HMS Courageous, if you like bizarre ships you'll love this one...

The HMS Courageous kit is a beautiful kit of a beautiful ship! I just received mine as a gift and I love the detail and the subject.

I was reading the earlier entries in this thread about the inadequacies of British Battlecruisers and their tendency to explode when hit by their contemporaries. I couldn't help but think of several articles that I have read on the subject recently. It seems that the current thought is that their thin armor was not the cause but rather poor cordite handling procedures. The British tended to stack the charges in piles during an engagement, meaning that the ships were an explosion waiting to happen.  When the ship was hit in an appropriate spot, the resulting ball of fire from the initial shell explosion ignited these piles of cordite, blowing up the ship, instead of being contained behind sealed watertight doors.  Remember, the British ships fared well in the early stages of the war, especially at Dogger Bank and the Falklands.  British ships also mauled their German counterparts on several occasions. Even in WWII, HMS Renown, armed with one more twin turret that Courageous, outfought both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off of Norway.

That is not to say that Courageous would have survived in any engagement with her own kind. Even the British admitted that she was more of a "large light cruiser" than a Battlecruiser.

However, the Courageous make for an interesting and welcome addition to my British Battlecruiser collection!

Bill Morrison

Well, there were several reasons why British battlecruisers fared badly.  Armor is one reason, with German battlecruisers having significantly more armor, and better sub-compartmentisation of the ship too.  Second, the propellant charges for the German shells were in brass or tin cartridges, while the British cordite charges were lying around in flammable silk bags all along the ammunition train from the magazine to the guns, and third, the British battlecruisers had no passage flaps between the shell ready rooms at the base of the barbette and the ammunition stores, which meant any flash from a shell bursting in the turret overhead would travel right down the barbette and straight into the ammunition magazine..... But these issues were not really noticed by the British until Jutland (when of course, it was too late).  At the Falklands, the two British battlecruisers (armed with 8 x 12" guns each) were facing two German armored cruisers (only equipped with 8" guns), and thus were able to stay well out of range of most of the the German guns while pounding the crap out of the Germans with impunity in precisely the kind of action  battlecruisers were actually designed to do. 

 At Dogger Bank, the German armored cruiser 'Blucher' went down, for the same reason as the 'Sharnhorst' and her sister at the Falklands; they were just not up to the task of taking on a battlecruiser, nor were they designed to.  As well, the British screwed up pretty badly in this exercise, by directing most of the gunfire of their battlecruisers against the hapless 'Blucher,' while allowing the outnumbered German battlecruisers to escape.  Several of these ships had been hit by heavy British rounds, and one was almost lost by the kind of explosion that devastated the British battlecruisers at Jutland.  The Germans learned from this almost-catastrophe, and altered their ammunition handling methods accordingly, while the British did not.

In WW2, the incident of the Renown and the 'Salmon & Gluckstein' was one of the worst efforts by the Kriegsmarine, in that they wasted almost 20 minutes trying to figure out whether the very large warship rapidly approaching them was friend or foe (just how many large friendly warships they might reasonably expect to see in the North Sea at that time is a question no-one has ever been able to answer for me!).  In any case, rather than forming a line of battle and turning broadside to paste the approaching Renown by 'crossing the T,' they turned and ran as soon as Renown opened up with her 15" guns.  What should have been a battle of 18 x 11" guns against 4 x 15" guns turned into a ridiculous Monty Python 'run away' scenario, and the only reason Renown didn't catch up to the Germans and really do them some damage is the Renown was shipping so much water over her bows that the forward turrets became almost useless and the ship was sure to suffer structural damage (not just 'oilcanning!') if the pursuit continued at the speed the Germans were fleeing (at over 28 knots straight into the teeth of a strong gale).  An extremely poor show by the Germans, and Hitler was none too pleased when he heard the details!

All are excellent points! It is simply important to realize that British Battlecruisers were not necessarily badly designed ships or that the basic idea behind their conception was flawed; there were several important reasons behind their tendency to blow up. Searat12 very poignantly note that one of the better armored German battlecruisers almost suffered a similar explosion as Queen Mary, Invincible, and, later, Hood.

Bill Morrison

warshipguy wrote:

All are excellent points! It is simply important to realize that British Battlecruisers were not necessarily badly designed ships or that the basic idea behind their conception was flawed; there were several important reasons behind their tendency to blow up. Searat12 very poignantly note that one of the better armored German battlecruisers almost suffered a similar explosion as Queen Mary, Invincible, and, later, Hood. Bill Morrison

True, but the real point I was trying to make was that the Germans learned from the situation, made a few alterations, and thenceforth had no more problems with their battlecruisers.  I think the flaw of the British is that they took the theory to extremes (thus, HMS Courageous), rather than trying to figure out how to make the original concept truly work.  On one hand, this tendency is understandable, as they were in an arms race, and innovation is almost everything in such cases, but the Germans responded with very sober reflections of what the British presented as 'fact,' made their own calculations and came to the same 'result,' but without any of the teething problems that are inherent in extremely experimental and innovative designs.  Really, its hard to find any flaws in the German battlecruisers either from a design viewpoint, or from an operational viewpoint.  Probably the only 'flaw' inherent in the German ships is that they were not designed for long-range blue-water operations, while the British ships were mostly designed with world-wide deployment in mind.  However, the German navy was not really interested in contesting the seas with Britain all over the world, but just in a very focussed area (The North Sea), and this allowed them to build their ships a fair bit stronger and not worry too much about accommodations, etc.  I think if you look closely at the Japanese 'Kongo' class, you will be looking at some of the very finest battlecruisers ever built in just about every respect (and they didn't explode, even when dueling with new US battleships armed with 16" guns at close range!).

I fully concur!  The Germans designed and built exceptionally strong capital ships through thorough study and a willingness to learn from practise.  And, the Kongo class, being British designed and the nameship British built, demonstrated what the British could do when given their heads.  HMS Tiger is an excellent example.

But, we are presuming that the Courageous and Glorious, and the Furious offshoot were designed as battlecruisers. They weren't. They were designed and classified as "large light cruisers" primarily for one operation - Fisher's Baltic Plan.  Under this plan, British forces were to penetrate the Baltic Sea, carry out landings on the Pomeranian coast, as well as conducting simultaneous operations against the Dardanelles and against Flanders and the Friesian Islands. To accomplish this plan, the British ordered 162 light warships of many types, but especially these three ships. They were designed to force their way through the Baltic Narrows, then to provide fire support for light forces. They were never intended to fight or serve as capital ships in any way. They were simply extreme light cruisers designed to serve as high speed escorts for light forces. 

In other words, they could not fight against the capital ships of High Seas Fleet.  they would never have survived, whereas, had the British learned the same lessons as the Germans did about cordite storage and handling procedures, and applied appropriate solutions to those procedures, then the battlecruisers would have probably had a better combat record.

Yup, you are absolutely right!  That said, the whole Baltic plan concept was completely bonkers, as in order to get to the Pomeranian beaches or Flanders, you would have to get through the Kaisers' fleet (as they would travel back and forth from the Baltic to the North Sea via the Kiel canal quite frequently), not too mention the disaster at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles.  Another suspect issue is if the 'Courageous' and 'Furious' were actually 'just' intended for escort work and some shore bombardment, why were they armed with such huge guns if they did not expect to run into something that might have large guns too?  'Repulse' and 'Renown' were also 'neither fish, nor fowl' products of Jackie Fisher, and they were completed just after Jutland.  But when the Royal Navy discovered just how lightly armored they were (not to mention being equipped with just six 15" guns), they were sent right back in horror to the builders for significant armor upgrades!  All in all, 'Furious' and 'Courageous' proved excellent subjects for conversions to aircraft carriers, while Jackie Fisher really caused as much harm as good to the whole battlecruiser concept (which was not a bad concept, when looked at objectively)......