Indefatigable-class battlecruiser

The Indefatigable class was the second class of British battlecruisers, a modest reworking of the preceding Invincible design that served in the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy during the First World War. It gave up one turret and armour protection for speed, and it lengthened the hull to improve the cross-deck arc of fire of the midships wing turrets. Each of the three ships was about 590 feet long, displaced some 18,500 long tons at load, mounted eight 12-inch guns in four twin turrets and was driven by Parsons steam turbines fed by Babcock and Wilcox boilers, burning coal sprayed with fuel oil. Indefatigable was built at Devonport Dockyard, Australia at John Brown on the Clyde, and New Zealand, funded by the dominion of that name, by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan, laid down on 20 June 1910 and launched on 1 July 1911. Indefatigable was destroyed by a magazine explosion at Jutland, New Zealand was sold for scrap in 1922 and Australia was scuttled in 1924.