Jellicoe understood that numerical superiority was key to victory in modern naval engagements, and steadfastly refused to allow the Royal Navy to meet the High Seas Fleet in detail. Given that the German fleet was smaller than the Grand Fleet and was limited geographically, this was an achievable task. Jellicoe’s job was to not lose the war, and the way to do that was to avoid being destroyed by the German High Seas Fleet. John Jellicoe, who had been promoted by Winston Churchill to command at the beginning of the war. HMS Iron Duke became flagship of the Grand Fleet upon its creation in August 1914. aircraft-carrier construction in World War II can compare with this level of productivity. The Royal Navy, mindful of its competition with Germany, would commission twenty-two super-dreadnoughts between 19, plus another half-dozen battlecruisers. The Iron Dukes were the third four-ship class of super-dreadnought (following the Orions and the King George Vs), and represented a staggering acceleration of peacetime naval construction on the part of the United Kingdom. Iron Duke was a well-designed ship, capable of outgunning its German (if not its American) counterparts, and serving as the basis for the even more heavily armed Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. Like most Royal Navy battleships of the era, it could make twenty-one knots. Its secondary armament, deployed in single casemates, consisted of twelve six-inch guns. It displaced twenty-five thousand tons, and carried ten 13.5-inch guns in five twin turrets.
Laid down in 1912, Iron Duke was commissioned in March 1914.
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