Completed in December 1916, Resolution saw no combat during the war as both the British and German fleets adopted a more cautious strategy after the Battle of Jutland in May owing to the increasing threat of naval mines and submarines.

Whilst serving in the Mediterranean in the early 1920s, the ship went to Turkey twice in response to crises arising from the Greco-Turkish War, including the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Resolution was assigned to the Channel Force before being transferred to convoy escort duties in the North Atlantic.

Thereafter she saw service with the training establishment HMS Imperieuse, a role she filled until February 1948, when she was paid off, sold for scrap and broken up at Faslane.

Still under construction, the ships were redesigned to employ oil-fired boilers that increased the power of the engines by 9,000 shaft horsepower (6,700 kW) over the original specification.

During the ship's 1929–31 refit, a High-Angle Control System (HACS) Mk I director was installed on the spotting top and the aft pair of torpedo tubes on either side were also removed.

To save weight and make more room available for the additional crew required to man the new equipment like the radars and Oerlikons, two 6-inch guns were removed in 1943.

[16] Resolution was laid down at Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Jarrow on 29 November 1913,[17] launched on 14 January 1915, and commissioned on 7 December 1916.

Resolution and the rest of the Grand Fleet sortied on 24 April once they intercepted wireless signals from the damaged Moltke, but the Germans were too far ahead of the British, and no shots were fired.

Resolution then went to Batumi in southern Russia, where she remained until mid-June, when she steamed back across the Black Sea to Constantinople, arriving on 18 June.

The ships primarily operated in the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora, though Resolution also stopped in Mytilene and Smyrna in February 1923 in company with the battleship HMS Emperor of India and several cruisers and destroyers.

[24][26] On 10 January 1924, while conducting training exercises in the English Channel, Resolution ran into and sank the British submarine HMS L24 as she was surfacing, damaging her bow in the collision.

Crewmen aboard Resolution reported feeling a shock at 11:13, but they were unaware that they had struck the submarine; it became clear later that day when the fleet returned to port and L24 was found to be missing.

[32] The Royal Navy purchased the merchant ship SS Waimana in September and disguised her as Resolution to deceive German aircraft while the battleship was on patrol in the Atlantic, a role she filled until February 1942.

She arrived off Bjerkvik late on 12 May as part of a force that included two cruisers and five destroyers; they made preparations for the attack, which began in the early hours of the following morning.

[18][35][36] On 4 June, Resolution departed Scapa Flow bound for Gibraltar, where she joined Force H, which also included the battlecruiser Hood and the battleship Valiant.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill therefore ordered Vice Admiral James Somerville, the commander of Force H, to neutralise the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir.

However, Somerville was ordered to return to Mers-el-Kebir to ensure that Dunkerque was in fact destroyed—the attacks carried out by Hood, Valiant, and Ark Royal—granting Richelieu a temporary reprieve.

Force H, again including Resolution, was then sent on 8 July to divert the attention of the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) while a Malta convoy steamed to the island.

While they were steaming off the coast, the destroyer Fortune came under attack from a French cruiser, which Resolution drove off with a single broadside of her main battery guns.

Just as they were manoeuvring into position, the French submarine Bévéziers launched a spread of torpedoes at the battleships, one of which struck Resolution amidships on her port side.

Resolution then crossed the Atlantic to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where she underwent repairs and modernisation under Lend-Lease; the modifications included altering her main battery turrets to allow elevation to 30 degrees, significantly increasing her range.

[40] In early 1942, the Royal Navy began amassing forces to send to the Indian Ocean to defend British India after the start of the Pacific War in December 1941.

Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's powerful Kido Butai, composed of six carriers and four fast battleships, was significantly stronger than Somerville's Eastern Fleet.

As a result, only the modernised Warspite could operate with the two fleet carriers; Resolution, her three sisters, and Hermes were kept away from combat to escort convoys in the Indian Ocean.

[41][42] In late March, the code-breakers at the Far East Combined Bureau, a branch of Bletchley Park, informed Somerville that the Japanese were planning a raid into the Indian Ocean to attack Colombo and Trincomalee and destroy his fleet.

Following the first raid on 5 April, Somerville withdrew Resolution and her three sisters to Mombasa, where they could secure the shipping routes in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

[43] In February 1943, Resolution and Revenge escorted the Operation Pamphlet convoy that carried the 9th Australian Division from Egypt back to Australia.

She was disarmed, her main battery guns being used as spares for Warspite and HMS Ramillies, which were being used for coastal bombardment in support of the Normandy landings at the time.

She was then placed on the disposal list and sold to the British Iron and Steel Co., who sent the vessel to Metal Industries Ltd. in Faslane to be broken up, arriving there on 13 May.