Armored Cruiser - 1900s: Battle of Tsushima and The Battlecruiser

1900s: Battle of Tsushima and The Battlecruiser

Armored cruisers were used with success in the line of battle by the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Of the battle damage received by the Japanese, the armored cruiser Nisshin received eight hits, which destroyed three of her 8-inch (203 mm) guns, killed five crew members and injured 90 more (one of the wounded being Isoroku Yamamoto, who would later plan the attack on Pearl Harbor). None of the other Japanese armored cruisers suffered serious damage or large loss of life. The Iwate was hit 16 times but no one onboard was killed and only 15 were wounded. Except for the Kasagi, all the cruisers present at Tsushima that morning were still battle-ready in the evening.

The performance of the Japanese armored cruisers led to a boom in the construction of armored cruisers in the world's navies as some naval authorities concluded that the armored cruiser's superior speed could ensure survivability in a naval action against battleships; they did not take into account the Russian Baltic Fleet's inefficiency and tactical ineptitude during the battle. First Sea Lord "Jacky" Fisher, an advocate of armored cruisers as more useful than battleships to safeguard British trade and territorial interests, saw his efforts justified; his belief that "speed is armor" would lead him to create the battlecruiser. Danish Navy Commander William Hovgaard, who would later become president of New York Shipbuilding and serve on the U.S. Navy's Battleship Design Advisory Board, a group which would help plan the Iowa class fast battleships in the 1930s, said, "The fighting capacity of the armored cruiser has reached a point which renders its participation in future fleet actions almost a certainty" and called for a "battleship-cruiser" which would possess the speed of a cruiser and the firepower of a capital ship Other naval authorities remained skeptical. Mahan called the interest in armored cruisers "a fad," then explained:

She is armored, and she is a cruiser; and what have you got? A ship to "lie in the line"? as our ancestors used to say. No, and Yes; that is to say, she may at a pinch, and at a risk that exceeds her powers. A cruiser? Yes, and No; for, order to give her armor and armament which do not fit the line, you have given tonnage beyond what is needed for the speed and coal endurance proper for a cruiser. By giving this tonnage to armor and armament you have taken it from other uses; either from increasing her own speed and endurance, or from providing another cruiser. You have in her more cruiser than she ought to have and less armored vessel, or less cruiser and more armored ship. I do not call this a combination, though I do call it a compromise.... I do not say you have a useless ship. I do say that you have not as useful a ship as, for the tonnage, you ought to have.

Buoyed with their success at Tsushima, Japan laid down the four Tsukubas between 1905 and 1908. At a speed of 20.5 knots, they carried an extremely heavy main armament of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns, 8 inches (203 mm) of belt and turret armor and 3 inches (76 mm) of deck armor. The Tsukubas were intended to take the place of aging battleships and thus showed Japan's intention of continuing to use armored cruisers in fleet engagements. The U.S. Navy raised the main gun caliber of its cruisers with its Tennessee class, laid down between 1902 and 1904. These mounted four 10-inch (254 mm) and 16 6-inch (152 mm) guns, the former a size previously allocated to battleships. While they had thinner armor than the Pennsylvanias (5 inches (127 mm) on their belts and 1 inch (25 mm) on their decks) due to newly imposed congressional restraints on tonnage, they could still steam at 22 knots. They were built as a fast, powerful response in the eventuality of a Pacific war and were the largest and last American armored cruisers built.

The British also considered 10-inch (254 mm) and 12-inch (305 mm) guns for its Minotaur class cruisers, the culmination of its armored cruiser building program. They displaced 14,600 tons, were capable of 23 knots and were armed with four 9.2-inch (234 mm) and 10 7.5-inch (191 mm) guns. By the time these ships were commissioned, Britain possessed the largest armored cruiser force in the world. Undaunted and fully engaged in a naval arms race with the British, the Germans also continued to build armored cruisers, partly from their faith in them as fighting units and commerce raiders, partly from Japan's success. Between 1897 and 1906 they laid down eight of them for use on overseas stations. The initial two, Fürst Bismarck and Prinz Heinrich, were armed with 9.44-inch (240 mm) guns; the six that followed had 8.2-inch (208 mm) guns of a more modern design. The final pair, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, displaced 12,781 tons, steamed at 23.5 knots, carried 6 inches (152 mm) of belt and 2 inches (51 mm) of deck armor and were armed with eight 8.2-inch (208 mm) guns.

Another powerful armored cruiser was the Russian Rurik, completed in 1908. Armed with four 10-inch (254 mm) in two twin turrets fore and aft and eight 8-inch (203 mm) in turrets along the ship's sides, she displaced 15,190 tons and carried a 6-inch (152 mm) belt, two armored decks and 8-inch (203 mm) armor on her turrets and conning tower. Her top speed was 21 knots. Rurik was unusual in that she was Russian designed but British built; the Russian Navy was not usually a customer of British shipyards. She was reportedly one of the best armored cruisers built, with an advanced sprinkler protection for the magazines. Intended as the first of a three-ship class, Rurik's sisters were cancelled with the advent of the battlecruiser HMS Invincible.

"The supreme embodiment of the armored cruiser," in historian Robert K. Massie's words, was the German ship Blücher. An enlarged version of the Scharnhorst class with a speed of 24.25 knots, armed with 12 8.2-inch (208 mm) and eight 5.9-inch (150 mm) guns, Blücher was planned as an armored cruiser in part because the British had misled the Germans on the Invincibles' then being constructed. The Germans expected these new British ships to be armed with six or eight 9.2 in (23 cm) guns. One week after the final decision to construct Blücher, the German naval attache learned they would carry eight 30.5 cm (12.0 in) guns, the same type mounted on battleships. With no funds available to redesign Blücher, work was ordered to proceed as scheduled. She was, Massie writes, "almost a battle cruiser, but not quite. Blücher would have been successful in dealing with British armored cruisers, but she could not stand up to—or keep up with—real battle cruisers."

By the time these ships were entering service, the armored cruiser as it was then known had reached the end of its development. Tactics and technology favored fighting power over long to medium ranges, which demanded an armament of primarily large caliber guns and a speed higher than that of battleships, preferably by at least 30 percent, to fulfill its traditional role as scout for the fleet and the newly-acquired one of participating with battleships in a naval encounter. Thirty percent was the ratio by which frigates had been faster than ships of the line in the days of sail. If a battleship sailed at 20 knots, this would mean that an armored cruiser would have to steam at least 26 or 27 knots. To fulfill these criteria, however, armored cruisers would have to be built much larger and take on a different form than they had in the past. The battlecruiser HMS Invincible and her two sister ships were designed specifically to fulfill these requirements. In a sense they were an extension of the armored cruiser as a fast, heavily armed scout, commerce protector and cruiser-destroyer, reflected in the term originally ascribed to them, "large armored cruiser." However, they were much larger, faster and better-armed than armored cruisers, able to outpace them, stay out of range of their weapons and destroy them with relative impunity. Because they carried the heavy guns normally ascribed to battleships, they could also theoretically hold their place in a battle line more readily than armored cruisers and serve as the "battleship-cruiser" for which Hovgaard had argued after Tsushima. All these factors made battlecruisers attractive fighting units, although Britain, Germany and Japan would be the only powers to build them. They also meant that the armored cruiser as it had been known was now outmoded and no more were built after 1910. The United States Naval Institute put the matter bluntly in its 1908 written proceedings:

It is very doubtful if an armored cruiser of the Colorado class would dare even tackle a monitor, for fear that one of the latter's shot might hit a vital spot, and if it did she would lose her only raison d'etre, for a crippled cruiser would be useless as a cruiser, and still not fit to "lie in the line."... It may be urged that an armored cruiser was never intended to fight a battleship. Then what is she intended for? Surely not as a scout or a commerce destroyer, for vessels a fifth the displacement could do this work as well, and numbers are required here, not strength.... If she is to overtake a weaker enemy, you must first assume a smaller enemy, otherwise she could not have superiority in both speed and strength. By escaping from a stronger enemy she will never win wars.

Later in the same address is this: "Every argument used against holds true for battle-cruisers of the Invincible type, except that the latter, if wounded, would be fit to lie in the line, owing to her great armament. If it is hoped to fight at such great ranges that her 7-inch belt and 5-inch side will be of value, then the armor of battleships is wrong, not in principle, but in distribution."