HMS Inflexible (1907)

Inflexible in New York City, 1909
Inflexible in New York City, 1909
History
RN EnsignUnited Kingdom
NameInflexible
Ordered1905
BuilderJohn Brown & Company, Clyde
Laid down5 February 1906
Launched26 June 1907[1]
Commissioned20 October 1908[2]
Stricken31 March 1920
FateScrapped, 1922
General characteristics
Class and typeInvincible-class battlecruiser
Displacement
Length
  • 530 ft 1 in (161.57 m) (waterline)
  • 567 ft (173 m) o/a
Beam78 ft 10.13 in (24.0317 m)
Draught29 ft 9 in (9.07 m) (deep load)
Installed power
Propulsion4 × shafts; 2 × direct-drive steam turbine sets
Speed26.48 knots (49 km/h; 30 mph) (trials)
Range3,090 nmi (5,720 km; 3,560 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement784
Armament
Armour

HMS Inflexible was one of three Invincible-class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy before World War I and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the light cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea when war broke out and she and her sister ship Invincible sank the German armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau during the Battle of the Falkland Islands. Inflexible bombarded Turkish forts in the Dardanelles in 1915, but was damaged by return fire and struck a mine while maneuvering. She had to be beached to prevent her from sinking, but she was patched up and sent to Malta, and then Gibraltar for more permanent repairs. Transferred to the Grand Fleet afterwards, she damaged the German battlecruiser Lützow during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and watched Invincible explode. She was deemed obsolete after the war and was sold for scrap in 1921.

  1. ^ The Times (London), Wednesday, 26 June 1907, p. 13
  2. ^ The Times (London), Wednesday, 21 October 1908, p. 12