The Renown class battlecruiser was one of two British, heavily-armed capital ships used by the Royal Navy during the First and Second World War. Laid down in 1915, they both joined the Fleet in 1916, after the Battle of Jutland had raised serious doubts about the role of the battlecruiser. Nevertheless, HMS Renown and HMS Repulse were retained in service after the Great War mainly because of their speed and the fact that they had proved to be a reliable and steady gun platform. Thus, in the interwar period, their armor protection was increased. Aside from their six 381-mm (15-in) main guns, they were equipped with seventeen 102-mm (4-in) guns as secondary armament.
The British Admiralty decision to build two more battlecruisers had been made after the Royal Navy's battlecruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible had defeated a German flotilla during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic on December 8, 1914, sinking three German armored cruisers. As a result, the War Cabinet ordered the construction of two more battlecruisers; these were HMS Renown (72) and Repulse (34). Despite their complexity, the two capital ships were built with remarkable speed by the firm John Brown & Company on the north bank of the River Clyde as they had both been laid down on January 25, 1915, and commissioned in August and September 1916.
Having survived the First World War, the Renown class battlecruisers were given additional armor in the early 1920s. Between 1936 and 1939, they were rebuilt for their new role as fast aircraft carrier's escorts as they were fitted with new turbines and boilers. At the beginning of the Second World War, HMS Repulse was assigned to the Far East, where she would be sunk, along with HMS Prince of Wales battleship, by Japanese dive-bombers on December 10, 1941. Meanwhile, HMS Renown served in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Theater. She was decommissioned after the war and struck in 1948.
Specifications
Type: Battlecruiser
Displacement: 27,650 metric tons (standard); 30,835 tons (full load)
Length: 242 m (794 feet)
Beam: 27.4 m (90 feet)
Draft: 7.8 m (25 feet)
Propulsion System: Brown-Curtis steam turbines, with 4 shafts, and 42 boilers, delivering a total of 112,000 SHP.
Maximum Speed: 30 knots
Range: 9,000 nautical miles (16,677 km)
Armament: six 381-mm (15 inches) and seventeen 102-mm (4 inches) guns.
Compliment: 1,260 sailors and officers
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| Above, HMS Renown (72) sailing off the English coast at the end of the war. |
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| HMS Repulse (34) in 1927. |