HMS Queen Mary is a one-off British battlecruiser design built in the leadup to WWI. Coming as part of the Seek & Destroy major update, HMS Queen Mary will soon reinforce the top ranks of the British Bluewater fleet with the introduction of a powerful new battlecruiser!
HMS Queen Mary: A Battlecruiser for Great Britain at Rank V
Features:
Powerful primary battery!
Mediocre protection.
Exceptional mobility.
No anti-air protection.
Vehicle History
HMS Queen Mary was laid down in March 1911 under the 1910-11 Naval Programme as the sole ship of its class. Completed in August 1913, the ship would become the last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy prior to the outbreak of WWI. The ship’s design drew heavily from the preceding Lion class, which featured a formidable arsenal and comparably good protection. Entering service in September 1913, HMS Queen Mary wouldn’t have to wait long for its first combat operation.
This came shortly after the outbreak of WWI, when the warship took part in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in which British and German forces clashed in the North Sea in August 1914. Under Admiral Beatty’s command, HMS Queen Mary along with other British warships sunk two German light cruisers during this battle. The next major operation saw HMS Queen Mary take part in the legendary Battle of Jutland in 1916. Being part of the largest naval battle of WWI, HMS Queen Mary managed to land several hits on German warships. In response however, the German battlecruiser SMS Derfflinger dealt HMS Queen Mary a lethal blow, causing the warship’s magazines to detonate. The major explosion which followed tore the ship apart and caused it to sink quickly.
Meet HMS Queen Mary!
In War Thunder, HMS Queen Mary will arrive at rank V of the British Bluewater tree as part of the Seek & Destroy major update, expanding this tree’s battlecruiser roster and smoothing out the progression to the current top British battlecruiser; HMS Hood. In today’s devblog, we’re eager to tell you all about this unique new imperial warship, coming to naval battles very soon!
Common for a battlecruiser, this warship combines superior mobility and firepower while featuring less impressive protection than battleships for example. The Queen Mary is is fitted with four twin 13.5’’ (343 mm) cannons, giving it ample firepower to comfortably engage any capital ship with relative ease, even at greater firing distances. Furthermore, the secondary battery of 16 4’’ (102 mm) cannons as well as two 533 mm torpedo launchers enable the warship to also engage smaller vessels or harass heavier opponents with their high rate of fire. Being a WWI era vessel however means that HMS Queen Mary didn’t receive any dedicated anti-air weapons. This makes the ship highly vulnerable to air attack, meaning it’s best to stick close to allies which can help fill this gap in the ship’s protection.
Interesting: HMS Queen Mary is the only ship of the Royal Navy to be named after the wife of King George V.
Speaking of protection, despite being fitted with less armor than a typical battleship, HMS Queen Mary still comes equipped with up to 229 mm of armor on its turrets, belts and barbettes. As a result, the vessel is well protected against shell fire from enemy cruisers but can not resist fire from battleships. HMS Queen Mary is by no means a sluggish ship. In fact, thanks to its very powerful propulsion system, HMS Queen Mary can reach an impressive top speed of 28.2 kts (52 km/h). This allows the vessel to easily keep up with more nimble allies and quickly respond to a changing tactical situation during battle.
In your matches by Keith (Scarper), Community Manager: “The guns of a battleship with the speed of a cruiser. When using this beastie, be the bully in the battle, pick on the smaller guys and manuever away from danger with the bigger slower ships like battleships. The lesser armour (to allow for speed) will not help when you meet something heavier so you cant slug it out. Keep ahead of any enemy firing turrets and think ahead before launching attacks - You aren’t a ‘Tank’. Air attacks will hurt as there is no dedicated AA, keep an eye on the sky.”
HMS Queen Mary has set course for War Thunder naval battles and is due to dock in player ports with the release of the Seek & Destroy major update. In the meantime, keep scanning the news section as we continue to release new info on the upcoming update. Until then, calm seas and good hunting captains!
Very nice! But… please, when will America get one ship that can more effectively compete against all these 381mm-armed Battleships?
The 356mm guns could do fine if at least their reload was more comparable, but, far from that, they are also the slowest Naval reloads in the game, being 10-15 seconds slower than the rest of the Battleships; it’s, for example, 15 seconds slower than the three Bayern-class ships’ 380mm guns, or than Mutsu’s 410mm guns!
A WW2 refit Colorado would probably still have a slow reload too, but at least it would have more powerful 506mm guns and heavier armor to make up for the reload. I don’t know how we have 3xBayerns, Hood and Mutsu but not a single Colorado…
At this point, I would even dare to ask to jump straight to a North Carolina! American Top Tier has been underwhelming for a long time.
The fact that their best ship is a limited event vehicle is funny as well, hahah. Not even a Tennessee on the research tree for the improved armor and guns!
Also, there’s an enormous yet easy to fix bug on Baden which I reported months ago and it was “acknowledged”, but nothing has been done still, even by the current dev server. Can it be looked into?
Firstly, a lovely ship and even better to see the Splendid Cats making an appearance, I appreciate Gaijin adding another British dreadnought I love naval and this will be a nice addition to my 6.3 lineup, and even better that she gets the heavy shells.
Any ship>no ship but QE/R>Queen Mary in terms of what the UK needed.
As @GlorytoHypnotoad beat me to saying, this is not what the UK tree needed right now.
I would like to ask any one of you @Stona_WT@Smin1080p@Scarper , why has Queen Mary been added instead of other higher priority ships?
I understand Gaijin plans ahead in terms of additions, in which case the planning of the current top tier naval would have accounted for Germany having no less than 2 tech tree Bayerns and Scharnhorst (I’ll refrain from addressing game balance) totalling 3 TT ships, the soviet union also has 3 ships, America has 2 7.0 ships and Japan has 4 good ships at 7.0.
However Italy and the UK have just 1 7.0 ship and France not a single top br dreadnought? Surely this wasn’t the way things were planned as ships absolutely exist for all 3 of these trees in particular for Britain? So does the issue perhaps lie with the external companies who do Gaijin’s modelling?
Or am I misunderstanding something with your process.
And same thing goes for America when they keep giving it Destroyers, Cruisers and Early WWI BBs instead of counterparts to the most powerful and dominating BBs ingame.
The way they implement ships is really strange.
They implement Scharnhorst+Bayern and Hood in 2021, then they spend 3 years implementing destroyers, cruisers and subpar/Early WWI BBs for other nations while giving Germany TWO more Bayerns… and suddenly they proceed to implement a friking NAGATO and the go back to implementing ships that are far from being a counterpart to these…
Like… (?) Why not add ships along with proper counterparts, or at least add the counterparts shortly afterwards instead of taking years for each time…? This lack of balance is one of the main reasons why so few people play Naval.
Like, France and Italy being subpar and left behind is sad, but almost inevitable to some degree… but why, of all nations, is the UNITED STATES one of the worst currently in Naval Top Tier?
I almost fell asleep when I looked at this ship, and seriously another pointless boat that will be beaten by scharnchorts and company in a badly done mode for ships :)
If this ship could never see the Scharnhorst. It would be great. But as ships like Hood can barely go toe to toe with the Scharnhorst. This ship stands no chance. You have to sacrifice everything in the vain hope for a downtier for it to be good.
Naval needs a decompression before more of these dreadnought fillers are added. Until then. The focus should be on capable top tier battleships (HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS King George V or HMS Nelson) or instead we should get some good light cruisers (HMS Fiji or HMCS Ontario) (i’d love some good heavies, but they’re tricky to add)
It was redesigned with the lessons learned from Jutland. It wasn’t a “WWI ship” as she wasn’t completed during that war. It was an inter-war ship, like the majority of WWII combatants.
I’d best describe Hood as an early inter-war battlecruiser. A full modernisation of her armour was planned but never carried out (which is why she was vulnerable in her battle with Bismark)
within the context of the game. She’s a bit of a glass canon. Good firepower, but with limitations (namely aweful accuracy). While she sometimes can soak a lot of abuse. She also can sometimes just be 1 tapped. Whilst she does have some AAA. She has nothing compared to most WW2 refits or WW2 built vessels.
exactly she had ww1 armour design, ww1 construction, bulkheads, subdevisions, guns, turrets, elevators (hense the lack of later ammunition), ww1 engines, decks armour etc. there is design and protection wise alone between a ww2 ship and a true interwar ship like nelsons etc
