The Battleship Cruiser concept

In a ground-breaking paper, in the early 1900's, William Hovgaard wrote about the Battleship-Cruiser. The Japanese were the first to attempt to implement the concept, although as pre-Dreadnoughts. Their attempts were armored cruisers with 4-12inch guns and a heavy secondary armament.

The Invincibles were similar, except with an all-big gun armament and higher speed. What the Germans built, starting with the Moltke and Göben were more what William Hovgaard had in mind. He was ready to sacrifice some armament to get good armor and good speed. The first British ships to achieve this were the Queen Elizabeth class battleships. They really didn't have the needed speed, however. It was only with the cancelled 1921 battlecruisers that the British would have achieve the desired type. It was not until the latter 1930's that William Hovgaard's vision was actually implemented--in the form of "fast battleships". The North Carolinas gave up armor and underwater protection to achieve rather modest speed goals (27 knots). The best fast battleships actually completed were the Iowas. They had acceptable side armor and good speed (33 knots).