Battlecruisers: A Failed Concept

HMS Hood — The Most Famous Battlecruiser

By John Beatty

The Cruiser Revolution, as I call it, was a misnomer. It’s my term, I can call it what I want. But the cruiser-type warships that are best known today simply fell into a category between the battleships on top and the destroyers on the bottom. They’ve been collectively called “cruisers” frankly out of habit, not any requirement. It’s how our language evolves.

Britain planned and built the first battlecruisers as large armored cruisers.

Built in parallel with Dreadnought in 1905–06, Inflexible was 20 feet longer, had the same guns, was ten to 15 knots faster, and could cruise farther than Dreadnought. Her biggest booster, John “Jackie” Fisher, First Lord of the British Admiralty, saw the potential for these big, fast, not-quite battleships, and ordered more.

The term “battlecruiser” was a press invention.

Fisher’s notion was to call the types either “large armored ships” or “Inflexibles.” Once the press got wind of the type, it was only a matter of time—1912 to be precise—before a reporter or editor coined “battle cruiser,” which became “battlecruiser” by 1915. That convenience soon became a problem, because it became hard to distinguish between a battleship and a battlecruiser, which were from the inside very different.

HMS Inflexible — First Battle Cruiser

The reason for the speed and range was less armor.

Inflexible was a little bigger than a contemporary battleship, much lighter, had similar power plants, and similar crew requirements. She would take up the same dockyard space, as much food, and as much anything else as a battleship. Battlecruisers needed the same resources the battleships did, but couldn’t fight with them. But they were faster and had a greater range. Why were they around, then?

The battlecruiser’s primary role was to catch armored cruisers and fast merchant cruisers.

After that, they were to be “cruiser killers,” sweeping before the battle fleet and denying those scouting vessels the chance to observe the main body. All of this, of course, was worked out before any of them fired a shot in anger; before 1914. As the Germans, then the Japanese, then the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians jumped on the battlecruiser bandwagon, the missions became…muddled. While there were still armored cruisers, these were becoming more battleship-like in all but size and name; the American types were the size of Dreadnought. Furthermore, those fast merchant cruisers had that annoying submarine and mine problem to deal with…and they weren’t faster than warships anymore. By the time WWI began, all the major belligerents had battlecruisers, but few knew exactly what to do with them. There was much speculation, but no practice or doctrine.

Then came Coronel.

As I talked about before, two German armored cruisers and three light cruisers making their way out of the Pacific encountered a British squadron off the coast of Chile on 1 December 1914 and made mincemeat out of it. Word swiftly reached England, and the RN dispatched a small squadron of battlecruisers to the Falklands. They were to intercept the German squadron, which was the first and last time that battlecruiser-specific mission was undertaken. On 8 December 1914, Invincible, Inflexible and their light and armored cruiser consorts caught the German squadron as it was trying to attack Port Stanley. The ensuing battle was as one-sided as Coronel had been the month before, only this time, the Germans got the stick end of the battle. There were 2000 German casualties to Britain’s less than 30. The German armored cruisers sank, as did two of the three light cruisers. The German survivor was scuttled off Chile three months later.

The Falkland Islands battle was the zenith of the battlecruiser concept.

After that, there was a great confusion about battlecruisers with pretty much everyone. While the British had used theirs in their unique role once, the other powers would have no such opportunity. The Falklands battle was unique: an isolated squadron of obsolescent warships trying to get home because the mission they were dispatched for vanished with their bases. Their betters outgunned them. But Germany would have no such opportunity. Nor would Japan or Austria-Hungary. And the British? The United States interned most of the fast German merchant ships—that could have become those dreaded merchant cruisers that the RN feared—at the beginning of the war. Now what to do with the battlecruisers?

HMS Invincible —
Victor at the Falklands, Victim at Jutland

They joined the fleets.

While at first no one thought much of it—just more hulls roaming the North Sea—at Jutland in May 1916, the phrase “eggshells armed with hammers” came to mind. Three  British battlecruisers—Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible—blew up in succession, and a fourth, Beatty's flagship Lion, was the most damaged ship to survive the battle, causing their admiral (a distant cousin of mine) to grumble, “there’s something wrong with our bloody ships today,” or something like that. Guns they had; speed and range they had, but armor they didn’t have. That afternoon in the North Sea, fate only decided two things: battlecruisers had no place in the battle line, and Russia was doomed to have a revolution (an entirely different discussion).

The Great War didn’t end the battlecruisers…entirely.

The Washington Naval Conference didn’t distinguish between a battlecruiser and a battleship. By then the distinction was minor, for the latest classes of battlecruisers were almost the same as the latest “fast superdreadnought” battleships, the first generation of which appeared at Jutland. Many of the ships sacrificed by the treaties were battlecruisers (two unfinished US battlecruiser hulls became aircraft carriers). The Japanese rebuilt most of their battlecruisers into fast battleships. Great Britain kept several, including HMS Hood, which would fall to Bismarck in May 1941, and Repulse, which would sink with battleship Prince of Wales in December 1941.

The Americans built and deployed the last operational battlecruisers.

The Alaska class of cruisers was an afterthought, sort of. Even during their planning, some people wanted to divert the resources to aircraft carriers. Intended as a “cruiser-killer” in some ways, Alaska and her sister Guam deployed to the Pacific and spent most of their time escorting the fast carriers. Towards the end of the Pacific War, the pair joined other surface units hunting Japanese merchant ships off the China coast. Other than coastal bombardment and antiaircraft fire, neither vessel fired a shot in anger at an enemy combatant. They are mostly known for their controversial designations: large cruiser or battlecruiser? The world may never know. 

USS Guam — American Battlecruiser

But the traditional all-gun heavy cruisers now are mostly obsolescent, replaced by missile cruisers and other types of surface combatants. The Cruiser Revolution ended far from where it started, but with far fewer types, yet having had a role in changing surface naval warfare.  The battlecruiser was obsolete by 1945, though the Americans continued to build “large cruisers” that were easily mistaken for battlecruisers, depending on who you talk to. 

Read John Beatty's latest book The Fire Blitz: Burning Down Japan, the the story of how an unconventional general named Curtis LeMay figured out how to use the B-29 to execute a plan to end a war. Click HERE to order.