Golden Journal No. 46: Iron Dogs
Fisher’s Greyhounds
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2022

Where German design theory saw the battle cruiser as a fast battleship, able to support the cruisers of the scouting forces and fight in the line of battle, Britain’s Royal Navy initially viewed the battle cruiser as a more powerful armored cruiser. That would allow them to overwhelm enemy scouting forces and, First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher argued, stand in the line of battle since the enemy would not be able to hit them at long range. Why the battle cruisers would be able to hit the enemy, he left unexplained.

When war came, the Admiralty considered splitting up its battle cruisers among squadrons of light cruisers to give each heavy support in the blockade of Germany. The would have allowed the Germans, with their own battle cruisers concentrated in the First Scouting Group, to destroy them one by one. Grand Fleet commander Sir John Jellicoe managed to scuttle that plan and keep the battle cruisers concentrated in a single squadron, but he couldn’t stop First Sea Lord Winston Churchill’s amateur meddling from detaching battle cruisers around the globe – to the Mediterranean, the South Atlantic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Caribbean.

Golden Journal No. 46: Iron Dogs is all about the battle cruisers that fought the Battle of Dogger Bank, German and British. To make play of the Dogger Bank scenarios in Jutland Second Edition and Jutland: Dogger Bank more fun, this volume of the Journal has giant-size pieces for the battle cruisers (and one big armored cruiser) that fought or could have fought at Dogger Bank. They’re the same size as the ones we used for Zeppelins, Land Cruisers and Rome at War, and fit (just barely) on the Great War at Sea Naval Tactical Map.

That helps show off the artwork, and the very sharp printing resolution of our die-cut and silky-smooth pieces. We showed you the Germans in an earlier installment; let’s have a look at the British ships of Iron Dogs.

Indomitable
Authorized: 1905
Laid Down: 1906
Commissioned: 1908
The world’s first battle cruiser (commissioned four months before Inflexible, though laid down after her sister), Indomitable’s appearance shocked naval observers, who had expected the Royal Navy to build an enlarged version of their last armored cruiser, Minotaur (perhaps with a uniform armament of 9.2-inch guns). She commissioned before she was fully complete, in order to carry the Prince of Wales on a trip to Canada.

She began the war in the Mediterranean where she chased the German battle cruiser Goeben and bombarded Turkish forts outside the Dardanelles strait. She returned to the North Sea on 26 December 1914, and promptly joined New Zealand to form the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron. She was the slowest of the British battle cruisers and Dogger Bank, and though she squeezed 26 knots out of her power plant, the British commander, Sir David Beatty, detailed her to finished the stricken armored cruiser Blücher. Instead, all of the British battle cruisers followed the order, greatly aiding the German escape. After the battle, Indomitable towed the badly damaged Lion to safety.

New Zealand
Authorized: 1909
Laid Down: 1910
Commissioned: 1912
In March 1909, both the British press and Parliament – egged on by some strategic spending from the Vickers-Armstrong shipbuilding combine – agitated for a massive increase in the 1908 naval budget. Rather than just two dreadnoughts, Britain should build eight. “We want eight,” Unionist MP George Wyndham famously shouted, “and we won’t wait!”

Dominion governments faced similar pressure to participate in the naval buildup, and New Zealand offered to pay for a dreadnought. First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher convinced the Kiwis to fund one of his beloved battle cruisers instead.

The new Lion class had already been laid down when New Zealand and Australia each committed to one battle cruiser. Fisher feared that the increase in price over Indefatigable, the lone ship of the previous (and much less expensive class), and so the Dominion-funded ships repeated the Indefatigable design rather than the larger and far more powerful Lion. Given the rampant jingoism in the Antipodes, the Dominions very likely would have gladly ponied up for more powerful ships. But instead, their battle cruisers would be built to the older design. New Zealand had to take out a loan to pay for New Zealand.

During a 1913 visit to New Zealand, Maori warriors taught the ship’s British crew to perform the haka, and gifted Captain Lionel Halsey with a hei-tiki pendant and piupiu warrior’s skirt. Halsey wore both at the Battles of Helgoland Bight and Dogger Bank, and passed them on to his successor, Jimmy Green, who wore them at Jutland. Both captains kept their trousers on, wearing the skirt over their uniform.

While New Zealand lagged behind the newer battle cruisers at Dogger Bank (as she had at Helgoland Bight); she scored the hits that doomed the armored cruiser Blücher.

Lion
Princess Royal
Authorized: 1909
Laid Down: 1909/1910
Commissioned: 1912
The “Splendid Cats” represented a shift in British battle cruiser design philosophy, from an armored cruiser with big guns to a fast battleship. Lion would be the first British warship designed with two super-firing turrets forward, and the first to adopt the then-secret 13.5-inch gun. To both accommodate her four main-battery turrets along the centerline and to generate a much greater speed than earlier battle cruisers (designed for 27.5 knots, she exceeded that in practice), the ship would be much longer than and displace half again as much as the previous battle cruisers.

Lion served as flagship of the Grand Fleet’s Battle Cruiser Force (sometimes “Battle Cruiser Fleet”) throughout the Great War. She suffered extensive damage at Dogger Bank – 14 hits from heavy shells - and required lengthy repairs. She inflicted the hit on Seydlitz that almost destroyed the German battle cruiser. Princess Royal also fought at Dogger Bank, scoring one hit on Derfflinger and two on Blücher while incurring no damage.

Queen Mary
Authorized:  1910
Laid Down: 1911
Commissioned: 1913
For the 1910 Program, the Admiralty ordered a modified version of Lion. Queen Mary was slightly longer and wider to provide better arrangements in her engine rooms, and had one inch of armor over her battery of 4-inch guns where Lion and Princess Royal had none.

Queen Mary did not fight at Dogger Bank; she missed the battle due to a dockyard period at Portsmouth where a new fire control system was installed. She exploded at the Battle of Jutland following a hit by the German battle cruiser Derfflinger that detonated at least one of her forward magazines. The flash baffles that should have protected her ammunition passages had likely been left open to speed the ship’s rate of fire, as occurred in the doomed armored cruiser Defence. She sank quickly along with 1,266 of her crew.

We’ve included her in the Iron Dogs set, however, to balance the two extra German battle cruisers we added that could have been present at Dogger Bank, but were not.

Tiger
Authorized: 1911
Laid Down: 1912
Commissioned: 1914
Rivalling Derfflinger as the most attractive ship design of the pre-war era, Tiger drew heavily from Sir George Thurston’s sketch for the Japanese battle cruiser Kongo. She was the largest and most expensive warship built in Britain up to that time, outstripping even the Queen Elizabeth class “fast” battleships. The major change from the previous design was the move of “Q” turret from amidships further aft, to fire over the aftmost turret (“D”).

Tiger joined the Grand Fleet in December 1914, with a crew pieced together from stockades and other ships’ rejects, since First Lord Churchill had sent the highly-trained specialists who should have manned her to Belgium so they could perish in infantry combat instead. As a result, Tiger performed poorly at Dogger Bank, obtaining three hits (one each on Blücher, Seydlitz and Derfflinger) while firing at every German heavy ship present. She did only slightly better at Jutland.

And those are the British of Iron Dogs.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his Iron Dog, Leopold.

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