HMS Anson (79): The Battleship That Never Fired Her Guns in Anger

A Battleship Renamed Before She Sailed

HMS Anson was one of the King George V-class battleships, built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson on the Tyne, her keel laid on 20 July 1937. She was originally intended to be named HMS Jellicoe, after the admiral who had commanded the Grand Fleet at Jutland, but was renamed Anson before her launch on 24 February 1940. She was not commissioned until 22 June 1942, her completion delayed by the addition of fire-control radar and other defensive systems that the rapidly evolving war made increasingly necessary.

She was a formidable ship on paper: over 42,000 tons, armed with ten 14-inch guns across three turrets, plus a substantial secondary and anti-aircraft armament, one of the most powerful battleships Britain would send to sea during the entire war.

Guarding the Arctic Convoys

Anson spent much of 1942 and 1943 providing distant cover for the brutal Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union, escorting no fewer than nine Russian convoys by December 1943, including QP 14, JW 51B, JW 52 and RA 52, part of the constant, exhausting effort to protect Allied shipping from German surface raiders and U-boats in some of the most hostile waters in the world.

A Hand in Planning, If Not Firing

Through 1943 and into 1944, Anson took part in a string of significant operations without ever quite getting into a direct gun battle herself. She played a diversionary role during preparations for Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, in July 1943, covered American carrier air strikes during Operation Leader that October, stood by for potential Norwegian strikes during Operation Bayleaf in February 1944, and served as flagship for Operation Tungsten on 3 April 1944, the major carrier strike against the German battleship Tirpitz sheltering in a Norwegian fjord. In every case, her role was one of cover, planning, and presence rather than direct combat.

To the Pacific, and a Front-Row Seat at Victory

Anson was decommissioned for refit in June 1944 and returned to service in March 1945, sailing out to join the British Pacific Fleet just as the war against Japan was reaching its final stages. She accepted the Japanese surrender at Hong Kong in August 1945 and was present in Tokyo Bay for the official surrender ceremony aboard USS Missouri, standing witness to the formal end of the Second World War from about as good a vantage point as any ship in the fleet could ask for.

And yet, for all of this, from Arctic convoys to Sicily to Tirpitz to the Japanese surrender, HMS Anson is reported to have never once fired her main armament in anger during the entire war. It is a genuinely remarkable statistic for a ship built around ten enormous 14-inch guns, a career defined entirely by presence, deterrence and support rather than a single decisive shot.

A Quiet Retirement

Anson returned to British waters on 29 July 1946 and took part in Exercise Verity in July 1949 before being placed in reserve that November. She was towed to Gare Loch in 1951 and finally sold for scrap on 17 December 1957 to Shipbreaking Industries at Faslane. Even in death she left a small physical legacy: timbers salvaged from the ship were repurposed as commemorative souvenirs, a modest afterlife for a battleship whose greatest achievement may simply have been being present, powerfully and reliably, exactly when and where she was needed, without ever needing to prove it with her guns.