Lion as a response to German battlecruisers

Von der Tann demonstrated that another navy could build a fast, well-protected ship able to challenge the first British battlecruisers. Her 1908 construction is compared with Indefatigable's contemporary ordering and construction. The case made here is that Lion responded to that emerging threat before Britain knew enough about Moltke to design a direct answer to that class. Von der Tann's roughly 24.8 knots was close enough to British 25-knot ships for her greater protection to matter. Lion therefore anticipated a generation of enemy battlecruisers beyond the armoured cruisers the Invincibles had been designed to defeat.