The Admiral Class
Even before Jutland, Jellicoe and Beatty had expressed concern at the lack of new construction for the Battlecruiser Fleet, and the inadequacy of the ships already provided. Early in 1916, they had rejected proposals for a new fast battleship design, similar to the Queen Elizabeth but with reduced draught, pointing out that, with the five new Revenge class nearing completion, the fleet already had a sufficient margin of superiority in battleships, whereas the absence of battlecruisers from the 1912 and 1913 programmes had left Beatty’s force with no reply to the new 30.5 cm (12-inch) –gunned German battlecruisers. Jellicoe had believed that the Germans intended to build still more powerful ships, with speeds of up to 29 knots (54 km/h), and hence had called for 30-knot (56 km/h) ships to fight them. Although two new battlecruisers (HMS Renown and Repulse) had been ordered in 1914, and were being constructed remarkably quickly, Jellicoe had argued that, although their speed was adequate, their armour protection (dramatically reduced at Fisher’s insistence) was insufficient.
The 1915 design had therefore been recast as a 36,000 ton battlecruiser with 8 15-inch (381 mm) guns, and a speed of 32 knots (59 km/h). The main belt was only 8 inches thick, sloped outwards to give the same protection as a vertical 9-inch belt. A class of four ships had been authorised, the first being laid down on 31 May – the day that Jutland was fought.
The losses at Jutland led to a reappraisal of the design. As noted above, the British were now convinced that their fast battleships were battleworthy but too slow, and their battlecruisers — even the largest — unfit for sustained battle. As a result, the new ships were radically redesigned in order to achieve the survivability of the Queen Elizabeths while still meeting the requirement for 32-knot (59 km/h) battlecruisers, although this reworking was flawed. The resulting ships would be the Admiral class battlecruisers; at 42,000 tons by far the largest warships in the world. In 1917 construction was slowed down, to release resources for the construction of anti-submarine vessels; when it became clear that the threatened new German battlecruisers would not be completed, the last three were suspended and ultimately canceled, leaving only the lead ship to complete as the famous HMS Hood.
Although the Royal Navy always designated Hood as a battlecruiser, some modern writers such as Anthony Preston have characterised her as a fast battleship, as she theoretically had the protection of the Queen Elizabeths while being significantly faster. On the other hand, the British were well aware of the protection flaws remaining despite her revised design, so she was intended for the duties of a battlecruiser and served in the battlecruiser squadrons throughout her career. Moreover, the scale of her protection, though adequate for the Jutland era, was at best marginal against the new generation of 16-inch (406 mm) gunned capital ships that emerged soon after her completion in 1920, typified by the US Colorado class and the Japanese Nagato class.
Read more about this topic: Fast Battleship
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