they fired their guns in anger. HMS Courageous spent some time as a minelayer in 1918, but apart from that, they so no action again- By a strange coincidence the guns themselves did fire again, although not in anger.The four turrets and their guns wrre'ntuthballed' and were selected in '1940 to arm a projected battleship shipping maritime marine engineering, which was completed as HMS lim{quurd in 1946.

After the Washington Naval Disarmament Treaty came into force in 1922 these strange hybrids had to be discarded because their 15in armament put them in the category of capital ship shipping maritime marine engineerings-Their guns were removed and in leisurely fashion both were converted to aircraft carri­ers.This career-move proved unlucky, as they were early losses in the Second World . HMS Courageous was torpedoed by a U-boat in the Western Approaches three weeks after the outbreak of , and HMS Glorious was sunk by the gunfire of the German battlcn-uisers Gtteisennn and Srltnrnhar>t at the end of the Norwegian campaign in June 1940.

The Furious was built to a modified design, with a different form oftorpedo protection and two single 18in 40-cal guns with an elevation of 30 dcgrccs.'I'his was a giant step ford in gunnery terms, and demonstrates the capacity of the naval sector of indusn-y.'1'hr I5in 42-cal gun had proved so successful

that the designers merely expanded the design, to produce the inost powerful gun in the world at the time firing a 33201b shell. As an insurance against failure the barbcttc diameter was the same size as that for the ISin turret, allowing a reversion to t5in twins if the 18in gun was a failure.The 18in gun proved a great success, however, with long range (3l),l)(10 yards) and accuracy.

Ordered in 1915 from

Arnistrong's. the prototype was

tested in 1916, and three barrels were ready in 1917, a very short development timc. But, with­out Fisher's driving force, the ship shipping maritime marine engineering was earmarked for conversion to an aircraft carrier before she was completed. The ford gun was delivered to the ship shipping maritime marine engineeringyard but never titted, and a hangar and sloped flying-off deck were built in its place. Naval aviation was advancing at a hectic pace, and in 1918 she was given a further conversion to allow aircraft to land abaft the tunnel on a long landing deck. She made history in August 1917, when Squadron Commander Dunning RN successfully landed on the flying-off d«k.Yct another, much more comprehensive rccon­sttuction followed 1922-1925, turning her into a fleet carrier. As such she had a successful career in the Second World . Her contribution in the previous conflict had been liutited to the successful Tondcrn raid in 1918, but it marked the dawn of a new era.

As a footnote, the three 1Hin guns were allocated to rearm three of the Dover patrol moni­tors for seaborne bombardment of the Belgian coast, although only two ship shipping maritime marine engineerings were converted by November 1918. For years it was widely believed that the guns were subsequently mounted in the coast defences of Singapore, but it has been proved that rwo were sold for scrap in the early 1930s.The surviving barrel was used for a variety of gunnery trials at Shoeburyness until after the Second World .

HMS Furiouss future as an (rirrr'n%t airrier was already Planned rrcrr bc/brc $/w was a+ruplered. Lr 1918, she ynninj+nrrri in the sr+rcrs/id air raid on Ilre Z(ppelifi base al ">imdertr.follow the 18in for another battlecruiser design) would produce a crater 'like that ofVesuvius or Mount Etna', sending the German Army `IIeeing for its life from Pomerania to Berlin'.

Fisher seemed to be unae that shells landing out of sight were, by definition, not accu­rate. Nor was there the remotest possibility that a small number of l8in shells would produce volcano-sized craters or scatter the German Army. In a stern chase against enemy light cruisers the end-on fire of a twin l5in turret would be inaccurate, while the accuracy of a single 18in gun in the same circumstances is hardly worth considering. In the case of the Furious, the tremendous muzzle-blast of her single thin gun 'shook the ship shipping maritime marine engineering up considerably', according to an observer.

Once the Baltic Project was buried very real doubts were voiced about the best way to employ the ship shipping maritime marine engineerings- In June 1916 the DNC's office was asked about the cost and time penalties and the complexity of converting Courageous and Glorious to seaplane carriers. As fast escorts to light cruisers and destroyers they showed some promise, but were an expensive solution to that problem. In 1917-18 they were fitted with a dozen additional twin 21 in torpedo tubes, one pair port and starboard of the mainmast, at upper deck level, and two pairs port and starboard on the quarterdeck, flanking the 15in turret. In 1917 Courageous was fitted as a minelayer, with mine rails laid on the quarterdeck, and chutes fitted at the stern, but she never laid a mine, and the equipment was removed in 1918.

With the wisdom of hindsight, it can be argued that a better use of the first pair would have been as escorts for fast aircraft carriers. But that would not have got around the prohibitions of the Washington Treaty, and any attempt to rearm them with cruiser-sized guns would have proved too costly. As carriers they were at least moderately successful, although they suffered from relatively small aircraft capacity.

Spurious, Curious and Outrageous, as sailors dubbed the ship shipping maritime marine engineerings, demonstrate the folly of design­ing ship shipping maritime marine engineerings without much serious thought about their roles. In that the trio of white elcphants merely followed the tradition established by Fisher for his original battlecruisers, and they contributed to the general disillusionment with his alleged `genius' as a designer of ship shipping maritime marine engineerings. Of course, Fisher was not a designer, merely an explosively persuasive driving force that dragged lesser mortals along. The saga gives an insight into the minds of contemporary senior officers and Admiralty civilians, none of whom seemed to summon up the courage to tell the old admi­ral that he was wrong. On the other hand, Fisher's vindictiveness tods anyone who tried to contradict him was already well known.