Armored Cruiser - Differences Between Armored Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers

Differences Between Armored Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers

The armored cruiser was not a close ancestor of heavy cruisers, even though the name sometimes suggests this. By 1905 the armored cruiser had grown in size and power to be very close to the pre-dreadnought battleships of the day, with a displacement of around 15,000 tons: considerably larger than the 10,000 tons of the heavy cruiser. This trend resulted in the battlecruiser, which was initially conceived as an armored cruiser on the same scale as the dreadnought battleship. By 1915, both battleships and battlecruisers had grown markedly; HMS Hood, for instance, designed at around that time, displaced 45,000 tons.

In the interwar period, the great gap between heavy cruisers and the capital ships of the same generation meant that the heavy cruiser could not be expected to serve as a junior battleship. By contrast, armored cruisers were part of the main battleline along with pre-dreadnoughts, and some armored cruisers did maintain their place around dreadnoughts and battlecruisers.

There were also important technical differences between the heavy cruiser and the armored cruiser, some of which reflected the generational gap between them. Heavy cruisers, like all contemporary ships, were typically powered by oil-fired steam turbine engines and were capable of far faster speeds than armored cruisers had ever been (propelled by coal-fired reciprocating steam engines of their era). Like their protected cruiser predecessors and contemporary light cruisers, heavy cruisers lacked a side armored belt, saving weight to achieve high speeds. The main armament of a heavy cruiser at a maximum 203 mm (8-inch) was smaller than the typical 233 mm (9.2-inch) guns of later armored cruisers. Nonetheless, heavy cruisers often had a larger number of main guns (some armored cruisers had a mixed instead of uniform complement of main guns), and discarded the mounting of main guns in casemates in favor of center-line superfiring turrets which saved tonnage and enabled the ship to fire all guns on one broadside. Heavy cruisers also benefited from the introduction of fire control in the 1920s and 30s, considerably improving accuracy.