HMS Inflexible (1907)

Inflexible in New York City, 1909
History
United Kingdom
Name	Inflexible
Ordered	1905
Builder	John Brown & Company, Clyde
Laid down	5 February 1906
Launched	26 June 1907[1]
Commissioned	20 October 1908[2]
Stricken	31 March 1920
Fate	Scrapped, 1922
General characteristics
Class and type	Invincible-class battlecruiser
Displacement	17,290 long tons (17,570 t) (normal) 20,700 long tons (21,000 t) (deep load)
Length	530 ft 1 in (161.57 m) (waterline) 567 ft (173 m) o/a
Beam	78 ft 10.13 in (24.0317 m)
Draught	29 ft 9 in (9.07 m) (deep load)
Installed power	31 × Yarrow boilers 41,000 shp (30,574 kW)
Propulsion	4 × shafts; 2 × direct-drive steam turbine sets
Speed	26.48 knots (49 km/h; 30 mph) (trials)
Range	3,090 nmi (5,720 km; 3,560 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement	784
Armament	4 × twin 12 in (305 mm) guns 16 × single 4 in (102 mm) guns 5 × 18 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour	Belt: 4–6 in (102–152 mm) Decks: 1.5–2.5 in (38–64 mm) Barbettes: 7 in (178 mm) Turrets: 7 in (178 mm) Conning tower: 6–10 in (152–254 mm) Torpedo bulkheads: 2.5 in (64 mm)

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.