While very effective against armored cruisers, they were invariably met with disaster when pitted against real battleships.īattlecruisers 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. They were built to serve as heavy scouts of the battle-fleet, commerce raiders and protectors, and unofficially as extra battleships. The idea of the battlecruiser is generally credited to the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, Sir John Fisher, as a follow on to the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they increasingly became used alongside the better-protected battleships. The original aim of the battlecruiser was to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire.
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. They were similar in size and cost to a battleship, and typically carried the same kind of heavy guns, but generally carried less armour and were faster. They were characterized by high speed, an all big gun armament, and thin armor protection.Ī battlecruiser, or battle cruiser, was a large capital ship built in the first half of the 20th century.
A battlecruiser was a type of capital warship popular in the early 20th century through World War Two.
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