Design issue with HMS Dreadnought.

It would certainly chip the tea cups in the wardroom.


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The only purpose I can see of those guns is to cover the defelade created by the superstructure; as there doesn't appear to be a great deal of midship armament.

 

This ship was launched in 1906 Including the latest technology, Dreadnought's power plant utilized steam turbines, recently developed by Charles A. Parson, in lieu of the standard triple-expansion steam engines. This greatly increased the speed of the vessel and allowed Dreadnought to outrun any existing battleship if the ship held together and it had Issues that caused great concern. Top speed of 21K, but it could only reach 18k and even then not for long periods of time. At that speed the engine caused tremendous vibration throughout the ship which greatly interfered with accurate spotting from the optical rangefinders. Additionally reciprocating machinery broke down with increased frequency when run near its limits. A high-speed run of any duration was likely to result in the ship sitting in harbor for days or making repairs to damaged parts.

Dreadnought was claimed by many a naval marvel of the Times but In a decade she was obsolescent, in 1920 she was sold for breaking-up.

For its main armament,mounted with ten 12" guns in five twin turrets. Three of these were mounted along the centerline, one forward and two aft, with the other two in "wing" positions on either side of the bridge. As a result, Dreadnought could only bring eight of its ten guns to bear on a single target. Supplementing the 12" guns were 27 12-pdr guns intended for close defense against torpedo boats and destroyers. For fire control, the ship incorporated some of the first instruments for electronically transmitting range, deflection, and order directly to the turrets.

HMS Dreadnought - Royal Navy Battleship HMS Dreadnought

I think Jughead is right with both Wing Guns firing it would of cracked many tea cups in the Bridge If being fired Dead Forward.

 

I agree firing directly ahead or astern was impractical, let alone the claimed six-gun capability, which was actually cited in references like Jane's. It might not be that much of a problem. Pursuing or retreating, steering 10 degrees off the direct bearing to the enemy costs very little in terms of distance covered.

Although the advantages of an all-centerline arrangement seem obvious to us, it may not have been so much so at the time. Within living memory, ships had carried their guns on the broadside, using only half their main armament on any one target. By the 1890s an all-centerline setup - two turrets - had become standard, although the French and others sometimes used diamond arrangements of four single mounts. Dreadnought's most immediate rivals, what subsequently came to be called semi-dreadnoughts, incorporated 4-6 heavy wing turrets, although they were lighter than the main battery, 8-10". It was acceptable to have a "broadside" comprising 8-10 out of 12-16 big guns. And of course the first German responses to Dreadnought, the Posen and Helgoland classes, had six 11-12" turrets with four on the sides.

The last time this came up, the deficiency of the 3" anti-torpedo armament (also in South Carolina) was mentioned. While it's a valid observation, this too was consistent with semi-dreadnought practice. Ships like Lord Nelson or Danton did away with the ~6" secondary battery, leaving only two types of guns - big ones in armored turrets and 3-4" anti-torpedo boat weapons. These were actually contemporaries of Dreadnought; the Dantons were laid down as late as 1908. The "all-big-gun" ship was the way of the future; Dreadnought just took the final step of making the big guns uniform.

Designers have to consider both total weight and topweight. The same item carried higher up in the ship has significantly more impact on the design. Compared to South Carolina, Dreadnought had one turret a deck lower and another two decks lower; this also saved the weight of the additional armored barbette structure to support them. Her ten 12" may not have "cost" much more than the American ship's eight.

We - well, I - cannot close this discussion without mentioning the Japanese. They were early converts to all-big-gun based on experience in their war with Russia. Their Satsuma was planned to carry twelve 12", ordered from Britain, but for some reason sufficient guns were not available and she had to be armed with four 12" and twelve 10". I'm not entirely sure why it was possible to procure twelve 10" guns but not eight more 12", but it did save us from calling a generation of battleships "satsumas".

The next Japanese class, the Settsu, did have all 12" and are usually classed with dreadnoughts, but they lacked one essential element, a uniform main battery. Their centerline turrets had 12" 50 caliber guns, wing turrets 12" 45 caliber. It may not have mattered much until the advent of director firing, but in my mind it makes them the ultimate semi-dreadnoughts.

 

Found the following quote by one of the builders about her first gunnery trials in the presence of Sir Philip Watts then director of naval construction.:

... He (Watts) selected a position on the port side of the forward babette (the guns were firing to starboard). He looked very grave and serious and I am quite sure he fully expected the decks to to come down wholesale. Presently there was a muffled roar and a bit of a kick on the ship. The eight guns had been fired and scores of men between decks had no idea of what happened.

Dreadnought was a prototype and a lot more advanced than anything then building, IMO turbines are just as revolutionary as single caliber main guns, the following Bellerophon and St Vincent classes mantained her general layout but introduced a more reasonable 4" QF secondary battery. I don't have any picture of one of those ships firing straight ahead but the conning tower had 12" armour so would not have much been affected by the blast, the light superstructure may take some damage but if you look at the drawings there's not a lot of it. During her life the foremast was progressively reduced and the bridge rebuilt (probably moved back) as it' reported the conning tower was clear of it in her final configuration.

 

Looks there are davets above the barrels of the wing gun mounts, look at my picture, when the guns are pointing forward. I am thinking the guns were not designed to be fired forward or rearward.

 

It would appear that the Royal Navy was struggling with exactly how to configure their "big guns" well before the Dreadnought and it’s all big gun set-up. I mean they had many guns mounted in "side turrets" before the Dreadnought, and some really bizarre ones after it. And I’m not dissing on the Rodney or Nelson as treaty battleships here either.

Look at the HMS Agincourt for example, that set of mid-hull turrets could only fire in broadside.

See:

Great Britain - Battleships - Warships 1900-1950

 

WTF is up with the number 3 turret?

 

I don't think it is necessarily a bad design but perhaps more of a different type. She has the forward gun power in any chase whether the enemy is dead astern or even a few degrees either side of the main superstructure rendering the opposite gun to the enemy ship incapable of firing, an interesting idea if you are the pursuer or even being chased.

 

Although Nelson and Rodney were "cut down by Washington", much of their design derived from the approximately 48,000-ton battleships and battle cruisers planned before the treaty. Both were going to be heavily armored "post-Jutland" types and were going to concentrate their turrets and magazines in one group for maximum protection. The arrangement was slightly different - two turrets, the tower bridge, then the third turret roughly amidships, guns oriented aft, then the superstructure, funnels, boilers, engines, secondary and AA armament aft. There would be about a 20 degree blind arc each side of the stern. The battleships were going to have 18" guns and the battle cruisers the 16" that eventually ended up in the Nelsons. Both would have armor comparable to the Nelsons, but the battle cruisers would have 30 knot speed, the battleships 23.

The RN had a class of fleet oilers whose names ended in -ol, so the battleships with their funnels aft were nicknamed Nelsol and Rodnol.

 

Britsh Battleships of World War Two by Alan Raven and John Roberts has a good description of the design process, which as you might guess was quite extensive, very mcuh a "blank sheet" exercise! As you can imagine, they were not governed by any pre-existing ideas of what a ship ought to look like! Just worked out whatever appeared to provide the characteristics they wanted, mainly massive protection. Out of a long series of concepts, the ones selected were G3 for the battle cruisers and N3 for the battleships; you might google etc. those.

 

I believe the issue was recoil not blast, she was firing an 8 gun broadside, battleships before Dreadnought had to handle only four big guns firing together so the effects od an eight guin salvo on the ship structure was a bit of an unknown. I believe she also had a new unproved babette design of 29' diameter instead of the previous 34' to save weight.

I also found mention that the forecastle decks and sides were strengthened to withstand the shock of the side turrets firing so while firing six guns directly forward may have been impossible four gun salvos were definetly part of the design (still found no picture of amy actual forward firing test though).


The interesting thing is that Sir Philip chose to stand outside on the "unengaged" side, not in the 12" conning tower, so blast was probably not so big an issue with the 12"/45 as with later larger guns.

BTW Agincourt was not built to a RN design, originally named Rio De Janeiro she was designed to a Brazilian requirement to be the world's most powerful ship while still using a 12" main battery. She was then sold to Turkey as the Sultan Osman I but seized by the RN at the beginning of the war. The other "Turk" Reishadieh/Erin was similar to the Iron Duke class.