battleship at the end of 1906 and the large numbers of the new dreadnought battleships that commissioned in succeeding years. By 1914, ''King Edward VII'' and her sisters – like all pre-dreadnoughts – were so outclassed that they spent much of their 1914–1916 Grand Fleet service steaming at the heads of divisions of the far more valuable dreadnoughts, protecting the dreadnoughts from naval mines by being the first battleships to either sight or strike them.〔Burt, p. 235〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS King Edward VII」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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