Iron Clads

[BombTaxi]

A close look at the pic shows why the system didn't work - the turrets were fixed together so both sets of guns had to engage the same target. This was no use if there were torpedo boats closing in, and spotting fall of shot must have been a nightmare too...

 

[vikingBerserker]

I'd also read the turrets were hell on the bearings due to the extra weight.

Interestingly, the USS South Carolina was actually designed before the HMS Dreadnought and with the same principles. For whatever reason the HMS Dreadnought was laid down and launched first.

 

[skipperbob]

With all the innovations that Ericsson's Monitor had, such as screw type propeller and rotating turret, they were a very limited design, made strictly for the type of war being fought - coastal and river actions. They were not very seaworthy and the US simply stopped any new shipbuilding after the Civil War until Teddy Roosevelt started pushing for a modern navy in the 1890's.

 

[timshatz]

For whatever reason the HMS Dreadnought was laid down and launched first.

Probably the armaments race with Germany put a fire under their tails. The US didn't have the same kind of threat hanging around. All that stuff was an ocean away.

 

[Messy1]

You post is right on skipperbob. I believe the Monitor had only 18-20 inches of ship sticking out above the water line, with the exception of the turret and the steering house. Yes, definitely not made for blue water. That was the Monitor's major weakness obviously since it was lost in rough coastal waters. But the instant it engages Virginia, as the Dreadnought, all older ships were instantly obsolete.

 

[BombTaxi]

USS South Carolina was one of several ships being built on the dreadnought principle - Japan were also in the race, and like the UK, had built some 'semi-dreadnoughts' which had primary and secondary batteries of almost the same calibre. This idea proved ineffective as spotting the fall of shot between similar sized batteries was very difficult, as it had been in USS Virginia.

I think the Anglo-German arms race did a lot to speed up Dreadnought's completion, but she was also very out-of-character for the Admiralty. They usually preferred to let someone else innovate, then copy the idea and outbuild the inventor if it was any good. Indeed, the Lord Nelson class were built after Dreadnought, on a 'semi-dreadnought' design (12in main battery, 9.2in secondary) in case Dreadnought didn't work out. With all big-gun armament and turbines, she was a ship of firsts and Whitehall weren't entirely sure she would be successful.

It is ironic that despite building this revolutionary ship, fire control hadn't changed much since Hampton Roads. The RN was very late in adopting director firing and could well have gone to war without it had events in Europe panned out differently. A fleet engagement like Jutland fought at short range with dreadnoughts would have been an absolute bloodbath, and it was only the adoption of director firing which allowed battles to be fought at the kind of ranges the guns were capable of reaching.

 

[timshatz]

Bomb, it is my understanding that the Japanese were buying British Built or designed BB and Dreadnought level ships up until about 1910-20 range?

Agree with you on the Fire Control. The great inovation of WW1 nobody talks about was the introduction of fire contol. Really changed the character of naval battles.

 

[BombTaxi]

The Japanese were buying British ships, but their first domestically designed battleship was Satsuma, authorised in 1904 and carrying 4x 12in and 12x 10in guns. She was roughly analogous to the Lord Nelson class, but closer to Dreadnought in terms of armament, displacement and performance. If they had gone with big guns, she would have been a dreadnought, although she was still finished too late (1910) to be the first. The Kawachi class dreadnoughts, commissioned two years later, were also built in Japan. The carried 12x 12in, but these were a mix of 4x 12in/50cal and 8x 12in/45cal. This was done to save money apparently, but caused a fire control headache as the two types of gun obviously had different ballistic properties.

It's hard to imagine a dreadnought aiming her guns the same way Victory did at Trafalgar, but it very nearly happened, and the RN lagged behind the Germans in fire control right up to 1945 - British gunnery in the final stages of the Bismarck engagement was so poor that Tovey famously remarked that he might as well throw his binoculars at the German ship. The Dreyer system initially used by the RN was nowhere near as good as the civilian-designed Pollen system that it plagiarized and then beat into production, nor were British optics as good as German ones. The positioning of the director station near a funnel in early British BBs and BCs also made them almost unworkable in combat, with temperatures in the perch becoming almost unbearable. Better than closing to 2000 yards and firing 10 guns individually though...