“I saw a large plate, which I judged to be the top of a turret, blown into the air… My attention was drawn from this by a sheet of flame by her second funnel, which shot up about 600 feet” Commander Alan Mackenzie-Grieve, HMS Birmingham, observing the hit on HMS Lion At just after 4pm, on 31 May 1916, HMS Lion was hit with a lethal barrage of German shells. The colossal naval battle off the coast of Jutland had been raging for only just over an hour, with German and British ships pounding one another with devastating firepower that would eventually obliterate some 25 vessels. Crippled, the HMS Lion and its 1,000 crew were now seemingly doomed to meet a similar end, as fire threatened to ignite one of…