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Source: List of battlecruisers

During the first half of the 20th century, many navies constructed or planned to build battlecruisers: large capital ships with greater speed but less armor than dreadnought battleships. The first battlecruisers, the Invincible class, were championed by the British First Sea Lord John Fisher and appeared in 1908, two years after the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought. In the same year, Germany responded with its own battlecruiser, SMS Von der Tann. Over the next decade, Britain and Germany built an additional twelve and six battlecruisers, respectively. Other nations joined them: HMAS Australia entered service for the Royal Australian Navy in 1913, Japan constructed four ships of the Kongō class from 1911 through 1915, and in late 1912 Russia laid down the four Borodino-class battlecruisers, though they were never completed. Two countries considered acquiring battlecruisers in this time, but chose not to: France looked at several battlecruiser design studies in 1913 and 1914, and the United States ordered six Lexington-class battlecruisers in 1916 that were never built.
The British and German battlecruisers were used extensively during World War I between 1914 and 1918, including in the Battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank, and most famously in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916, where one German and three British battlecruisers were sunk. The Japanese battlecruisers did not see action during the war, as the German naval presence in the Pacific was destroyed by the British in the early months of the war. Britain and Germany attempted to build additional battlecruisers during the war—the Admiral class for the former, and the Mackensen and Ersatz Yorck classes for the latter—but changing priorities in favor of smaller warships prevented their completion. At the end of the war, the German High Seas Fleet was interned and subsequently scuttled in Scapa Flow.
In the immediate aftermath of World War I, Britain, Japan, and the United States all considered new battlecruiser construction, including the British G3 class, the Japanese Amagi class, and a revised version of the American Lexingtons. In the interest of avoiding another crippling naval arms race, the three countries, along with France and Italy, signed the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, which included a moratorium on new capital ship construction. A clause in the treaty, however, gave the British, Japanese, and Americans a chance to convert several of their battlecruisers into aircraft carriers. Only a handful of battlecruisers survived the arms limitation regime. In the 1930s, several navies considered new "cruiser killer" battlecruisers, including Germany's O class, the Dutch Design 1047, and the Soviet Kronshtadt class. The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 put a halt to all these plans.
During the war, the surviving battlecruisers saw extensive action, and many were sunk. The four Japanese Kongō-class ships had been rebuilt as fast battleships in the 1930s, but all were sunk during the conflict. Of the three British battlecruisers still in service, HMS Hood and Repulse were sunk, but Renown survived the war. The only other battlecruiser in existence at the end of the Second World War was the ex-German Goeben, which had been transferred to Turkey during the First World War and served as Yavuz Sultan Selim.
Several new wartime classes were proposed, including the Japanese Design B-65 class, and the American Alaska class, two of which were built before the end of the war. The Alaskas were officially classified as "large cruisers", but many naval historians refer to them as battlecruisers. In the postwar drawdown of forces, Renown and the two Alaskas were withdrawn from service and eventually scrapped; Only Yavuz Sultan Selim, the last surviving battlecruiser in the world, lingered on until the early 1970s, when she too was sent to the shipbreakers. Only one country, the Soviet Union, considered building battlecruisers after the war. The three Stalingrad-class ships, championed by Joseph Stalin, were laid down in the early 1950s, but were cancelled after his death in 1953. However, in the 1970s, the Soviet Union began the construction of a class of very large guided missile cruisers, much larger than any other surface combatant built since the Second World War. This new type, the Kirov-class, although designated as a "heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser" by the Soviet Navy, was generally referred to in the West as a "battlecruiser".