Battlecruiser

Battlecruisers were massive warships built to be faster and more powerful than the smaller warships that dominated combat at sea. The battlecruiser was meant to combine the speed of a cruiser with the firepower of a battleship. Battlecruisers were most popular during the early 1900s, such as during World War I. The first battlecruiser was the HMS Inflexible, completed in 1908 for the Royal Navy.

The advent of military aircraft made battlecruisers vulnerable to attack from above, and Japan converted some to aircraft carriers prior to World War II. With this vulnerability, they were almost obsoleted, except in the Soviet Union and later Russian Federation, the only navy with battlecruisers.