Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and the inconclusive action of 19 August, her service during World War I generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea.

The turbines were rated at 27,000 shaft horsepower (20,000 kW) and were intended to give the battleships a speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph).

[2] During her sea trials on 5 March 1912, Thunderer reached a maximum speed of 20.8 knots (38.5 km/h; 23.9 mph) from 27,427 shp (20,452 kW), although hampered by a boiler malfunction.

The ships carried enough coal and fuel oil to give them a range of 6,730 nautical miles (12,460 km; 7,740 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

[3] The Orion class was equipped with 10 breech-loading (BL) 13.5-inch (343 mm) Mark V guns in five hydraulically powered twin-gun turrets, all on the centreline.

Two flying-off platforms were fitted aboard the ship during 1917–1918; these were mounted on 'B' and 'X' turret roofs and extended onto the gun barrels.

[6] Thunderer was the sixth ship of her name to serve in the Royal Navy[7] and was laid down by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at their shipyard in Poplar, London on 13 April 1910 and launched on 1 February 1911.

They then participated in training manoeuvres with Vice-Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg commanding the "Blue Fleet" aboard Thunderer.

Thunderer decisively outshot the latter ship, although some of her success was because her director was above the smoke that obscured the target from Orion's guns.

During the annual manoeuvres in August, Thunderer was the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander of the "Red Fleet".

The squadron departed for gunnery practice off the northern coast of Ireland on the morning of 27 October and the dreadnought Audacious struck a mine, laid a few days earlier by the German armed merchant cruiser SS Berlin.

On the evening of 22 November 1914, the Grand Fleet conducted a fruitless sweep in the southern half of the North Sea; Thunderer stood with the main body in support of Vice-Admiral David Beatty's 1st Battlecruiser Squadron.

Almost three weeks later, Thunderer participated in another fleet training operation west of Orkney during 2–5 November and repeated the exercise at the beginning of December.

On the night of 25 March, Thunderer and the rest of the fleet sailed from Scapa Flow to support Beatty's battlecruisers and other light forces raiding the German Zeppelin base at Tondern.

On 21 April, the Grand Fleet conducted a demonstration off Horns Reef to distract the Germans while the Imperial Russian Navy relaid its defensive minefields in the Baltic Sea.

[22] On 31 May, Thunderer, under the command of Captain James Fergusson, was the eighth ship from the head of the battle line after deployment.

After sunset, the battlecruiser SMS Moltke spotted the four Orion-class ships at 22:30 and signalled a challenge to Thunderer before sheering off.

They enforced strict wireless silence during the operation, which prevented Room 40 cryptanalysts from warning the new commander of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Beatty.

The British only learned of the operation after an accident aboard the battlecruiser SMS Moltke forced her to break radio silence to inform the German commander of her condition.

[26] The ship was present at Rosyth, Scotland, when the High Seas Fleet surrendered there on 21 November[27] and she remained part of the 2nd BS through 1 March 1919.