Historical Warship Design and History

[Joe Shearer]

Gonna tag Joe "I Read HISTORY!" Shearer hehe for his perusal at his leisure when he pops by next

.... his head won't hurt this time since the thread is historical stuff heh (it's in the title even!).

@Joe Shearer

Good Heavens!

My head didn't ache!!

 

[Nilgiri]

 

[Nilgiri]

A good resource @Anmdt @AlphaMike et al:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mftUX7apmV1vsVXZh7RTw/videos

 

[Fuzuli NL]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1330261889251766282

Design of the anchor as we know it by Iskitie philosoph Anacharsis. Iskits are of Turkish origin. Apparently

Scythians are believed to be of Iranian origin.

 

[Saithan]

Scythians are believed to be of Iranian origin.

Scythian | People, History, & Facts | Britannica

Scythian, member of a nomadic people, originally of Iranian stock, known from as early as the 9th century BCE who migrated westward from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. The Scythians founded a rich, powerful empire centered on what is now Crimea.

www.britannica.com

 

[Nilgiri]

Fascinating (1915) footage:

Location:

Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The actual "boring" scene occupies (in the middle somewhere) very little of the footage time but probably the most engineering intensive part (For the time and today as well in getting precise quality control)

Though no audio here, it is a very familiar sound/feel to me as I did lot of lathe boring for a project we did in university in machine shop (thankfully for the bits and our wits... Al-2024 tube and on a specially designed lathe with large chuck for that tube size/length)

I knew before that the breech attachment was shrink fitted onto naval guns, but first time ive seen it...quite visually endearing+elegant to me...though really there is no other practical option at this scale given its easiest for the inevitably required refurbishment (reheat+replace) as the breech chamber gets worn out.

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Built-up_gun

File:BL 6 inch Mk IV gun construction diagram.jpg - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Building and Testing Naval (Battleship) Guns

(Update: near the end of WWI, five 14" guns were mounted on special railroad cars to destroy railyards and ammunition dumps up to 25 miles ...

industrialscenery.blogspot.com

@Anmdt @UkroTurk @AlphaMike @Gessler et al.

 

[Nilgiri]

An interesting follow up to the above:

Animation showing Gun Crew drill and "Close Up" stations for the Royal Navy 15 inch gun

 

[Nilgiri]

A fairly detailed look into the Prinz Eugen post war, its sonar was the especially big scoop for the Americans.
@Anmdt @Gary et al.

USS Prinz Eugen

The cruiser Prinz Eugen was the largest and most modern German surface ship to survive WWII intact. Allocated to the United States, the ship briefly served as USS Prinz Eugen (IX-300), having some …

wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com

 

[Gary]

A fairly detailed look into the Prinz Eugen post war, its sonar was the especially big scoop for the Americans.
@Anmdt @Gary et al.

USS Prinz Eugen

The cruiser Prinz Eugen was the largest and most modern German surface ship to survive WWII intact. Allocated to the United States, the ship briefly served as USS Prinz Eugen (IX-300), having some …

wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com

Haa! this is the most detailed website on the subject, kinda remind me of KBismarck.com which I used to frequent when it comes to Bismarck BB.

 

[Nilgiri]

Changed thread title and moved to military history subforum (hopefully gathers more view and participation).

========================================================

This Ministry of Information documentary was made to be "a comprehensive picture of life on board for the 1500-strong complement" of the battleship HMS King George V. Released in October 1942, it takes viewers on a tour of the warship's various departments - including the engine room, administration, post office, command bridge and specialist workshops. It shows the workings of a 14in turret and the ship's Walrus amphibian aircraft and catapult. Daily life includes issuing of the rum ration, the mess and wardroom, recreational activities, and the slinging of hammocks.

A few of us elsewhere few weeks ago got discussing the topic more deeply and broadly and the lessons learned.

Didn't have time till now to post a few points of interest to me here and see what you all might have to say and share.

A) Both KGV and PoWales seemed to be having turret issues (evident in parts of this documentary even though KGV was in service for 7mths already)

B) This was a legacy of the interwar naval treaties and Jutland. The original design was for 3 triple 15" turrets, then for 4 quadruple 14", then finally they had to change B turret to a twin to save top weight. These changes meant problems developed with the ammunition handling interlocks, which after the self-inflicted battlecruiser losses at Jutland was something the RN was not going to accept work-arounds on.

C) Beatty role in Jutland was lot worse than is often let on. i.e It wasn't just storing propellant charges outside the magazine (which by itself wouldn't have been enough to cause a magazine explosion, just the loss of a turret), but also the deliberate disabling of anti-flash precautions in order to facilitate rapid fire, which caused flash-back from the turret to the magazine. The reasoning for it was even more damning: the Battlecruiser Squadron couldn't shoot straight because they didn't have enough time for shooting practice, so Beatty decided to emphasise rate of fire in the hope that if he threw enough shells at the enemy some might hit.

D) It's notable that the gunnery of 5th Battle Squadron (BARHAM, VALIANT, WARSPITE & MALAYA) was far more effective than the rest of the Battlecruiser Squadron it was attached to - and despite being far more heavily hit (WARSPITE suffered 15 main gun hits when the squadron was engaged by the whole of the High Seas Fleet) they all made it home again. They were normally part of the Grand Fleet at Scapa, so actually did gunnery practice and followed the correct ammunition handling procedures.

E) It's also notable that Beatty completely failed at his principal job at Jutland: provide Jellicoe with accurate and timely information about the position of the enemy capital ships. He did lead the High Seas Fleet onto the guns of the Grand Fleet, but that was more by luck than judgement - he was running north without an accurate position for the Grand Fleet, and Jellicoe guessed correctly. Replace Beatty with someone competent and Jutland becomes a very different battle.

F) Drachinifel 3 part jutland series is very good watch to get a battle analysis reference with details:

G) Hood’s 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron had dramatically improved their shooting during their brief stint on gunnery practice, but were not materially better at reporting in to the fleet commander. This despite Jellicoe explicitly sending them out to find Beatty and the Germans. Nor were the light cruiser squadrons very good at reporting in, despite scouting being their job.

The destroyers and armored cruisers similarly failed to keep Jellicoe informed that night, and many COs assumed the division and squadron officers could see the exact same things they could see. Jellicoe had no idea there was a fight going on in his screen, despite sort of expecting one (that’s why the screen was so heavy astern).

As a result, instead of the Grand Fleet being between Scheer and home at early morning hours on June 1 (as Jellicoe planned), the Germans got away relatively unscathed. Whether Jellicoe could have repositioned the Grand Fleet to cut the Germans off is a good question, but there’s very little doubt if Jellicoe can do so most German battleships are going to be bottom, given how devastated the KONIGs (and to a lesser extent the KAISERs) were, how Jellicoe’s combat power was virtually unimpaired, and the German gunnery systems degraded by the exhaustion of their crews.


H) Quite frankly, most RN officers at the battle were extremely negligent in keeping their superiors informed, and Jellicoe had a much less complete picture than he should have had, even accounting for the chaos of battle. Yes, his guesses/intuitions/deductions emphasize how good he was and how well Fisher chose him, but it’s still a massive failure that cost the Royal Navy a huge victory.

This failure ultimately lies at Jellicoe’s feet for not sufficiently emphasizing proper communication and reporting and granting individual captains the responsibility and expectation they would report in - whether or not they thought someone else saw things. That error was rectified after the battle, but far better for the RN had it been before.

@Anmdt @Gary et al.

 

[Nilgiri]

Interesting background on the Yamato design process @Gary @Anmdt et al.

 

[Gary]

Interesting background on the Yamato design process @Gary @Anmdt et al.

I think the reason why the Yamato ended up so big is Japan's relative lag in engine technology, in its largest form the A140-A with 200.000shp, the tonnage raised to a gargantuan 68,000tons clean. That's a 20,000+ tons increase in weight for just a ~20,000shp increase in power output compared to Tirpitz (the largest European battleship ever built) with a 183,000 shp engine. Note that the final Yamato class has only 150,000shp engine installed.

Tirpitz also seems able to cruise longer at 16430km at cruising speed while the Yamato design has almost 2000km less, despite having more room to bunker fuel.

The Iowa's has a 212,000shp combined output engine and this is in a ship 10,000 tons less than the Yamato. And prolly more impressive is that kit could cruise as far as 27,580 km or almost twice the endurance of the Yamato.

Overall I think the Iowa's were really WW2 best-designed battleships, very good balance between firepower, speed, endurance, protection, and fire control.

And it's the most beautiful as well

 

[Nilgiri]

I think the reason why the Yamato ended up so big is Japan's relative lag in engine technology, in its largest form the A140-A with 200.000shp, the tonnage raised to a gargantuan 68,000tons clean. That's a 20,000+ tons increase in weight for just a ~20,000shp increase in power output compared to Tirpitz (the largest European battleship ever built) with a 183,000 shp engine. Note that the final Yamato class has only 150,000shp engine installed.

Tirpitz also seems able to cruise longer at 16430km at cruising speed while the Yamato design has almost 2000km less, despite having more room to bunker fuel.

The Iowa's has a 212,000shp combined output engine and this is in a ship 10,000 tons less than the Yamato. And prolly more impressive is that kit could cruise as far as 27,580 km or almost twice the endurance of the Yamato.

Overall I think the Iowa's were really WW2 best-designed battleships, very good balance between firepower, speed, endurance, protection, and fire control.

And it's the most beautiful as well

Yes this is large part of reason diesel propulsion was even considered to long of time that went on....in many of the Yamato designs (to essentially be CODAS), was the deficit in steam turbine they had at the time. i.e to get the endurance to some respectable range with the main adversary who could do it with just steam.

This brought its own snowball of a problem that Drachinfinel explores quite well at end ...even if assuming the diesel side was 100% reliable so chance of downtime + hull cutting was minimal. Which it also was not for this size for Japanese designs at the time either.

Matters like this, the amount of catch up the Japanese still had to do with the west at the time in core industrial capacity regarding these things were why IJN and Yamamoto particularly for example (having seen the US "Core" close up) were much more cautious of a war with the US and advised against it....ultimately to deaf ears. Then the best window that was available w.r.t time till that closed too given all the advantages that were baked in and would just add up in the assets at hand (on the adversary side compared to yours).