HMS TIGER (1913)

The eleventh 'HMS ''Tiger''' was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, built by John Brown and Company, Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1913. ''Tiger'' was the most heavily armoured battlecruiser of the Royal Navy at the start of World War I.

Contents

Genesis

Building Programme

World War One

Postwar Service

See also

References

Notes

External links

Genesis

''Tiger'' was originally intended to be a sister ship of HMS ''Lion'', along with ''Princess Royal'' and ''Queen Mary''. However, in January 1911, the Vickers-Armstrong yard began building a battlecruiser for the Imperial Japanese Navy, the ''Kongō''. Vickers' chief designer, Sir George Thurston, created what was immediately recognised as a fine and superbly-balanced design, mounting eight guns and a well-balanced scheme of armoured protection. The key feature of the ''Kongō''-class was that it had its main gun turrets all either aft or fore, eliminating the amidship turret which had a poor firing arc. ''Kongō'' was actually built to a more balanced design than the ''Lions'', which caused some indignation within the Royal Navy. The upshot of this minor controversy was that the Royal Navy abandoned the original ''Lion'' design.
Although the first three ''Lions'' already under construction could not be altered, ''Tiger'' was still early enough along in construction that she could be significantly redesigned. Thus it was possible to create revised specifications for her. What emerged from the naval architects' drawing boards was a ship which incorporated elements of the ''Kongō's'' design, but also retained many features of the ''Lions'', including their eight main guns. Her secondary armament was increased from guns to guns, which matched the secondary batteries of the newest British battleships. A proposal to use the new lightweight small-tube Yarrow boilers was rejected, a decision later criticised by the Director of Naval Construction, Sir Eustace Tennyson, who claimed that the Brown & White boilers used in ''Tiger'' cost her several knots of speed due to their greater size and weight. However, the early small-tube boilers used by the Royal Navy were very unreliable indeed, and the decision to use traditional boilers in ''Tiger'' is therefore understandable.
The quantity of coal carried was substantially greater than that carried by ''Lion'', but since ''Tiger's'' engines generated higher shaft horsepower and burned more coal than ''Lion's'', there was no real increase in range over the older ship.
''Tiger'' was the sole member of her class, however one notable source (Siegfried Breyer's ''Battleships and Battle Cruisers, 1905-1970'') states that a second ship, alleged to be named ''Leopard'', was planned for authorization under the 1912 Naval Estimates and later under the 1914 Estimates, but in the end was never ordered. ''Leopard'' was supposedly was replaced in the 1914 Estimates by a battlecruiser variant of the ''Queen Elizabeth'' class of fast battleships named HMS ''Agincourt''. As circumstances turned out, ''Agincourt'' was never built either, and her name was given instead to a Turkish dreadnought being built in Britain for the Ottoman Navy and seized in August 1914 after the outbreak of war with Germany.

Building Programme

The following table gives the build details and purchase cost of the members of the ''Tiger'' class.

Ship	Builder	Engine builder	Laid down	Launched	Completed	Cost according to
						BNA (1914)[1]	BNA (1924)[2]	Parkes[3]
''Tiger''	John Brown & Co., Clydebank	John Brown & Co., Brown-Curtis turbines	20 June 1912	15 December 1913	October 1914	not stated	£2,500,000 ★	£2,593,100 ★ ★

★ = estimated cost, including guns

★
★ = including guns

World War One

''Tiger'' was still under construction when the First World War broke out in August 1914. She was commissioned in October 1914 and after working up she was sent to join Rear-Admiral David Beatty's First Battlecruiser Squadron based at Rosyth. She was a welcome addition to the squadron, which was composed of her near sisters ''Lion'', ''Princess Royal'', and ''Queen Mary''. Her Commanding Officer was Captain Henry B. Pelly, who was later described by Beatty as "a little bit of the nervous excited type." Her initial crew was mostly made up of poor deserters from other ships.
With her fellow "Big Cats" ''Lion'' and ''Princess Royal'' she was part of the British force that fought in the Battle of Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915. During the action ''Tiger'' was hit by several German shells, losing ten of her crew to enemy action. Like the rest of the battlecruisers, ''Tiger's'' own gunnery was rapid but appallingly inaccurate (perhaps a result of Beatty's conspicious reluctance to take his ships out on gunnery exercises), and she achieved only one hit out of 255 shells fired, though this was partially the result of her less than first rate crew and the fact that she had only been in service for a few months at the time of the battle. In the aftermath of the battle, ''Tiger's'' Gunnery Officer was sacked.
At the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916, ''Tiger's'' performance was better. Even so she took some substantial blows from the German guns. During the battle she was hit by fifteen 11 inch shells from the battlecruisers of ''Vizeadmiral'' Franz von Hipper's First Scouting Group, primarily from SMS ''Moltke'', who scored 13 of those 15 hits. ^[4] Twenty-four of her crew were killed during the action, most of whom died when a hit badly damaged her midships "Q" Turret early in the battle. Despite the damage she had suffered, she was very lucky to have survived the battle. In one instance, an unexploded shell came to rest on the floor of a gun turret. In another, an 11 inch projectile impacted the 'A' turret barbette but damage was minimal since the shell had impacted a strong point in the armour. If it had hit a half-metre lower, the shell would have passed through thinner armour and would have destroyed the whole turret.
The damage ''Tiger'' suffered at Jutland was repaired by 2 July, and after leaving the repair yard she served as the temporary flagship of the First Battlecruiser Squadron while ''Lion'' was under repair. ''Tiger'' saw action again a year later when she fought at the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, on 17 November 1917. The same year saw her undergo a minor refit during which a flying-off platform for aircraft was mounted on "Q" Turret and a searchlight platform was added to her third funnel. She underwent a more extensive refit in 1918 which saw her mainmast shifted to the top of the derrick-stump and a more substantial observation platform added to the foremast. The resulting change in appearance was decried by the editors of the 1919 edition of ''Jane's Fighting Ships'', who wrote that ''Tiger'' had been "a remarkably handsome ship until the present hideous rig was adopted in 1918."[1]

Postwar Service

''Tiger'' remained in service with the Royal Navy after the Armistice and survived the culling of older capital ships following the Washington Naval Treaty. In 1922 she became a sea-going training ship, a role she served in throughout the 1920s. Her last major period of activity came in 1929 when the Royal Navy's newest battlecruiser, the ill-fated HMS ''Hood'', went into dockyard hands for a refit. While ''Hood'' was out of commission, ''Tiger'' returned to active service with the fleet to keep the Royal Navy's three-ship Battlecruiser Squadron (normally made up of ''Hood'' plus the smaller ''Renown'' and ''Repulse'') up to strength. Although by the 1930s ''Tiger'' was still in fair condition and was not a terribly old ship, her death knell was sounded by the Second London Naval Conference of 1930, during which ''Tiger'' was sacrificed by the Admiralty as part of an overall reduction in world battleship fleets. She remained in service with the fleet until ''Hood'' came out of refit in early 1931, at which time she was taken out of commission in accordance with the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty.
On 30 March 1931 ''Tiger'' was paid off at Devonport, and after the better part of a year of lying idle and awaiting her fate she was sold in March 1932. ''Tiger's'' last voyage was made under tow and ended at Inverkeithing, where she was broken up.

See also

★ HMS Tiger for other ships of the same name

★ List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy

'''Tiger'' class battlecruiser'

''Tiger'' | ''Leopard'' (planned but not built)

Preceded by: ''Lion'' class - Followed by: ''Renown'' class

'List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy'

References

★ Hythe, Viscount (ed) The Naval Annual 1914

★ Breyer, Siegfried ''Battleships of the World, 1905-1970'', , 1973, Macdonald's and Jane's, (Translated from the first edition of ''Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer, 1905-1970'', 1970, J. F. Lehmanns Verlag), ISBN 0831707054

★ Gardiner, Robert and Gray, Randal (ed) ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906 - 1921'', Conway Maritime Press, London, 1982. ISBN 0-85177-245-5.

★ Parkes, Oscar ''British Battleships'', first published Seeley Service & Co, 1957, published United States Naval Institute Press, 1990. ISBN 1-55750-075-4

★ Richardson, Sir Alexander and Hurd, Archibald (ed) Brassey's Naval and Shipping Annual 1924

★ Maritimequest HMS Tiger Photo Gallery

Notes

1. Brassey's Naval Annual 1914, p192-199.
2. Brassey's Naval and Shipping Annual 1924, p422-424.
3. Parkes, Oscar, ''British Battleships'', p551-557.
4. Staff, Gary: ''German Battlecruisers: 1914-1918'', page 16. Osprey Books, 2006. ISBN 978-1-84603-009-3

External links

★ Maritimequest HMS Tiger Photo Gallery