The Renown class consisted of two battlecruisers built during the First World War for the Royal Navy, and . They were originally laid down as improved versions of the s, but their construction was suspended on the outbreak of war on the grounds they would not be ready in a timely manner. 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 their commissioning.
Repulse was the only ship of her 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; the 1920s reconstruction increased their armour protection and made lesser improvements, while the 1930s reconstruction was much more thorough, especially for Renown. Repulse accompanied the battlecruiser during the Special Service Squadron's round-the-world cruise in 1923–1924 and protected British interests during the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. Renown frequently conveyed royalty on their foreign tours and served as flagship of the Battlecruiser Squadron when Hood was refitting.
Both ships served during the Second World War; they searched for the in 1939, participated in the Norwegian Campaign of April–June 1940 and searched for the 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 or transporting Winston Churchill and his staff to and from various conferences with various 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 refitted before being placed in reserve after the end of the war. Renown was sold for scrap in 1948.
Genesis
Improved Revenge-class battleships The battleships of the 1914 Naval Programme consisted of three improved Revenge-class ships, named Renown, Repulse and Resistance, and one further member of the , called Agincourt. Resistance and Agincourt were to be built in royal dockyards while Renown was awarded to Fairfield and Repulse to Palmers. The design was approved on 13 May 1914 and the improvements over the Revenge class consisted of:Burt 1986, p. 291. A consistent thickness of for the protective wing bulkheads. An enlarged torpedo control tower. An enlarged conning tower with the armour rearranged for better access. A protected spotting position in the bow. The width of the keel was increased to provide a more rigid structure amidships to resist stress while docking. Shell stowage for the main guns was increased from 80 rounds per gun to 100.
These changes would have done little to change the size of the ships in comparison to their predecessors other than a decrease in draught to , less than the older ships. They would, however, have been slower than the Revenge-class ships as they were to be provided with only rather than the of their predecessors.Burt 1986, pp. 276, 291.
Work on all four ships was suspended at the beginning of the First World War and the two ships to be built in the royal dockyards were cancelled on 26 August 1914, as it was believed that they could not be completed before the end of the war. Admiral Lord Fisher, once he returned to office as First Sea Lord in October, began pressuring Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to allow him to convert the suspended contracts for Renown and Repulse into a new class of battlecruisers capable of the very high speed of . Churchill argued that their construction would interfere with other construction programmes, absorb too many resources, and still could not be finished in time. Fisher countered by arguing he could keep the building time to a minimum, as he had done with , by using as much material ordered for the battleships as possible, including their gun turrets. Churchill was unmoved, however, until the experiences of Battle of Heligoland Bight in August and the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December, seemed to demonstrate that high speed and heavy gun power was a potent combination and vindicated Fisher's long-held belief on the viability of the battlecruiser. These actions, plus pressure from Admiral Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleet, and Vice Admiral Beatty, commander of the Battlecruiser Force, caused Churchill to gain approval from the Cabinet to build two ships on 28 December.Roberts, pp. 46–47.
Battlecruisers Admiral Lord Fisher first presented his requirements for the new ships to the DNC on 18 December, before they had even been approved. He wanted a long, high, flared bow, like that on the pre-dreadnought , but higher, four 15-inch guns in two twin turrets, an anti-torpedo boat armament of twenty guns mounted high up and protected by gun shields only, speed of 32 knots using oil fuel, and armour on the scale of the battlecruiser . Within a few days, however, Fisher increased the number of guns to six and added two torpedo tubes. Minor revisions in the initial estimate were made until 26 December, and a preliminary design was completed on 30 December.Roberts, pp. 47–48.
During the following week the DNC's department examined the material delivered for the two battleships and decided what could be used in the new design and the contract for Repulse was transferred from Palmers to John Brown & Company because the former lacked a slipway long enough to use for the new ship. The usable material was transferred to John Brown and both builders had received enough information from the DNC's department to lay the keels of both ships on 25 January 1915,Raven and Roberts, p. 45.Burt states that the first twelve plates were laid down for Repulse on 30 November 1914, but this is not mentioned in any other source. See Burt 1986, p. 291. well before the altered contracts were completed on 10 MarchRoberts, p. 47.
Description
General characteristics The Renown-class ships had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of at deep load. They displaced at standard load and at deep load. While longer than their predecessor, , they displaced less than the older ship at deep load.Burt 1986, pp. 212, 297.
The ships proved to be good sea boats, but had to be reinforced while under construction with additional stiffening and pillars under the forecastle deck to cure some minor structural problems forward.Roberts, pp. 49–50. They had a metacentric height of at deep load as built as well as a complete double bottom.Burt 1986, pp. 297–298.
Propulsion The original plan for these ships was to use lightweight machinery producing a total of , but that would have required a considerable amount of time to complete its design. Rather than risk delaying the completion of the ships the machinery from HMS Tiger was duplicated with the addition of three extra boilers to provide the required power needed for the additional speed. Each ship had two paired sets of Brown-Curtis direct-drive steam turbines, housed in separate engine-rooms. Each set comprised high-pressure ahead and astern turbines driving an outboard shaft and low-pressure ahead and astern turbines, housed in the same casing, driving an inner shaft.Raven and Roberts, p. 49. Their three-bladed propellers were in diameter.Roberts, p. 76. The turbines were powered by 42 Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boilers in six boiler rooms at a working pressure of .Raven and Roberts, pp. 49–50. They were designed to produce a total of , but achieved more than during Renowns trials, when she reached a speed of .Roberts, p. 81. They were the fastest capital ships in existence until the arrival of in 1920.Burt 1986, p. 294.
They were designed to normally carry of fuel oil, but had a maximum capacity of . At full capacity, the Renown-class ships could steam at a speed of for .Burt 1986, p. 297. The ships had two reciprocating steam-driven dynamos, one oil-driven dynamo, and one turbine-driven dynamo that supplied the common ring main at 220 volts.Raven and Roberts, p. 50.
Armament
The Renown-class ships mounted six 42-calibre BL 15-inch Mk I guns in three twin hydraulically powered gun turrets, designated "A", "B", and "Y" from front to rear. The guns could be depressed to −3° and elevated to 20°; they could be loaded at any angle up to 20°, although loading at high angles tended to slow the gun's return to battery (firing position). The ships carried 120 shells per gun. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of ; this provided a maximum range of with armour-piercing shells.
The ships were designed with seventeen 45-calibre BL 4-inch Mark IX guns, fitted in five triple and two single mounts. These were manually powered and quite cumbersome in use as they required a crew of thirty-two men to load and train the triple gun mounts. The gun's rate of fire was only 10 to 12 rounds per minute as the loaders kept getting in each other's way. They had a maximum depression of −10° and a maximum elevation of 30°. They fired a high-explosive shell at a muzzle velocity of . At maximum elevation the guns had a maximum range of . The ships carried 200 rounds for each gun.
Each ship mounted a pair of QF 3 inch 20 cwt"cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 20 cwt referring to the weight of the gun. anti-aircraft guns on single high-angle mountings. These were mounted on the shelter deck abreast the rear funnel.Raven and Roberts, p. 48. The gun had a maximum depression of 10° and a maximum elevation of 90°. It fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of at a rate of fire of 12–14 rounds per minute. They had a maximum effective ceiling of . Both ships carried ten torpedoes and mounted two submerged torpedo tubes fitted just forward of "A" barbette.Roberts, p. 83.
Fire control
The main guns of the Renown-class ships could be controlled from either of the two fire-control directors. The primary director was mounted above the conning tower in an armoured hood and the other was in the fore-top on the foremast. Data from a rangefinder in the armoured hood was input into a Mk IV* Dreyer Fire Control Table located in the Transmitting Station (TS) where it was converted into range and deflection data for use by the guns. The target's data was also graphically recorded on a plotting table to assist the gunnery officer in predicting the movement of the target.Brooks, p. 170. The secondary armament was controlled by directors mounted on platforms on each mast. Each turret was provided with a rangefinder in an armoured housing on the turret roof.
During the war the number and size of rangefinders increased. By 1918 Renown carried two rangefinders, one on "Y" turret and the other in the armoured hood above the conning tower. Fifteen-foot rangefinders were mounted on "A" and "B" turrets, the torpedo control tower abaft the mainmast, and the armoured hood. The fore-top was equipped with a rangefinder and the anti-aircraft guns were controlled by a simple rangefinder mounted on the aft superstructure. Two rangefinders were mounted on the bridge.
Armour