List of battlecruisers of World War I

Last updated February 03, 2024

This is a list of battlecruisers of World War I. A battlecruiser, or battle cruiser, was a capital ship built in the first half of the 20th century. They were similar in size, cost, and carried similar armament to battleships, but they generally carried less armour to obtain faster speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, in the first decade of the century, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The original aim of the battlecruiser was to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they increasingly became used alongside the better-protected battleships.

Battlecruisers served in the navies of Britain, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, Australia and Japan during World War I, most notably at the Battle of the Falkland Islands and in the several raids and skirmishes in the North Sea which culminated in a pitched fleet battle, the Battle of Jutland. British battlecruisers, in particular, suffered heavy losses at Jutland, which modern research has revealed was due to dangerous ammunition handling practises rather than the weak armour usually attributed as the weakness.^[1] By the end of the war, capital ship design had developed with battleships becoming faster and battlecruisers becoming more heavily armoured, blurring the distinction between a battlecruiser and a fast battleship. The Washington Naval Treaty, which limited capital ship construction from 1922 onwards, treated battleships and battlecruisers identically, and the new generation of battlecruisers planned was scrapped under the terms of the treaty.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]

The list includes armed vessels that served during the war and in the immediate aftermath, inclusive of localized ongoing combat operations, garrison surrenders, post-surrender occupation, colony re-occupation, troop and prisoner repatriation. Some uncompleted battlecruisers are included, out of historic interest.

List of battlecruisers of World War I
Ship	Operator	Class	Displacement (tonnes)	First commissioned	End of service	Fate
Australia	Royal Australian Navy	Indefatigable	18,800	21 June 1913	12 December 1921	Scuttled 12 April 1924
Borodino	Imperial Russian Navy	Borodino	33,000			Launched 31 July 1915, sold for scrap 21 August 1923
Courageous	Royal Navy	Courageous	19,490	28 October 1916	17 September 1939	Converted to aircraft carrier 1924–1928, sunk by submarine 17 September 1939
Derfflinger	Imperial German Navy	Derfflinger	26,600	1 September 1914	10 May 1917	Scuttled 21 June 1919, refloated 1939, scrapped 1946–1948
Ersatz Yorck		Ersatz Yorck	33,500			Laid down July 1916, broken up 1918
Fürst Bismarck		Mackensen	31,000			Laid down 3 November 1915, broken up 1922
Furious	Royal Navy	Courageous	19,826	26 June 1917	15 September 1944	Converted to aircraft carrier 1921–1925, paid off April 1945, broken up 1948–1954
Glorious	Royal Navy	Courageous	19,490	14 October 1916	8 June 1940	Converted to aircraft carrier 1924–1930, sunk 8 June 1940
Graf Spee	Imperial German Navy	Mackensen	31,000			Launched 15 September 1917, stricken 17 November 1919, sold for scrap 28 October 1921
Haruna	Imperial Japanese Navy	Kongō	27,384	19 April 1915	28 July 1945	Sunk 28 July 1945, refloated and scrapped 1946
Hiei	Imperial Japanese Navy	Kongō	27,384	4 August 1914	13 November 1942	Sunk 13 November 1942
Hindenburg	Imperial German Navy	Derfflinger	26,947	10 May 1917	21 June 1919	Scuttled 21 June 1919, refloated 23 July 1930, scrapped 1930–1932
Ibuki	Imperial Japanese Navy	Ibuki	14,871	1 November 1909	20 September 1923	Sold for scrap 20 September 1923
Ikoma	Imperial Japanese Navy	Tsukuba	13,970	24 March 1908	20 September 1923	Stricken 20 September 1923 and scrapped
Indefatigable	Royal Navy	Indefatigable	18,800	24 February 1911	31 May 1916	Sunk 31 May 1916
Indomitable		Invincible	17,530	25 June 1908	31 March 1920	Sold for scrap 1 December 1921
Inflexible			17,530	20 October 1908	31 March 1920	Sold for scrap 1 December 1921
Invincible			17,530	20 March 1909	31 May 1916	Sunk 31 May 1916
Izmail	Imperial Russian Navy	Borodino	33,000			Launched 22 June 1915, broken up 1931
Kinburn	Imperial Russian Navy	Borodino	33,000			Launched 30 October 1915, sold for scrap 21 August 1923
Kirishima	Imperial Japanese Navy	Kongō	27,384	19 April 1915	15 November 1942	Sunk 15 November 1942
Kongō		Kongō	27,384	16 August 1913	21 November 1944	Sunk by submarine 21 November 1944
Kurama		Ibuki	14,871	28 February 1911	20 September 1923	Sold for scrap 20 September 1923
Lion	Royal Navy	Lion	26,690	4 June 1912	30 May 1922	Sold for scrap 31 January 1924
Lützow	Imperial German Navy	Derfflinger	26,600	8 August 1915	1 June 1916	Scuttled 1 June 1916
Mackensen		Mackensen	31,000			Launched 21 April 1917, stricken 17 November 1919, broken up 1922
Moltke		Moltke	22,979	30 August 1911	21 June 1919	Scuttled 21 June 1919, refloated 1927, scrapped 1929
Navarin	Imperial Russian Navy	Borodino	33,000			Launched 9 November 1916, sold for scrap 21 August 1923
New Zealand	Royal Navy	Indefatigable	18,800	19 November 1912	19 December 1922	Sold for scrap 22 January 1923
Princess Royal	Royal Navy	Lion	26,690	14 November 1912	19 December 1922	Sold for scrap 22 January 1923
Prinz Eitel Friedrich	Imperial German Navy	Mackensen	31,000			Laid down 1 May 1915, launched 13 March 1920, broken up 1921
Queen Mary	Royal Navy		27,200	4 September 1913	31 May 1916	Sunk 31 May 1916
Renown		Renown	32,740	20 September 1916	21 January 1948	Scrapped, 3 August 1948
Repulse		Renown	32,740	18 August 1916	10 December 1941	Sunk during the Naval Battle of Malaya, 10 December 1941
Seydlitz	Imperial German Navy		24,988	22 May 1913	21 June 1919	Scuttled 21 June 1919, refloated 2 November 1928, scrapped 1930
Tiger	Royal Navy		29,000	3 October 1914	15 May 1931	Sold for scrap February 1932
Tsukuba	Imperial Japanese Navy	Tsukuba	13,970	14 January 1907	14 January 1917	Sunk by magazine explosion 14 January 1917
Von der Tann	Imperial German Navy		19,370	1 September 1910	21 June 1919	Scuttled 21 June 1919, refloated 7 December 1930, scrapped 1931
Yavuz Sultan Selim	Ottoman Navy	Moltke	23,100	2 July 1912	14 November 1954	Scrapped, 7 June 1973

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The battlecruiser was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attributes. Battlecruisers typically had thinner armour and a somewhat lighter main gun battery than contemporary battleships, installed on a longer hull with much higher engine power in order to attain greater speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they were increasingly used alongside the better-protected battleships.

The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, during the First World War. The battle unfolded in extensive manoeuvring and three main engagements, from 31 May to 1 June 1916, off the North Sea coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula. It was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships of the war. Jutland was the third fleet action between steel battleships, following the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War. Jutland was the last major battle in history fought primarily by battleships.

A heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in calibre, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The heavy cruiser is part of a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950s, although the term "heavy cruiser" only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armoured cruisers of the years before 1905. When the armoured cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theatres.

The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship and fast enough to outrun any battleship it encountered.

A warship or combatant ship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a nation. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are typically faster and more maneuverable than merchant ships. Unlike a merchant ship, which carries cargo, a warship typically carries only weapons, ammunition and supplies for its crew. Warships usually belong to a navy, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations.

HMS <i>Queen Mary</i> Last battlecruiser built by the Royal Navy before World War I

HMS Queen Mary was the last battlecruiser built by the Royal Navy before the First World War. The sole member of her class, Queen Mary shared many features with the Lion-class battlecruisers, including her eight 13.5-inch (343 mm) guns. She was completed in 1913 and participated in the Battle of Heligoland Bight as part of the Grand Fleet in 1914. Like most of the modern British battlecruisers, the ship never left the North Sea during the war. As part of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, Queen Mary attempted to intercept a German force that bombarded the North Sea coast of England in December 1914, but was unsuccessful. The ship was refitting in early 1915 and missed the Battle of Dogger Bank in January, but participated in the largest fleet action of the war, the Battle of Jutland in mid-1916. She was hit twice by the German battlecruiser Derfflinger during the early part of the battle and her magazines exploded shortly afterwards, sinking the ship.

The Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were a group of five super-dreadnoughts built for the Royal Navy during the 1910s. These battleships were superior in firepower, protection and speed to their Royal Navy predecessors of the Iron Duke class as well as preceding German classes such as the König class. The corresponding Bayern-class ships were generally considered competitive, although the Queen Elizabeth class were 2 knots (3.7 km/h) faster and outnumbered the German class 5:2. The Queen Elizabeths are generally considered the first fast battleships of their day.

HMS Malaya was one of five Queen Elizabeth-class battleships built for the Royal Navy during the 1910s. Shortly after commissioning in early 1916, she participated in the Battle of Jutland of the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet. In the Second World War, Malaya served mostly in escort duties in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. She was withdrawn from service at the end of 1944, and sold for scrap in 1948.

The Grand Fleet was the main battlefleet of the Royal Navy during the First World War. It was established in August 1914 and disbanded in April 1919. Its main base was Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.

Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built from the mid- to late- 1880s to the early 1900s. Their designs were conceived before the appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and their classification as "pre-dreadnought" is retrospectively applied. In their day, they were simply known as "battleships" or else more rank-specific terms such as "first-class battleship" and so forth. The pre-dreadnought battleships were the pre-eminent warships of their time and replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s.

HMS Defence was a Minotaur-class armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century, the last armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser SMS Breslau. The ship was transferred to the Grand Fleet in January 1915 and remained there for the rest of her career.

The Minotaur class was a three-ship class of armoured cruisers built in the first decade of the twentieth century for the Royal Navy. These were the last class of armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy, with that role being substantially replaced by the first battlecruisers. These initially served with the Home Fleet, generally as the flagships of cruiser squadrons. Minotaur became flagship of the China Station in 1910 and Defence served as flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean from 1912; Shannon remained at home as flagship of several different squadrons.

A fast battleship was a battleship which in concept emphasised speed without undue compromise of either armor or armament. Most of the early World War I-era dreadnought battleships were typically built with low design speeds, so the term "fast battleship" is applied to a design which is considerably faster. The extra speed of a fast battleship was normally required to allow the vessel to carry out additional roles besides taking part in the line of battle, such as escorting aircraft carriers.

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, had such an effect when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an "all-big-gun" armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. As dreadnoughts became a crucial symbol of national power, the arrival of these new warships renewed the naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany. Dreadnought races sprang up around the world, including in South America, lasting up to the beginning of World War I. Successive designs increased rapidly in size and made use of improvements in armament, armour, and propulsion throughout the dreadnought era. Within five years, new battleships outclassed Dreadnought herself. These more powerful vessels were known as "super-dreadnoughts". Most of the original dreadnoughts were scrapped after the end of World War I under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, but many of the newer super-dreadnoughts continued serving throughout World War II.

References

↑ Lambert (1998), pp. 54–55.
↑ Sondhaus (2001).
↑ Roberts (1997).
↑ "Hulls Listed by Name". Naval Vessel Register . Archived from the original on 30 June 2007.
↑ "US Navy Inactive Classification Symbols". Naval Vessel Register. NAVSEA Shipbuilding Support Office. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 21 April 2015.
↑ "Index". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships .
↑ "Royal Navy operations in the Second World War". The National Archives . Retrieved 29 March 2016.

Bibliography

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Gray, Randal (1985). Gardiner, Robert (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Naval Institute Press. p. 439. ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8.
Gibbons, Tony (1983). The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships and Battlecruisers - A Technical Directory of all the World's Capital Ships from 1860 to the Present Day. London, UK: Salamander Books Ltd. p. 272. ISBN 0-517-37810-8.
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Moore, John (Foreword) (1990). Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. London, UK: Random House Ltd. p. 320. ISBN 1-85170-378-0.
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"Battleships-Cruisers.co.uk". Cranston Fine Arts. 2001–2007.
Lambert, Nicholas A. (January 1998). "'Our Bloody Ships' or 'Our Bloody System'? Jutland and the Loss of the Battle Cruisers, 1916". Journal of Military History . Society for Military History. 62 (1): 29–55. doi:10.2307/120394. ISSN 0899-3718. JSTOR 120394.

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[FOOTNOTELambert199854–55-1] Lambert (1998), pp. 54–55.

[FOOTNOTESondhaus2001-2] Sondhaus (2001).

[FOOTNOTERoberts1997-3] Roberts (1997).

[4] "Hulls Listed by Name". Naval Vessel Register . Archived from the original on 30 June 2007.

[5] "US Navy Inactive Classification Symbols". Naval Vessel Register. NAVSEA Shipbuilding Support Office. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 21 April 2015.

[6] "Index". Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships .

[7] "Royal Navy operations in the Second World War". The National Archives . Retrieved 29 March 2016.

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List of battlecruisers of World War I

Contents

See also

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References

Bibliography