HMS Vanguard

HMS Vanguard was a British fast battleship built during the Second World War and commissioned after the end of the war. She was the biggest and fastest of the Royal Navy's battleships, the last battleship to be launched in the world, and the only ship of her class.

The Royal Navy anticipated being outnumbered by the combined German and Japanese battleships in the early 1940s, and had therefore started building the Lion-class battleships. However the time-consuming construction of the triple-16-inch turrets for the Lion-class would delay their completion until 1943 at the earliest. The British had enough 15-inch (381 mm) guns and turrets in storage to allow one ship of a modified Lion-class design with four twin-15-inch turrets to be completed faster than the Lion-class vessels that had already been laid down.