main belt below the waterline was reduced from , although a strake of three-inch armour tall was added below the main belt that stretched from the front of 'A' barbette to the rear of 'B' barbette. It was based on that used on the Vickers built Japanese battlecruiser , the only design influence on Tiger that can be attributed to that ship. Like the ships and Queen Mary, Tiger was given an upper armour belt with a maximum thickness of six inches over the same length as the thickest part of the waterline armour and thinned to abreast the end turrets. Unlike those ships, Tiger had an additional strake of 6-inch armour above the upper belt protecting her secondary armament. Four-inch transverse bulkheads closed off the ends of the armoured citadel. High-tensile steel was used for the protective decks. They generally ranged from in thickness. The gun turrets had 9-inch front and sides while their roofs were thick. The barbettes were protected above the citadel by of armour, thinning to three to four inches inside the citadel. The main conning tower had a three-inch roof and sides thick. The walls of the communication tube were three to four inches thick. The aft conning tower had 6-inch walls and a 3-inch cast steel roof. High-tensile steel torpedo bulkheads thick were fitted abreast the magazines and shell rooms. After the Battle of Jutland revealed the ship's vulnerability to plunging shellfire, around of additional armour was added to the turret roofs, the decks over the magazines, and the bulkheads separating the 6-inch guns. Service history First World War Tiger was laid down at the John Brown and Company shipyard in Clydebank on 6 June 1912. She was launched on 15 December 1913 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 3 October 1914, at the cost of £2,593,100, including armament. The ship was still under construction when the First World War broke out in August 1914. On 3 August 1914, Captain Henry Pelly was appointed to command the incomplete ship. Beatty described Pelly at the time as "a very charming person and, what is more important just now, a very efficient officer". Tiger was commissioned for the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron (1st BCS) on 3 October. After the Battle of Coronel and the deployment of three battlecruisers to hunt for the German East Asia Squadron, Tiger was ordered to cut short her firing trials off