The battle cruiser is actually a special type of ship born under specific historical conditions, and the British Royal Navy needs a fast, fierce ship that can easily destroy the cruiser and outrun the battleship, in which case the battlecruiser is designed!

Battlecruisers were popular in the early 20th century, with the high speed of a cruiser and the high firepower of a battleship, it can be seen as a battleship with reduced armor in exchange for maneuverability to suppress the opposing cruiser or attack a damaged and lone battleship. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoThe world's first battle cruisers were the British battle cruisers INS Indomitable, HMS Invincible, HMS Steadfast (i.e., Invincible-class battlecruisers). With the rise of high-speed battleships, the weakness of insufficient protection of battlecruisers became increasingly prominent and withdrew from the stage of history.

Design ideas

A battle cruiser is a type of large warship built in the early 20th century. It is a new type of capital ship with strong functionality that evolved on the basis of armored cruisers.

The dominant idea behind the design of the battlecruiser was that it could easily hunt the cruiser, as its main guns allowed it to attack enemy ships before they were within range of the cruiser. And its high speed allows it to hunt down ordinary cruisers, but also to get rid of the threat of battleships, or to attack the opposing side's damaged battleships in naval battles. Therefore, the most classic design rule of the battlecruiser is "fasterthanthestrongest, strongerthanthefastest" - faster than the strongest (referring to the battleship) and stronger than the fastest (referring to the cruiser).

In the Battle of the Falklands in World War I, battlecruisers proved their worthy - hunting cruisers. In this battle, the British battlecruisers HMS Steadfast and HMS Invincible easily wiped out a German fleet of cruisers in the South Atlantic (Spee's fleet). And this is exactly what the battlecruiser was designed for, but this battle was also the only time the battlecruiser played its rightful role.

In 1916 at the Battle of Jutland, a British fleet of battlecruisers tried to fight German battlecruisers and battleships before the arrival of the British main fleet, and the result was a major defeat. The British ships Queen Mary, Indefatigable and Invincible exploded and sank, killing almost all but a few people, and the Lion was forced to flood its own ammunition depot to avoid the same fate. The German battlecruisers, though better armoured, did not end much better, as they also encountered British battleships (and the faster Queen Elizabeth-class battleships). The battlecruiser Lützov was sunk (this was still the most advanced in the German army), and the battlecruiser Seydlitz was heavily damaged (it sank after returning to port). Thankfully, Hipper's timely escape prevented him from repeating the Falklands naval battle (again one thing and one thing). In this naval battle, except for one old German battleship, none of the British and German battleships were sunk. This battle proved that battleships are the real bosses at sea, and battlecruisers are clearly difficult to pick up on big tasks.

After that, the British Navy abandoned the tactics of battle cruisers. The battlecruiser HMS Hood, launched in 1918, was the last battlecruiser built in Britain. Between the two world wars, the USS Hood was the largest capital ship in the world. It was better armored than previous battlecruisers, but it still had the same shortcomings in the design and arrangement of its armor, allowing shells to easily penetrate at certain angles. In World War II, it exploded and sank during a gun battle with the German battleship Bismarck, and at that time she was scheduled to undergo the relevant modifications.

Since then, there has been no navy in the world to build battle cruisers anymore. Japan's "88th Fleet" plan originally planned to build eight battle cruisers, but this plan had to be terminated when it ran into the Treaty on the Limitation of Naval Armaments (the "Akagi" and "Kaga" were later converted into aircraft carriers), and later in the 1930s, Japan upgraded the existing Kongo-class battlecruisers to "high-speed battleships". The U.S. Navy's USS Lexington and USS Saratoga were originally designed as battle cruisers, but they were converted into aircraft carriers due to the Treaty on the Limitation of Naval Armaments. Later, the United States built two similar battle cruisers, the "large cruisers" Alaska and Guam, codenamed CB. But they did not enter service until near the end of the war, and even if they were worthy, they were not reflected, and after the war four other similar ships that had been planned to be built were abandoned. The two ships were armed with 12-inch guns, and their armor was also designed to deal with 12-inch guns. This was different from the British battlecruisers of the past: the British ships were armed with the 12-inch guns of their contemporaries, but their armor could not resist their own weapons.

The German "Panzer Ship" was another scheme similar to the battle cruiser. They were not light battleships, but cruisers with very heavy firepower. They were relatively small, armed with six 11.1-inch guns, and instead of using steam engines as power, they used eight nine-cylinder diesel engines. It can reach speeds of up to 28 knots (52 km/h). The only more important battle in which they participated was the Battle of the Estuary of La Plata in World War II. Germany also built two battleships known as battle cruisers: the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, which were mainly used for cruiser operations, and similar to the characteristics of battle cruisers, but their armor was much stronger than that of traditional battle cruisers, reaching 350mm, and using 11.1-inch guns. They inherited the characteristics of the German capital ships that focused on protection, and were more like light battleships.

The new type of battleship technology also made the battlecruiser quickly useless. The speed of the battleships became faster and faster, and by the time of World War II it had reached at least 30 knots. What's more, the advent of aircraft carriers made both battleships and battlecruisers lose their former power. Like the Iowa-class battleships of the time, their speed proved to be excellent aircraft carrier frigates and ships bombarding land, but they were no longer suitable for their original purpose: decisive battle at sea.

Someone classifies four Kirov-class missile cruisers of the USSR in the eighties of the 20th century as battle cruisers, but in fact they were heavy missile cruisers

There is a certain difference between a battleship and a battlecruiser, usually a battlecruiser has large-caliber guns comparable to a battleship, with weaker armor and faster speed than a battleship. Battleships pursue a balance of firepower, armor, and speed, while battlecruisers have both the high speed of a cruiser and the firepower of a battleship. Typical BCs include the German De Verblinger-class battlecruisers, the British Lion-class battlecruisers, the USS Hood battlecruisers, etc., and there are also examples of BCs that have been modified into battleships, such as the Japanese Kongo-class. And the battlecruiser is generally inferior to the battleship in terms of firepower, and is generally practical as an auxiliary ship of the battleship in wartime.