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| The first battllecruiser HMS Invincible |
The repetition of the myth of the fragile
battlecruiser continues even as the greatest victory of the class is now just
over 100 years in the past. This particular capital ship has been on the receiving
end of the naval world’s harshest criticism since three of their British number
met untimely ends at the May 31-June 1, 1916 Battle of Jutland. In fact, the
battlecruiser was a hybrid, cost saving platform designed specifically to
support a mature British strategic concept of seapower. Its heavy losses at Jutland
were more to do with early 20th century capital ship design and poor
British tactical doctrine than the thickness (or lack thereof) of its armor
belt. That particular myth was constructed in the wake of Jutland for good
reasons of operational security, but there is no reason to continue to repeat
it in the present day. The experience of the battlecruiser still has important
lessons for contemporary warship designers. Every warship is a compromise of
weapons, protective features, speed, and operational range. Operational
employment is as important as physical design and construction in determining a
warship’s vulnerability. Time marches forever forward and today’s invincible
front line combatant can become tomorrow’s proverbial fighter with a glass jaw
if not modernized to reflect technological change. Warship designers seeking lethal,
high speed and survivable platforms on a limited hull would do well to consider
the battlecruiser’s performance in their deliberations on how much of these
qualities can be achieved in a single class. Sometimes operational employment
and tactical doctrine can be just as deadly to a ship in battle as its lack of
speed, armament and robust construction.
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| The ever-combative Admiral Sir John Fisher |
The battlecruiser was the brainchild of
mercurial British technological innovator and strategist Admiral Sir John
Fisher. Fisher’s well documented “need for speed” so denigrated in the
battlecruiser myth was actually just one part of a well thought out plan to
create a hybrid, cost effective, modern capital ship in support of British
strategic interests. Fisher was appointed to a series of high level naval
positions culminating in that of First Sea Lord in 1904 following his command
of Britain’s Mediterranean Fleet from 1899-1902. While in that billet, Fisher
became convinced that the high speed armored cruiser and the torpedo boat would
prove significant threats to Britain’s fleet of slow, conventional battleships,
still known in the late 19th century as “ironclads”.
Fisher was appointed not so much for his
ideas on naval warfare, but rather that Lord Selborne, the First Lord of the
Admiralty and civilian head of the Royal Navy, recognized that Fisher “was the
only admiral on the flag list willing and able to find economies in naval
expenditure.”[1] His challenge was to
reduce naval expenditures whilst combating the threat of armored cruisers to
the Empire’s trade routes, meeting the threat of torpedo-armed small craft and
submarines, and still maintaining a force of battle-worthy combatants to
destroy hostile enemy fleets. Fisher’s elegant solution to these problems was what
he called the “large armored cruiser” and massed flotillas of torpedo-armed
destroyers and submarines. The large cruisers would protect British trade
routes and carry the war to remote enemy colonies and bases. Destroyers and
submarines would form the ideal defense for the “narrow seas” that Fisher
defined as the Western Mediterranean basin and the English Channel.[2]
The team of Fisher and his civilian superior Selborne was very successful in
that their overall program of cutting old warships, geographic re-balance of
the fleet, and introduction of new types of vessels kept British naval spending
at or below the levels of 1906 for five years.[3]
Unfortunately the British civilian and naval
leadership did not buy into Fisher’s full scheme. While the feisty Admiral
seems to have regarded his famous all big gun creation HMS Dreadnought as a mere interim step toward a high speed, high
endurance heavy combatant, successive First Lords of the Admiralty from
Selbourne through Winston Churchill hedged their bets by investing in both
concepts. They refused to regard the traditional battleship as obsolete, and
built successive “Dreadnoughts” as well as Fisher’s large armored cruisers
which by 1911 were labeled as “battlecruisers” by the Royal Navy. Given that
they were the same size as contemporary battleships, it is not surprising that
naval traditionalists assigned them to capital ship duties within the British
fleet. The balance of power in Europe also shifted in the period from 1905 to
1911 as Britain reached accommodations with its former imperial enemies of
France and Russia, and the German Empire became a more significant threat. Rather
than roam the sea in defense of colonial trade, the battlecruiser became the
naval equivalent of heavy cavalry and found employment as the principle heavy scouting
arm of the British battle fleet in home waters. These changes would place the
battlecruiser in an environment not anticipated by Fisher and expose
significant faults in British tactical doctrine.
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| Invincible explodes during the battle of Jutland |
The outbreak of the First World War at
first saw the battlecruiser performing as Fisher had intended. The crusty
admiral had returned to the office of First Sea Lord at the behest of an
admiring Winston Churchill and immediately set about finding ways to use his
creations for the intended purpose. Two of the original battlecruisers
fulfilled their mission exactly as designed when they were dispatched from home
waters to the South Atlantic on short notice to intercept the commerce-raiding
squadron of German cruisers commanded by Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee. HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible destroyed Spee’s flagship the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst and her sister SMS Gneisenau on 08 December 2024 with little
damage and few British casualties in return. In combat in home waters, however,
Fisher’s creations faced more significant threats. During the 1916 Battle of
Jutland, three British battlecruisers exploded and sank with heavy loss of
life. This is the starting point for the myth that the battlecruisers were
destroyed because their combination of high speed, heavy guns and thin armor
made them extremely vulnerable to German shellfire.
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| Invincible sinking |
On the conclusion of the first day of the
Battle of Jutland, the exhausted British battlecruiser commander Vice Admiral
Sir David Beatty collapsed on the bridge of his flagship HMS Lion and uttered the famous quote to his flag Captain Ernest
Chatfield that “something is wrong with our damn bloody ships and our damn
bloody system.”[4] Beatty was actually right
on both counts, but not for the reasons the mythologists suggest. The
supposedly thin armor belts of British battlecruisers were not penetrated in
battle. Instead, their turret roofs (17% of the total surface area of some
warships’ decks) with relatively thin armor were the locations of German hits.[5] The
explosions that sank the ships however were more the result of British tactical
doctrine rather than thin armor. The Royal Navy had extensively experimented
with director-firing of heavy guns at medium range as a method of achieving
critical hits on opponents early in battle. Admiral George Callaghan, Admiral
Jellicoe’s immediate predecessor as Grand Fleet Commander, did not fully trust
the new system, and decided to mitigate its potential failings by significantly
increasing the ammunition supply aboard British capital ships.[6]
British doctrine called for high rates of fire to smother an enemy before they
had a chance to effectively respond. The battlecruisers were carrying 50% more
ammunition then their designed capacity on the day Jutland was fought to accomplish
this goal.[7]
British gunners also failed to close safety hatches in their turrets designed
to protect ammunition magazines from explosion. This was done to achieve the
high rates of fire demanded as integral to British tactical doctrine.
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| Burned out turret of HMS Lion which narrowly avoided Invincible's fate |
Contrary to other parts of the myth, the
British Admiralty reacted within days of Jutland to remedy these faults. One
report by British inspectors submitted immediately after the battle found
“magazine doors were left open, lids were off powder cases, and all (turret)
cages were loaded (with propellant charges).[8] The
First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, who had replaced Fisher in the wake
of the Dardanelles disaster in 1915,
ordered immediate changes. By the spring of 1917 all of the faults in
material condition of readiness, and doctrine were corrected. The
battlecruisers under construction at this time, including the large Admiral Class warship that would become
the HMS Hood were substantially
modified with additional armor and protective measures designed to prevent
further disasters such as those that befell HM
ships Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and
Invincible. Why then the false myth that thin armor caused the demise of
the battlecruisers at Jutland?
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| The short path from turret roof to magazine |
When the after action reports were
gathered and submitted to the First Sea Lord for approval and action, the
occupant of that office had changed. The former Jutland commander Admiral Sir
John Jellicoe suppressed the findings of the report, but left the changes it
made in place. He repeated the false claims that the battlecruisers were built
with inadequate armor and flash protection on numerous occasions. His
unofficial reasoning was that fleet morale had suffered enough in the wake of
the battle, but it was instead clearly a cover-up to protect the reputation of
the Royal Navy in the midst of war.[9] John
Jellicoe can probably be excused as it could be argued that it was prudent to
avoid the disclosure of a deficient tactical doctrine in the course of an
ongoing conflict. They story should not, however, be repeated a century on as
gospel when it is clearly false. When historian Arthur Marder first began a
systematic, independent investigation of the RN’s operational history during
World War One, he turned to retired senior RN officers, some of whom had been
on active duty during the First World War, as his first sources. They repeated
the myth to Marder, he repeated it to the world, and it remained until the late
1980’s/early 1990’s when RN insiders / scholars such as David K. Brown, John
Sumida, and Nicholas Lambert began to unravel and expose the false myth.
Why refer to the events of a century ago
in conjunction with present U.S. naval strategy and operational and tactical
doctrine? Every warship is a compromise in multiple characteristics including
armament, survivability, endurance, and speed. A warship might be perfectly
suited to perform in one strategic environment, but less effective in future
situations. Continued modernization is vital to tactical success. HMS Hood was perfectly suited to the
combat conditions of the 1920’s, but failure to modernize her as scheduled
placed her in grave danger when exposed to 1940’s naval ordnance. Improper
operational employment can be just as dangerous to a ship and her crew as lack
of armor, or the active and passive defenses modern warships utilize in lieu of
armor protection. Having an offensive ethos, like that of the battlecruiser,
sometimes makes its advocates less observant of necessary defensive measures.
The battlecruiser force was so concerned with rate of fire that they ignored
their ships’ installed safety measures. If the U.S. Navy intends to transition
to a concept of “Offensive Sea Control”, it might be tempted to omit or ignore
defensive capabilities in order to achieve the perfect first salvo of cruise
missiles against an opponent. Small concerns perhaps, but worth noting since
the British battlecruiser force lost over 3000 sailors in one battle in large
part because its offensive mindset blinded it to necessary defensive actions.
[1] Nicholas Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution, Columbia, SC, University of South Carolina Press, 1999, p. 91.
[2] Lambert, p. 116.
[3] David K. Brown, The Grand Fleet, Warship Design and Development, 1906-1922, Annapolis, MD, Naval Institute Press, Reprint Edition, 2010, p. 13.
[4] Nicholas Lambert, “Our Bloody Ships or Our Bloody System, Jutland and the Loss of the Battlecruisers, 1916”, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), p 29
[5] Brown, p. 30.
[6] John Tetsuro Sumida, “The Royal Navy and the Tactics of Decisive Battle, 1912-1916”, The Journal of Military History, Volume 67, No. 1 (Jan 2003), p 110.
[7] Nicholas Lambert, “Our Bloody Ships or Our Bloody System”, pp. 29-55.
[8] Brown, p. 168.
[9] Brown, p. 169.
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