Battlecruiser Repulse: Detailed in Original Builders' Plans

By John Roberts

An outstanding illustrated reference revealing the painstaking work of draftsmen in recording every detail of the famed British warship.
 
The technical details of British warships were recorded in a set of plans produced by the builders on completion of every ship. Known as the “as fitted” general arrangements, these drawings represented the exact appearance and fitting of the ship as it entered service. Intended to provide a permanent reference for the Admiralty and the dockyards, these highly detailed plans were drawn with exquisite skill in multi-colored inks and washes that represent the acme of the draftsman’s art. Today they form part of the incomparable collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, which is using the latest scanning technology to make digital copies of the highest quality.
 
This book is one of a series based entirely on these drafts which depict famous warships in an unprecedented degree of detail—complete sets in full color, with many close-ups and enlargements that make every aspect clear and comprehensible. Extensive captions point the reader to important features to be found in the plans, and an introduction covers the background to the design. The subject of this volume was one of the last battlecruisers, elegant ships that combined a powerful armament with high speed, but were much criticized for their light protection. Throughout their existence, they were controversial—three were sunk at Jutland—and Repulse herself was famously lost to Japanese air attack at the outset of the Pacific War. Nevertheless, the type was highly prized: Repulse and her sister Renown were the only capital ships given sufficient priority to be designed, built, and completed during the course of the First World War, and substantial sums were spent on large-scale reconstruction during the 1930s. Both of these phases of the ship’s life are fully documented in two separate sets of plans, which allow this novel form of anatomy to cover the whole life of the ship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526757296

John Roberts

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ORIGINS

During the decade before 1914 the most influential personality in the development of British warship design was Admiral Sir John Fisher (1st Sea Lord 1904–1910). His forceful and positive approach served to accelerate the rate of technical advance generating what was to become known as the ‘dreadnought’ revolution. While the Dreadnought may have initiated this revolution, it actually encompassed a much broader range of technological, strategic and tactical ideas than those simply concerned with battleship construction. Fisher’s undoubted genius and foresight brought substantial advantages to British naval administration and development but his faith in the correctness of his views on ship construction contained the danger of assuming that their success was a foregone conclusion. Foremost among his pet schemes was the introduction, in parallel with Dreadnought , of the all-big-gun armoured cruiser of which three ( Invincible, Inflexible and Indomitable ) were included in the same 1905–06 Construction Programme. These ships followed Fisher’s obsessive belief that high speed in warships was of paramount importance. His demands for priority in speed were employed with religious fervour whenever an opportunity to express his vision presented itself. In effect he saw the Indomitable class, which were 4 knots faster than Dreadnought , as the basis for the capital ships of the future. He did not view their considerably lighter protection as a problem or see that many of the advantages of high speed would be lost if matched by new ships of a potential enemy. His essential requirements were for speed and gun-power. Armour followed up a poor third, utilising whatever weight was available on the displacement allowed by the financial limitations of the time.

Fisher was a master of employing persuasion, intrigue and threats (usually to resign) to get his own way but he was not all-powerful and was dependent on the support of both his political masters and the senior officers of the Admiralty. In consequence there was no change in construction priority and the battleship remained the primary unit of fleet power. Consequently the construction programmes for 1906–07 and 1907–08 included no armoured cruisers, in part due to political demands for economy. For much the same reason the 1908–09 Programme included only one battleship and one conventional armoured cruiser with 9.2in guns. However, at this point in time Germany embarked on a substantially increased warship construction programme that included her first all-big-gun armoured cruiser (the German designation was großen kreuzer = large cruiser), Von Der Tann, laid down in March 1908. This initiated the pre-war naval race between Britain and Germany which began in earnest in 1909 and gave Fisher his chance to press again for ships that would outclass their rivals in both speed and gun-power.With the need for economy overridden by the threat to Britain’s naval supremacy the next three programme years provided for the construction of 14 battleships and 6 armoured cruisers – size steadily increased, gun calibre was stepped up from 12in to 13.5in and, in the case of the 13.5in-gunned armoured cruisers, speed raised to 28 knots. In 1911 the all-big-gun armoured cruisers were officially re-designated ‘battle cruisers’.

When Fisher stepped down as 1st Sea Lord in January 1910 he had not achieved his prime objective in regard to speed. All the battleships constructed during his tenure of office retained the standard 21-knot speed of Dreadnought while the speed of the armoured cruisers more-or-less equalled rather than exceeded contemporary German designs. However, being out of office did not put him out of the picture and he continued to campaign for those items of naval administration, strategy and technology that he viewed as critical to the continuation of British naval supremacy. His efforts were substantially enhanced when Winston Churchill, having been appointed 1st Lord of the Admiralty in October 1910, solicited his advice.This developed into a close relationship in which Fisher provided guidance on a variety of naval subjects including his strong views on the advancement of ship design. Even here, however, Fisher failed to win round either Churchill, or possibly the Board of Admiralty via Churchill, to his view that the heavily armed battlecruiser, with a speed substantially in excess of foreign contemporaries, was an essential fleet requirement. The last of the pre-war battlecruisers, Tiger of the 1911–12 Programme, demonstrates the relatively limited extent of Churchill’s application of Fisher’s views in the adoption of a modification of the machinery design to allow sufficient overload power to provide a design speed of 30 knots (in practice she could not achieve more than 29 knots). The fact that none of the remaining pre-war construction programmes included a battlecruiser also serves to indicate the Admiralty’s loss of confidence in the value of the type which resulted in the introduction of the fast battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class in the 1912 Programme. These ships were intended to serve as the fleet’s fast wing but not for the cruiser functions (scouting and trade protection) assigned to the battlecruisers. The only points in which they fulfilled Fisher’s desires were a further increase in gun-power by adopting the 15in calibre and the provision of oil fired boilers. It is worth noting that late in 1911 Fisher was advocating the adoption of the same eight-gun 15in armament for a 30-knot battlecruiser design – it is not clear if this proposal served to initiate the development of the 15in gun or that his choice of calibre was simply prompted by some inside knowledge of developments at the Admiralty. Any doubt in regard to the immediate pre-war capital ship construction policy of the Admiralty is provided by the programmes of 1913–14 and 1914–15.The former consisted of the five 15in gun, 21-knot Royal Sovereign class battleships and the latter of three more slightly modified vessels of the same class and a single repeat of the Queen Elizabeth design.Thus by 1914 Fisher’s battlecruiser concept was as good as dead – but fate, in the shape of the outbreak of war in August 1914, was to intervene and allow him to initiate the construction of exactly what he wished for.

At the end of October 1914, following a loss of confidence in the naval leadership of the Admiralty during the first few months of war, the 1st Sea Lord, Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, was obliged to resign. Churchill offered the post to Fisher who, despite his age of 73, was still seen as capable of providing the same energetic leadership he had so ably demonstrated in the past. The choice was, at least initially, justified. On the material side he immediately set in train a large building programme that included destroyers, submarines, sloops, patrol craft and amphibious warfare vessels which proved invaluable in the subsequent prosecution of the naval war. In particular, Fisher accelerated the production process by bypassing the Admiralty’s standard bureaucratic system and consulting with suppliers directly – leaving whatever red-tape was required to follow. He also began a campaign for a return to the construction of battlecruisers, but Churchill rejected his proposals on the grounds that large ships would absorb too much of the available construction resources and could not, in any case, be completed in time to take part in the war which, at this time, was not expected to extend beyond the latter part of 1915. Not to be thwarted, Fisher continued to lobby for support using a variety of arguments. He expressed the view that several naval actions of the war thus far had clearly demonstrated the great advantages of the battlecruiser concept, especially the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914 and the need of the Grand Fleet for newer and faster ships of the type to face the battlecruisers nearing completion in Germany. In a letter to Admiral Jellicoe, CinC Grand Fleet, on the 23 December soliciting for support he wrote ‘The new German Lützow battlecruiser, with possible 14in guns, or even 16in, will certainly have over 28-knots speed! We must have 32-knots speed to give us a margin for being long out of dock, and to give the necessary speed to CATCH a 28-knot ship! … SPEED IS EVERYTHING …’ His remarks on the speed and armament of Lützow were somewhat exaggerated but he was always more concerned with impact than with accuracy when it came to making a point.

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SHEER DRAWING, MARCH 1915

One of a number of general arrangement design drawings prepared by the DNC’s department as general guidance for the shipbuilders. This illustrates the hull form by means of the sheer profile and plan and a body plan. It also indicates the positions of the decks, frames and bulkheads together with the ship’s primary dimensions, including the heights between the underside of the decks (ie, to the tops of the deck beams at the side) and the positions of various items (such as the gun axis) in relation to the LWL. (J9432)

DESIGN

It would seem that the Admiralty’s wartime regime did not provide the same restraint on Fisher’s more far-reaching proposals for warship development as it had done pre-war.There appears to be no record of dissenting voices regarding his re-introduction of the battlecruiser concept or the fact that he effectively restored the type to the form he originally envisaged for it in 1905, including the limited protection and light anti-torpedo-boat (ATB) armament. He certainly seems to have had little time for consulting the naval members of the board on his proposals. His thoughts and requirements for ship design were generally discussed directly with the Director