List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy
The battlecruiser was the brainchild of Admiral Sir John ("Jacky") Fisher, the man who had sponsored the construction of the world's first "all big gun" warship, HMS Dreadnought.
All three ships were destroyed by more heavily armoured German battlecruisers,[3] with the British failure to prevent fires or explosions in the gun turrets from reaching the magazines also playing a role in the losses.
[4] The Renown and Courageous classes, built during the war, were begun when Admiral Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord for the second time in late 1914.
Each of these classes in turn served as the fastest capital ships in the world and were heavily armed with four or six 15-inch (381 mm) guns, but they paid for their speed and armament by having less armour than battleships.
The design resembled that of HMS Dreadnought, but sacrificed armour protection and one gun turret from the main battery for a 4-knot (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) speed advantage.
Invincible and Inflexible were sent to the South Atlantic in late 1914 to hunt down the German East Asia Squadron and destroyed it at the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
Indomitable participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank in the North Sea in early 1915 while Inflexible was badly damaged during the opening stages of the Dardanelles Campaign.
[9] The design of the Indefatigable class represented a modest reworking of the preceding Invincible-class battlecruisers, featuring increased endurance and an improved cross-deck arc of fire for their midships wing turrets achieved by lengthening the hull.
Like its predecessor, the design resembled the contemporary dreadnought, but sacrificed armour protection and one turret from the main battery for a 4-knot speed advantage.
Indefatigable and New Zealand participated in the Battle of Jutland, where the former was destroyed by a magazine explosion after numerous hits from the battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann.
During the Battle of Jutland she suffered a serious propellant fire that destroyed one gun turret, which had to be removed and rebuilt while the ship was under repair for several months.
[23] Princess Royal served in the Battle of Heligoland Bight a month after the war began and then was sent to the Caribbean to prevent the East Asia Squadron from using the Panama Canal.
During the Battle of Dogger Bank she scored only a few hits, although one directly crippled the German armoured cruiser Blücher, which allowed the enemy vessel to be caught and sunk by the concentrated fire of the British battlecruisers.
Both ships spent the rest of the war on uneventful patrols in the North Sea, although they did provide distant cover during the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917.
[23] HMS Queen Mary was similar to the Lion-class battlecruisers, though she was slightly larger and given more powerful engines to achieve the same speed as the earlier ships.
As part of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, she unsuccessfully attempted to intercept a German force that bombarded the North Sea coast of England in December 1914.
The German battlecruiser SMS Derfflinger, in the meantime, had lost sight of her previous target in the haze and switched to Queen Mary.
The ship was assigned to the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron for the duration of the war and participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank in early 1915 even though she was still shaking down and did not perform well.
The Director of Naval Construction (DNC), Eustace Tennyson-D'Eyncourt, quickly produced an entirely new design to meet Admiral Lord Fisher's requirements and the builders agreed to deliver the ships in 15 months.
The ship was transferred back to Force H for Operation Torch and spent much of 1943 refitting and transporting Winston Churchill and his staff to and from various conferences with Allied leaders.
To maximize their speed, the Courageous class were the first capital ships of the Royal Navy to use geared steam turbines and small-tube boilers.
The class was going to consist of Hood, Anson, Howe, and Rodney—all names of famous Admirals—but the latter three ships were suspended as the material and labour required to complete them was needed for higher-priority merchantmen and escort vessels.
On 23 April 1937, after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, she escorted three British merchantmen into Bilbao harbour despite the presence of the Nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera that attempted to blockade the port.
