Wikipedia:Today's featured list/September 26, 2014
Sunken battlecruisers are large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century that were either destroyed in battle, scuttled, or destroyed in a weapon test. Three British battlecruisers were lost at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. SMS Lützow, a German battlecruiser, was also sunk during the battle. Five German battlecruisers scuttled themselves in 1919 to prevent their seizure by the Royal Navy after the First Armistice at Compiègne in 1918. HMAS Australia (pictured), the sole Australian battlecruiser, was scuttled to comply with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 which limited the number and tonnage of capital ships that could be retained by the British Empire. In contrast to World War I, where all four ships were lost to gunfire, only two were sunk solely by guns during World War II and two more by a combination of gunfire and aerial attack. Four ships were sunk solely by aircraft and two by submarines. The three surviving battlecruisers—two of which had been converted into aircraft carriers—were scrapped or used as a target for nuclear weapon tests. (This list is part of a featured topic: Battlecruisers of the world.)