For a year from November 1999 to November 2000 a woman living in my home town was the oldest person alive in Europe and the second oldest in the world behind an American from Virginia.  

She had a few nicknames in the RN, 'thinskin' and because of her lack of armour and an eggshell armed with hammers. A wonderful career but one incident stands out about her, when she took on two modern German battleships alone. When built she was the fastest capital ship in the world and remained so for a considerable time. However, a heavy cloud hung over her class and that was a strange ability to completely blow up when hit. Three of her sister ships had gone down to plunging fire at the Battle of Jutland and so the Admiralty decided on a full refit from the deck up and down. Replacing the innards for modern machinery of the time saved around 3,000 tons in weight. New and modern 15 inch big guns, radar gun aiming changed her out of all proportion to what she was. Because of all this she attracted a new nickname HMS Refit. When the Nazis were taking Norway, two of their latest battleships (come battlecruisers) Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were involved in protection when the Renown suddenly turned up. She fired her first salvo at 18,000 yards. It didn't take long before the first one landed and knocked out Gneisenau's radar. The second and third salvo knocked out a gun turret. Retribution should have arrived when two shells hit Renown but failed to explode. Admiral Lutgens (of Bismark fame) decided he'd seen enough and withdrew. Renown joined the Med fleet and performed a multiple of tasks from protection to bombing inland and coastal targets and was chosen to carry Churchill across the Atlantic to meet Roosevelt. I recall reading about the impact on US sailors she and her crew made. She was battle hardened and held the scars of battle to prove it.  The Yanks, as they do, went to town on these fellow sailors and treated them to anything and I mean anything, they wanted. The poor girl was eventually scrapped after the war. We never kept a one of these wonders