High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Lion class were a class of battlecruisers built by the British Royal Navy before World War I. Nicknamed the "Splendid Cats", the ships were a significant improvement over their predecessors of the Indefatigable class in terms of speed, armament and armour. The Lion-class cruisers were 2 knots (3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph) faster, exchanged the 12-inch (305 mm) guns of the older ships for 13.5-inch (343 mm) guns, and had a waterline belt 9 inches (229 mm) thick versus the 6 inches (152 mm) of the Indefatigables. These improvements were in response to the German Moltke-class, Germany`s first battlecruisers, which were larger and more powerful than the first British battlecruisers of the Invincible class.