Naval Fire Support of the WWI Western Front: Long Patrol Part 3, Lord Clive Class M6-9

Published accounts identify a 1918 action as the first Ostend raid even though comparable naval bombardments took place in 1915.

The Lord Clive class used an Abercrombie-derived monitor hull, British 12-inch guns, shallow draft, heavy armor, and a top speed of only six and a half knots.

Four older Majestic-class battleships supplied their 12-inch guns to new monitors while the donor hulls served as troop, depot, and ammunition ships.

A profile of the nine-ship Majestic class explains its expansion under the Spencer programme and the pool of weapons later recycled into monitors.

The late-war BL 18-inch Mark I installation left Lord Clive's original 12-inch turret in place, though reports of a combined broadside remain uncertain.

HMS Lord Clive moved from laying down to bombardment training in seven months, but elderly 12-inch mountings struggled at the high elevations required ashore.

Lord Clive's first Belgian-coast operation fired on the Zeebrugge-Bruges canal locks, but turret failures and poor results ended the bombardment early.

The monitor's varied 1916 duties ranged from a publicized anti-Zeppelin role to defending the Dover Barrage and masking a new coastal battery.

When German torpedo boats bombarded Dunkirk in 1917, the slow monitor tried to answer with its six-inch guns in darkness but achieved little effect.

Lord Clive and Sir John Moore were modified to carry a huge landing pontoon for an amphibious assault tied to the hoped-for advance at Passchendaele.

General Craufurd combined monitor service with the awkward delivery of heavy gun barrels for shore batteries and bombardment of German communications.

General Craufurd experimented with a Short Type 184 floatplane, but the brief account says only that the arrangement did not always go to plan.

Two Lord Clive-class monitors armed with guns from HMS Mars operated across the eastern Mediterranean and shelled Ottoman positions in several campaigns.

Monitors could mass their guns in the defended Channel, while the mobile eastern Mediterranean campaign required the same ships to disperse among distant army operations.

A monitor excels at close coastal fire support, but adding the speed, hull length, and gun arcs needed for fleet combat gradually recreates a battleship.

The closing force-structure argument favors enough specialist and supporting hulls to handle the many naval jobs that do not require a battleship or carrier.