Talk:HMS Centurion (1911)

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[edit] Target Ship

I am reading a little book about Cromarty, written by someone who remembers the RN activity around that area in the 1930s. He writes about HMS Centurion being used as a target ship. All her guns had been removed and she was controlled from the destroyer HMS Shikari which carried the radio gear to control Centurion. Both these ships were painted light brey when all the other warships were painted dark grey. He says that she was sent to Bombay after Japan entered the war where she was stationed offshore with dummy upper works to look like a King George V class of battleship as described in the main article but could be wrong about that. She was sunk at Arromanches as part of the Mulberry harbour and withstood the storms better than the other smaller ships. --jmb 08:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

She was officially a Fleet Target Service vessel until April, 1941. Then she was converted into an imitation of HMS Anson, with dummy turrets, citadel &c. Winston Churchill, directly responsible for her change of use, paid a visit to her while converting. She was then dispatched via the Cape of Good Hope to Bombay, where she arrived before the Japanese war began. It was realised that she could do nothing out there but lie at anchor, so she was sent to Alexandria, where she participated in Operation Vigorous and for a time was stationed in the Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal on Antiaircraft work. She remained there until March 1944 when she returned to Britain to be readied for scuttling off Arromanches. --Harlsbottom 10:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)