British Battlecruisers
Entries in bold indicate photos.
Invincible Class
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Indomitable Inflexible Invincible |
The first battlecruisers, these ships were cruiser versions of Dreadnought.
They made all other cruisers obsolete, as Dreadnought had done to battleships.
However, to achieve the required speed, armour was vastly reduced, and this would prove fatal, Invincible being lost at Jutland. |
Indefatigable Class
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Indefatigable |
The second class of British battlecruisers were a slight improvement on the Invincibles, having a proper 8 gun broadside which was very resticted on the previous ships. However, the light armour was not improved. Australia and New Zealand were paid for by those states, but were attached to the Grand Fleet during the war. |
Lion Class
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Lion Princess Royal Queen Mary |
The Lions were intended to rectify the faults of the Indefatigables of poor protection, and to mount 13.5" guns with full broadsides. However, the speed required meant that the ships were much larger then their predecessors, and protection again suffered. |
Tiger Class
| Tiger | Intended as the fourth of the Lion class, Tiger was built to a different design influenced by the Japanese Kongo. Protection was on a similar scale to the Lions, but better distributed, enabling Tiger to survive a mauling at Jutland. |
Courageous Class
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Courageous Glorious |
Officially classified as battlecruisers, they were in fact 'large light cruisers'.
They were intended mainly for shore bombardment as part of Fishers 'Baltic
Plan', which was never put into action.
Postwar plans to scrap the two 15" ships were cancelled when it was realised they could be converted into fast aircraft carriers. |
Furious Class
| Furious | Furious was the third of Fishers 'large light cruisers'. She was completed with a flying off deck in place of the forward turret, but was eventually converted to a full deck carrier. |
Renown Class
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Renown Repulse |
Originally intended to be part of the Revenge class of 8 battleships (of which the last 2 had been cancelled), these 2 ships were assembled from the materials from the 2 cancelled Revenges. Both received refits in the interwar period. |
Admiral Class
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Anson Hood Howe Rodney |
The last and best known British battlecruiser was originally intended to be
one of a class of 4, but the cost of building them, £6,000,000 each, was
too much, and 3 were cancelled on the slips.
On her launch, Hood was the largest and fastest warship in the world, but her speed was gained at the expense of protection, especially horizontal, which would contribute to her destruction. |
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