2010 Annual Reunion in
the Holiday Inn, Southsea
For three days over the long
weekend 9/10/11 September 2010,
members of the KGVA attended their
24th annual reunion , gala dinner and
church service
Notes of the Annual
General Meeting can be read and
copied by clicking on the image
below.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
20 YEARS of HMS KING GEORGE
V
It was 1937 in Walkers Naval
Yard in Newcastle and nearly 700 feet
of keel was laid. The ship being
built by Vickers-Armstrongs was the
first of its class to be named by
King George VI as HMS KING GEORGE V.
Pathe News footage of 21 Feb 1939
shows KGV, as those who served in her
affectionately knew her, being
launched by the King into a specially
deepened River Tyne watched by an
estimated 20000 people. A D
Divine of the Newcastle Evening
Chronicle recorded seeing her in the
river being fitted out early in 1940,
‘her hull was a dull grey
splashed largely with red lead, but
she looked enormous – already
powerful, already warlike’.
She was not completed until 1 Oct
1940 at a cost of £8M, and on a dark
night Captain Duncan, a Tyne pilot,
took the ship down the pitch-black
river in preparation for sea trials.
The Newcastle Journal described the
picture of her two waiting destroyer
escorts and of night fighters
patrolling the skies for German
bombers; Germany would have
designated KGV as a priority target.
BBC records show that there
were to be more than two escorts and
events of 17 October 1940 were to
provide extra work for the Tyne
shipbuilders than was anticipated.
‘It was a bleak day, with heavy
drizzle and poor visibility at sea,
although the waters were fairly calm.
Men at the shore defence post at
Whitburn watched helplessly, as
through the mist and rain loomed a
flotilla of ships, which ran aground
at Wheathall Bay’. Accounts
of the wreck differ; some reports
refer to four destroyers, others say
there were six. The flotilla
leaders HMS FAME and HMS ASHANTI ran
well aground but were later refloated
and taken to the Tyne for repair.
HMS KING GEORGE V was worked
up for the next two months. Her
125000 max shp produced nearly 30
knots through 4 shafts and single
reduction geared steam turbines. She
fired 1590 lb shells from her 10
14-inch guns with a muzzle velocity
of 2475 ft per sec at ranges up to 20
miles. With a full load of
fuel, she had a range of 6500 nm at
14 knots, and this endurance was soon
put to the test as she and HMS RODNEY
hunted down the BISMARCK. Much
has been written of the sinking of
the BISMARCK and that will not be
repeated here. Bart Kent’s
compilation of life aboard King
George V, ‘Memories’, tells
many stories of the ship during the
war years and a story of a Jack Dusty
tasked with de-storing the ship ready
for preservation in 1949. So,
we will move on 1950.
HMS KING GEORGE V was
decommissioned in Portsmouth in 1949
and taken in tow for the Gareloch on
14 June 1950. In 1957 twenty
years after her keel was laid ,
Admiralty approval was given for the
ship to be broken up on the Firth of
Tay at Troon. And the
battleship was replaced by the
aircraft carrier as the capital ship
of modern naval warfare.
