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RN Battle Cruisers World Naval Ships Forums Archive

RN Battle Cruisers

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The concept of the Battlecruiser came directly from Lord Jackie Fisher. Big guns, high speed and light armourment. Despite conspicuous success at the Battle of the Falklands, the history of the British battlecruiser is ignominious: A couple almost lost at Dogger Bank in 1915. Invicible, Indefatigable and Queen Mary blown up at Jutland in 1916. Hood blown up by Bismark in 1941 and Repulse sunk by Japanese aircraft off Singapore in 1941. Always the same problem - inadequate armor to stand up to serious opposition. A flawed concept. All Battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy have been listed here with the exception of Glorious, Courageous and Furious which were converted soon after construction into aircraft carriers and have been covered in this thread... [URL]http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1488&highlight=glorious[/URL]
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Bit harsh Terry. The Hood was better armoured than any of her predecessors, and that includes the Queen Elizabeths and Royal Sovereign battleships. Slightly disingenuous to mention Repulse as well considering she was sunk in the company of the newest battleship of the Royal Navy. It may have been an inherently flawed concept in terms of armour, but there is the simple matter ignored by Beatty that in having bigger guns than your enemy you stay outside his range! The whole point of the big gun and the high speed was that you wouldn't need a lot of armour. All Dogger Bank and Jutland proved is that you shouldn't close an equal or superior enemy with battle cruisers, thruth be told. Harley

Simon whilst I agree that Battle cruisers were not designed to be drawn against Battleships I still stick by my description of them as a flawed concept.

I have to agree with Harley on this one. The Battlecruiser was conceived as a ‘cruiser killer’ in order to deprive an enemy fleet of it’s ‘eyes’. The intention being that on locating an enemy’s scouting cruisers the Battlecruiser would be able to catch them through superior speed and then destroy them with superior fire power. Ideally, the Battlecruiser should never have had to come within range of the enemy’s guns. On occasions when a Battlecruiser met an equally well armed but better armoured Battleship the idea was that she should ‘run away’ and use her superior speed to keep out of range. In practice, however, most Battlecruisers met their end, not when running away, but when chasing or even going head to head with units that were at least as well armed and armoured as themselves. When considering the loss of the Repulse it should be remembered that Battlecruisers were conceived, designed and built long before it was even imagined that airpower would become a major threat to Capital ships. The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing! In my view, the concept of the Battlecruiser as a ‘cruiser killer’ was a great idea. The flaw in the concept was that it was fine so long as only one side in a conflict had Battlecruisers. Once the other side had them in it’s fleet, the hunter became the hunted. John

Well we will have to agree to differ there John [and Simon]. Anyway the advent of the airplane made them even less viable by the start of WW2! Even the Americans withdrew their battlecruisers before their last battleships.

It could be argued that every naval concept (and every army and airforce one for that matter) has been flawed one way or another. Equally there have seldom been developments that were not in some way flawed in their execution. As regards concepts, there was always a trade-off between size, speed, manoeuverability, protection and firepower (and manpower too in the days of sail). In the days of engines, armour and HE, being able to manoeuvre into a position where you could sink or at least punish the opponent severely without his being able to respond was every captain's aim. Short of that, being able to inflict such damage that the opponent's ability to manoeuvre and to inflict damage was compromised, without at the same time suffering equal or greater damage was next best. At worst you should be able to sustain damage while maintaining manoeuverability and adequate speed to break off action. Graf Spee was unable to achieve the first or the second but managed the third, even against three dogged opponents. Its concept was that a pocket battleship should be able to destroy or evade any single opponent. But with only two main turrets it was a flawed concept against multiple opponents, even though they were individually less powerful. Breaking off action was only a viable option if there were somewhere realistic to run to. As to flaws in execution of a concept, the British battlecruisers of WWI had magazines and ammunition hoists that were less than 100% safe. Even with one or more main turret out of action the integrity of the vital areas beneath should have been intact. Their speed would then have allowed them to retire behind a destroyer screen or oncoming battle squadrons. Ultimately even an apparently successful concept will sooner or later be proved to be flawed. Carrier-borne aircraft spelt the end of the big gun ship just as cannon ended the role of the castle and hand guns the role of the armoured knight. Even the arguably best value for money weapon of the last thousand years - the English/Welsh longbow - though by no means outmoded by handguns, proved to be flawed because the training and practice required of archers was simply unacceptable to men of the late 16th century.

Re: British battle cruisers and safety procedures, I'll go with noted author Bill Jurens every time (technical expert on the Jutland and Hood and Bismarck dives) - what did for the British battle cruisers at the end of the day was poor armour protection. As to sealing off one turret that has gone up, Lion proved that that was perfectly possible - she returned to sea for a month or so after "Q" turret was removed to be reworked if memory serves. As to safety practices, the battle cruisers, spanning 5 years and 3 classes of warship by and large had the same equipment as the battleships - the key was some criminally negligent practices on the part of the BCF which allowed the whole turret to become a bomb after the armour had initially failed. Harley

Now I agree with that Simon. surely that was what I was saying - flawed because of poor armourment protection!

I make no claims to technical knowledge of naval architecture, nor would I disagree with Jurens. I think my point about magazines and ammunition hoists is that the flaw in execution of the concept was that the BCs' turrets were not designed in such a way as to prevent a foreseeable catastrophy (flash-back in the turret by premature detonation of a loaded shell, direct hit on the turret). "Criminally negligent practices" involving magazines and gun turrets should have been physically impossible by the second decade of the 20th century. Long before Nelson's time systems and routines had been designed to keep fire from the magazines. By Beatty's day electro-mechanical and hydraulic systems were well beyond their infancy. Turret and magazine routines should have been fool-proof, even if, heaven forfend, gunnery officers and turret captains ignored sloppy procedures.

This is why I don't see the battle cruiser as an entirely flawed concept - the only reason those ships sank was because they were within range of the enemy in the first place - which no one should have allowed and can therefore be characterised as "sloppy procedure". It's unclear, if memory serves, whether "Invincible" suffered from the same shoddy disregard of safety procedure that "Queen Mary" and "Indefatigable" most certainly did, and any such practices lie not with the Turret Captains and the Gunnery Officers but with the Captains of the ships and ultimately with the Vice-Admiral Commanding the Battle-Cruiser Fleet, especially if as suggested orders to that effect were disseminated throughout the B.C.F. and a culture of "high rate of fire" fostered. I've just been transcribing the account of "Tiger's" gunnery officer from Jutland, and it's utterly obscene to see him note "Germans opened fire" - when the 13.5-inch gun had a far longer reach! There are many things can be pilloried for, but closing the German battle cruisers and then being subjected to their fire was just criminal. Harley

interesting comments from Adm Le Baily (sorry about spelling) book "The Man Around the Engine" from his two commissions served in Hood, the disparity between the armoured and less armoured parts of the ship caused such severe stress cracking of the deck and supersturcture that in any kind of a seaway she leaked like a sieve, and by 1939 her freeboard had been reduced by a foot so this was most of the time, to the great discomfort of those aboard. He maintained that had war not occurred she should have been scrapped. He left her very shortly before the tragedy with the Bismark..... Rather reminds you of the current complaints about adequacy of equipment in Afganistan. tim

The citing of [I]Repulse[/I]'s failure to remain afloat off Malaya, while I do not believe "disingenuous", has very little bearing on her attributes or defects as a battlecruiser. Armor plating was not an effective defense against properly-set and adequately-warheaded torpedoes. Taranto, Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Leyte Gulf, the Med theater, and certain individual battles, are all testament to this. I suppose a tangential but similarly flawed argument can be made that aircraft carriers were faulty for having inadequate armor, as well....HMS [I]Courageous[/I] and USS [I]Gambier Bay[/I] did not withstand enemy gunfire well, either! One thing I will add, is that due recognition of [I]Courageous, Glorious[/I] and [I]Furious[/I] should be made, i.e., they were not battlecruisers. They were not conceived as such, never intended to be deployed as such (even with Beatty's Battlecruiser Squadron), instead being specially purpose-built for Fisher's planned Pomeranian landings. Fisher wanted ships with heavy guns, high speed and very shallow draughts, to be used in support of those landings. They were built to serve a role which never materialized for them, and their post-war conversion to aircraft carriers was simply making the best of a bad situation.

Two close-up shots of 12'' battlecruisers - HMNZS New Zealand (June 1913, Nelson) and HMAS Australia (December 1918, Firth of Forth). [ATTACH]94554[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]94555[/ATTACH]
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[QUOTE=kronserg;154259]Two close-up shots of 12'' battlecruisers - HMNZS New Zealand (June 1913, Nelson) and HMAS Australia (December 1918, Firth of Forth). [ATTACH]94554[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]94555[/ATTACH][/QUOTE] That is an interesting shot of AUSTRALIA, with two aircraft embarked.

A nice view of New Zealand's A turret! Those 12" look pretty impressive like this. What is amazing is the amount of work and industrial infrastructure needed to build these massive naval rifles; plus the turret, machinery and fire control equipment....DFO :D
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Yes, and that infrastructure is gone today. We couldn't reproduce them if we wanted to. We couldn't build a twin of the Golden Gate bridge without components from Korea, Japan or China.

Sad to say, not to mention way to many other things, BUT...we sure can do up Big Macs....whoopy! DFO :eek:

Here in Sheffield, England. funds are being founds (slowly) to build a smaller scale version of the Brooklyn bridge. All of the steel from the Brooklyn bridge was made in Sheffield and shipped to New York. There is still a steel industry in Sheffield, just! There is still a working steam engine (biggest in the world) in Sheffield, it was used to press the steel for British battleships/cruisers, amazing piece of engineering, when it's working the ground rumbles like a earthquake.

Well, I don't believe I ever saw this thread before, so I'm glad it got necro'ed. Was the battlecruiser concept flawed? Well, if anyone thinks he can channel Fisher, then maybe we'll know exactly what his concept was. There are a few things we can say with some certainty. The battlecruiser WAS intended to fight against battleships, though not in the same way that other battleships were. Considering the speed revolution that began with Hood, you could argue that Fisher's concept was the one that ultimately won out. At the Battle of Vella Gulf, American destroyers sank three Japanese destroyers. Does that mean the destroyer concept was flawed? At Jutland, battlecruisers sank four battlecruisers. I'm not sure that indicts the battlecruiser at all. Except for pre-dread designs, all capital ships lost at Jutland were sunk by battlecruisers--that's a pretty good record. No one knows what Fisher was trying to accomplish with his Courageous class, but it fairly well established that the Baltic Operation had little or nothing to do with it. If we cite inadequacies in ammo supply protection as a flaw in the battlecruiser concept, then the battleship concept is flawed as well. The rise of the aircraft carrier argues in favor of the battlecruiser, which was more adaptable to this new brand of naval warfare than the battleship. I have a booklet on the battlecruiser coming out in a couple months. It discusses the origins of the battlecruiser, how it evolved, and specific thorny issues like Courageous. The title is Thunder in Its Courses, so if this topic is of interest, you may want to check it out. I know it will be available in the US and UK--otherwise, I'm not sure.

Hi Tiornu, hope your book includes what Jellicoe sums up here. Fisher & Jellicoe were sending letters to the War Cabinet either defending or approving the situation the Navy found itself in, and it was from Jellicoe's point not too well conceived. Fisher talks about Courageous and so forth in these letters, but one thing i do note here, Jellicoe's damming of Renown & Repulse is an embarrassment to the RN, and also, one never heard the Germans complain about their battlecruisers as they were more than happy, they were in all terms fast battleships and the progress they were making in this field was alarming the RN, as they would later say the Hoods were not going to be the answer to the Germans, as we found out in 1941. The British via Fisher & Jellicoe conceded the Battlecruiser was the dominate vessel of the day. I totally agree with your comments re the battleships must be flawed as well if it was only cordite, as Geddes says this circa 1920 in that they have no vessels in the RN that have been built with the lessons learnt from Jutland. This whole issue does not explain Hood's loss if it was just ammo. BATTLE CRUISER STRENGTH. Memorandum for the War Cabinet, by the First Lord of the Admiralty. The Board of Admiralty desire to draw the attention of the War Cabinet to the serious situation which will arise by the end of this year in regard to the comparative strength of the British and German Battle Cruiser Forces, owing to their superiority in amour protection and speed, raids can be carried out with comparative impunity by German Battle Cruisers on our Coasts and East Coast shipping and successful scouting work for the Battle Fleet by the Battle Cruiser Force becomes a matter of considerable difficulty, and places the Battle Fleet at a disadvantage on joining action with the High Seas Fleet. The Board suggest that the only way of meeting this danger is by using Japanese Battle Cruisers. The Japanese are unlikely to consent to such craft joining the Grand Fleet, and in any case, it is doubtful whether, manned by Japanese, they would be a match for the German Battle Cruisers, the Board suggest for the consideration of the War Cabinet that the Foreign Office should be asked to instruct the Ambassador at Tokyo to sound the Japanese Government as to whether they would sell two Battle Cruisers. The First Sea Lord has prepared a comparative statement of the fighting strength of British and German Battle Cruisers of approximately the same date, which shews that the German craft bare much superior in protection and that their guns have considerable greater range than the British. In speed the slowest German Battle Cruiser exceeds by two knots our slowest, so that they can draw our fast ships ahead of the slower ones. The First Sea Lord ,Groups the Battle cruisers thus- MANTEUFFEL-PRINCESS ROYAL HINDENBURG-LION DERFFLINGER-TIGER AND NEW ZEALAND SEYDLITZ-AUSTRALIA MOLTKE-REPULSE VON DER TANN-RENOWN AND INFLEXIBLE and has little doubt that in either group the advantage would lie with the enemy. (As one of our Force would certainly be refitting at the German selected moment, our weakest' Battle Cruiser INDOMITABLE - is omitted) (MANTEUFFEL is expected to -commission in a few months: MACKENSEN the next Battle Cruiser, about November 1918*. Our next, HOOD; December 1918, ANSON. HOWE and RODNEY are stand-by jobs). On a detailed comparison, taking vessels of Approximately the same age, the First Sea Lord remarks That RENOWN & REPULSE are completely outclassed and not fit to even engage MANTEUFFEL & HINDENBURG: that TIGER & DERFFLINGER, PRINCESS ROYAL, LION & SEYDLITZ are fairly matched except for very inadequate torpedo protection in our ships; that NEW ZEALAND & AUSTRALIA are badly outclassed by MOLTKE; and that INFLEXIBLE & INDOMIDABLE are considerably inferior to VON DER TANN in protection & speed, though somewhat superior in armament. The all-round superiority of the VON DER TANN is shown by her 2,000 tons greater displacement. 20th of August 1917.

Some discussion threads about British Battle Cruisers here; [FONT=Verdana][URL="http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8379&highlight=battle+cruisers"][COLOR=#0000ff]http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8379&highlight=battle+cruisers[/COLOR][/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana][URL="http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8378&highlight=battle+cruisers"][COLOR=#800080]http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8378&highlight=battle+cruisers[/COLOR][/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana][URL="http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8380&highlight=battle+cruisers"][COLOR=#0000ff]http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8380&highlight=battle+cruisers[/COLOR][/URL][/FONT] [FONT=Verdana]It is intended that the Gallery threads are restricted to postings of multiple pictures, but I do appreciate that invetitably this strays into conversation. It is particularly the case with very interesting topics such as this one.[/FONT]

The comparison picture of 12'' and 13,5'' battlecruisers (mixed from S. Breyer drawings). Invincible, Indefatigable, New Zealand, Lion and Tiger (last two are showed before and after modernizations) [ATTACH]95113[/ATTACH] IMHO, HMS Lion is best! Especially as new, with short 2nd and 3rd funnels.
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[QUOTE=kronserg;154259]Two close-up shots of 12'' battlecruisers - HMNZS New Zealand (June 1913, Nelson) and HMAS Australia (December 1918, Firth of Forth). [ATTACH]94554[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]94555[/ATTACH][/QUOTE] 2 excellent quality images... really impresive! Any thoughts on the canon being brought aboard "New Zealand"? It looks like part of a battery... maybe ceremonial? as artillery had advanced beyond such guns by 1913. Then again, it may be 'right' for pre-war! Anyone?

[QUOTE=TCC;160369]2 excellent quality images... really impresive! Any thoughts on the canon being brought aboard "New Zealand"? It looks like part of a battery... maybe ceremonial? as artillery had advanced beyond such guns by 1913. Then again, it may be 'right' for pre-war! Anyone?[/QUOTE] Could be a QF 12 pdr 8cwt landing gun; most larger RN warships carried at least one of these at the time of WW1. There seems to be a second gun being swayed up at the extreme left of the picture. The landing gun in action in West Africa, 1915:
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[QUOTE=BALTICSUBS;154567] "BATTLE CRUISER STRENGTH. Memorandum for the War Cabinet, by the First Lord of the Admiralty. The Board of Admiralty desire to draw the attention of the War Cabinet to the serious situation which will arise by the end of this year in regard to the comparative strength of the British and German Battle Cruiser Forces, owing to their superiority in amour protection and speed, 20th of August 1917"[/QUOTE] That reads like a scare letter from dept. heads wanting more resources. The table of ship V ship seems very suspect as, and I'd have to look them all up, but it looks like they cherry picked the worst case examples for oponents. SEYDLITZ v AUSTRALIA? VON DER TANN v RENOWN AND INFLEXIBLE? Were the RN battlecruisers held in such low regard by the Admiralty that they needed 2 of theirs, including 1 with 6x 15in guns and the 2nd 8x 12in, to tackle the first type of the German armed with 8x 11in guns!! If this letter is indcative of the group-think in the RN at that time, Jutland must have [U]really[/U] shook their faith in their ships.

[QUOTE=patroclus;160370]Could be a QF 12 pdr 8cwt landing gun; most larger RN warships carried at least one of these at the time of WW1. There seems to be a second gun being swayed up at the extreme left of the picture. The landing gun in action in West Africa, 1915:[/QUOTE] So this is the 12 pdr 'boat & field'! Am I to take it this was mounted onto a picket boat in some way? Maybe the same method as the 3pdr? Looks a bit 'big' to be put on the front of a picket boat. What happened to these guns at the start of the war? Did they take up a place with the Marine units fighting in ashore?

[I][B]Were the RN battlecruisers held in such low regard by the Admiralty that they needed 2 of theirs, including 1 with 6x 15in guns and the 2nd 8x 12in, to tackle the first type of the German armed with 8x 11in guns!![/B][/I] TCC, reading Jellicoe's writing after Jutland tells you this is exactly what he means, and saying he could not guarrentee to the Admiralty Jutland & the disasters that were the 3 battlecruisers blowing up would not happen again. He later says the wonder ships Renown & Repulse could explode with one hit. The problem in ships like HMAS Australia would have been far more suited to getting rid of the menace of vessels such as Wolf, rather than knocking on Japan's door to find the elusive raider. But HMAS Australia was there to maintain the blockade agaisnt ships like Wolf, but Wolf got out & back in anyway after raiding the southern oceans. Overall the British battlecruisers were exactly what Jellicoe describes and there is no point hiding from it, Renown & Repluse had thin deck armour and as he says, and his words, they are not fit for battle, this concept being proven in 1941 when Hood was lost, so you can see what he is saying holds weight. Fisher also states prior to Jutland that the battlecruiser had become the dominate ship of the day, and the worry was British ships were not dominate one on one as Jellicoe points out. They were a different concept from the German ships, as Jellicoe points out with armour protection, but they were used in a roll the same as the Germans ships & paid the price, with Jellicoe saying after the loss of 2 more cruisers in August 1916 that he was not going to offer battle again when they come out. So then the next problem, the Germans were building a new class of Battlecruisers in 1917 & 1918 of which the British could not match, and saying Hood & her sisters were not being built with the lessons learnt from Jutland tells you it was more than cordite they were worried about, and in any case these ships would not be ready until 1920 plus. The Q L class battleships were not the answer as Jellicoe states they were too slow & they should have built battlecruisers of the Tiger class instead. When the Germans switch to U-Boats the German battlecruisers use their power to keep the sea lanes open to the North Sea, the RN can't take them on or won't take them on. The proof of what Jellicoe says is the fate of Hood 25 years laters, it was just a myth she was the Mighty Hood, but it is easy to see the spin on things from WW1 & the naval war that led us to believe this hype, you can't let the enemy know your weakneses.

Palmers, HMS Queen Mary outfitted (March, 1913) [ATTACH]111156[/ATTACH]
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Thank you Kronserg, that is a super photograph, very atmospheric.

[QUOTE=kronserg;10014404]Palmers, HMS Queen Mary outfitted (March, 1913) [ATTACH]111156[/ATTACH][/QUOTE] Is the Queen Mary image from the IWM site? I'd found this image a day or 2 prior to my laptop failing so, as I've lost everything on it, I couldn't post it. 4 images of Lion at Devonports No4(?) slip during construction. They are from this chaps album: [URL="http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/museumedwardianalbum"]http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/museumedwardianalbum[/URL] [my laptop won't bootup so I've potentially lost everything I've ever gathered together about HMS LION and ships in general. In fact, I've losy EVERYTHING from films to music to emails addresses to log-on passwords and sites. I'm not really dwelling on it as the enormity of it all is strikingly depressing!!!]
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[QUOTE=TCC;10014416]Is the Queen Mary image from the IWM site?[/QUOTE] No, this photo is not from the IWM.

[QUOTE=kronserg;10014420]No, this photo is not from the IWM.[/QUOTE] Well it is a excellent photograph.

Two interesting Hood's aerial views (left image showing ship during her visit in Vancouver) [ATTACH]117329[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]117330[/ATTACH]
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TCC: Terribly sorry to hear of the computer problems. They may be able to recover your hard drive, however, if you can get the "geeks" to work on it. We all live in fear of that happening, which is why I do a weekly update of my computer to a 500 gB external hard drive AND to disc....paranoia strikes deep when it comes to computer files! I do hope you are able to recover your data! Regards,

[QUOTE=Don Boyer;10031761]TCC: Terribly sorry to hear of the computer problems. They may be able to recover your hard drive, however, if you can get the "geeks" to work on it. We all live in fear of that happening, which is why I do a weekly update of my computer to a 500 gB external hard drive AND to disc....paranoia strikes deep when it comes to computer files! I do hope you are able to recover your data! Regards,[/QUOTE] Same happened to me a few years back but my computer bloke got most of it back. Went and bought an EHD the next day and copied everthying to it and put my special stuff on disc as well. I don't trust Microsoft or computers at all! Hope you get it all back Cheers Bruce

Thank you for the sentiments, chaps. While this was around christmas time (six months ago), I'm still living with the effects from it. It turns out it was the motherboard or processor that was gone and, luckily, the hard-drive is sound and usable. I nursed a desktop along for near 10 years and had a laptop last for 18-24 months: there's a lesson there! I used to pick the LT up with one hand from one side (it could stress the soldering on the motherboard) and I sometimes placed it down on a flat cloth surface (e.g. bed, settee, etc. The fibres gathered and started to constrict the fan airway) Both things are no-nos and may have broke the LT. Just a general heads up. Cheers

Glad to read that events proved not to be too disasterous for you! :)

[QUOTE=astraltrader;10031878]Glad to read that events proved not to be too disasterous for you! :)[/QUOTE] Thank you Terry...

[QUOTE=kronserg;10014404]Palmers, HMS Queen Mary outfitted (March, 1913) [ATTACH]111156[/ATTACH][/QUOTE] I was under the impression that the guns in any one turret were liked, or fixed together such that they always had the same elevation. The turret in this photograph (Y?) have different elevations. How is this? Steve

[QUOTE=eskimosailor;10032066]I was under the impression that the guns in any one turret were liked, or fixed together such that they always had the same elevation. The turret in this photograph (Y?) have different elevations. How is this? Steve[/QUOTE] The 13.5" guns of [I]Queen Mary[/I] were individually sleeved, not fixed as pairs. The 13.5" guns of previous RN capital ships could individually elevate, as well. [url]http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_135-45_mk5_EOI_pic.jpg[/url] Hope this helps, Dan

This is a picture of Renown that I came across recently that I'd not seen before, taken in the Med in April 1941. bert.
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An easy to overlook image of HMS Lion at Dogger Bank. Photograph or artwork? You'd be forgiven if you thought it was art-work due to the blurredness and lack of photographic reality... but who-ever painted it, they also incorporated Lions A turret being knocked out (as it was during the first half of the battle) If it's a photo, it shows Lion during the chase where she is firing upon a forward bearing to port.
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[QUOTE=TCC;10069474]An easy to overlook image of HMS Lion at Dogger Bank. Photograph or artwork? You'd be forgiven if you thought it was art-work due to the blurredness and lack of photographic reality... but who-ever painted it, they also incorporated Lions A turret being knocked out (as it was during the first half of the battle) If it's a photo, it shows Lion during the chase where she is firing upon a forward bearing to port.[/QUOTE] It's a photograph: it's very common on ebay and I've always overlooked it. But it's actually interesting as it shows her down in the bow, A turret out of action and the camouflage is definitely there. So the only? extant photograph of Lion during the chase, and as such, there's a good chance that the foremost blob on the compass platform is Adm Beatty. ;)
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A sequence of shots showing Hood's 'A' turret firing, courtesy of stills from a C4 documentary. Regards, Bert.
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Could she be the REPULSE by any chance?

The documentary was about the loss of Hood and asserts that the pictures are of said ship. Bert.

Defintely HMS Repulse and taken in the 1920's.

I bow to your superior knowledge Monty. Justification please. Bert.

Bert, perhaps the best and easiest way to explain the differences between Repulse and Hood would be to show more photos of the two - Repulse first, Hood second. Note how Repulse has a smaller foretop, note her triple four-inch gun mountings abreast the bridge structure. Also note the streak of six-inch armour along her hull sides (actually her original belt sited higher up after being replaced by a new nine-inch belt). Note the large conning tower on Hood. Compare your photos to these photos taken at about the same time period (circa 1924): :)
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Q.E.D. Monty. Much obliged for that, and respects to patroclus for my dismissive reply, regards, Bert.

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