If you are a fan of Warship Wednesday, then you undoubtedly are aware of the classic Royal Navy battleships Dreadnought, and Valiant. The former is the warship that started the entire modern battlewagon era and the latter one of the Queen Elizabeth-class super-dreadnoughts that served at Jutland during the First World War and ate Italian cruisers like gumdrops in the Second.
Well, the two aforementioned names have been issued to the new class of British Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines, which will arguably be the most powerful Royal Navy vessels to ever sail the high seas.
The name of the third vessel of the class has been announcing this week.
She will be the eighth HMS Warspite since 1666.
Most famously, the sixth Warspite— like Valiant, a Queen Elizabeth-class “castle of steel“— earned more battle honors than any other single warship in Royal Navy history.
Scorched by fire, blackened by soot and cordite, this is the silk battle ensign of the Royal Navy’s greatest ‘castle of steel’, last seen flying from HMS Warspite as she clashed with the Germans at Jutland.