User:The Bushranger/Large light cruiser

Courageous class large light cruiser, depicted in Brassey's Naval Annual, 1923

The Large Light Cruiser was a type of British warship of the World War One era, the brainchild of Admiral Jackie Fisher. Designated as 'light cruisers' to get around Treasury restrictions on the construction of additional battlecruisers, the ships, also known in the Royal Navy as 'Lord Fisher's hush-hush cruisers', were intended to follow Fisher's famous dictum that Speed is Armour, and were perhaps the ultimate expression of that school of design.

Fisher resorted to subterfuge to obtain another three fast, lightly armoured ships which could make use of the several spare 15-inch (381 mm) gun turrets left over from battleship construction. These ships were essentially light battlecruisers, and Fisher can occasionally be found referring to them as such, but were officially classified as "large light cruisers". This unusual designation was required because construction of new capital ships had been placed on hold, while there were no limits on light cruiser construction. They became the Courageous class, and there was a bizarre imbalance between their main armament of 15-inch (or 18-inch (457 mm) in 'Furious') guns and their armour, which at 3 inches thickness was on the scale of a light cruiser. The design was generally regarded as a bizarre failure - the ships were quickly given the nicknames Outrageous, Curious, and Spurious - however, the conversion of the ships to aircraft carriers, undertaken after the war, was very successful.

Fisher also speculated about a new mammoth but lightly built battlecruiser which would carry 20-inch guns, which he termed HMS Incomparable; however, this never got beyond the concept stage.

Three large light cruisers were constructed, HMS Glorious, HMS Furious, and HMS Courageous. They were part of First Sea Lord; Admiral Lord Fisher's Baltic Project, a plan to force the Baltic Narrows and invade Germany from the north, making an amphibious landing within 100 miles of the German capital of Berlin with the intention of a quick end to the war. In order to carry out this plan, it was thought that ships fitted with heavy guns, but also possessing a shallow draft for close inshore operations, were needed to work alongside the other, more conventional ships involved in such an operation. While the plan ultimately was not approved, funding for light cruisers for the Grand Fleet was and the "large light cruiser" name and careful security allowed their building.

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Bibliography

• Roberts, John Battlecruisers, Chatham Publishing, London, 1997.