Renown was a late expression of pre-war battlecruiser logic, with six 15-inch guns, a quoted 32-knot speed, and only three to six inches of armour. A four-knot advantage could give much greater control of an engagement than a marginal speed edge. Britain had to balance matching German battlecruisers against maintaining enough ships for global commerce protection. The counterfactual argument is that modest additional spending could have produced substantially more ships before the war. Building three ships in successive early battlecruiser groups left Britain short of the four needed for a division.
Notable Point · 1:44:32-1:48:05
Renown class and Britain's wartime force shortage
The Renown class paired 32-knot speed with light protection, while exposing Britain's failure to buy enough ships for both global cruising and the German challenge.