During the early stages of World War II, she searched for German commerce raiders, missed participating in the Norwegian Campaign after she was badly damaged by a mine in late 1939, and escorted convoys in the Atlantic Ocean.

During the Normandy landings in June 1944, Nelson provided naval gunfire support before she struck a mine and spent the rest of the year under repair.

The design, which had been approved six months after the treaty was signed, had a main armament of 16-inch (406 mm) guns to match the firepower of the American Colorado and Japanese Nagato classes in the battleline in a ship displacing no more than 35,000 long tons (36,000 t).

The ship carried enough fuel oil to give her a range of 7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km; 8,100 mi) at a cruising speed of 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph).

In 1934–1935, Nelson was fitted with a pair of quadruple mounts for Vickers 0.5 in (12.7 mm) anti-aircraft machine guns that were positioned on the forward superstructure.

[9] While under repair from January–August 1940 after being mined in December 1939, Nelson had her aft 6-inch directors replaced by a pair of octuple 2-pounder "pom-pom" mounts and another was added on the quarterdeck.

[11] While refitting in the United States in late 1944 to prepare her for operations in the Pacific Ocean, her anti-aircraft armament was augmented with 21 more Oerlikon guns for a total of 61 weapons.

[14] She was laid down on 28 December 1922 as part of the 1922 Naval Programme at Armstrong Whitworth's Low Walker shipyard in North Tyneside, Newcastle upon Tyne[15] and was launched on 3 September 1925.

[16] The Nelson-class ships received several nicknames: Nelsol and Rodnol after the Royal Fleet Auxiliary oil tankers with a prominent amidships superstructure and names ending in "ol", The Queen's Mansions after a resemblance between her superstructure and the Queen Anne's Mansions block of flats, the pair of boots, the ugly sisters and the Cherry Tree class as they were cut down by the Washington Naval Treaty.

[21] On 12 January 1934, she ran aground on Hamilton's Shoal, just off Southsea, as she was about to depart with the Home Fleet for the spring cruise in the West Indies.

The subsequent investigation did not find any of the ship's officers at fault, attributing the incident to her poor handling at low speed.

On 30 October, Nelson was unsuccessfully attacked by the German submarine U-56 near the Orkney Islands and was hit by two of the three torpedoes fired at a range of 870 yards (800 m), none of which exploded.

After the sinking of the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi off the coast of Iceland on 23 November by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, Nelson and her sister participated in the futile pursuit of them.

On 4 December 1939, she detonated a magnetic mine (laid by U-31) at the entrance to Loch Ewe on the Scottish coast and was under repair in HM Dockyard, Portsmouth, until August 1940.

[23] After returning to service in August, Nelson, Rodney and the battlecruiser Hood were transferred from Scapa Flow to Rosyth, Scotland, in case of invasion.

When the signal from the armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay that she was being attacked by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer on 5 November was received by the Admiralty, Nelson and Rodney were deployed to block the gap between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, although Admiral Scheer headed for the South Atlantic afterwards.

When the Admiralty learned that Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were attempting to break out into the North Atlantic to resume commerce raiding operations, Nelson, Rodney and the battlecruiser Renown were ordered on 25 January 1941 to assume a position south of Iceland where they could intercept them.

[24] Nelson became a private ship on 1 April[15] and she was detached to escort Convoy WS.7 from the UK to South Africa, visiting Freetown, Sierra Leone, on the 4th.

After the Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May, the German battleship Bismarck was spotted two days later heading for France and Nelson and Eagle were ordered to join the pursuit from their position north of Freetown.

[27] On 11 July,[15] the ship was assigned to escort Convoy WS.9C[28] that consisted of merchantmen that were to pass into the Mediterranean to deliver troops and supplies to Malta.

[15] Several weeks later, the ship participated in Operation Mincemeat, during which Force H escorted a minelayer to Livorno to lay its mines while Ark Royal's aircraft attacked Northern Sardinia as a diversion.

On 13 September, Force H escorted Ark Royal and the aircraft carrier Furious into the Western Mediterranean as they flew off 45 Hawker Hurricane fighters to Malta.

The British were spotted the following morning and attacked by Regia Aeronautica (Royal Italian Air Force) aircraft the next day.

Although she was down at the bow by eight feet (2.4 m) and ultimately limited to a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) to reduce the pressure on her bulkheads, Nelson remained with the fleet to so that the Italians would not know that she had been damaged.

[32] Nelson was assigned to the Eastern Fleet after she finished working up and departed 31 May,[15] escorting Convoy WS.19P from the Clyde to Freetown[33] and its continuation WS.19PF to Durban, South Africa, en route.

The convoy was spotted later that morning and the Axis attacks began the following day with the sinking of Eagle by a German submarine.

Syfret temporarily transferred his flag to the battleship King George V in May as Nelson returned to Scapa Flow to train for Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.

The following day, they began patrolling in the Ionian Sea to deter any attempt by the Regia Marina to interfere with the landings in Sicily.

The sisters covered the amphibious landings at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) on 9 September with Nelson using her main guns in "barrage" mode to deter attacking German torpedo bombers.

The Italian surrender was signed between General Dwight Eisenhower and Marshal Pietro Badoglio aboard the ship on 29 September.