The Ships of Battlegroup: Great Britain Repulse (BC)

Displacement	32,000 tons	Belt Armor	9 inches
Overall Length	794 feet	Deck Armor	3 inches
Beam	90 feet	Main Turret Armor	11 inches
Speed	29 knots	Main Guns	6 × 15″

Laid down on January 25, 1915, launched on January 8, 1916 and commissioned on August 18, 1916, the ship carried a main armament of six 15 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two centerline superfiring forward and one centerline aft. Repulse was half of the two-ship Renown battle cruiser class. This was the first full British battle cruiser class powered by turbines with oil-fired boilers. The small number of big guns was unusual because, at the time, at least six guns were considered to be necessary to properly straddle a target for adequate firing accuracy and the loss of even one turret could render these ships ineffective offensively. The reason was that only 12 of the 15 inch guns would be available while the ships were being built, so that’s how they were armed! The original displacement of 26,000 tons was surprisingly small for ships of this size, the original speed of 32 knots was very high for the Fist World War and the armor was very thin (originally only six inches of belt armor - they were nicknamed the “Tin Cans” because of this) on this class but they did incorporate an integral antitorpedo bulge. Like all British battlecruisers, they were designed to the dictum that “speed is protection”.

The Repulse name has a long history as a ship name in the Royal Navy. The two battle cruisers had many early problems and were dubbed the H. M. S. “Refit” and H. M. S. “Repair”. Repulse spent the Great War with the Grand Fleet and the Battle Cruiser Squadron and put to sea whenever there was a German sortie. In November 1917, she participated in operations in the German Bight. Between the wars, Repulse served with the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets and underwent conversions and modernization from 1919-1922 and 1934-1936 that added armor, increased her displacement and reduced her speed to the figures shown above.

On the outbreak of World War II, she operated in the North Sea, escorted troopships between Canada and Great Britain and saw action off the coast of Norway during the 1940 nazi invasion there. During late 1940 through mid 1941, she attacked German weather ships, escorted minelayers off Iceland, and took an unsuccessful part in hunts for the German battle cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst and, later, for the German fast battleship Bismarck. Transferred to Singapore in late 1941, she sortied as part of Force “Z” in company of the battleship Prince of Wales , the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Tom “Tom Thumb” Phillips (1888–1941) and was sunk by five torpedo and one bomb hits from land-based Japanese torpedo planes and bombers on December 10, 1941, with a loss of 327 killed.

For other “battlecruisers” that served in World War II, see: Guam, Haruna, Hiei, Hood, Kirishima, Kongo and Richelieu .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships and battlecruisers of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.