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HMS ''Monarch'' was an of the Royal Navy. She served in the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet in World War I, and fought at the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916, suffering no damage. As a result of the Washington Naval Convention she was decommissioned in 1921 and was used as an experimental and target ship. She was sunk by in 1925. Following the , Britain's next class of battleship were the ''Orion'' class. Beaten to a world's first by the American commissioned in 1910, these were the first battleships in the Royal Navy to feature an all-big-gun armament on the centre line. With the possibility of war looming the cost savings made by limiting the displacement of the Dreadnought types were dispensed with, resulting in a far better and larger ship. The ''Orion'' class also saw the introduction of the new 13.5 inch gun. To achieve greater hitting power in the later variants of ''Dreadnought'' the barrels of the 12 inch guns had been lengthened to increase the muzzle velocity and hence the range and impact energy. This was, however, a less satisfactory gun with poor accuracy due to excessive muzzle droop and with a short active life due to higher wear levels. In the 13.5 inch gun a return to lower muzzle velocities was made, the hitting power being increased by the greater weight of the shell fired by the bigger gun, making it a more accurate and more powerful weapon. == Design and description == Compared to the ''Colossus''-class battleships, the ''Orion''-class design came across as sleeker and more refined than earlier ships; outwardly similar to the following the two could be told apart by the ''Orion''s aft funnel being broader, and fore mast being placed aft of the smaller forward funnel. This resulted in the fire control top at the mast head being heavily affected by smoke, heat and gasses from the funnel, which had also been a problem in the and ''Colossus'' classes. The problem facing the designers was where to place the foremast? Place it in front of the funnel so that the spotting top would be clear of smoke and heat with a head wind, and that would lead to the problem of where to put the derrick needed to hoist the boats. The ''Orion'' designers would seem to have bowed to the seamanship problem and placed the mast aft of the fore funnel to allow the fitting of a large derrick for hoisting the ships boats. To partially alleviate the smoke and heat problem the fore funnel was made smaller than the aft one by only venting six boilers into it, the remaining twelve venting via the aft funnel. One other feature of the ships, their beam, was dictated by the size of the dry docks available at the time.The size of the ships was the maximum that could fit into these dry docks and a design compromise had to be made; the bilge keels were reduced in size. It was recognised that the ships could be expected to roll heavily, but if reports in the tabloids of the times were to be believed the class would capsize in any sea. In reality the rolling, whilst undesirable, was not that severe and the class were fitted with bilge keels which were adequate for their design function if not perfect for it. 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 Monarch (1911)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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