List of Battlecruisers of The Royal Navy - Courageous Class

Courageous Class

The Courageous class comprised three battlecruisers, known as "large light cruisers", that were nominally designed to support Admiral of the Fleet Lord John Fisher's Baltic Project, which was intended to land troops on the German Baltic Coast. The ships of this class were fast but very lightly armoured with only a few heavy guns. They were given a shallow draught, in part to allow them to operate in the shallow waters of the Baltic but also reflecting experience gained earlier in the war. To maximize their speed, the Courageous class were the first capital ships of the Royal Navy to use geared steam turbines and small-tube boilers. This made them the fastest capital ships in existence, slightly faster than even the Renown-class ships.

The first two ships, HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious, were commissioned in 1917 and spent the war patrolling the North Sea. They participated in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight and were present when the High Seas Fleet surrendered a year later. Their half-sister HMS Furious was designed with a pair of 18-inch (457 mm) guns, the largest guns ever fitted on a ship of the Royal Navy, but was modified during construction to take a flying-off deck and hangar in lieu of her forward turret and barbette. After some patrols in the North Sea her rear turret was removed and another flight deck added. Her aircraft attacked the Zeppelin sheds during the Tondern raid in July 1918. All three ships were laid up after the end of the war, but were rebuilt as aircraft carriers during the 1920s. Glorious and Courageous were sunk early in the Second World War and Furious was sold for scrap in 1948.