Operational History
The King Edward VIIs served together as a tactical unit during much of their careers, operating in the Atlantic Fleet, Channel Fleet, and Home Fleet before World War I. They formed the 3rd Battle Squadron in 1912, with individual ships leaving the squadron between 1916 and 1918. The squadron served in the Mediterranean during the First Balkan War in 1912–1913 and in the Grand Fleet for most of the first half of World War I, although it was detached to the Channel Fleet for a time in 1914 and two ships served in the Dardanelles Campaign (1915–1916). The ships were treated as expendable while with the Grand Fleet, which routinely placed them at the heads of divisions of the more valuable dreadnoughts to protect the dreadnoughts by watching for mines or being the first to strike mines. The 3rd Battle Squadron left the Grand Fleet in 1916; as it gradually broke up between 1916 and 1918, some ships served in the Adriatic Sea and Atlantic, while others performed subsidiary duties in home wates or went into reserve. Two were lost during World War I and those that survived the war were sold for scrapping in 1920 and 1921.
Read more about this topic: King Edward VII Class Battleship
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)