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Invincible-class battlecruiser
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Invincible-class battlecruiser
The three Invincible-class battlecruisers were built for the Royal Navy and entered service in 1908 as the world's first battlecruisers. They were the brainchild of Admiral Sir John ("Jacky") Fisher, the man who had sponsored the construction of the world's first "all-big-gun" warship, HMS Dreadnought. He visualised a new breed of warship, somewhere between the armoured cruiser and battleship; it would have the armament of the latter, but the high speed of the former. This combination would allow it to chase down most ships, while allowing it to run from more powerful designs.
This design philosophy would prove to be most successful when the Invincibles were able to use their speed to run down smaller and weaker ships. The classic example was during World War I at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, where Invincible and Inflexible sank the German armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau; despite numerous hits by the German ships, Inflexible and Invincible incurred very few casualties among their crews. They were least successful when standing in the main line of battle, where they faced enemy capital ships. An example is the loss of Invincible to a magazine explosion during the Battle of Jutland about eighteen months after her success in the Falklands, although this explosion owed more to flaws in British ammunition-handling practices – that exposed numerous cordite charges to a fire in one of her gun turrets – than any flaws in the design of the ship.
After the loss of Invincible, the two surviving ships had an uneventful time for the rest of the war conducting patrols of the North Sea, as the High Seas Fleet was forbidden to risk any more losses. They were put into reserve in early 1919 and sold for scrap in 1921.
After Admiral Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord on 20 October 1904, he pushed through the Board of Admiralty in early December 1904 a decision to arm the next armoured cruiser with 12-inch (305 mm) guns and that it would have a speed no less than 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h; 29.3 mph). Shortly afterwards he convened a "Committee on Designs" to investigate and report on requirements for future ships. While nominally independent, it served to validate decisions already made and to deflect criticism off Fisher and the Board of Admiralty, as it had no ability to consider options other than those already decided upon by the Admiralty. Fisher appointed all of the members of the committee and himself as President of the committee. During its last meeting on the 22 of February 1905 it decided on the outline design of the fast armoured cruiser. This, in turn, was approved by the Board on March the 16th with only minor changes, such as the reduction in the anti-torpedo boat armament from twenty to eighteen 12-pdr guns.
The Invincible-class ships were formally known as armoured cruisers until 1911, when they were redesignated as battlecruisers by an Admiralty order of 24 November. Unofficially a number of designations were used until then, including cruiser-battleship, dreadnought cruiser and battle-cruiser.
The Invincibles were significantly larger than their armoured cruiser predecessors of the Minotaur class. They had an overall length of 567 ft (173 m), a beam of 78.5 ft (23.9 m), and a draft of 30 ft (9.1 m) at deep load. They displaced 17,250 long tons (17,530 t) at load and 20,420 long tons (20,750 t) at deep load, nearly 3,000 long tons (3,050 t) more than the earlier ships.
Early in the design process the "Committee on Designs" had thought to power these ships with the traditional reciprocating vertical triple-expansion steam engines, but were persuaded to adopt Parsons steam turbines as they required fewer boilers for the same amount of power, were easier to protect from damage as they were more compact than reciprocating engines and could be kept below the waterline. In addition they were significantly lighter and more reliable than the older design. The direct-drive turbines then in use did have one significant drawback in that they ran at a relatively high speed which required small-diameter, fine-pitch propellers of a large blade area which adversely affected manoeuvrability at low speeds. Parsons alleviated this problem by his suggestion of fitting more powerful astern turbines on all four shafts, which could increase manoeuvrability by reversing the turbines as needed.
An additional solution was to fit twin balanced rudders behind each inner shaft, in contrast to the single central rudder used on earlier ships. This greatly increased the effectiveness of the rudder and substantially decreased the turning circle of the Invincibles in comparison to earlier ships of their size.
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Invincible-class battlecruiser
The three Invincible-class battlecruisers were built for the Royal Navy and entered service in 1908 as the world's first battlecruisers. They were the brainchild of Admiral Sir John ("Jacky") Fisher, the man who had sponsored the construction of the world's first "all-big-gun" warship, HMS Dreadnought. He visualised a new breed of warship, somewhere between the armoured cruiser and battleship; it would have the armament of the latter, but the high speed of the former. This combination would allow it to chase down most ships, while allowing it to run from more powerful designs.
This design philosophy would prove to be most successful when the Invincibles were able to use their speed to run down smaller and weaker ships. The classic example was during World War I at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, where Invincible and Inflexible sank the German armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau; despite numerous hits by the German ships, Inflexible and Invincible incurred very few casualties among their crews. They were least successful when standing in the main line of battle, where they faced enemy capital ships. An example is the loss of Invincible to a magazine explosion during the Battle of Jutland about eighteen months after her success in the Falklands, although this explosion owed more to flaws in British ammunition-handling practices – that exposed numerous cordite charges to a fire in one of her gun turrets – than any flaws in the design of the ship.
After the loss of Invincible, the two surviving ships had an uneventful time for the rest of the war conducting patrols of the North Sea, as the High Seas Fleet was forbidden to risk any more losses. They were put into reserve in early 1919 and sold for scrap in 1921.
After Admiral Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord on 20 October 1904, he pushed through the Board of Admiralty in early December 1904 a decision to arm the next armoured cruiser with 12-inch (305 mm) guns and that it would have a speed no less than 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h; 29.3 mph). Shortly afterwards he convened a "Committee on Designs" to investigate and report on requirements for future ships. While nominally independent, it served to validate decisions already made and to deflect criticism off Fisher and the Board of Admiralty, as it had no ability to consider options other than those already decided upon by the Admiralty. Fisher appointed all of the members of the committee and himself as President of the committee. During its last meeting on the 22 of February 1905 it decided on the outline design of the fast armoured cruiser. This, in turn, was approved by the Board on March the 16th with only minor changes, such as the reduction in the anti-torpedo boat armament from twenty to eighteen 12-pdr guns.
The Invincible-class ships were formally known as armoured cruisers until 1911, when they were redesignated as battlecruisers by an Admiralty order of 24 November. Unofficially a number of designations were used until then, including cruiser-battleship, dreadnought cruiser and battle-cruiser.
The Invincibles were significantly larger than their armoured cruiser predecessors of the Minotaur class. They had an overall length of 567 ft (173 m), a beam of 78.5 ft (23.9 m), and a draft of 30 ft (9.1 m) at deep load. They displaced 17,250 long tons (17,530 t) at load and 20,420 long tons (20,750 t) at deep load, nearly 3,000 long tons (3,050 t) more than the earlier ships.
Early in the design process the "Committee on Designs" had thought to power these ships with the traditional reciprocating vertical triple-expansion steam engines, but were persuaded to adopt Parsons steam turbines as they required fewer boilers for the same amount of power, were easier to protect from damage as they were more compact than reciprocating engines and could be kept below the waterline. In addition they were significantly lighter and more reliable than the older design. The direct-drive turbines then in use did have one significant drawback in that they ran at a relatively high speed which required small-diameter, fine-pitch propellers of a large blade area which adversely affected manoeuvrability at low speeds. Parsons alleviated this problem by his suggestion of fitting more powerful astern turbines on all four shafts, which could increase manoeuvrability by reversing the turbines as needed.
An additional solution was to fit twin balanced rudders behind each inner shaft, in contrast to the single central rudder used on earlier ships. This greatly increased the effectiveness of the rudder and substantially decreased the turning circle of the Invincibles in comparison to earlier ships of their size.
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