A fast battleship was a battleship which in concept emphasised speed without undue compromise of either armor or armament. Most of the early World War I-era dreadnought battleships were typically built with low design speeds, so the term "fast battleship" is applied to a design which is considerably faster. The extra speed of a fast battleship was normally required to allow the vessel to carry out additional roles besides taking part in the line of battle, such as escorting aircraft carriers.
A fast battleship was distinguished from a battlecruiser in that it would have been expected to be able to engage hostile battleships in sustained combat on at least equal terms. The requirement to deliver increased speed without compromising fighting ability or protection was the principal challenge of fast battleship design. While increasing length-to-beam ratio was the most direct method of attaining a higher speed, this meant a bigger ship that was considerably more costly and/or could exceed the naval treaty tonnage limits (where these applied, such as the Washington Naval Treaty shaping naval fleet composition after World War I). Technological advancements such as propulsion improvements and light, high-strength armor plating were required in order to make fast battleships feasible.
Unlike battlecruiser, which became official Royal Navy usage in 1911,Admiralty Weekly Order no. 351, 24 November 1911; quoted in the term fast battleship was essentially an informal one. The warships of the were collectively termed the Fast Division when operating with the Grand Fleet. Otherwise, fast battleships were not distinguished from conventional battleships in official documentation; nor were they recognised as a distinctive category in contemporary ship lists or treaties. There is no separate code for fast battleships in the U.S. Navy's hull classification system, all battleships, fast or slow, being rated as "BB".
Origins Between the origins of the armoured battleship with the French and the Royal Navy's at the start of the 1860s, and the genesis of the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth class in 1911, several battleship classes appeared which set new standards of speed. Warrior, at over under steam, was the fastest warship of her day as well as the most powerful. With the increasing weight of guns and armour, this speed was not exceeded until achieved under steam. The Italian of 1880 was a radical design, with a speed of , heavy guns and no belt armour; this speed was not matched until the 1890s, when higher speeds came to be associated with second-class designs such as the of 1895 (18 knots) and the and of 1903 (20 knots). In these late pre-dreadnought designs, the high speed may have been intended to compensate for their lesser staying power, allowing them to evade a more powerful opponent when necessary.
From about 1900, interest in the possibility of a major increase in the speed of Royal Navy battleships was provoked by Sir John ("Jackie") Fisher, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. The Senior Officer's War Course of January 1902 was asked to investigate whether a ship with lighter armour and quick-firing medium guns ( calibre), with a advantage in speed, would obtain any tactical advantage over a conventional battleship. It was concluded that "gun power was more important than speed, provided both sides were determined to fight"; although the faster fleet would be able to choose the range at which it fought, it would be outmatched at any range. It was argued that, provided that the fighting was at long range, an attempt by the faster fleet to obtain a concentration of fire by "crossing the T" could be frustrated by a turn-away, leading to the slower fleet "turning inside the circle of the faster fleet at a radius proportional to the difference in speed" (Figure 1). War games conducted by the General Board of the U.S. Navy in 1903 and 1904 came to very similar conclusions.
Fisher appears to have been unimpressed by these demonstrations and continued to press for radical increases in the speed of battleships. His ideas ultimately came to at least partial fruition in the of 1906; like Warrior before her, Dreadnought was the fastest as well as the most powerful battleship in the world.
Early dreadnoughts
Dreadnought was the first major warship powered by turbines. She also included other features indicating an increased emphasis on speed: An improved hull form was developed, with increased length-to-beam ratio. The thickness of the main belt was reduced to 11 inches, compared to 12 inches for preceding classes. The belt terminated at the upper deck, the usual "upper belt" being deleted. The forecastle was raised, allowing higher sustained speed in heavy seas.
In the decade following the construction of Dreadnought, the Royal Navy's lead in capital ship speed eroded as rival navies responded with their own turbine-powered "dreadnoughts". Meanwhile, in the UK, Fisher continued to press for still higher speeds, but the alarming cost of the new battleships and battlecruisers provoked increasing resistance, both within the Admiralty and from the Liberal government that took office in 1906. As a result, many potentially significant fast battleship designs failed to achieve fruition.
A notable abortive design was the 22,500-ton "X4" design of December 1905. This would have been a true fast battleship by the standards of the time, carrying the same armament and protection as Dreadnought at a speed of . However, the British lead in dreadnought and battlecruiser construction was deemed to be so great that a further escalation in the size and cost of capital ships could not be justified. The X4 design is often described as a "fusion" of the Dreadnought concept with that of the battlecruiser, and it has been suggested that she "would have rendered the s obsolete".
Fisher was again rebuffed in 1909 over the first of the "super-dreadnoughts", the ; of the two alternative designs considered, one of and the other of , the Board of Admiralty selected the slower and cheaper design. Fisher had his dissent recorded in the board minutes, complaining "we should not be outclassed in any type of ship".
Queen Elizabeth class
Fisher's aspirations for faster battleships were not fulfilled until after his retirement in 1910. Following the success of the gun used in the Orion class, the Admiralty decided to develop a gun to equip the battleships of the 1912 construction programme. The initial intention was that the new battleships would have the same configuration as the preceding , with five twin turrets and a speed of . However, it was realised that by dispensing with the amidships turret, it would be possible to free up weight and volume for a much enlarged power plant and still fire a heavier broadside than the Iron Dukes.
Although War College studies had earlier rejected the concept of a fast, light battlefleet, they were now supportive of the concept of a Fast Division of or more, operating in conjunction with a conventional heavy battle line, which could use its advantage in speed to envelop the head of the enemy line (Figure 2). Compared to Fisher's idea of speeding up the entire battlefleet, the advantages of this concept were that there would be no need to compromise the fighting power of the main fleet, and that it would be possible to retain the use of the existing 21-knot ships. Up to this time, it had been assumed that the role of a Fast Division could be fulfilled by the battlecruisers, of which there were ten completed or on order.Three Invincible class, three , two , and However, it was realised that there were two problems with this assumption. The first was the likelihood that the battlecruisers would be fully committed in countering the growing and very capable German battlecruiser force. The second was that, as Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, put it, "our beautiful Cats had thin skins compared to the enemy's strongest battleships. It is a rough game to pit ... seven or nine inches of armour against twelve or thirteen".
The new battleships would, in fact, be the most heavily armoured dreadnoughts in the fleet. The original 1912 programme envisaged three battleships and a battlecruiser. However, given the speed of the new ships, it was decided that a new battlecruiser would not be needed. The battleship design for the following year's programme, which became the , also had 15-inch guns, but reverted to the 21-knot speed of the main battlefleet. Again, no battlecruiser was included, a decision which suggests that the fast battleships were perceived at that time as superseding the battlecruiser concept.
Battle of Jutland When the fast battleship concept was put to the test at the Battle of Jutland, the Queen Elizabeth class ships had been temporarily attached to Vice Admiral David Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet at Rosyth (this was to release the Invincible-class battlecruisers of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron for gunnery practice at Scapa Flow). The Queen Elizabeth ships proved an outstanding success, firing with great rapidity, accuracy and effect, while surviving large quantities of hits from German 28.3-centimetre (11 in) and 30.5-centimetre (12 in) shells and successfully evading the main German battlefleet during the so-called "run to the North". In the fighting, was severely damaged, suffered a steering failure and was obliged to withdraw, while Malaya suffered a serious cordite fire which nearly caused her loss. However, both ships returned safely to port. This was in notable contrast to the performance of the battlecruisers, of which three out of the nine present were destroyed by magazine explosions after a relatively small number of hits.
When the main body of the Grand Fleet came into action, the Queen Elizabeth ships were unable to reach their intended station ahead of the battle line and instead joined the rear of the line, seeing little further action. Meanwhile, the six surviving battlecruisers assumed the "Fast Division" role, operating ahead of the battle line with some success, exploiting their advantage of speed to damage the head of the German line with virtual impunity.
Jutland was a crippling blow to the reputation of the existing battlecruisers. However, it also reinforced the views of Commander-In-Chief Sir John Jellicoe that the Queen Elizabeth ships were too slow to operate with the Battlecruiser Fleet on a permanent basis. Based on combat reports, Jellicoe erroneously credited the 21-knot German s with , which would mean that Queen Elizabeth ships, which were rated at , would be in serious danger if they were surprised by a battlefleet headed by these ships.; the relevant passage is available on-line at the War Times Journal website
Admiral class Even before Jutland, Jellicoe had expressed concern at the lack of new construction for the Battlecruiser Fleet and the inadequacy of the ships already provided. Early in 1916, he had rejected proposals for a new fast battleship design, similar to the Queen Elizabeth but with reduced draught, pointing out that, with the five new Revenge-class nearing completion, the fleet already had a sufficient margin of superiority in battleships, whereas the absence of battlecruisers from the 1912 and 1913 programmes had left Beatty's force with no reply to the new 12-inch-gunned German battlecruisers. Jellicoe believed that the Germans intended to build still more powerful ships, with speeds of up to , and hence called for ships to fight them. Although two new battlecruisers ( and ) had been ordered in 1914, and were being constructed remarkably quickly, Jellicoe argued that, although their speed was adequate, their armour protection was insufficient. The 1915 design was therefore recast as a battlecruiser with eight guns, an eight-inch belt, and a speed of . A class of four ships was ordered in mid-1916.