With Indefatigable, the cross-deck firing angles are slightly better, but still not great.īoth ships carry the same secondary armament - 16 4-inch guns - and both have a maximum of just 6 inches of belt armour. Both feature an 8-gun arrangement with 2 turrets en echelon (the amidships ones). They were designed to 'outgun anything they can't outrun, and outrun anything they can't outgun.' And this is exactly how these ships should be played - at least for the low tiers.Īs with Dreadnought and Bellerophon at Tier 3, Invincible and Indefatigable are very, very similar. Whilst this was somewhat due to poor ammunition stowage, this was also due to the weak armour in comparison to the German equivalents.īut, the British BC's weren't designed to fight in the line of battle like the German BC's had.

However, the battle of Jutland was to prove disasterous for the British Battlecruisers, with the loss of 3 Battlecruisers. In the battles of Heligoland Bight, the Battle of the Falkland Islands, and the battle of Dogger Bank, where they had chased and sunk the most advanced armoured cruiser - SMS Blücher. In the early part of WWI, the British Battlecruisers - which tended to have a strong armament but mediocre armour - performed superbly. She carried a uniform battery of 8 12-inch guns - the same caliber as that on Dreadnought - and whilst she had 1 fewer turret, she had an equivalent broadside to her, as readnought featured 2 wing turrets. Invincible made all other nations' armoured cruisers look like toy boats.

They effectively replaced the Armoured Cruiser. And gain speed they did - the first class (Invincible Class) hit a very respectable 25 knots, and could maintain this speed for days on end. The Admiral was fond of the 'second-class battleship' - which was a faster type of pre-dreadnought battleship that sacrificed armour for speed. The brainchild of Admiral Jackie Fisher, the Battlecruiser was to become a new type of capital ship. Whilst much of these efforts were spent on the new Dreadnought Battleships, Battlecruisers also came to play in this at approximately the same time. During the mid 1900's, Germany and Britain entered a naval arms race, building larger and more powerful ships than the other.

World of warships british cruisers