in World War I was dominated by the dreadnought battleship. Battleships were built along the dreadnought model, with several large turrets of equally sized big guns. In general terms, British ships had larger guns and were equipped and manned for quicker fire than their German counterparts. In contrast, the German ships had better optical equipment and rangefinding and were much better compartmentalized and able to deal with damage. The British also generally had poor propellant handling procedures, a point that was to have disastrous consequences for the British battlecruisers at Jutland. Many of the individual parts of ships had recently improved dramatically. The introduction of the turbine led to much higher performance, as well as freeing up room and thereby allowing for improved layouts. Whereas pre-dreadnought battleships were generally limited to , modern ships were capable of at least , and in the latest British classes, . The introduction of the gyroscope and centralized fire control, the "director" in British terms, led to dramatic improvements in gunnery. Ships built before 1900 had effective ranges of around , whereas the first "new" ships were good to at least , and modern designs to over . One class of ship that appeared just before the war was the battlecruiser. There were two schools of thought on battlecruiser design: British and German. The British designs were armed like their heavier dreadnought cousins, but deliberately lacked armor to save weight in order to improve speed. The concept was that these ships would be able to outgun anything smaller than themselves, and get away from anything larger. The German designs opted to trade slightly smaller main armament (11 or 12 inch guns compared to 12 or 13.5 inch guns in their British rivals) for speed, while keeping relatively heavy armor. They could operate independently in the open ocean where their speed gave them room to maneuver, or, alternately, as a fast scouting force in front of a larger fleet action. The torpedo boat caused considerable worry for many naval planners. In theory, a large number of these inexpensive ships could attack in masses and overwhelm a dreadnought force. This led to the introduction of ships dedicated to keeping them away from the fleets, the "torpedo boat destroyers", or simply, "destroyers". Although the mass raid continued to be a possibility, another solution was found in the form of the submarine, increasingly in use. The submarine could