List of Battlecruisers of The Royal Navy - Renown Class

Renown Class

The Renown class ships were originally laid down as improved versions of the Revenge-class battleships. Construction was suspended at the outbreak of the war on the grounds they would not be ready in time. Admiral Lord Fisher, upon becoming First Sea Lord, gained approval to restart their construction as battlecruisers that could be built and enter service quickly. The Director of Naval Construction (DNC), Eustace Tennyson-D'Eyncourt, quickly produced an entirely new design to meet Admiral Lord Fisher's requirements and the builders agreed to deliver the ships in 15 months. They did not quite meet that ambitious goal, but they were delivered a few months after the Battle of Jutland in 1916. They were the world's fastest capital ships upon completion.

HMS Repulse was the only ship of the class to see combat in the First World War when she participated in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917. Both ships were reconstructed twice between the wars; their armour protection was increased along with other lesser improvements in the 1920s, while a much more thorough reconstruction was done in the 1930s, especially for HMS Renown. Both ships served during the Second World War; they searched for the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in 1939, participated in the Norwegian Campaign of April–June 1940, and searched for the German battleship Bismarck in 1941. Repulse was sunk on 10 December 1941 in the South China Sea off Kuantan, Pahang, by Japanese aircraft.

Renown spent much of 1940 and 1941 assigned to Force H at Gibraltar escorting convoys, and she fought in the inconclusive Battle of Cape Spartivento. She was briefly assigned to the Home Fleet and provided cover to several Arctic convoys in early 1942. The ship was transferred back to Force H for Operation Torch and spent much of 1943 refitting and transporting Winston Churchill and his staff to and from various conferences with Allied leaders. In early 1944 Renown was transferred to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, where she supported numerous attacks on Japanese-occupied facilities in Indonesia and various island groups in the Indian Ocean. The ship returned to the Home Fleet in early 1945 and was placed in reserve after the end of the war. Renown was sold for scrap in 1948.