HMS King George V (pennant number 41) was the lead ship of the King George V class of battleships of 1939.
Following the tradition of naming the first battleship constructed in the reign of a new monarch after the current monarch, she was originally to be named King George VI (after George VI). However the King instructed the Admiralty to name the ship in honour of his father, George V. King George V was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Walker's Naval Yard, Newcastle upon Tyne and laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 21 February 1939, and commissioned on 11 December 1940.
She was the flagship of the Home Fleet under the command of Admiral Sir John Tovey, and was involved in the chase for the German battleship Bismarck. On 27 May 1941, she and HMS Rodney fired a large number of shells into to the hull of the ill-fated ship.
While escorting convoy PQ-15 to Murmansk on 1 May 1942, King George V collided with the destroyer HMS Punjabi, resulting in the sinking of the latter ship with 49 crew, and bow damage to the battleship.
In the Mediterranean, King George V covered the Operation Husky landings at Sicily, as well as transporting the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, back to Britain from the Tehran Conference.
From 1944 until the surrender of Japan, King George V served with the British Pacific Fleet, and was present off Japan during the official surrender ceremony.
She was recommissioned as flagship of the Home Fleet in 1946. Just three years later, King George V was decommissioned into the Reserve Fleet and subsequently scrapped at Dalmuir in 1957.
