HMS Invincible (1907)

HMS Invincible was the lead ship of the three Invincible-class battlecruisers of the Royal Navy and the first battlecruiser built by any country. Armstrong Whitworth built her on Tyneside, laying her down on 2 April 1906 and launching her on 13 April 1907, and she was officially completed on 16 March 1909. Her turrets were an experiment: electrically driven mountings built by Vickers and by Armstrong proved a failure and were converted to hydraulic power during her refit in early 1914. She played a minor part in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914, and in December 1914 she and her sister Inflexible sank the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. At Jutland in 1916 she was flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron and was destroyed by a magazine explosion after the armour of one of her gun turrets was penetrated.