Battlecruiser
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Battlecruisers were large warships of the first half of the 20th century first introduced by the British Royal Navy. They evolved from armoured cruisers and in terms of ship classification they occupy a grey area between cruisers and battleships. Generally, battlecruisers were similar in layout and armament to battleships but with significantly less armour allowing for gains in speed.
Although technical specifications varied, all battlecruisers shared a similar role specification. They were designed to hunt down and outgun smaller warships (or merchant ships in the case of the pocket battleships), and outrun larger warships that they could not outgun.
Originally, to achieve this, they deviated from the standard practice of providing a ship with sufficient armour to protect against its own guns. The weight saving from the reduced armour allowed more powerful engines to be fitted. This idea was mainly conceived by British Admiral Jackie Fisher who believed "speed is the best protection". Fisher's idea centred on battlecruisers operating with the fleet, the intention being that they would hunt down enemy cruiser squadrons and evade the battleships. Germany's navy by contrast sacrificed gun calibre instead of armour in order to raise speed. Despite the major difference in design philosophy, both performed the same task.
Battlecruisers were superseded by the beginning World War II as advances in design and technology allowed fast battleships to be developed, which combined or even exceeded the best features of World War I battlecruisers and slow battleships.
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[edit] First battlecruisers
The battlecruiser was the brainchild of First Sea Lord, Sir Jackie Fisher of the Royal Navy. The navy of Victorian Britain was a massive, inefficient and, above all, expensive edifice. Driven to improve and reform the Navy, and compelled to reduce its cost, Fisher paid off the veritable host of small or old warships the Royal Navy stationed around the world for the purpose of Imperial defence, and importantly closed many of the expensive network of bases where these ships had been based.
In their stead Fisher envisaged a new type of large, fast warship. Operating in "flying squadrons" and under centralised control via the new technology of radio, they would be able to cruise at high speeds and therefore could be redeployed across entire oceans so that a single squadron could perform the role of perhaps a dozen existing warships. Although such vessels would be individually expensive, fewer would be needed so overall they would cost far less to build and operate than the multiplicity of pre-dreadnought battleships employed at the time. However, in order to be a credible threat wherever they went Fisher's new ships needed to be able to threaten any likely opponent, as such they were to be fitted with the most powerful guns available allied with recent advances in naval gunnery, which would enable them to fight at extreme ranges. Fisher foresaw a variety of roles for his new type of warship including commerce raiding, the protection of Britain's trade routes and scouting for the conventional battle fleet. However, he never intended them to be deployed as part of the main Line of Battle.
[edit] The British Designs
The design of the first battlecruiser was entrusted to the same committee that produced the Dreadnought. Compared to the most recent of the RN's cruisers they were quite different. They had a displacement similar to that of the Dreadnought but twice the power to give a speed of 25 knots. They had 12 inch guns like a contemporary battleship, but achieved speed at the expense of protection. They had armour 6 or 7 inches (150 to 180 mm) thick along the side of the hull and over the gunhouses, whereas a comparable battleship of the period had armour 11 or 12 inches (280 to 300 mm) thick. These ships completed with the most modern fire control equipment available at the time, and in this respect represented a great advance over ships completed only a few years earlier. The full advantages of centralised fire control would not be realised for some years, and the Invincible class ships were eventually fitted with director firing in the months before Jutland.
The new vessels were named Inflexible, Invincible and Indomitable, all completed in 1908. Originally thought of as simply a new type of armoured cruiser (their armour was the same as that of the older armoured cruisers'), they were originally designated "dreadnought cruisers". However, a tendency to think of them as somehow partially equal to a battleship led to the unofficial title "battleship cruisers" which led to the adoption of the term "battlecruiser" in 1912.
Having ordered three of the new "Dreadnought Armoured Cruisers" in the 1905-6 programme, the Royal Navy, faced by tight naval budgets under the new Liberal Government, considered but declined to build any in the 1906-7 and 1907-8 programmes, favouring battleships proper for those years. A single "battlecruiser" was built under the 1908-9 programme, the Indefatigable, which represented only a minor increase in size, and detail improvement over the Invincible. The following ships of the Lion class built in the 1909-10 programme represented a major increase in size, cost, speed, fire power and protection over the 12-inch ships, although the ships were still "unbalanced" in that the protection was inadequate to resist their own guns. Two Lion class ships were built in the 1909-10 programme, the second ship ordered under a blaze of journalistic, parliamentary and general public uproar generally known as the "we want eight" campaign, a desire to see eight large armoured ships authorized in the 1909-10 programme in response to fears of German naval ambitions. A slightly modified third vessel of the Lion class was ordered for the 1910-11 programme and HMS Tiger was built to a significantly revised, larger and faster design still under the 1911-12 programme. She was the last pre war battlecruiser of the Royal Navy as the 1912, 1913 and the largely un-built 1914 programme did not include any battlecruisers, an oversight offset to some extent by the admirable qualities of the Queen Elizabeth class of the 1912-13 programme, and intended to be repeated under the 1914-15 programme that was suspended on the outbreak of war.
With the return of Fisher to the Admiralty early in WWI, and the early success of the battlecruisers in the Battle of the Falkland Islands, Fisher gained permission from cabinet to complete two new battlecruisers, using some of the equipment and armament intended for the suspended battleships of the Revenge class from the 1914 programme. The result was the Renown class, ships combining high speed, six 15 inch guns but very thin six inch armour. Aside from these ships, and in line with Fisher's plans for operations in the Baltic Sea three "large light cruisers" - big ships (22,000 tons and some 750 ft long) with even less protection than the battlecruisers but carrying a few battleship calibre guns were ordered, Fisher stretching the truth in this case because he had authority to order ships up to the size of light cruiser but no further capital ships. In the event, the planned Baltic operations never materialised and the three "large light cruisers" laid down HMS Furious (the 18-inch gun design), Glorious and Courageous (each two twin 15-inch) found use elsewhere as aircraft carriers.
[edit] The German Response
The launch of HMS Invincible made all armoured cruisers afloat obsolete at a stroke, so it was inevitable that Britain's naval rivals would respond by building battlecruisers of their own. The Germans were the first to respond with the Blücher. Completed in 1909, armed with twelve 8.2 inch guns and capable of 25 knots, she had been laid down in response to inaccurate reports about the construction of the Invincibles, and in particular in the mistaken belief that the latter would only be carrying guns of 9.2 inch calibre. Although the Blücher was a fine ship by armoured cruiser standards, she was obsolete before she was completed and was destroyed by British battlecruisers at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915. Germany's first true battlecruiser was Von der Tann of 1910.
German design philosophy was dramatically different to that of the British. As early as 1906 Korvettenkapitän Vollerthun, an official representative of the RMA (Reichsmarineamt, the German Naval Office), had published a paper predicting that the armoured cruiser and battleship would merge into a single distinct type, effectively pre-empting the "fast battleship" by 30 years. Although the Germans called their battlecruisers Große Kreuzer (large cruisers) what the RMA was actually trying to build were small, fast battleships. The Germans had no global obligations to defend and, as such, all their warships were designed for a probable clash of arms in the North Sea. With this in mind, the primary role for the German battlecruiser force was to function as fleet scouts and a distinct fast division of the battlefleet, so the Germans placed combat power (in terms of both armament and protection) ahead of all other considerations when designing their battlecruisers.
German battlecruisers were expected to fight alongside the battleships once the enemy fleet was met and as such were armoured sufficiently to withstand heavy gunfire. Requiring neither the crew accommodation nor fuel bunkerage for long range cruises, the German designers were able to devote a greater proportion of the vessels tonnage to armour. To further this advantage, a great deal of attention was paid to saving weight in the machinery and fittings of the ships. Measures ranged from the adoption of small-bore water-tube boilers which gave a better power to weight ratio, right down to the piano in the Officer's mess being made from aluminium. The vessels also benefited from the wider dockyards that they were built in, allowing them to be built with a broader beam and greater internal subdivision than the British battlecruisers. The Von der Tann was protected by a 10 inch thick armoured belt, carried eight 11 inch guns and could cruise at 26 knots, but her operational range was short as she possessed only the most rudimentary accommodation for her crew.
Overall the Germans emphasised speed and protection compared to the British emphasis on speed and firepower. Indeed, Korvettenkapitan Vollerthun described their battlecruisers as Kreuzer-Schlachtschiffe ("cruiser-battleships") thus neatly defining the different design priorities of the German designs over the British "battleship-cruisers". Most German battlecruisers were armed with 11 inch guns, even as the Royal Navy adopted the 13.5 inch gun, on the basis that it was more than adequate against any likely opponent and the Germans only adopted larger guns in the battlecruiser fleet with the launch of the Derfflingers in 1913. The cumulation of pre-war German battlecruiser development, the Derfflinger class ships were 28,000 ton ships capable of 29 knots, armed with eight 12 inch guns and protected by a 12 inch armoured belt. They were handsome ships as well as being very effective and Gary Staff, Naval Historian and author, considers these ships the most effective battlecruisers of World War I.
Further evolution of the Derfflinger design resulting in the laying down of the 30,000 ton Mackensen and so called Ersatz Yorck class battlecruisers - enlarged Derfflingers with eight 14 and 15 inch guns respectively. Although all four of the Mackensens were laid down and three were launched, none were completed before the end of the war. They would have been roughly equivalent to the British Renowns in terms of speed and firepower, although much better protected.
[edit] Other Nations
In the years immediately preceding the First World War several nations including France, the United States, Austria-Hungary and Spain began to draw up designs for new classes of battlecruiser. However, only two got as far as actually laying down ships. The Japanese received their first battlecruiser in 1913 with the commissioning of the Kongō. Designed and built in England by the Vickers yard, the design of the Kongō was so advanced the Royal Navy redesigned HMS Tiger to a new configuration very similar to that of the Japanese ship. The four ships of the Kongō class were the first vessels to mount 14 inch guns (of which they had eight) and were capable of 28 knots, but were armoured in accordance with British practice and their armoured belt was only 8 inches thick at its widest point.
The Russians laid down the four ships of the Borodino class (sometimes known as the Izmail class) in 1913. Unable to build powerful enough turbines themselves, they instead purchased machinery from Germany. However, the outbreak of war halted construction and although all the hulls had been launched by 1917, there was no chance of them being completed without machinery. Had they been completed the Borodinos would have been large and impressive vessels, armed with 12 14 inch guns and protected by an armoured belt as much as 12 inches thick. However, post-revolutionary Russia had no use for them and the hulls were cut up for scrap during the 20's.
[edit] First World War
At the outbreak of the war, only three nations operated battlecruisers; The Royal Navy, the German High Seas Fleet and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The British and German battlecruisers saw a great deal of action and were involved in nearly all the major fleet actions of World War I.
[edit] The Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau
Although not a naval battle in the traditional sense, the German battlecruiser Goeben and her escort, the light cruiser Breslau, managed to escape the French and British Mediterranean fleets and sail to Constantinople, where their arrival directly caused the Turks to enter the war alliance with the Central powers. The closure of the Dardanelles to all shipping effectively sealed off Russia's only ice-free shipping route and with Goeben frustrating any attempts by the Black Sea Fleet to open them.
[edit] Battle of Heligoland Bight
A force of British light cruisers and destroyers entered the Heligoland Bight to attack German shipping in August 1914, the first month of World War I. When they met opposition from German cruisers, Admiral Beatty took his squadron of four battlecruisers into the Bight and turned the battle, ultimately sinking three German light cruisers and killing a German commander, Rear Admiral Leberecht Maass.
[edit] Battle of the Falklands
The original battlecruiser concept proved successful in December 1914 at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The British battlecruisers Inflexible and Invincible did precisely the job they were intended for when they chased down and annihilated a German cruiser squadron, consisting of the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (with some light cruisers), commanded by Admiral Maximilian Graf Von Spee in the South Atlantic Ocean.
[edit] Battle of Dogger Bank
During the Battle of Dogger Bank, the after turret of the German flagship Seydlitz was pierced by a British 13.5 inch shell which detonated in the working chamber. The charges being hoisted upwards were detonated, and the explosion flashed up into the turret and down into the magazine, setting fire to charges in the process of being handled. The gun crew tried to escape into the next turret, allowing the flash to spread, destroying both turrets internally. Seydlitz was saved from near-certain destruction only by emergency flooding of her after magazines. This near-disaster was due to the way that ammunition handling was arranged and was common to both German and British battleships and battlecruisers, but the lighter protection on the latter made them more vulnerable to the turret or barbette being pierced. The "working chamber" had been introduced in HMS Formidable (1898) and was intended to prevent such a dangerous flash, but instead made such an event more likely. The Germans learned from investigating the damaged Seydlitz and instituted improved measures to ensure ammunition handling was flash tight. The British remained unaware of the weakness, to their great misfortune at the Battle of Jutland.[1]
[edit] Battle of Jutland
At the Battle of Jutland 18 months later, both British and German battlecruisers were employed as fleet units. The British battlecruisers became engaged with both their German counterparts, the battlecruisers, and then German battleships before the arrival of the battleships of the British Grand Fleet. The result was a disaster for the Royal Navy's battlecruiser squadrons: Invincible, Queen Mary and Indefatigable exploded with the loss of all but a handful of their crews. This was due to the vulnerability of the working chamber which the Germans had discovered after the near-loss of Seydlitz at Dogger Bank and had taken preventative measures against. The lightly armoured British ships did not have flash tight ammunition handling arrangements and each was lost to a single salvo penetrating the working chamber. The better armoured and flash tight German battlecruisers fared better, in part due to poor performance of British fuzes (with failure to explode behind armour). Nevertheless, Lützow was fatally damaged after receiving more than thirty hits and had to be scuttled, although the crew saved 117 dead by enemy fire before she went down. The other German battlecruisers, Moltke, Von der Tann, Seydlitz, Derfflinger were all heavily damaged and required extensive repairs after the battle, Seydlitz barely making it home, for they had been in the very centre of enemy fire for much of the battle. No British or German battleship was sunk during the battle with the exception of the old German pre-dreadnought Pommern, the victim of torpedoes from British destroyers.
[edit] Post-war developments
Following the end of World War I many navies re-evaluated their ship designs. This led to a number of changes as many nations chose to reduce their battlecruiser fleet following the Washington Naval Treaty rather than scrap valuable battleships. Generally speaking it was felt that the German "Cruiser-battleship" concept had been vindicated and accordingly most navies preferred to develop Fast Battleships rather than follow Fisher's original "Super Cruiser" concept.
[edit] British designs
Based on their wartime experience, the Royal Navy de-emphasized battlecruisers in the original sense of the word and all but three were scrapped by the mid-1930s. In the Royal Navy, the term was applied to ships with heavy armour, but that were still capable of speeds in excess of 25 knots.
HMS Hood, launched in 1918, was the last British battlecruiser to be completed, her three sisters of the Admiral class were cancelled. However Hood was modified during construction to feature belt armour that was thought to be capable of resisting her own weapons - the classic measure of a "balanced" battleship - and her armour weaknesses were recognized and tackled to some extent during refits.
The other two battlecruisers retained, HMS Renown and Repulse were modernized significantly in a series of refits between 1920 and 1939. Like several other elderly British capital ships, Renown underwent a total reconstruction between 1937 and 1939, to make her suitable for acting as a fast consort for aircraft carriers. Similar rebuilds planned for Repulse and Hood were cancelled by the events of WWII.
Of the three "large light cruisers," Furious had already been converted to an aircraft carrier during the war and seeing that Glorious and Courageous were too big and too heavily armed to fit in with the Washington Naval Treaty definition of cruisers, the Royal Navy chose to repeat the Furious aircraft carrier conversion on both vessels rather than being scrap them outright.
Although the Royal Navy had no plans to increase the size of her battlecruiser fleet after WWI, when the US and Japanese Navy laid down their Lexington and Akagi class battlecruisers, both of which would have outclassed HMS Hood, the Royal Navy felt compelled to respond and as part of their new warship building programme the British ordered four 48,000 ton G3 battlecruisers. Owing little to British wartime designs, these ambitious vessels would have been superior to any battlecruiser afloat, or indeed under construction, at the time. In fact, in terms of their blend of firepower, speed and protection the G3 design would remain unmatched until the launch of the similarly sized US Navy Iowa class fast battleships 20 years later. Had they been completed the G3's would actually have been immense fast battleships and the battlecruiser name came from their high speed and armour relative to the planned N3 battleships they would serve alongside. In event both the G3 and N3 designs were cancelled by the Washington Treaty in 1922 before being laid down, probably to the relief of the Treasury as they would undoubtedly have proven vastly expensive to construct.
When the Washington treaty ended, like most nations the British concentrated on developing new classes of fast battleship. The Royal Navy would never again design or construct a battlecruiser.
[edit] Japanese Designs
Prior to the Washington Treaty, the Imperial Japanese Navy laid down four Amagi class battlecruisers. These vessels would have been of unprecedented size and power, being as fast and well armoured as HMS Hood whilst carrying a main battery of ten 16" guns - the most powerful armament ever proposed for a battlecruiser. Like the British G3's the Amagi's fell foul of the Washington Treaty and were cancelled. The first two hulls, those of Amagi and Akagi were taken in hand for conversion into aircraft carriers and the other two vessels were scrapped. Unfortunately, in 1923 the Amagi was damaged beyond repair by an earthquake and was broken up on the slips, the hull of one of the proposed Tosa class battleships, Kaga, being converted in her stead.
Unable to pursue new construction, the Imperial Japanese Navy instead chose to improve their existing battlecruisers of the Kongō class (Hiei, Haruna, Kirishima and Kongō) by increasing the elevation of the guns to 40 degrees, adding anti-torpedo bulges and additional armour, and building on a "pagoda" mast. The 3,800 tons of additional armour slowed their speed, but between 1933 and 1940 replacement of heavy equipment and an increase in the length of the hull by 26 ft (8 m) allowed them to reach up to 30 knots once again. They were reclassified as "fast battleships", although their armour and guns still fell short compared to surviving World War I-era battleships in American or British navies.
[edit] US Designs
The United States Navy re-tasked two battlecruiser hulls as aircraft carriers: USS Lexington and Saratoga were both designed as battlecruisers (the hull designations were originally CC-1 and CC-3) but converted part-way through construction, although this was only considered marginally preferable to scrapping the hulls outright (the remaining four: Constellation, Ranger, Constitution and United States were indeed scrapped).
The Lexington class battlecruisers, if completed as planned, would have been exceptionally fast and well armed, but would have carried armour little better than that of the very first battlecruisers. With that in mind they represented the ultimate evolution of the original "super-cruiser" concept, rather than being hybrid fast battleships like HMS Hood or the Japanese Amagis.
They were planned to be armed with eight 16" guns in four turrets but were only protected with a seven inch armoured belt, proof against cruiser sized weapons but completely inadequate against any weapon likely to be carried by a rival battleship or battlecruiser. However, the engines required to propel these vessels at 33 knots (their design speed) made them into fast, flexible aircraft carriers with large growth margins.
[edit] Re-armament
As war became more likely nations began to rebuild their forces. At first lip-service was paid to the Treaty of Versailles and the Washington Naval Treaty, but as war became more likely the designs became more ambitious. Most nations preferred to build fast battleships but Germany, Italy, France and Russia all designed new battlecruisers. Even so, most of these vessels were considerably better protected than their First World War counterparts and several were arguably genuine fast battleships. Ultimately the Italians chose to upgrade their old battleships rather than build new battlecruisers, whereas the Russians laid down the 35,000 ton Kronshtadt Class, but were unable to launch them before the Germans invaded in 1941 and captured the hulls. Only Germany and France actually completed any vessels.
[edit] German designs
The German pocket battleships (German:Panzerschiffe - armored ship: Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee), built to meet the 10,000 ton displacement limit of the Treaty of Versailles, were another attempt at a cruiser-battleship concept. Rather than construct a lightweight battleship which sacrificed protection in order to attain high speed, the pocket battleships were relatively small vessels with only six 11 inch (280 mm) guns — essentially large heavy cruisers. They attained fairly high speeds of 26 knots (52 km/h), and reasonable protection, while (allegedly!) staying close to the displacement limit, by using welded rather than riveted construction, triple main armament turrets, and replacing the normal steam turbine power with a pair of massive 9 cylinder diesel engines driving each propeller shaft (an ironic reversion from turbine to reciprocating engines). They were later reclassified as "heavy cruisers", having heavier guns and armour than regular heavy cruisers at the cost of speed. Unfortunately, they were outclassed by British WW1-era true battlecruisers in speed, weaponry, and protection. (They in fact had basic cruiser armour, except for the turrets.)
Two more ships were built later in the 1930s, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were considerably more powerful. At 38,900 tons full load they were somewhat larger than the French Dunkerque class and very well armoured. As built, they had three triple 11-inch gun turrets, but the mounts were designed to accept twin 15-inch turrets (six guns total) when enough became available. However, circumstances and the fates of the two ships - Scharnhorst sunk by gunfire, Gneisenau heavily damaged by bombs and her repair sacrificed to higher priorities - meant that this plan was abandoned. At the time, treaty requirements allowed the production of 12+ inch guns at 1 a year, which along with the very time consuming production of naval guns, kept these two ships with 11-inch guns. The Royal Navy categorised them as battlecruisers since they followed the Imperial German Navy design lineage of trading off gun size for protection and speed. The German Navy nonetheless categorised them as battleships.
[edit] French designs
As a response to the German pocket battleships the French decided to build the Dunkerque class in the 1930s. They were labelled "fast battleships" and were armed with 13 inch (330mm) guns arranged in two quadruple turrets located forward. They were considerably larger, faster and more powerfully armed than the ships they were designed to hunt. This last design illustrated inter-war technological developments. The ultimate limit on ship speed was drag from the water displaced (which increases as a cube of speed) rather than weight, so heavier armour slowed World War II battleships by only a couple of knots (4 km/h) over their more lightly armoured brethren. Heavy guns mounted on fast and well armoured fast battleships invalidated the concept of the battlecruiser as a ship class in its own right.
[edit] Second World War
[edit] Commerce raiding
In the early years of the war the German ships each had a measure of success hunting merchant ships in the Atlantic. The pocket battleships were deployed alone and sank a number of vessels, causing disruption to the trade routes which supplied the UK. They were pursued by the Royal Navy and on one occasion, at the Battle of the River Plate in 1939, the hunter became the hunted.
Admiral Graf Spee had been at sea at the start of WWII and engaged in a successful commerce raiding spree. Off the coast of South America, Admiral Graf Spee encountered the British cruisers Exeter, Achilles and Ajax. Apparently mistaking the cruisers for destroyers, the Graf Spee did not employ the battlecruiser doctrine and flee before the superior force. While Admiral Graf Spee inflicted heavy damage on the Exeter, it was forced to retire to neutral Uruguay. Unable to stay in port any longer without internment, and led to believe by the nature of British radio transmissions that aircraft carriers and 15-inch gunned battlecruisers were too close to evade, her captain elected to scuttle his ship, and then accepted responsibility for its destruction by committing suicide.
Allied battlecruisers such as Renown, Repulse, Dunkerque and Strasbourg were employed on operations to hunt down the commerce raiding German battlecruisers, but they rarely got close to their targets, Renown enjoying a brief clash against the German 11-inch battlecruisers with a few non-critical hits on Gniesenau but being unable to keep up in bad weather. The one stand-up fight was when the Bismarck was sent out as a raider and was intercepted by HMS Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales in May 1941. However, the modern German battleship was not suitable prey for the elderly British battlecruiser and the Bismarck's 15 inch shells caused a magazine explosion in Hood reminiscent of the Battle of Jutland. Only three men survived.
Gneisenau and Scharnhorst hunted together and were initially successful at commerce raiding, sinking the British armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi in 1939. Following repairs from damage during the Norwegian campaign, the two battlecruisers set out commerce raiding once again in 1941 and sank 22 merchant ships. They returned to Brest in northern France but found this port was vulnerable to Royal Air Force attacks and were obliged to return to Germany. They did so in the Channel Dash, a daring and successful run up the English Channel. However, they were both damaged by mines and although Scharnhorst was repaired, Gneisenau was damaged again in RAF bombing raids and was eventually disarmed and sunk as a blockship. Scharnhorst was employed once more to attack commerce and attempted to raid the Arctic convoys in December 1943. However, she was surprised by the battleship HMS Duke of York with the cruisers Jamaica, Norfolk and Belfast at the Battle of North Cape and sunk on 26 December 1943. 14-inch gunfire from the battleship crippled her, then the attendant British cruisers and destroyers closed in and finished her off.
The use of battlecruisers as commerce raiders was curtailed following an attack by the Admiral Scheer on a convoy guarded by the HMS Jervis Bay, an armed merchant cruiser. It persuaded the British Admiralty that convoys had to be guarded by battleships or battlecruisers. The older R-class battleships and the un-upgraded Queen Elizabeths (Malaya and Barham) were used for this task, for which they were quite adequate despite their age, and subsequently the smaller German ships were forced away from their quarry. Additionally, the air gap over the North Atlantic closed, Huff-Duff (radio triangulation equipment) improved, airborne centimetric radar was introduced and convoys received escort carrier protection. The results of some of these developments were illustrated by the successful defence of convoys at the Battle of the Barents Sea and the Battle of the North Cape.
[edit] Norwegian campaign
The Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine both deployed battlecruisers during the Norwegian Campaign in April 1940. The Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst both engaged HMS Renownin appalling weather and although they had stronger armour than their counterpart, the British ship could hit them harder and at a longer range. They disengaged after Gneisenau sustained damage.
Later in the campaign they returned and sank the light aircraft carrier HMS Glorious (a converted battlecruiser herself) and her destroyer escort. One of the destroyers (HMS Acasta) succeeded in damaging the Scharnhorst with a torpedo, and later a submarine did the same to Gneisenau, forcing both ships to spend several months in repair. The pocket battleship Lützow was similarly damaged by HMS Spearfish during the campaign.
[edit] Mediterranean
The French battlecruisers had fled to North Africa following the fall of France. In July 1940 Force H under Admiral James Somerville was ordered to force their surrender or destroy them. The Dunkerque was damaged by shells from HMS Hood at Mers-el-Kebir but escaped to join the Strasbourg at Toulon. Both ships were scuttled on 27 November 1942, although Strasbourg was raised and used by the Italian navy before being sunk again in an air attack on 18 August 1944.
[edit] Pacific War
The first battlecruiser to see action in the Pacific War was Repulse when she was sunk near Singapore on December 10, 1941 whilst in company with HMS Prince of Wales. She had received a refit to give extra anti-aircraft protection and extra armour between the wars, however despite these additions and her agility, without aerial protection she was unable to avoid the continuous waves of Japanese torpedo bombers indefinitely.
The Japanese Kongō class "fast battleships" were used extensively as carrier escorts for most of their wartime career. However, in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 12 November the Hiei was sent out to bombard US positions. She was badly damaged by gunfire from US cruisers and destroyers. She was attacked by US aircraft from Guadalcanal’s American held airfield (Henderson Field) the next day and left to sink north of Savo Island. A few days later on 15 November 1942 Kirishima, engaged the U.S. battleships South Dakota and Washington, and was scuttled following damage from 9 hits inflicted by the Washington and perhaps South Dakota. In contrast South Dakota survived 42 hits and was back in operation four months later. She did, however, lose all electric power in the action (a self-inflicted wound from improper fire control procedures; the ship's breakers had not been put into combat status and the first salvo of the aft turret knocked them offline). and did not contribute to the destruction of the Japanese force. The Kongō survived the Battle of Leyte Gulf, but was eventually sunk on 21 November 1944 in the Formosa Strait by three torpedoes from the U.S. submarine Sealion. Haruna was involved in bombardment operations at Guadalcanal, the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. She was attacked by American carrier aircraft of Task Force 38 and B-24 bombers of the United States Army Air Forces while at Kure on 28 July 1945 and sank at her moorings.
[edit] The Last Battlecruisers
On the eve of the Second World War the Battlecruiser enjoyed a late renaissance in popularity. The Dutch, Japanese and Americans all planned new classes of Battlecruiser specifically to counter the large Heavy cruisers being built by their naval rivals - especially the Japanese Mogami class cruisers. The Germans also designed a class of lightly protected battlecruisers. Some of these vessels were variously described as "super-cruisers," "large cruisers" or even "unrestricted cruisers." They were optimised as cruiser-killers, fleet scouts and commerce raiders, and many authorities consider them battlecruisers in everything but name.
The first such battlecruisers were the Dutch "1047" design. Never officially assigned names, the Dutch designed these vessels with the assistance of the Germans and Italians to protect their East Indies Colonies. They broadly resembled the German Scharnhorst Class and had the same main battery, but would have been considerably lighter and only protected against 8 inch gun fire. Although the design was completed, work on the vessels never commenced as the Germans overran the Netherlands in 1940.
The Germans planned to build three battlecruisers as part of their Z Plan for the expansion of the Navy. With six 15 inch (38 cm) guns, high speed, excellent range but very thin armor, they were intended as commerce raiders. Only one of these was ordered shortly before World War II broke out and no work was ever done on it. No names were assigned, and they were known as O, P, and Q. The new class was not universally welcomed in the Kreigsmarine, their abnormally light protection gaining the class the derogatory nickname Ohne Panzer Quatsch (without armour nonsense) within certain circles of the Navy.
The only class of these last battlecruisers to be laid down were the United States Navy's two Alaska class "large cruisers", Alaska and Guam. The Alaskas were classified as "large cruisers" instead of battlecruisers (ironically, the Germans had used exactly the same term to describe their battlecruisers during WWI). With a main armament of nine twelve-inch guns in three triple turrets, they were designed to hunt down Japanese heavy cruisers and they lacked the armoured belt and torpedo defense system normal in capital ships. However, unlike most battlecruisers their protection could withstand fire from their own caliber of gun, albeit only in a very narrow range band. Like the contemporary Iowa-class fast battleships, their speed made them ultimately more useful as carrier escorts and bombardment ships than as the sea combatants they were developed to be and a planned additional four ships of the Alaska class were cancelled after the war. Hawaii, the third ship, was laid up for years at over 90% complete; many plans were made and rejected for completing her either as a missile ship or a command vessel; eventually she was scrapped incomplete.
The Japanese started designing the B64 class, similar to the Alaska but with 12.2 inch guns. They responded to news of the Alaskas by upgrading them to the B65 design. Armed with 14 inch guns, the B65's would have been the best armed of the new breed of battlecruisers, but they still would have had only sufficient protection to keep out 8 inch shells. Much like the Dutch battlecruisers, the Japanese got as far as completing the design for the B65's, but never laid them down. By the time the designs were ready the Japanese Navy recognised that they had little use for the vessels and that their priority for construction should lie with Aircraft Carriers. Like the Alaskas, the Japanese did not call these ships battlecruisers.
[edit] Cold War designs
In spite of the fact that the Second World War had demonstrated battleships and battlecruisers to be generally obsolete, Josef Stalin's fondness for big gun armed warships caused the Soviet Union to plan several large cruiser classes in the late 1940s and early 1950s that would be a response for the Alaska class vessels. In Russia, they were called "heavy cruisers" (thyazholyi kreyser).
The fruits of this program were the project 82 (Stalingrad) cruisers, with 36,500 tons standard load (42,300 tons full load), 9 guns 305 mm and a speed of 35 knots. Three ships were laid in 1951–52, but after Stalin's death they were canceled in April 1953. Apart from high costs, the main reason was, that gun-armed ships became obsolete with an advent of guided missiles. Only a central armoured hull section of the first cruiser Stalingrad was launched in 1954 and then used as a target for rockets.
The Soviet Kirov class of Raketny Kreyser (Missile Cruiser), displacing approximately 26,000 tons, is classified as a battlecruiser in the 1996–7 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships, even though in actuality they are very large missile cruisers. Their classification as battlecruisers arises from their displacement, which is roughly equal to that of a World War I battleship, and the fact that they possess more firepower than nearly every other surface ship. However, the Kirov-class lacks the heavy armour that distinguishes battlecruisers from regular cruisers and they are classified as "heavy missile cruisers" in Russia. There were four members of the class completed, Kirov, Frunze, Kalinin, and Yuri Andropov. As the ships were named after Communist personalities, after the fall of the USSR they were given traditional names of the Imperial Russian Navy, respectively Admiral Ushakov, Admiral Lazarev, Admiral Nakhimov, and Petr Velikiy. Due to budget constraints two members of this class have been decommissioned, although Petr Velikiy and Admiral Nakhimov are in active service and funds are being gathered for possible repair of Admiral Lazarev. Nakhimov was returned to service early, at the beginning of 2006, possibly due to increasing tensions in the Middle East and potential Russian naval involvement therein.
[edit] Problems with the idea
In practice, battlecruisers rarely saw the type of independent action for which they were designed. The increase in gunnery technology was so swift in the years following 1905, that there was a blurring of the distinction between the battleship and battlecruiser. At Jutland the guns on Beatty's flagship, HMS Lion were 13.5-inch, which was larger than most German and many British battleships.
In most cases, the temptation to add extra big guns to the main fleet proved hard to resist. As a result, battlecruiser squadrons were added to the line of battle — a role for which they were not designed and one that exposed them to great risk. The armour on a battlecruiser remained that of (or slightly more than) a normal cruiser. Thus the ships could dish out a lot more punishment than they could absorb. Any advantage they had in speed was lost when locked into formation at the speed of the slowest battleship in the line of battle. Heavy shells from opposing capital ships could easily penetrate their thinner armour. During Jutland, both British and German battlecruisers scored hits on each other. The British ships came off poorly, where the German ships' fared better due to better internal protection and poor performance of the British shells.
During the Second World War large-scale close range fleet actions did not occur. Battlecruisers were paired with battleships in roles such as raiding (German), convoy escort, or as part of task forces. In operations where battlecruisers did fight battleships, such as Hood and Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Duke of York, Kirishima and Washington, the battlecruiser was destroyed by gunfire. They were equally vulnerable to aircraft, and during World War II several were lost in this way.
[edit] Science fiction
In science fiction, the meaning of the word "battlecruiser" is generally somewhat different. Usually it denotes a spaceship more comparable to the fast battleships of World War II: A large, fast and tough vessel with both high firepower and enough protection to dish out and take considerable amounts of damage.
- In Star Trek, Klingon "battlecruisers" often menaced the Starship Enterprise—which was classified as a "heavy cruiser", and just as often faced her on even terms. The crew of the Klingon vessel in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock also refer to the Enterprise as a "Federation battlecruiser" at one point.
- In The Mote in God's Eye (by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) a battlecruiser (named MacArthur) is seen as intermediate in power between a battleship and a heavy cruiser.
- In David Weber's Honorverse, a battlecruiser (BC) is in-between a battleship (BB) and a heavy cruiser (CA).
- In the MMOG EVE Online, a battlecruiser has much better protection and somewhat greater firepower than an ordinary cruiser, but is clearly inferior to a battleship. For example: battlcruisers fit "medium" guns, which are cruiser class armaments, as opposed to the larger battleship cannons. The similarities between the real world battlecruiser concepts and their EVE equivalents varies by ship type. The Caldari battlecruisers follow somewhat along the lines of the German concept, in that they fit relatively weak weapons (their damage output is higher than that of a cruiser) but have an incredibly resilient defense. Minmatar battlecruisers (and the Gallente tier one battlecruiser, the Brutix), in comparison, are closer to the British battlecruiser concept in that they can potentially do as much or even more damage than a battleship, but could not easily withstand firepower similar to their own. (See Spaceships of EVE Online)
- In the computer strategy game StarCraft, the battlecruiser is the most powerful unit of the Terran race and can be seen as the flagship for many Terran generals. (It might also bear mentioning that the voice actor for the Terran battlecruiser speaks with a Russian accent)
- In Homeworld 2, the battlecruiser is the most powerful unit that can be built, and is practically invulnerable to almost every other unit in the game.
- In Stargate SG-1, the battlecruiser is the only capital class vessel in use by humans.
[edit] See also
- Protected cruiser
- Armored cruiser
- Light cruiser
- Cruiser
- Heavy cruiser
- List of cruisers
- Crossing the T
[edit] Notes
- ^ Naval Battles of the First World War, Geoffrey Bennett, Penguin Books Classic Military History, 2001, ISBN 0-14-139087-5
[edit] References
- Bonney, George The Battle of Jutland 1916 Sutton Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-0750941785
- Brooks, John, Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland, The Question of Fire Control,Routledge, Abingdon, 2005.
- Burr, Lawrence British Battlecruisers 1914- 1918 (New Vanguard) Osprey Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-1846030086
- Hough, Richard Dreadnought: A History of the Modern Battleship MacMillan Publishing Company, 1975. ISBN 978-0025544208
- Ireland, Bernard, and Tony Gibbons Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century New York: HarperCollins, 1996. ISBN 0-00-470997-7 Also covers battlecruisers
- Massie, Robert K, Dreadnought, Jonathan Cape, London, 1992.
- Miller, David. The Illustrated Directory of Warships: from 1860 to the Present Day. London: Salamander, 2001 ISBN 0-86288-677-5
- Roberts, John Battlecruisers, Chatham Publishing, London, 1997.
- Staff, Gary German Battlecruisers 1914-18 (New Vanguard) Osprey Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-1846030093
- Van Der Vat, Dan The ship that changed the world: The Escape of the Goeben to the Dardanelles in 1914 Adler & Adler, 1986. ASIN B000JN9QC6
