Eighty years ago, another week, another budget busting battleship is launched

Fiscal conservatives quaked in their boots as the Chancellor of the Exchequer sought authorisation to double his borrowing powers to £800m to finance Britain’s rearmament programme. It had only been in 1937 that the original figure had been set. Spending for the next three years was projected at the astronomic figure of £1.17bn on the armed forces with the cost of air raid precautions coming on top. The reaction in the City was muted to say the least. In proof of what all this money was being lavished, Britain’s first battleship for 17 years was launched on Tyneside. King George V was the name ship of her class and her first sister, Prince of Wales , would soon be launched too. It all seemed an appropriate response to the launch of Nazi Germany’s Bismarck the week before. The KGV’s were a somewhat flawed design with a quadruple and a twin turret forward and a quadruple aft, dictated by difficulties in gun development. Both the first KGVs fought against Bismarck . The Prin