User:Harlsbottom/HMS Dreadnought (1906)

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Career
Name:	HMS Dreadnought
Ordered:	1905
Builder:	HM Dockyard, Portsmouth
Laid down:	2 October 1905
Launched:	10 February 1906
Commissioned:	2 December 1906
Decommissioned:	1919
Homeport:	Portsmouth
Fate:	Sold for scrap 9 May 1921
General characteristics
Displacement:	18,420 tons
Length:	527 ft oa (160 m)
Beam:	82 ft (25 m) (25 m)
Draught:	26 ft (8 m)
Propulsion:	18 Babcock & Wilcox 3-drum water-tube boilers Parsons single-reduction geared steam turbines 22,500 shp (17 MW) on 4 shafts
Speed:	21 kt (39 km/h)
Range:	900/2,900 tons coal, 1,120 tons oil, 6,620 nmi (12 260 km) at 10 kt (19 km/h) 4,910 nmi (9090 km) at 18.4 kt (34 km/h)
Complement:	695–773
Armament:	10 x BL 12 in (305 mm) L/45 Mk.X guns, 5 twin B Mk.VIII turrets (one forward, two aft, two wing) 27 × QF 12 pdr (3 in / 76.2 mm) 18 cwt L/50 Mk.I guns, single mountings P Mk.IV 5 × 18 in (457 mm) submerged torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt: 4 to 11 in (100 to 280 mm) midship, 2.5 in (64 mm) at ends Deck: up to 3 in (75 mm) Turrets: 11 in (280 mm) Barbettes: up to 11 in (280 mm) Conning tower: 11 in (280 mm)

The sixth HMS Dreadnought of the Royal Navy was a revolutionary battleship which entered service in 1906. So advanced was Dreadnought that her name became a generic term for modern battleships, whilst the ships she made obsolete became known as "pre-dreadnoughts". Her introduction helped spark off a major naval arms race as navies around the world rushed to match her, particularly the German navy in the build up to the First World War.^[1] Dreadnought was the first-built battleship of her era to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a few large guns complemented by a heavy secondary battery of somewhat smaller guns. She was also the first major warship to be powered by steam turbines, making her the fastest battleship in the world at the time of her completion.

Contents 1 Design 1.1 Genesis 1.1.1 Fisher 1.1.2 Royal Navy 1.1.3 Cunberti 1.2 Committee on Designs 1.3 Machinery 2 Technology 2.1 Machinery 2.2 Armament 2.3 Fire control 3 Construction 4 Career 4.1 First World War 5 In command 6 See also 7 Notes 8 Citations 9 References

[edit] Design

At the turn of the century naval battles were intended to be fought at a distance of 3,000 yards. This distance was theorised to be unacceptably small with the advent of effective torpedoes. The French and Italian navies began to experiment with long range fire, resulting in tests being initiated by Sir John Hopkins at 6,000 yards ^[2] and in 1899 Vice-Admiral Jackie Fisher, Commander-in-Chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet continued the tests up to 8,000 yards. For accurate long-range fire larger guns were necessary, as well as at least 8 to be able to practise salvo-firing. To eliminate confusion between the different salvoes a uniform main armament was called for.

Beginning in 1900 Vice-Admiral Jackie Fisher, Commander-in-Chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet developed an idea for an all-big-gun battleship. In concert with the Chief Constructor at Malta, W.H. Gard, and later the gunnery expert Sir Andrew Noble, Fisher created a series of designs for a vessel named HMS Untakeable, armed variously with a uniform main armament of either 10-inch or 12-inch guns. By 1902 Fisher was Second Sea Lord, Gard was about to be promoted to Manager of the Constructive Department at Portsmouth, and Noble was the chairman of the shipbuilder Armstrong Whitworth.

[edit] Genesis

In 1881 the Captain of the battleship HMS Inflexible was John Fisher. He was visited by a young Admiralty constructor by the name of Philip Watts (see below) who had designed rolling tanks which were being installed in Inflexible. While this work was being done, Watts and Fisher discussed the possibility of a vessel similar to the 16-inch 80 ton gunned Inflexible which had an additional centre-line turret at either end - in essence one of the first suggestions of an all-big-gun ship. Watts later recounted;

I brought away with me (after the trials of his his tanks in 1881) an outline design which had been evolved during the cruise and which was described as a combination of the Devastation and Inflexible designs. The armament was an all big gun armament (italics Watts' own) of 4 pairs of 16in, 80 ton guns, mounted in turrets, all placed on the upper deck; one pair at each extremity of the vessel on the middle line, as in Devastation, and one pair placed on each broadside as in the Inflexible.

Due to the envisaged weight of the projected ship, 16,000 tons, the Director of Naval Construction Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, did not approve the idea.^[3][a] Until the turn of the 20th Century there would be no other serious thought given to an all-big-gun warship.

[edit] Fisher

From 1902 to 1904 the trio of Fisher, Gard and Noble produced a series of battleship designs. Noble as head of Armstrong's also had access to the Elswick Ordnance Works, and had great faith in the 10-inch naval gun. Fisher was attracted by this weapon as many could theoretically be carried on a much lower displacement than a comparable number of 12-inch guns and technically would have a higher rate of fire. The resulting design incorporated 16 10-inch guns and a light 4-in anti-torpedo boat armament. Fisher then consulted several serving naval officers (amongst whom were Captains Bacon, Jackson and Madden). Bacon produced Fisher asked Gard for a new design with 8 12-inch turrets, known as Design "B". Upon becoming First Sea Lord on 21 October 1904 Fisher submitted a report including both designs for Untakeable to the Cabinet.

[edit] Royal Navy

In 1902 the Controller of the navy, Sir William H. May launched an inquiry into the armament and armour of battleships pursuant to the design of the Lord Nelson class battleship. The new Director of Naval Construction, Sir Philip Watts prepared a series of diagrams which illustrated the manner in which ships of different characteristics could absorb and give punishment. The 6-inch secondary armament was shown to have little offensive value, while the need for heavier armour protection was realised. Consequently in the Lord Nelsons the 6-inch battery was replaced by an all 9.2-inch battery. The Royal Navy therefore moved to an "all-big-gun" ship, but not one of uniform calibre.^[4]

Seperately, the Director of the Royal Naval War College at Greenwich, Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Henry John May, carried out a series of war games in May, 1902 to attempt to ascertain the necessary characteristics of the future battleships. He concluded that speed, while important, was secondary to improved armour and firepower.^[5]

[edit] Cunberti

Unaware of the secret deliberations on the all-big-gun ship, in 1903 the noted Italian naval archictect Vittorio Cuniberti wrote an article for Fred T. Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships entitled An Ideal Battleship for the British Navy. In it, Cuniberti called for a 17,000 ton ship carrying a main armament of 12 12-inch guns, protected by 12-inch armour and having a speed of 24 knots. While superficially similar to the Untakeable concept, Cunibert's concept was of a ship which could destroy the enemy at close range - relying on only its speed for anti-torpedo protection and not the range of its guns. Cuniberti wrote;

...We should adopt the calibre of 12-inch if we want to be absolutely certain of sinking the adversary, striking him only on the belt...We must increase the number of pieces of 12-inch so as to be able to get in at least one fatal shot on the enemy's belt at the waterline...With her twelve guns ready, she would swiftly descend upon her adversary and pour in a terrible converging fire at the belt.

While Cuniberti's ideal ship may have looked impressive on paper, the thinking behind it was little changed from the Age of Sail, barely taking into account the advances made in naval gunnery.

[edit] Committee on Designs

In 1904, both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Navy, working on the same premise as Fisher, Gard and Noble, prepared designs for all-big-gun ships, with both navies laying down ships in 1905/1906. Mindful of the possibility that other navies were in fact working on all-big-gun designs, as First Sea Lord Fisher wasted no time. He had Gard transferred from Portsmouth as an Assistant Director of Naval Construction to supervise production and calculations of his draft designs. On 22 December 1904 Fisher appointed a "Committee on Designs", encompassing the best naval and scientific minds in the country, to choose a design from the number prepared and to improve them where necessary. The guideline for this committee was for a ship of;

Speed: 21 knots
Armament: 12-inch guns and snti-torpedo craft guns. Nothing between 12-inch guns to be numerous as possible. No guns on main deck, except anti-torpedo craft guns if necessary to place them there. Armour to be adequate. Must be capable of using docking accomodation at Portsmouth, Devonport, Malta and Gibraltar.

The committee first met on 3 January 1903 at the Admiralty. The first design considered was Fisher-Gard "E", which was a 21,000 ton ship with 6 super-imposed 12-inch turrets. While ostensibly having an excellent broadside (and consequent weight of shell), this design appealed to Fisher due to the axial fire afforded - 9 guns on either end. The Director of Naval Ordnance Captain Jellicoe, who sat on the committee, pointed out that axial firing would be impossible due to blast effects upon the turrets, with the result that any super-imposed guns could only be fired within 30° of the beam. For this reason, as well as the fact that the turret groupings at either would present a favourable target, both designs "E" and "F" were discarded.

Design "G" was similar in layout to the future first German modern battleship, SMS Nassau in being flush-decked and having a 12-inch turret at either end on the centre-line and two on either side. Like the German vessel, this ship would have been powered by reciprocating engines. By grouping the wing turrets closer together, raising the forecastle and by adopting turbine propulsion a significantly lighter and smaller design was created, "D.1". One with the amidships spaced further apart once more was labelled "D.2". The Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear-Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg pointed out that to maintain an optimum broadside only one pair of wing turrets was needed. Therefore Design "H", with one centre-line turret substituted for the aft pair of wing turrets, was prepared and accepted by the Committee on 13 January 1905 as a basis for the future battleship.

[edit] Machinery

Charles Parsons, the driving force behind the turbine, was a member of the Committee and along with Fisher vigorously championed the use of turbines in the new ship. The turbine had greater speed, endurance, reliability, and cost effectiveness; On a battleship they would save 1,000 tons of weight and £100,000 in cost. However, upto that time (1905) turbines had only been installed in a small number of destroyers and one 3rd-Class cruiser, HMS Amethyst which was still under construction. One of the destroyers had sunk however and one had been wrecked. Therefore in adopting such a superior yet relatively untried powerplant the Committee and therefore the Royal Navy were taking something of a risk. The decision was then made to utilise turbines with Design "H".

[edit] Technology

[edit] Machinery

[edit] Armament

[edit] Fire control

[edit] Construction

The keel of Dreadnought was laid down on 2 October 1905^[6]

[edit] Career

From April, 1907 to May, 1912 Dreadnought served as flagship of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet, when she was relieved by HMS Neptune. On 5 August 1907 HM King Edward VII with a number of other members of the Royal Family visited Dreadnought at Spithead. Accompanied by the Board of Admiralty, as well as the commander of the Home Fleet Vice-Admiral Francis Bridgeman, the Dreadnought went for a cruiser flying the royal standard. For this the captain, Reginald Bacon, was appointed CVO and Bridgeman KCVO by the king.

On 10 February 1910 she attracted the attention of notorious hoaxer Horace de Vere Cole, who persuaded the Royal Navy to arrange for a party of Abyssinian royals to be given a tour of a ship at Weymouth. In reality, the "Abyssinian royals" were some of Cole's friends in blackface and disguise, including a young Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury Group friends; it became known as the Dreadnought hoax. Cole had picked Dreadnought because she was at that time the most prominent and visible symbol of Britain's naval might.

On 27 July, soon after ascending to the throne, HM King George V visited Dreadnought at Torbay. For two days Dreadnought, under the command of Captain Herbert Richmond in company with the Commander-in-Chief William May went to sea on excercises.

In 1910, HMS Orion, the first of the 13.5-inch-gunned "super-dreadnoughts", was laid down. These ships had much greater fighting power than the 12-inch-gunned Dreadnought and her immediate successors, and gradually supplanted them in both military significance and prestige. The "super-dreadnoughts" had the same design speed as the older dreadnoughts (21 knots),^[7] and the older ships therefore had no difficulty maintaining station with them.

Compared to later battleships, Dreadnought was ill-defended against torpedo attacks. Her anti-destroyer armament consisted of 12 pounder (76 mm) guns; the arrangement of these was the subject of experiment during her trials, resulting in a final arrangement of 14 guns distributed about her superstructure, and another 10 mounted in pairs on the roofs of the main turrets.^[8] Even in 1906, this gun was considered too light to be wholly effective against the newest classes of destroyer, and all subsequent British dreadnoughts has secondary batteries of 4-inch (10.2 cm) calibre or larger. In common with all major warships of her day, Dreadnought was fitted with anti-torpedo nets, judged to be the most effective at the time, but these were removed early in the war, since they caused considerable loss of speed and were easily defeated by torpedoes fitted with net-cutters.^[9]

[edit] First World War

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 she was flagship of the Fourth Battle Squadron in the North Sea, based at Scapa Flow. Ironically for a vessel designed to engage enemy battleships, her only significant action was the ramming and sinking of German submarine U-29 on 18 March 1915 — Dreadnought thus became the only battleship ever to sink a submarine directly.^[11] U-29 had been responsible for the catastrophic sinkings, on 22 September 1914 of the cruisers Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue which had resulted in the deaths of 62 officers and 1,397 ratings. She was refitted early in 1916,^[12] and from May 1916 served as flagship of the Third Battle Squadron, based at Sheerness on the Thames, part of a force intended to counter the threat of shore bombardment by German battlecruisers. As a result, she missed the Battle of Jutland, the Royal Navy's most significant fleet engagement of the war. She returned to the Grand Fleet in March 1918, resuming her role as flagship of the Fourth Battle Squadron, but was paid off in July.^[13]

Like most of the older battleships, she was now in bad condition from constant patrols in the North Sea, and was put in reserve at Rosyth in February 1919. Dreadnought was put on the sale list on 31 March 1920 and sold for scrap to T.W. Ward & Company on 9 May 1921 for the sum of £44,000. She was broken up at Ward's new premises at Inverkeithing, Scotland, upon arrival on 2 January 1923.

[edit] In command

• Captain Reginald Bacon
• Captain Charles Madden
• Captain Arthur Cloudesley Shovel Hughes-D'Æth

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

[edit] Citations

[edit] References