Calling battlecruisers raiders would have stated their economic-warfare role plainly, but official rhetoric treated raiding as something other navies did. British cruisers were still designed to attack or protect commerce. Submarine warfare followed the same pattern: Britain called the method underhanded while maintaining the world's largest interwar submarine arm and employing submarines actively in the Mediterranean. Battle cruiser retained the prestige of fleet warfare and obscured the less gentlemanly public image of the type's intended work. That name may have made later doctrinal misuse easier.
Notable Point · 1:08:32-1:08:53
Royal Navy rhetoric and the commerce-raiding role
British language avoided calling its ships surface raiders even though battlecruisers and other cruisers were built for comparable trade-war functions.