Battlecruisers

Battlecruisers were big warships of the first half of the 20th century. They evolved from armored cruisers and in terms of ship classification they occupy a grey area between cruisers and battleships. Different nations built to commonly different designs. Some battlecruisers were lesser than heavy cruisers while others were larger than contemporaneous battleships. The chief similarity was the role specification. They were supposed to hunt down and outgun smaller warships, and outrun larger warships that they could not outgun. initially, to achieve this, they deviated from the standard practice of providing a ship with enough armour to protect against its own guns. The weight saving from the reduced armour permitted more powerful engines to be fitted. This idea was mostly conceived by British Admiral Jackie Fisher who believed "speed is the best protection". However, as technology developed design philosophy changed and led to the creation of more heavily armoured ships with less powerful guns. They were given different labels, but fundamentally performed the same task