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The Washington Naval Treaty, which limited capital ship construction from 1922 onwards, treated battleships and battlecruisers identically, and the new generation of battlecruisers planned was scrapped under the terms of the treaty. By the end of the war, capital ship design had developed, with battleships becoming faster and battlecruisers becoming more heavily armoured, blurring the distinction between a battlecruiser and a fast battleship.

This dismal showing led to a persistent general belief that battlecruisers were too thinly armoured to function successfully. British battlecruisers in particular suffered heavy losses at Jutland, where poor fire safety and ammunition handling practices left them vulnerable to catastrophic magazine explosions following hits to their main turrets from large-calibre shells. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they were increasingly used alongside the better-protected battleships.īattlecruisers served in the navies of the United Kingdom, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, Australia and Japan during World War I, most notably at the Battle of the Falkland Islands and in the several raids and skirmishes in the North Sea which culminated in a pitched fleet battle, the Battle of Jutland. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships.

The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. Battlecruisers typically had thinner armour (to a varying degree) and a somewhat lighter main gun battery than contemporary battleships, installed on a longer hull with much higher engine power in order to attain greater speeds. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attributes. The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century.

HMS Hood, the largest battlecruiser ever built, in Australia on 17 March 1924