List of British Dreadnought Battlecruisers, 1908 - 1920

British battlecruiser INVINCIBLE, 1908

HMS Invincible, the prototype battlecruiser, appears a model of dash and daring, flaunting her huge 12" guns, never before used in a cruiser. Actually larger than the battleship Dreadnought (as most battlecruisers were through their development), and nearly as heaviy armed, the battlecruiser suffered from a somewhat fuzzy mission concept. Sacrificing a great deal of armored protection for the sake of superior speed, the battlecruisers proved ruthless predators when swooping down on enemy raiders and armored cruisers: nothing could out-speed them on the seas, and their armament was very strong. But in this magical combination of great force with an incredible speed of 27-28 kts, the temptation was to consider these fast scouts as fast battleships. That they were not. Fast battleships with speeds of 28-33 kts would come along -- in 1942! When thinly armored battlecruisers were placed at risk in combat with fully armored battleships (or even with better-protected German battlecruisers), the results could be horrifying. At the Battle of Jutland in 1916, Invincible herself was blown to smithereens when her inadequate flash protection allowed explosive gases from hits on the the "A" turret to penetrate her magazines and detonate them. Of a crew of 1,032, there were 6 survivors. Nor was this the only British battlecruiser disaster that day. Two other ships in Beatty's fleet blew up in exactly the same fashion, with the same heavy mortality. The casualties including the three-year-old, 13.5"-gunned Queen Mary, improved sister of the battlecruiser flagship HMS Lion.

Name

Date

Tonnage

Main Armament

Fate

Invincible, Indomitable, Inflexible

Invincible Class

1908

17,373

8 x 12"/45 Mk X

Scrapped 1921 except
Invincible, sunk at
Jutland by mag. expl.
Schematic

Indefatigable, Australia, New Zealand

Indefatigable Class

1911

18,500

8 x 12"/45 Mk X

Indefatigable sunk by mag.
explosion at Jutland
N.Z. scrapped 1922
Aus. scuttled 1924

Lion, Princess Royal

Armament Up-Sized to 13.5"

Lion Class

1912

26,270

8 x 13.5"/45 Mk VI

Scrapped 1924/26.

HMS Queen Mary

1913

26,700

8 x 13.5"/45 Mk VI

Sunk at Jutland by
magazine explosion

HMS Tiger

1914

28,340

8 x 13.5"/45 Mk VI

Scrapped 1932
Schematic

Renown, Repulse

Armament Up-Sized to 15"

Renown Class

1916

27,650

6 x 15"/42

Renown scrapped 1948
Repulse sunk by Jap.
planes off Singapore, 12/10/1941

Courageous, Glorious

Fisher's "large light cruisers," mounting huge guns but with paper-thin protection. All were converted to aircraft carriers in the 1920s.

Courageous Class

1916-17

19,230

4 x 15"/42

Courageous sunk by
U-boat, 1939.
Glorious sunk 1940
in Norway evacuation.

HMS Furious

1917

27,500

1 x 18"/40

Scrapped 1948-54

HMS Hood

1920

45,200

8 x 15"/42

Sunk by mag. expl.
in combat with Nazi
battleship Bismarck 5/24/41.

NOTE: Dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy are listed separately. For complete statistics on the ships, (with no pictures), consult World Battleships List. For a class-by-class analysis with plans and limited photos, see World War 1.co.uk.

H.M.S. Hood (1915 /1920)

HMS HOOD visiting New Zealand, 1924

HMS Hood, launched 1918, shown in 1924. Originally to have been the name ship of a 4-ship class, Hood became a one-off when her sister ships were canceled as WWI wound down; one of the many cancellations which decimated British yards within a few years -- in this case, John Brown's great shipyard at Clydebank, a few miles from Glasgow, which looked upon this single ship with special affection. At 860' and 45,200 tons, Hood dwarfed her predecessors. The largest warship afloat during the time between the wars, she was the Royal Navy's "showboat" sent on many a goodwill mission or round-the-world cruise. Her enormous size conveyed a sense of great strength -- she was, after all, longer than the Bismarck or the Japanese 70,000-ton Yamatos. In fact, the Hood was 100 ft. longer than the Japanese Nagatos built 1918-20, and less than 30 ft. shorter than the U.S. Iowa class battleships commissioned in 1942. But despite her size and firepower, Hood was not a battleship -- just an overgrown battlecruiser.

HMS HOOD in battle, 1941

Hood's first wartime assignment was as flagship of the force that neutralized the French fleet gathered at Mers-el-Kebir, the naval base near Oran in Algeria. Despite the odious nature of the duty -- firing on allies -- it was carried out quite effectively, killing and maiming some 2,000 Frenchmen in the process. Hood had been overdue for a refit when war broke out, and after several years of nonstop duty she had a legacy of long-deferred maintenance and jury-repairs when she ventured forth to meet her doom. In May 1941 she was sent, in company with the new King George VI class battleship Prince of Wales, to stop the new German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from breaking out into the North Atlantic through the Denmark Strait. Ironically, in their war games, the German crew had often "fought the Hood"; now they were doing so in reality. Within 5 minutes of opening fire, the Hood was in trouble. A fire from an 8" hit was exploding 4" ready ammo all over the starboard side amidships, and damage control didn't dare venture into the mayhem. The ship did not live to see 10 minutes in combat, as 2 long-range salvos from the Bismarck drove through Hood's flimsy deck armor and detonated her aft 15" magazines. These explosions ripped the ship in half, sending her inexorably to the bottom. In a very few minutes she was totally gone, with only a towering pillar of smoke to mark her place above the littered, oil-slicked sea. Out of a crew of more than 1,400 there only 3 survived, ever since honored as heroes in Britain.

HMS HOOD breaking up in battle; PRINCE OF WALES avoids wreckage under emergency helm

The sinking of the Hood is remembered to this day in Britain as a sharp shock to the solar plexus, in the way people recollect first hearing of JFK's assassination or the 9-11 terror strikes. The great ship, so immense, so imposing, seemingly so impregnable, had come to symbolize Britain itself over the years. The sense of loss was infinitely greater than just the destruction of one fighting unit and 1500 men: it was a blow to national prestige. Hood's sudden demise astonished and dismayed the Bismarck's crew as well: in their war games Hood had always been treated as a worthy adversary, delivering wily counterpunches in a battle royal of the high seas. Now the real Hood was completely gone within minutes of going into action. Perhaps the Bismarck too would prove vulnerable, despite all the hype about her advanced protection?

Though the Royal Navy mustered all its might to sink the Bismarck in revenge, Hood carried a freight of sentimental association which the new ship had not had time to acquire (though she will always be remembered for sinking the Hood in her first battle.) Fearing further blows to morale after Bismarck's demise, Hitler ordered his remaining surface fleet restricted to port after Operation Rheinübung -- the Bismarck's sortie. Thereafter, Germany's naval effort focused primarily on submarine warfare, a shift symbolized by the replacement of Grand Admiral Erik Raeder with Adm. Karl Dönitz, chief of the U-boat arm. In England, people of an age still revere the "Mighty Hood" for her handsome lines and bold concept. More than 65 years after her demise, the numerous modelers and artists who continue to portray the ship demonstrate the Hood's timeless appeal.

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