HMS Tiger was a battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy during the 1910s. The ship was the most heavily armoured British battlecruiser at the start of the First World War in 1914, but was not yet ready for service. The ship was assigned to the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron (1st BCS) for the duration of the war and participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank in early 1915, though she was still shaking down and did not perform well. Tiger next participated in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, where she was only lightly damaged despite suffering many hits by German shells. Apart from providing distant cover during the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917, she spent the rest of the war on uneventful patrols in the North Sea.
The ship was the oldest battlecruiser retained by the Royal Navy after the tonnage limits of the Washington Naval Treaty came into effect in 1922. She became a gunnery training ship in 1924 and then joined the Battlecruiser Squadron in 1929 when its flagship, , underwent a lengthy refit. Upon Hoods return to service in 1931, Tiger was decommissioned and sold for scrap in 1932 in accordance with the terms of the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
In his book, The Price of Admiralty, British military historian John Keegan described her as "certainly the most beautiful warship in the world then, and perhaps ever[.]"
Design and description
Tiger was the sole battlecruiser authorised in the 1911–12 Naval Programme. According to naval historian Siegfried Breyer, a sister ship named Leopard was considered in the 1912–13 Programme and deferred until 1914 as a sixth member of the , but there is no record of any additional battlecruiser being provided for in any naval estimates before 1914.
Tiger had an overall length of , a beam of , and a mean draught of at deep load. She normally displaced and at deep load. Although Tiger was only longer and wider than the previous battlecruiser, , she displaced almost more than the older ship. She had a metacentric height of at deep load. In September 1914, her complement consisted of 1,112 officers and ratings; in April 1918, they totalled 1,459. Her three-bladed propellers were in diameter. The turbines were powered by 39 Babcock & Wilcox boilers in five boiler rooms at a working pressure of . The turbines were designed to produce a total of and a maximum of when forced, but only achieved during her sea trials, although she managed to exceed her maximum designed speed of by over a knot.
The ship's fuel stowage capacity was of fuel oil and of coal, giving a total fuel supply of —much more than Queen Marys total of . The sole (unofficial) figure for Tigers daily fuel consumption of a day at would have given a maximum endurance of . The equivalent figure for Queen Mary was roughly . Four direct current electric dynamos with a total capacity of supplied the common ring main at 220 volts.
Armament
thumb|right|Tigers armament as painted by [[William Lionel Wyllie]]
Tiger mounted eight 45-calibre BL 13.5-inch Mk V guns in four twin hydraulically powered turrets, designated 'A', 'B', 'Q' and 'X' from front to rear. The guns could be depressed to −5° and elevated to +20°, although the directors controlling the turrets were limited to 15° 21' until superelevating prisms were installed before the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 to allow full elevation. They fired projectiles at a muzzle velocity of ; at 20° elevation, this provided a maximum range of . The rate of fire of these guns was approximately 2 rounds per minute. The ship carried a total of 1040 rounds during wartime for 130 shells per gun. They were provided with 120 rounds per gun. Mk I anti-aircraft guns on high-angle Mark II mounts. Originally, Tiger carried 300 rounds per gun, but this was reduced during the war to 150 rounds per gun.
Four British 21 inch torpedo| submerged torpedo tubes were fitted on the beam, one pair port and starboard forward of 'A' barbette and aft of 'X' barbette.
Fire control
The main guns of Tiger were controlled from either of the two fire-control directors. The primary director was in the fore-top on the foremast and the other was mounted on the aft superstructure in the torpedo control tower. A Mark VII* Dumaresq in the armoured tower was trained on the target to supply bearing data to one transmitting station for use in plotting and calculations, and a second station was fitted for the ship's secondary armament, although a pair of fire-control directors for those guns, one for each broadside, were not fitted until 1915.
Fire-control technology advanced quickly during the years immediately preceding the First World War and the development of the director firing system was a major advance. This consisted of a fire-control director mounted high in the ship which electrically provided elevation and training angles to the turrets via pointers, which the turret crewmen had only to follow. The director layer fired the guns simultaneously by an electrical trigger which aided in spotting the shell splashes and minimised the effects of the roll on the dispersion of the shells.
During the war, Tigers rangefinders had increased in number and in size. By the end of the war, 'A' and 'Q' turrets mounted rangefinders while 'X' turret, the armoured hood above the conning tower (also known as the gun control tower), and the torpedo control tower had instruments. A rangefinder was fitted in the fore-top and three instruments were fitted on 'B' turret, the gun control tower and above the compass platform. A high-angle rangefinder was mounted above the roof of the fore-top for use by the anti-aircraft guns. the only design influence on Tiger that can be attributed to that ship.