HMS Invincible

1916

Jutland, the first battlecruiser, Q turret Location: North Sea, off Jutland, Denmark · Coordinates: 56.82°N 5.93°E · Casualties: 1,026 · Survivors: 6 · Depth: 55 m · Cause: naval gunfire · magazine explosion — Engaged by SMS Derfflinger and SMS Lützow at the Battle of Jutland at 18:33 on 31 May 1916. A German salvo penetrated her Q turret and ignited the adjacent magazine. She broke in half inside ninety seconds; her two halves remained upright on the North Sea floor. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: battlecruiser · Invincible class · Tonnage: 17,250 tons · Crew: 1032 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1907 The first battlecruiser ever built and type-ship of a new class of warship. At the Battle of Jutland on the evening of 31 May 1916 a German salvo from SMS Derfflinger penetrated her Q turret and exploded the adjacent magazine; she broke in half inside ninety seconds. 1,026 dead, six survivors. Rear-Admiral Sir Horace Hood, Nelson's great-great-grandson, died on the bridge. The Vessel HMS Invincible was the lead ship of her class of battlecruisers, the first battlecruiser ever built, laid down on 2 April 1906 at Elswick on the Tyne and commissioned on 20 March 1909. She was 172 metres long, 17,250 tons, and carried eight 12-inch guns in four twin turrets, a main armament equal to contemporary battleships. Her design speed of 25 knots, produced by 41,000 shaft horsepower on four shafts, was approximately 4 knots faster than contemporary Dreadnought-class battleships. She was Fisher's flagship of the battlecruiser concept: fast enough to catch and destroy armoured cruisers, heavily armed enough to engage any other ship of her class, and fast enough to outrun any battleship. The concept traded armour protection for speed; her belt armour of 6 inches was thinner than contemporary armoured cruisers and half the thickness of contemporary battleships. In Fisher's tactical vision, speed would compensate for the armour deficit: an Invincible class ship would engage at ranges beyond any battleship's accurate fire and would close only when the balance favoured her. She entered service in 1909 as the Royal Navy's answer to the emerging German Scharnhorst-class armoured cruisers and to any future German ships of the battlecruiser type. By 1914 she had served in the North Sea and the Mediterranean; her one combat action before Jutland had been at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914, where she and her sister HMS Inflexible, under Vice-Admiral Doveton St The Disaster At 18:33 on 31 May 1916, a salvo from SMS Derfflinger struck Invincible's Q turret, forward of the bridge. The shell penetrated the turret roof and detonated in the cordite handling room. The resulting flash explosion propagated downward through the loading trunk into the forward magazine of Q turret. The forward magazine of Q turret detonated. The fire-flash then propagated aft along the main flash path of her interconnected magazines; within two seconds of the first detonation, the adjacent P turret magazine had also detonated; within six seconds, the cross-magazine connections to her amidships A and X turret magazines had ignited. Invincible experienced essentially simultaneous detonation of three of her four main magazines. She disintegrated. Observers on nearby ships saw her hull lifted bodily from the water and split into two pieces by the blast; the forward piece rose at the stern, the after piece at the bow, and the two ends momentarily stood almost vertical in the smoke before sinking in opposite directions. Photographs taken from HMS Indomitable show the smoke column reaching 300 metres into the North Sea evening, the highest single pillar of smoke recorded in the Battle of Jutland. Invincible was gone inside fifteen seconds of the fatal salvo. Rear-Admiral Hood, Captain Edward Cay, 23 other officers, and 1,001 ratings went down with her. Six men survived, of whom five were from her foretop or masthead: one was the gunnery control officer who had been thrown clear b