User:Carom/Sandbox
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[edit] Genesis
Existing battleship designs of the era typically mounted four large guns in twin turrets fore and aft, with a number of smaller guns lining the sides of the ship, in a fashion similar to earlier sail warships. Not only did this mask nearly half of the ship's guns at any one time (while turrets mounted on the centerline were free to either broadside), it also allowed water into the ship through the many gunports, a clear hazard in heavy sea. Furthermore, each calibre of gun had different ballistic properties, something which greatly complicated gunnery, especially when watching for splashes. The smaller-calibre guns would either have to hold fire to wait for the heavies, which had a longer "hang time" (so to speak), negating the faster firing rate advantages of the smaller calibres, or risk confusion between the splashes of the larger and smaller guns.
The invention by Charles Algernon Parsons of the steam turbine in 1884 led to a significant increase in the speed of ships with his dramatic unauthorised demonstration of Turbinia with its speed of up to 34 knots (63 km/h) at the Spithead Navy Review in 1897. After further trials and construction of two turbine powered destroyers, HMS Viper and HMS Cobra, the Admiralty confirmed in 1905 that future Royal Navy vessels were to be turbine powered.
[edit] "All-big-gun" concepts
The idea of "all-big-gun" warships, capable of firing powerful guns from a long distance seems to have emerged as the threat from torpedoes became more potent. The Italian naval architect Vittorio Cuniberti first articulated the concept of an all-big-gun battleship in 1903 (although Fisher claimed the idea had occurred to him by 1900). When the Italian Navy didn't pursue his ideas, Cuniberti wrote an article in Jane's propagating his concept. He proposed an "ideal" future British battleship of 17,000 tons, with a main battery of twelve 12 inch (30 cm) guns, 12 inch belt armour, and speed of 24 knots (44 km/h).
[edit] Japanese development (1904-1905)
The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) provided operational experience to validate the concept. The Russian Navy was decisively defeated during the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), especially at the Battle of Tsushima (May 1905), by the modern Imperial Japanese Navy, which was equipped with modern-era battleships, mostly of British design. The events of the battle confirmed to the world that only the biggest guns mattered in naval battles at that time. As secondary guns grew in size, spotting and discriminating between splashes of main and secondary guns became problematic. The Battle of Tsushima demonstrated that damage from the main guns was much greater than secondary guns. In addition, the battle demonstrated the practicality of gun battles beyond the range of secondary guns (12,000 yards / 11 km). The United States, Japan, and Britain all realized this and launched plans for all-big-gun ships.
Finally, the Imperial Japanese Navy's Satsuma was the first battleship in the world to be designed (1904) and laid down (15 May 1905) as an all-big-gun battleship, five months before the Dreadnought, although gun shortages only allowed her to be equipped with four of the twelve 12 inch (30 cm) guns that had been planned.
[edit] American development
Influenced by William S. Sims, Americans also worked on an all-big gun design before Dreadnought: USS South Carolina and USS Michigan were presented to Congress in 1904. The Americans moved slowly. The ships were not authorised until the spring of 1905 and not laid down until the autumn of 1906, after Dreadnought. The South Carolina class carried all of their main guns on the centerline, avoiding the wing turrets favoured by the British. Unlike Dreadnought, they used triple-expansion machinery, not turbines, a more conservative approach made necessary by the American requirement for great range at the expense of speed.
[edit] The Dreadnought era — "All-big-gun" battleships
In May 1905 the Russian Navy, which was equipped with older designs (except for four new French-designed Borodino class battleships) was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tsushima by the modern Japanese Navy, which was equipped with the latest battleships of British construction built to Japanese naval standards. The events of the battle revealed to the world that only the biggest guns mattered in modern naval battles. As secondary guns grew in size, spotting gun splashes (and aiming) between main and secondary guns became problematic. The battle of Tsushima demonstrated that damage from the main guns was much greater than secondary guns. In addition, the battle demonstrated the practicability of gun battles beyond the range of secondary guns; some 12,000 yards ( 11 000m).
The United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom all realized this and launched plans for all-big-gun ships. The Imperial Japanese Navy's Satsuma was the first battleship in the world to be designed and laid down as an all-big-gun battleship, although gun shortages only allowed her to be equipped with four of the twelve 12-in (305 mm) guns that had been planned. She was fitted additionally with eight 10-in guns.
The United Kingdom, led by the efforts of the First Sea Lord (head of the Admiralty), Jackie Fisher, took the lead and completed HMS Dreadnought in only 11 months. Dreadnought carried ten 12-inch guns in 5 turrets, and was powered not by reciprocating engines, but by revolutionary (for large ships) steam turbines. Previous ships powered by reciprocating steam engines were, in practice, limited by engine vibration to 18 knots (33 km/h). Even at that speed vibration limited aiming ability and the engines wore out quickly. Dreadnought had a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h). It was the first of the new breed of "all-big-gun" battleships. However, by introducing a jump in battleship design instead of having a lead of over twenty of the latest design of battleship over their nearest competitors, the Royal Navy now had a lead of only one: Dreadnought herself. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts to avoid being overtaken by the United Kingdom. The Royal Navy, labouring under the expectation that it should be able to match any two of its competitors combined, began demanding increasingly unaffordable sums from the government for dreadnought construction. The government, already burdened with financial crises caused by the Second Boer War and a voting population demanding more government expenditure on welfare and public works, could not afford to squander precious money on even more dreadnoughts, allowing rival navies (particularly the Kaiserliche Marine) to catch up with the United Kingdom's battleship forces. Even after Dreadnought's commission, battleships continued to grow in size, guns, and technical proficiency as countries vied to have the best ships. By 1914 Dreadnought was outmoded. This expensive arms race would not end until the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess.
With advances in gun laying and aiming, engagement ranges had increased from no more than 1,000 yards (900 m) to at least 6,000 yards (5,500 m) over the previous few years, in part as a consequence of the devastating, but short-ranged firepower of the recently invented torpedo. This had caused a move away from mixed calibre armament, as each calibre required a different aiming calibration, something which unnecessarily complicated gunnery techniques. At longer ranges, the higher maximum rate of fire of the smaller calibres was negated by the need to wait for shell splashes before firing the next salvo and the determination of those from the other calibres. This negated the advantage of small-calibre guns; heavier weapons were effectively as fast and packed a much greater punch.
The French navy solved the problem of identifying the results of individual ships in a clever way; each ship added color to its shells.[1] Other nations adopted this measure as well.
Partially as a consequence of this new philosophy and of its powerful new turbine engine, Dreadnought dispensed almost completely with the smaller calibre secondary armament carried by her immediate predecessors, allowing her to carry more heavy calibre guns than any other battleship built up to that time. She carried ten 12-inch guns mounted in five turrets; three along the centreline (one forward and two aft) and two on the wings, giving her twice the broadside of anything else afloat. She retained a number of 12-pounder (3-inch) quick-firing cannon for use against destroyers and torpedo-boats. The first large warship equipped with steam turbines, she could make 21 knots (39 km/h) in a calm sea, allowing her to outrun existing battleships (with a typical speed of 18 kts (33 km/h)). Her armour was strong enough that she could conceivably go head-to-head with any other ship afloat in a gun battle and win.
Although there were some problems with the ship — the design's wing turrets strained the hull when firing broadsides, and the top of the thickest armour belt lay below the waterline when the ship was fully loaded — Dreadnought was so revolutionary that battleships built before her were afterward known as "pre-Dreadnoughts", and those following as "Dreadnoughts". Vessels built within a few years that were bigger and mounted more powerful guns were referred to as "Superdreadnoughts". In a stroke, Dreadnought had made all existing battleships obsolete; including those of the Royal Navy, which embarked on a programme of building ever-more-powerful Dreadnought designs.
National pride in the early 20th Century was largely based on how many of these ships a navy had, and details were published in the newspapers for the public to avidly follow; the naval arms race which Dreadnought sparked, especially between the United Kingdom and the young German Empire, was to create powerful shockwaves. Whereas Germany before the commissioning of Dreadnought had been behind the British Empire by more than twenty battleships of the highest class, they were now behind by only one.
Dreadnought was powered with steam turbines, which enabled her to sustain a higher maximum speed for longer, and with less maintenance than her triple-expansion engine powered predecessors. Being more compact, the turbines also allowed for a lower hull, which had the side-effect of reducing the amount of armour the ship had to carry. Although turbines had been used in destroyers for some years previously, Dreadnought was the first large warship to use them. As a consequence of the turbines, Dreadnought was actually slightly cheaper than the previous Lord Nelson class of pre-Dreadnoughts.
The American South Carolina class battleships were begun before Dreadnought, and had most of her features, except for the steam turbines; however, their final design was not completed before Dreadnought, and their construction took much longer. Smaller than Dreadnought at 16,000 tons standard displacement, they carried eight 12-inch (305 mm) guns in four twin turrets arranged in superfiring pairs fore and aft along the centreline of the keel. This arrangement gave South Carolina and her sister Michigan a broadside equal to Dreadnought's without requiring the cumbersome wing turrets that were a feature of the first few British dreadnought classes. The superfiring arrangement had not been proven until after South Carolina went to sea, and it was initially feared that the weakness of the previous Virginia class ship's stacked turrets would repeat itself. Half of the first ten US dreadnoughts used the older reciprocating engines rather than steam turbines. North Dakota and the Florida and Wyoming classes used turbines while the South Carolina class, Delaware and the New York class used VTE engines, this was owed to the much lower fuel efficiency of the early turbines.
[edit] The "Super Dreadnoughts"
The arrival of Super Dreadnoughts is not as clearly identified with a single ship in the same way that the dreadnought era was initiated by HMS Dreadnought. However, it is commonly held to start with the British Orion class, and for the German navy with the Königs. The super dreadnoughts also saw the introduction of geared turbines and turboelectric propulsion as ways to improve the fuel efficiency of the turbines, and this robbed reciprocating machinery of its last remaining advantage. Geared turbines introduced a reduction gearbox between the turbine and the screws, this allowed the turbine to spin very, very quickly while the screws could turn at a much more sedate and hydrodynamically efficient speed. Turboelectric propulsion took this one step further; in a turboelectric setup, the turbines turned an electrical generator, which fed power to electric motors that turned the shafts.
The Orions were just one step in a breathtakingly rapid evolution that Dreadnought had initiated. What made them "super" was the unprecedented jump in displacement of 2,000 tons over the previous class, the introduction of the heavier 13.5 inch (343 mm) gun, and the distribution of all the main armament on the centreline of the keel. Thus, in the four years that separated the laying down of Dreadnought and Orion, displacement had increased by 25%, and weight of broadside had doubled. Because of Admiralty insistence on open sighting hoods, however, the raised turrets in this class could not fire on the axial line without concussing the gunlayers in the lower turret, a feature avoided in the South Carolina class.
Superdreadnoughts also incorporated, during construction, the latest technical gunnery advances. Thus they received director control, designed from the outset with larger observation positions with range finders and electrical repeaters aloft, mechanical calculators and predictors in protected positions below, and very advanced alignment and correction devices for the guns.
The design weakness of super dreadnoughts, which distinguished them from post-Great War designs, was armour disposition. Their design placed emphasis on vertical protection which was needed in short range battles. These ships were capable of engaging the enemy at 20,000 metres, but were vulnerable to the angle of fire that came at such ranges. Post-war designs typically had 5 to 6 inches (127 mm to 152 mm) of deck armour to defend against this dangerous, plunging fire. The concept of Zone of immunity became a major part of the thinking behind battleship design. Lack of underwater protection was also a weakness of these pre-World War I designs which were developed only as the threat of the torpedo became real. The US Navy's "Standard"-type battleships, beginning with the Nevada class, or "Battleship 1912," were designed with long-range engagements and plunging fire in mind; the first of these ships, USS Nevada, was laid down in 1912, five years before the Battle of Jutland taught the dangers of long-range fire to European navies. Important features of the "Standard" battleships were "all or nothing" armor and "raft" construction, a philosophy under which only the parts of the ship worth armoring with the thickest armor that could be fitted to the ship were worth armoring at all, and that enough reserve buoyancy should be contained within the resulting armored "raft" to float the entire ship in the event that the unarmored bow and stern be thoroughly riddled and flooded. This concept was not fully validated until 1942, when a surface battle between the Japanese battleship Kirishima and the American battleships South Dakota and Washington during the Battle of Guadalcanal, resulted in South Dakota's survival despite her bow and stern becoming fully flooded due to battle damage. This was the last solely battleship-to-battleship surface action. Kirishima, herself an uprated battlecruiser, was blasted into a blazing wreck by Washington and scuttled off Savo Island.
The "Standard" battleships had identical handling characteristics to the previous two class of dreadnoughts, with a maximum speed of 21 knots and a tactical diameter of 700 yards at that speed, giving the US Navy an interwar battle line of completely homogenous handling characteristics, in keeping with the naval strategy theories of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. Admiral Mahan held that sea power was the key to world power and victory would go to the combatant who controlled the enemy's ports, and that strategic advantage would come to the Navy that could most efficiently destroy the enemy's fleets. Given that, the US Navy did not desire avoidance of combat with the enemy; American strategic thinking held that approaching enemy strategic targets would force the enemy to come out, give battle and be destroyed.
The superdreadnoughts that had already been built were surpassed by designs developed during the Great War. Any remaining that served in World War II had all either received extensive modifications, or were a source of extreme anxiety because of their vulnerability to more modern battleships, or both.
