~ Bronze WW1 Renown Class Battleship HMS Repulse (1916) Main Battery Tompion ~
The tompion, a gun muzzle cover, has a central Griffin, rope border and is mounted on a wooden back with suspension hole.
~ HMS Devonshire (1929) ~
HMS Repulse was one of two Renown-class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. Originally laid down as an improved version of the Revenge-class battleship, her construction was suspended on the outbreak of war because she would not be ready in time. Admiral Lord Fisher, upon becoming First Sea Lord, gained approval for her to resume construction as a battlecruiser that could be built and enter service quickly. The Director of Naval Construction (DNC), Eustace Tennyson-d’Eyncourt, quickly produced an entirely new design to meet Admiral Lord Fisher’s requirements and the builders agreed to deliver the ship in 15 months. They did not quite meet that ambitious goal, but the ship was delivered a few months after the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Repulse and her sister ship Renown were the world’s fastest capital ships upon completion.
Repulse participated in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917, the only combat she saw during the war. She was reconstructed twice between the wars; a reconstruction in the 1920s increased her armour protection and made lesser improvements, while another in the 1930s was much more thorough. Repulse accompanied the battlecruiser Hood during the Cruise of the Special Service Squadron on a round-the-world cruise in 1923 to 1924 and protected international shipping during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 to 1939.
The ship spent the first months of the Second World War hunting for German raiders and blockade runners. She participated in the Norwegian Campaign of April to June 1940 and searched for the German battleship Bismarck in 1941. Repulse escorted a troop convoy around the Cape of Good Hope from August to October 1941 and was transferred to the East Indies Command. She was assigned in November to Force Z, which was supposed to deter Japanese aggression against British possessions in the Far East. Repulse and her consort, the battleship Prince of Wales, were sunk by Japanese aircraft on 10 December 1941 when they attempted to intercept landings in British Malaya.
~ Condition ~
Please refer to the images. The piece is in excellent order.
~ Dimensions ~
The tompion is 25 cm (10 inches) in diameter . The wooden back is 30 cm (12 inches) in diameter. It weighs 3.2 Kg.
JA_1136121923
