Once upon a time, there was a British admiral who put forth a design for a warship that drastically changed how the world looked at and built capital ships. This man was 'Jackie' Fischer and his design was the all big gun battleship, the HMS Dreadnaught. Prior to this battleships had a variety of armament sizes, each for battle against a specific type of ship or mission. After the Dreadnaught, all battleships had a single, large caliber main armament.

But he thought beyond this type of ship and his next focus was on a ship that was as heavily armed as a battleship, but as fast as a cruiser. The plan here was to produce a ship that could operate against surface raiders and if any of the opposing battleships turned up, would be fast enough to get out of harm's way. These ships would be quite lightly armored compared to battleships as they would not be fighting the big guns, but still needed enough armor to take on cruisers. Thus was born the battlecruiser.

Fischer was enamoured with the type and his enthusiasm spilled over onto his successors. Before WWI, not only Britain, but also Germany was building battle cruisers. German battlecruisers were not quite so heavily armed, more heavily armored and a bit slower. Early in the war, those few occasions where British battlecruisers met German ships, they did well. However, at the 'big one' at Jutland in 1916, these ships were used against German battleships, a task for which they were not designed and three of them were lost in quick succession.

It was quite obvious that the design was flawed and after WWI only three ships of this class remained in the Royal Navy. These ships were more heavily armored than their predecessors. They were the Repulse, Renown and the Hood. The Repulse and Renown were sister ships while the Hood was the lone ship of its class to be built as a battle cruiser. One other was completed as HMS Eagle, an aircraft carrier. These three ships entered WWII and had quite different histories. The Hood was destroyed by the Bismark, the Repulse was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers early in the war, and the Repulse spent most of her war mostly escorting convoys. She was the only one to survive the conflict but was soon scrapped after the end of the war.

This particular book covers, in considerable detail, the history of the battlecruiser and the continuing development of these three ships in particular. There are tons of line drawings showing how they changed over the years as well as a goodly number of superb period photos. A rather large section of the book is on building models of these ships. First off, every known ship kit of these three subjects is covered, giving the good and the bad about these items. Then there is a showcase that provides a look at what several modelers have accomplished when building kits of these ships. To say that none are out of the box would be an understatement, but all are truly superb. Another nice section is on the various camouflage schemes worn by these ships.

It all makes for an excellent reference not only for the enthusiast, but especially for the modeler who wants a history of the ships, photos, drawings and additional information to help with their projects. A book I found particularly interesting and one that I can recommend to you.

May 2015

Review book courtesy of  Casemate Publishing, where you can order your copy of this and many other superb books and DVDs. You can get this particular book at this link.

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