What You Need to Know: HMS Vanguard, Britain’s last battleship, was laid down in 1941 amid shifting naval tactics favoring aircraft carriers over traditional battleships. Despite being completed ...

The result was the HMS Vanguard. The HMS Vanguard came with a hefty price. At the time, the battleship cost the Royal Navy approximately £11,500,000, which translates to almost $800 million today.

In 1987 it became a training ship before an explosion in its boiler led to it being used as a harbour training vessel - until it was decommissioned in October 2020, after almost 48 years of service.

HMS Vanguard, the last battleship ever built by the United Kingdom, did not enter service until after the war. Neither of these classes, however, were the apogee of British battleship design.