page_title: Battlecruiser
section_title: Plans in the aftermath of World War I
hierarchical_section_title: Battlecruiser / Interwar period / Plans in the aftermath of World War I
caption_attribution_description: English: "Artwork by F. Muller, circa 1919, depicting the definitive design for these ships, whose construction was cancelled under the Washington Naval Limitations Treaty of 1922." Türkçe: Lexington sınıfı muharebe kruvazörü, I. Dünya Savaşı sırasında 1916 yılında ABD Deniz Kuvvetleri tarafından sipariş edilen ilk ve tek muharebe kruvazörü olarak tasarlandı. Ancak savaş sonrasında muzafferler arasında imzalanmış olan Washington Donanma Antlaşmasında alınan karara göre dördü iptal edildi ve ikisi uçak gemisine çevirildi.
context_page_description: The battlecruiser or battle-cruiser was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. They were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed slightly in form and balance of attributes. Battlecruisers typically had slightly thinner armour and a lighter main gun battery than contemporary battleships, installed on a longer hull with much higher engine power in order to attain greater speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they were increasingly used alongside the better-protected battleships.
context_section_description: Hood, launched in 1918, was the last World War I battlecruiser to be completed. Owing to lessons from Jutland, the ship was modified during construction; the thickness of her belt armour was increased by an average of 50 percent and extended substantially, she was given heavier deck armour, and the protection of her magazines was improved to guard against the ignition of ammunition. This was hoped to be capable of resisting her own weapons—the classic measure of a "balanced" battleship. Hood was the largest ship in the Royal Navy when completed; thanks to her great displacement, in theory she combined the firepower and armour of a battleship with the speed of a battlecruiser, causing some to refer to her as a fast battleship. However, her protection was markedly less than that of the British battleships built immediately after World War I, the Nelson class.
  The navies of Japan and the United States, not being affected immediately by the war, had time to develop new heavy 16-inch (410 mm) guns for their latest designs and to refine their battlecruiser designs in light of combat experience in Europe. The Imperial Japanese Navy began four Amagi-class battlecruisers. These vessels would have been of unprecedented size and power, as fast and well armoured as Hood whilst carrying a main battery of ten 16-inch guns, the most powerful armament ever proposed for a battlecruiser. They were, for all intents and purposes, fast battleships—the only differences between them and the Tosa-class battleships which were to precede them were 1 inch (25 mm) less side armour and a .25 knots (0.46 km/h; 0.29 mph) increase in speed. The United States Navy, which had worked on its battlecruiser designs since 1913 and watched the latest developments in this class with great care, responded with the Lexington class. If completed as planned, they would have been exceptionally fast and well armed with eight 16-inch guns, but carried armour little better than the Invincibles—this after an 8,000-long-ton (8,100 t) increase in protection following Jutland. The final stage in the post-war battlecruiser race came with the British response to the Amagi and Lexington types: four 48,000-long-ton (49,000 t) G3 battlecruisers. Royal Navy documents of the period often described any battleship with a speed of over about 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph) as a battlecruiser, regardless of the amount of protective armour, although the G3 was considered by most to be a well-balanced fast battleship.
  The Washington Naval Treaty meant that none of these designs came to fruition. Ships that had been started were either broken up on the slipway or converted to aircraft carriers. In Japan, Amagi and Akagi were selected for conversion. Amagi was damaged beyond repair by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and was broken up for scrap; the hull of one of the proposed Tosa-class battleships, Kaga, was converted in her stead. The United States Navy also converted two battlecruiser hulls into aircraft carriers in the wake of the Washington Treaty: USS Lexington and USS Saratoga, although this was only considered marginally preferable to scrapping the hulls outright (the remaining four: Constellation, Ranger, Constitution and United States were scrapped). In Britain, Fisher's "large light cruisers," were converted to carriers. Furious had already been partially converted during the war and Glorious and Courageous were similarly converted.
caption: Lexington-class battlecruiser (painting, c. 1919)
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