The drawing shows her as a target ship.
A selection of ships'badges of his majesty's Royal Navies published by Gutta, Percha&Rubber Limited in 1942, digital available via the website www.archive.org
As part of the King George V-class super-dreadnought battleships which succeeded the Orion-class was her building allowed in 1920 and was she on 16 January 1911 laid down at the Devonport dockyard, launched on 18 November of the same year, commissioned in May 1913 and decommissioned 11 years later, fitted out as a target ship in stead of the HMS Agamemnon and served as such at Portsmouth until she was in April 1941 camouflaged with a false superstructure to pretend if she was the HMS battleship Anson and finally sunk on 7 June 1944 as a so-called Mulberry harbour blockship off Aranches. According to Jane’s Fighting Ships edition 1930 was she between 1927 and 1927 rebuild at the Chatham dockyard as a wireless controlled target ships costing 358,088 pound sterling. She was in 1926 stricken as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty.(1) Her sister ships were the King George V, Audacious and Ajax.
The original technical details were a displacement of 25,500 tons/25,900 tonnes and as dimensions 182,12 x 27 x 8,74 metres or 597’6”x 89’x 28’8”. Her speed was 21 knots and as a battleship numbered her crew 782 men. The original armament consisted of 10-34,29 (13.5”) guns, 16-10,16cm (4”) guns, 4-4,7cm guns and 3-21” submerged torpedo tubes.
In the Dutch newspaper Het Vaderland evening edition dated 17 July 1929 was a small item published dealing with her as a target ship. The British HMS battleship Nelson was involved in gun experiments with the radio controlled Centurion. This wireless controlled target could still maintain a speed of 14 knots and served as a target for the Nelson which was shooting on a long distance. Despite the fact that destroyers laid a smoke smoke screen the Nelson managed to hit several times the target and was later shooting using intelligence reports supplied by planes. The Centurion was controlled over a distance of a mile out of Shikari.
Note
1. The Washington Naval Treaty tried to stop the naval arms race between the major naval powers of that moment namely USA< United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy and is therefore also known as the Five-Power Treaty/The conference found place at Washington between November 1921 and February 1922 with as result the limitation of the building of battleships, battle cruisers and aircraft carriers. As a result were battleships already being build never completed or sometimes completed as aircraft carriers. Another result was the technical limitation of the battleships and battle cruisers with a standard displacement of no more as 35,000 tons and maximum 16” guns.
