Were Battlecruisers a Dreadnought Disaster?

The Royal Navy’s Innovative but Fatally Flawed Battlecruiser Concept

Feb 3, 2009

The concept behind the battlecruiser was simple. Faster than anything that can outgun them. Bigger guns than anything that can outrun them. Great - in theory.

It certainly convinced Jackie Fisher, maverick British First Sea Lord, driving force behind the revolutionary dreadnought battleship and creator of the mighty Grand Fleet that helped the Royal Navy maintain the upper hand throughout World War One.

Indeed, Fisher’s ‘true love’ was the battlecruiser rather than the battleship proper, Dreadnought or no. He considered that speed was the ultimate arbiter of naval success, and that this quality would enable his beloved battlecruisers to evade the clutches of the more powerful but much slower battleships.

Royal Navy Battlecruisers Had Two Functions

There’s also the strategic angle, the very thinking behind the introduction of this radical new type of ship in the first place. Essentially, the battlecruiser was intended to perform two key functions:

1) Act as the ‘eyes of the fleet’, a fast advanced scouting party for the massed ranks of battleships, a role hitherto assigned to the much less powerful and now outclassed armoured cruiser.

2) Use their speed and guns to hunt down and destroy conventional cruisers and other ships employed as lone commerce raiders.

The evidence of World War One enables the student to evaluate the performance of these ships against these strategic objectives.

Battlecruisers Triumph in the Battle of the Falkland Islands

Taking the second first, one need look no further than the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December, 1914. The plan worked perfectly. A German squadron of commerce raiders under von Spey had annihilated an older British one under Captain Craddock. This humiliation could not go unanswered, either for propaganda or strategic reasons, and two of Fishers ‘pets’ – the battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible were despatched to the South Atlantic to deal with the ‘Hun’. This they did admirably, avenging the earlier disaster and using their unbeatable combination of 12” guns and 5 extra knots of speed to catch and destroy von Spee.

Battlecruisers Fail at the Battle of Jutland

Now the bad news. The fleet role. At the Battle of Jutland on 31st May 1916, the British version of the battlecruiser concept got its come-uppance. Now, there’s a great deal to be told about the tactics used in this battle, not least the inefficiency of signalling which rendered swashbuckling battlecruiser fleet commander Sir David Beatty’s ships considerably less effective than they might have been.

However, the key point is that the battlecruiser concept failed disastrously. In the first phase of the battle, Beatty’s ships were engaged in a straight fight with the German battlecruiser squadron under von Hipper. Despite enjoying a slim numerical advantage of six ships to five, they took an absolute hammering. Three Brits – the Queen Mary, Indefatigable and Invincible - blew up in the face of the withering accuracy of German gunnery. 6,000 men lost their lives. Although ludicrously unsafe arrangements for handling cordite charges were also a major factor, the fact that these ships were basically tin cans did not exactly help. German shells penetrated their flimsy armour like knives through butter.

German Battlecruisers a More Balanced Design

In contrast, the German ships were not so much overgrown cruisers as fast, light battleships, and accordingly had enough armour to see them through. Only one German battle-cruiser was lost at Jutland, the Lutzow, and this after she took an almost unbelievable pummelling from the big boys, the dreadnought battleships of the Grand Fleet itself.

Essentially, any capital ship design is a trade-off between gunnery, armour and speed, and success is always dependent on the balance struck. The Brits opted for extreme speed and offensive power at the expense of defensive capability, and paid a heavy price. The Germans went for a more restrained and equal balance of all three qualities, and were largely justified.

Big Rethink on Battlecruisers after Jutland

Jutland saw the proof of the pudding. It inspired a major rethink, and significantly no more British battlecruisers were ever laid down. Their death knell was sounded by a speech by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, no less, who extolled the virtues of the fast battleship. Only HMS Hood, whose construction had reached a relatively advanced stage, was completed post-Jutland.

And the fate of HMS Hood? Sadly, in World War Two she too blew up within a few minutes of her first taste of German gunnery, again with a massive loss of life. It was the ultimate irony, a grim echo of exactly what had happened at Jutland twenty five years before.

Epitaph on the Battlecruiser

Although never intended to mix it with battleships, the battlecruiser looked so big and powerful on paper that it was almost inevitable she would be expected to. With tragic consequences in two world wars. Battleship or boxer, those who can dish it out must be able to take it. Sadly, the battlecruiser couldn’t.

The copyright of the article Were Battlecruisers a Dreadnought Disaster? in WW I History is owned by Rob Jackson. Permission to republish Were Battlecruisers a Dreadnought Disaster? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.