HMS Indomitable was one of three s built for the Royal Navy before World War I and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German ships and in the Mediterranean when war broke out and bombarded Turkish fortifications protecting the Dardanelles even before the British declared war on Turkey in the Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau She helped to sink the German armoured cruiser during the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 and towed the damaged British battlecruiser to safety after the battle. She damaged the German battlecruisers and during the Battle of Jutland in mid-1916 and watched her sister ship explode. Deemed obsolete after the war, she was sold for scrap in 1921.
Design
General characteristics The Invincible-class ships were formally known as armoured cruisers until 1911 when they were redesignated as battlecruisers by an Admiralty order of 24 November 1911. Unofficially a number of designations were used until then, including "cruiser-battleship", "dreadnought cruiser" and "battle-cruiser".Roberts, pp. 24–25
Indomitable was significantly larger than her armoured cruiser predecessors of the . She had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of at deep load. She displaced at normal load and at deep load, nearly more than the earlier ships.Roberts, pp. 43–44
Propulsion Indomitable had two paired sets of Parsons direct-drive turbines. The turbines were designed to produce a total of , but reached nearly during trials in 1908. Indomitable was designed for a speed of , but reached during trials.Roberts, pp. 76, 80 She maintained an average speed of for three days during a passage of the North Atlantic in August 1908.Roberts, p. 75
The steam plant comprised 31 Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boilers arranged in four boiler rooms.Roberts, pp. 70–75 Maximum bunkerage was of coal, and an additional of fuel oil that was to be sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate.Roberts, p. 76 At full fuel capacity, she could steam for at a speed of .Preston, p. 24
Armament Indomitable mounted eight BL Mk X guns in four twin hydraulically powered turrets. Her secondary armament consisted of sixteen QF Mk III guns. During 1915 the turret roof guns were transferred to the superstructure and the total number of guns was reduced to twelve. All of the remaining guns were enclosed in casemates and given blast shields at that time to better protect the gun crews from weather and enemy action.Roberts, pp. 96–97 The QF Mk III guns were replaced by twelve 4-inch BL MK VII guns during 1917.Roberts, p. 83
Her anti-aircraft armament consisted of a single QF 3 inch 20 cwt AA gun on a high-angle MKII mount at the aft end of the superstructure that was carried from July 1915. A 3-pounder Hotchkiss gun on a high-angle MkIc mounting with a maximum elevation of 60° was also mounted in November 1914 and used until August 1917. A 4-inch BL MK VII on a high-angle mount was added in April 1917. Five 18-inch (450 mm) submerged torpedo tubes were fitted on the Invincibles, two on each side and one in the stern. Fourteen torpedoes were carried for them.
Armour The Invincibles waterline belt had a maximum thickness amidships. The belt was 6 inches thick roughly between the fore and aft 12-inch gun turrets, but was reduced to four inches from the fore turret to the bow, but did not extend aft of the rear turret. The gun turrets and barbettes were protected by of armour, except for the turret roofs which used of Krupp non-cemented armour (KNC). The thickness of the main deck was and the lower deck armour was . Mild steel torpedo bulkheads of 2.5-inch thickness were fitted abreast the magazines and shell rooms.Roberts, pp. 109, 112
After the Battle of Jutland revealed her vulnerability to plunging shellfire, additional armour was added in the area of the magazines and to the turret roofs. The exact thickness is not known, but it was unlikely to be thick as the total amount was less than .Burt, p. 48
Construction and service history
She was built by Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering at Govan. She was laid down on 1 March 1906 and launched on 16 March 1907.Roberts, p. 41 She was commissioned on 25 June 1908 before she was fully complete to carry the Prince of Wales to Canada.
Immediately after commissioning, Indomitable embarked the Prince of Wales (soon to be King George V) for the Quebec Tercentenary celebration. On her return voyage, "…her average was a fraction below 25 knots, almost equalling the record for an Atlantic crossing of 25.08 knots, set by the liner ".Kenneth Rose, King George V. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1984, p. 72 She returned on 10 August and was immediately returned to her builders for final completion. She was assigned to the Nore Division of the Home Fleet on 28 October and assigned to the 1st Cruiser Squadron (CS) in March 1909. She became the flagship of Rear-Admiral S. Colville, commanding the 1st CS, on 26 July. She was refitted several times between 1910 and 1913 before she was transferred to the Mediterranean on 27 August 1913 to form the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) with her sister ship Invincible. She was slightly damaged in a collision in Stokes Bay with the minelayer C4 on 17 March 1913. She was refitting in Malta in July 1914 when the deepening crisis forced the Navy to cut short her refit.Burt, p. 57
World War I
Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau
Indomitable, accompanied by , under the command of Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne encountered the German battlecruiser and the light cruiser on the morning of 4 August 1914 headed east after a cursory bombardment of the French Algerian port of Philippeville, but Britain and Germany were not yet at war so Milne turned to shadow the Germans as they headed back to Messina to recoal. All three battlecruisers had problems with their boilers, but Goeben and Breslau were able to break contact and reached Messina by the morning of the 5th. By this time war had been declared, after the German invasion of Belgium, but an Admiralty order to respect Italian neutrality and stay outside a six-mile (10 km) limit from the Italian coast precluded entrance into the passage of the Strait of Messina where they could observe the port directly. Therefore, Milne stationed Inflexible and Indefatigable at the northern exit of the Strait of Messina, still expecting the Germans to break out to the west where they could attack French troop transports, the light cruiser at the southern exit and sent Indomitable to recoal at Bizerte where she was better positioned to react to a German sortie into the Western Mediterranean.Massie, p. 39
The Germans sortied from Messina on 6 August and headed east, towards Constantinople, trailed by Gloucester. Milne, still expecting Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon to turn west, kept the battlecruisers at Malta until shortly after midnight on 8 August when he set sail for Cape Matapan at a leisurely , where Goeben had been spotted eight hours earlier. At 2:30 PM he received an incorrect signal from the Admiralty stating that Britain was at war with Austria—war would not be declared until 12 August and the order was countermanded four hours later, but Milne followed his standing orders to guard the Adriatic against an Austrian breakout attempt, rather than seek Goeben. Finally on 9 August Milne was given clear orders to "chase Goeben which had passed Cape Matapan on the 7th steering north-east." Milne still did not believe that Souchon was heading for the Dardanelles, and so he resolved to guard the exit from the Aegean, unaware that the Goeben did not intend to come out.Massie, pp. 45–46 Indomitable remained in the Mediterranean to blockade the Dardanelles, but Inflexible was ordered home on 18 August.Preston, p. 25
On 3 November 1914, Churchill ordered the first British attack on the Dardanelles following the opening of hostilities between Turkey and Russia. The attack was carried out by Indomitable and Indefatigable, as well as the French pre-dreadnought battleships Suffren and Vérité.Massie, p. 50 The intention of the attack was to test the fortifications and measure the Turkish response. The results were deceptively encouraging. In a twenty-minute bombardment, a single shell struck the magazine of the fort at Sedd el Bahr at the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, displacing (but not destroying) 10 guns and killing 86 Turkish soldiers. The most significant consequence was that the attention of the Turks was drawn to strengthening their defences, and they set about expanding the mine field.Carlyon, p. 47 This attack actually took place before a formal declaration of war had been made by Britain against the Ottoman Empire which didn't happen until the 5th. Indomitable was ordered to return to England in December where she joined the 2nd BCS.Roberts, p. 122
Battle of Dogger Bank
On 23 January 1915, a force of German battlecruisers under the command of Admiral Franz von Hipper sortied to clear the Dogger Bank of any British fishing boats or small craft that might be there to collect intelligence on German movements. But the British were reading their coded messages and sailed to intercept them with a larger force of British battlecruisers under the command of Admiral Beatty, which included Indomitable. Contact was initiated at 07:20The times used in this section are in UTC, which is one hour behind CET, which is often used in German works. on the 24th when the British light cruiser spotted the German light cruiser . By 07:35 the Germans had spotted Beatty's force and Hipper ordered a turn to the south at , believing that this would suffice if the ships that he saw to his northwest were British battleships and that he could always increased speed to 's maximum speed of if they were British battlecruisers.Massie, pp. 376–384
Beatty ordered his battlecruisers to make all practicable speed to catch the Germans before they could escape. Indomitable managed to exceed and Beatty recognized her performance with a signal at 08:55 "Well done, Indomitable".Massie, p. 385 Despite this achievement Indomitable was the slowest of Beatty's ships and gradually fell behind the newer and faster battlecruisers. By 10:48 Blücher had been heavily damaged by fire from all the other battlecruisers and her speed had dropped to and her steering gear had been jammed; Beatty ordered Indomitable to attack her. But due to a combination of a mistake by Beatty's flag lieutenant in signaling and heavy damage to Beatty's flagship which had knocked out her radio and caused enough smoke to obscure her signal halyards so that Beatty couldn't communicate with his ships caused the rest of the battlecruisers to turn away from Hipper's main body and engage Blücher.Massie, pp. 385–406 Indomitable fired 134 shells at Blücher before she capsized and sank at 12:07. After the end of the battle Indomitable was ordered to tow Lion back to port as one of her engines had been knocked out, the other was failing and she'd been holed a number of times beneath the waterline. It took over a day and a half at speeds of .Massie, pp. 410–412
She was transferred to the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) in February 1915 although she was being repaired after an electrical fire at the time. Rear Admiral Horace Hood took command of the 3rd BCS on 27 May 1915. The 1st and 3rd BCS sortied in response to the German bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft on 24–25 April 1916, but failed to locate the German ships in heavy weather.Tarrant, pp. 84, 95–96
Battle of Jutland