History Characters / WorldOfWarshipsUnitedKingdom

The British Royal Navy is the fourth faction to be introduced; their first ship was the Tier VI premium battleship ''Warspite''. The British tech tree, beginning with the Light Cruiser line, was released in October 2016. Battleship line was added in August 2017. Destroyer line was released in October 2018. Aircraft Carrier line was released in March 2019. Heavy Cruiser line was added in February 2020. Battlecruiser line is to be released in mid-2022.

HMS ''Emerald'' was the lead ship of her class, launched in 1918 and completed in 1920, but not completed until 1926. She served in the East Indies station for nine years, with a one-year refit at Chatham Dockyards in 1933. She went into reserve in 1937. At the outbreak of war in 1939, she was recommissioned and sent to the North Atlantic. Her most notable role during this time was her participation in Operation Fish, the relocation of Britain's gold reserves and other wealth to Canada. She and her sister ship ''Enterprise'' made two trips from England to Halifax. ''Emerald'' carried £58 million of gold bullion from the Bank of England on the first trip and millions of pounds in private securities on the second. She was transferred to the Indian Ocean in 1941 and then to the Pacific when Japan declared war, where she served on convoy duty for a year before returning to England for refit in August 1942. In 1944, she participated in the invasion of Normandy, providing fire support at Gold Beach. By 1945 ''Emerald'' was considered superannuated and was sent to the reserve fleet. In 1947, she was sunk as a target, then refloated the following year and broken up.

Tier VI British Cruiser of the Heavy Cruiser line representing the County-class.

Tier VII British Cruiser of the Heavy Cruiser line representing the improved County-class cruiser.

* StoneWall: By RN battleship standards and for the tier, Iron Duke is exceptionally resilient, with a strong, well-distributed armour scheme and an improved heal. However, this is compensated for by her relatively slow speed and poor manoeuvrability, as well as a relatively weak main battery.

The lead ship of a new generation of British battleships, the Washington and London Naval Treaties limited the size and firepower of this class. Her proprietary (for the British) quadruple 14in/356mm gun turrets were a factor of this restriction, but her reload is quicker to compensate.

Tier IX British Battleship. Developed to succeed the King George V class, the Lion class wielded 15/in406mm guns, with her hull being laid down in 1939, but never finished, and scrapped after World War II began.

* MultiRangedMaster: In addition to normal planes she has tactical squadrons of reactive aircrafts, that has a very high speed but long reload time, makig them perfect for surgical strikes.

British Tier 6 premium destroyer.

* SmokeOut: She has a more standard smoke screen compared to the short duration smoke generators of other RN dd's, allowing her to sit in smoke and use her guns more effectively.

HMS ''Hood'' was one of the most famous warships of her day. Laid down in 1916, she was still under construction when three British battlecruisers blew up and sank at Jutland due to inadequate armor and antiflash protection, leading ''Hood'' to receive 5000 tons of extra armor and bracing. Despite this, her armor scheme remained flawed, a vulnerability which may have ultimately led to her destruction.[[note]]Specifically, the problem lay in her deck armor; it was spread over three decks, the idea being that the top deck would detonate the shell and the other two would absorb the force of the explosion. The introduction of bigger guns and improved time-delay shell fuses rendered this design obsolete almost from the get-go.[[/note]] She was the last battlecruiser the Royal Navy ever built and the largest warship afloat at the time of her launch, which quickly earned her the nickname "Mighty ''Hood''". She spent the interwar years traveling the world as a showcase for the might of the British Empire, though as the years passed she was superseded by the new fast battleships being produced worldwide. ''Hood'' was scheduled for an extensive modernization in 1941 that would have improved her propulsion and armor, but WWII intervened and she never received the upgrades. She was on constant service from 1939 to 1941, during which time she participated in the assault on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir and the hunt for ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau''. In May 1941, she received orders to intercept and destroy the German battleship ''Bismarck'' before it could break out into the Atlantic. She and HMS ''Prince of Wales'' caught up to ''Bismarck'' and her companion ''Prinz Eugen'' on 24 May, as they were transiting the Denmark Strait. Only eight minutes after the British had opened fire, ''Bismarck'' hit ''Hood'' with a salvo that triggered a cataclysmic explosion in her aft magazines, tearing poor ''Hood'' apart and sinking her in three minutes with nearly her entire crew.[[note]]The exact nature of ''Hood'''s fatal hit will always remain a mystery, since the relevant portion of the ship was obliterated by the explosion and none of the three survivors could say exactly what had happened. The most prominent theory suggests that she was hit by a plunging shell from ''Bismarck'' that breached her deck armor and burst inside the 102mm magazines, triggering an explosion that in turn detonated the aft 381mm magazines. This one is the most well-supported by eyewitness and physical evidence, though others have proposed that she instead received an underwater hit from a shell that landed short and hit beneath her belt armor, that a fire on the boat deck cooked off her magazines, or that she was blown up by either her own torpedoes or a shell cooking off inside one of the after turrets.[[/note]] ''Bismarck'' herself was sunk three days later.

* LightningBruiser: Strangely played straight, given the usual battlecruiser FragileSpeedster / GlassCannon conventions. Her armor is actually quite resilient when angled against other battleships, and she has the hit points and excellent repair party to allow her to endure considerable damage.

The last battleship launched in the world[[note]]Though not the last commissioned, as ''Jean Bart'' was repaired and commissioned for the first time after ''Vanguard''.[[/note]] ''Vanguard'' was made as a cheaper alternative to the proposed ''Lion'' class, built around surplus 15inch gun turrets taken from the ''Courageous''-class battlecruisers after their conversion into aircraft carriers. Notably served as the Royal Yacht for a brief period of time.

One of the most famous British carriers, an obsolete Swordfish bomber from the ''Ark Royal'' dropped the torpedo that crippled the ''Bismarck''. Utilizes tier IV aircraft as a result of this, but fields larger squadrons and a faster restoration time.

British ships, with the sole exception of their [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness first line]], are excellent firestarters. Their HE shells have improved penetration and high fire chance. Torpedo-outfitted ships of the Royal Navy are also capable of single-firing torpedoes. Most British ships also have an improved Repair Party, capable of almost completely healing fire/flooding-induced damage. However, these ships are quite fragile, and their Repair Party can heal only a sliver of damage to the citadel. Their AP shells are somewhat underwhelming, too, suffering from low initial velocity and poor alpha damage.

Tier VI British Cruiser of the Heavy Cruiser line

Tier VII British Cruiser of the Heavy Cruiser line

Tier VIII British Cruiser of the Heavy Cruiser line
* GoodThingYouCanHeal: Zigzagged. From this point on, all RN Heavy cruisers get the Royal Navy super heal capable of healing over 50% of the ships' HP in one use. However, the exposed citadels of these ships means you'll most likely use them to recover from citadel damage, rather than being an advantage.