HMS Rodney was one of two Nelson-class battleships built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1920s. The ship entered service in 1928, and spent her peacetime career with the Atlantic and Home Fleets, sometimes serving as a flagship when her sister ship, Nelson, was being refitted. During the early stages of the Second World War, she searched for German commerce raiders, participated in the Norwegian Campaign, and escorted convoys in the Atlantic Ocean. Rodney played a major role in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in mid-1941.

The Nelson class was a class of two battleships of the British Royal Navy, built shortly after, and under the terms of, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. They were the only British battleships built between the Revenge class and the King George V class, ordered in 1936.