The ‘Worn-Out’ British Battlecruiser That Outran And Outfought The Entire War

HMS Renown was the oldest capital ship configuration in the Royal Navy when war broke out — a First World War battlecruiser critics had spent two decades calling thin-skinned, fragile, obsolete. An eggshell armed with hammers. On 9 April 1940, in a full Arctic gale off the Lofoten Islands, she found herself alone. Her destroyers had fallen behind in the storm. Ahead of her were Scharnhorst and Gneisenau — two of the newest battleships in the German navy, eighteen heavy guns between them against her six. Renown opened fire first. What followed was the first engagement between British and German capital ships of the Second World War. This is the full story: Fisher's speed-over-armour gamble, the Jutland verdict that damned the battlecruiser, the £3 million reconstruction that rebuilt her from the upper deck up, and the six years of war she fought across four oceans while newer, prouder ships went to the bottom around her. If you're enjoying the channel, subscribing takes a second and supports the work. Watch next — the battleship that finished Bismarck:    • The 'Outdated' British Battleship That Ave...   Sources include Roskill, The War at Sea; Peter C. Smith, The Battle-Cruiser HMS Renown; Geirr Haarr, The Battle for Norway 1940; and German war diary material. Where sources disagree on hit counts, the more conservative figure is used. Thumbnail artwork is a dramatisation, not a historical photograph.