All in for innovation -a different Jan/May 1905 in the Royal Navy Committee on Designs

Well they did think that the wing turrets would be able fire straight forward, in practice this proved impossible due to blast damage. If they had realized this then the design could have deleted them ( maybe upgraded the remaining turrets to triples ). One issue with Dreadnought as built was that it had no secondary guns, this meant she was defenseless against torpedo boats. At the time it was decided she would always have a screen that would deal with them but later guns were added. Replacing the wing turrets with turreted twin secondaries would have helped.
Conventional wisdom has the deletion of the secondary amrmament as a primary reason for the construction of Dreadnought and all-big gun designs in general*. When they were added back on in later classes, it was in some senses a repudiation of one of the original ideas behind the all-big gun concept. Including secondary armament from the beginning would make Dreadnoughts just a scaling up of the pre-dreadnoughts, and less of a distinct concept. As a side note, the Germans and Japanese never really subscribed to the idea of stripping the secondary armament on all-big gun designs. Nassau had a fairly standard secondary armament upon construction, and Satsuma had a sort of middling ground.

*here I'm using all-big gun to refer to the whole set of designs which existed at the time and shared that as a unifying and defining trait. Dreadnought specifically has other additonal influences on its design so I'm refering to the general concept.
 
Conventional wisdom has the deletion of the secondary amrmament as a primary reason for the construction of Dreadnought and all-big gun designs in general*. When they were added back on in later classes, it was in some senses a repudiation of one of the original ideas behind the all-big gun concept. Including secondary armament from the beginning would make Dreadnoughts just a scaling up of the pre-dreadnoughts, and less of a distinct concept. As a side note, the Germans and Japanese never really subscribed to the idea of stripping the secondary armament on all-big gun designs. Nassau had a fairly standard secondary armament upon construction, and Satsuma had a sort of middling ground.

HMS Dreadnought as built carried 12lb guns and on subsequent ships guns of 4-6 inches were employed.

On dreadnoughts the secondary armament was intended to stop torpedo attacks, as torpedoes became larger with longer range heavier guns were needed to stop the ships carrying them. On pre-dreadnoughts the secondary armament was intended for use against heavy ships as well as against torpedo boats. So pre-dreadnoughts tended to carry intermediate calibre weapons with higher rates of fire than the main battery for closer range action to damage the less heavily armoured areas. During the pre-dreadnought and early dreadnought eras ships tended to have significant variations in the thickness of protection, making intermediate calibre guns potentially useful even against other battleships as long as the range could be closed. In addition and possibly the final nail in the coffin of intermediate calibres, pre-dreadnoughts used local gun control, making calibre largely irrelevant, whereas dreadnoughts increasingly tended to use centralised director control so that differences in calibres massively complicated fire control.

There was no reversion to intermediate calibres (which I'm defining as above 6 inches but below about 10 inches), so the all big gun concept wasn't repudiated, just how it was implemented.
 
A Better POD is the Admiralty going a step further and building the X4 Design - basically a fast Battleship 10 odd years before the QEs
The extra horsepower would have been very expensive. We are looking at 1 and a third the cost of dreadnought. Still it might be worth it.

The extra horsepower developed a lot cheaper later in the dreadnought race. Queen Elizabeth's are pretty much same cost as the Revenge class. Revenge had an extra year of war inflation so it's hard to compare.
 
HMS Dreadnought as built carried 12lb guns and on subsequent ships guns of 4-6 inches were employed.
Right. And the South Carolinas had 3-inch secondaries, IIRC. German dreadnoughts never deleted the guns of that caliber range.
On dreadnoughts the secondary armament was intended to stop torpedo attacks, as torpedoes became larger with longer range heavier guns were needed to stop the ships carrying them. On pre-dreadnoughts the secondary armament was intended for use against heavy ships as well as against torpedo boats. So pre-dreadnoughts tended to carry intermediate calibre weapons with higher rates of fire than the main battery for closer range action to damage the less heavily armoured areas. During the pre-dreadnought and early dreadnought eras ships tended to have significant variations in the thickness of protection, making intermediate calibre guns potentially useful even against other battleships as long as the range could be closed. In addition and possibly the final nail in the coffin of intermediate calibres, pre-dreadnoughts used local gun control, making calibre largely irrelevant, whereas dreadnoughts increasingly tended to use centralised director control so that differences in calibres massively complicated fire control.
On the pre-dreadnoughts the secondary armament was intended as a main part of its combat. I've heard it said that in some senses the secondaries on pre-dreadnoughts were more of a "primary" armament than the large caliber guns. This was born out by pre-dreadnought combat, IIRC at Tsushima Straight some of the Russian battleships were rendered non-functional by the Japanese small-caliber fire destroying their upperworks when their main belt kept them otherwise protected. However, I'd disagree with the statement most pre-dreadnoughts tended to carry intermediate caliber weapons. Intermediate guns of 9.2-inch were only introduced in the RN on the King Edward VII-class, which was the second to last class of British pre-dreadnoughts. US ships from Virginia on carried an intermediate battery of 8-inch weapons, as did contemporaneous Italian ships.
There was no reversion to intermediate calibres (which I'm defining as above 6 inches but below about 10 inches), so the all big gun concept wasn't repudiated, just how it was implemented.
I think this is where we had some confusion. I agree there was never a reversion to intermediate calibers in the 6-10 inch range. However, when I spoke about returning to the secondary armaments, I spoke in reference to the guns 6-inches and below. Essentially my point is that Dreadnought didn't just delete the intermediate armament of the pre-dreadnoughts, it also deleted the secondaries and equipped only the light anti-torpedo boat weapons and the main armament. That split is the idea that was abandoned fairly quickly.
 
The point I was trying to make is that dreadnoughts carried light guns but for a different purpose than light guns on pre-dreadnoughts. Dreadnoughts continued to carry only light anti-torpedo boat weapons, it's just that bigger guns were needed for this role as torpedo boats got bigger and torpedo ranges got longer. This aspect of the design philosophy of the dreadnought remained consistent and the secondary armament of dreadnoughts remained very different from that of pre-dreadnoughts.
 
The point I was trying to make is that dreadnoughts carried light guns but for a different purpose than light guns on pre-dreadnoughts. Dreadnoughts continued to carry only light anti-torpedo boat weapons, it's just that bigger guns were needed for this role as torpedo boats got bigger and torpedo ranges got longer. This aspect of the design philosophy of the dreadnought remained consistent and the secondary armament of dreadnoughts remained very different from that of pre-dreadnoughts.

Agreed the growth in secondary guns is related to the growth in torpedo boats and destroyers.

German destroyers built during wartime have similar displacements to the light cruisers when HMS Dreadnought was being designed.
 
The Royal Navy Committee on Designs was responsible for HMS Dreadnought. They made a lot of good decisions around this time but they made two bad decisions in my opinion.
....
In my opinion these are two mistakes. Going for super firing turrets would have been cheaper and been a saving for the next few classes of ships too. The Orion class was the first that had super firing guns historically.

Just to derail the topic, can I ask what about a third option?

3- Decide that the RN is sufficiently strong to win the PD race under almost any circumstances and that the future is larger "Dreadnought" battleships. So cancel as much as you can without wasting to much money already spent and invest in building bigger docks and facilities?

Stockpile the main guns if they have already been ordered so that a year or two later you can just out build the first nation to go all 12" gun with your new supper heavy fast battleships?
 
Just to derail the topic, can I ask what about a third option?

3- Decide that the RN is sufficiently strong to win the PD race under almost any circumstances and that the future is larger "Dreadnought" battleships. So cancel as much as you can without wasting to much money already spent and invest in building bigger docks and facilities?

Stockpile the main guns if they have already been ordered so that a year or two later you can just out build the first nation to go all 12" gun with your new supper heavy fast battleships?
Exactly.
When Britain finished Dreadnought they had made all of their own ships obsolete, along with everyone else.
Wait a year or two, figure everything out, save up some money, then start building class after class if Dreadnoughts.
Not to mention it gives extra time to clean up any design flaws, ala the spotting top, turret arrangement and the low armour belt.
 
Just to derail the topic, can I ask what about a third option?

3- Decide that the RN is sufficiently strong to win the PD race under almost any circumstances and that the future is larger "Dreadnought" battleships. So cancel as much as you can without wasting to much money already spent and invest in building bigger docks and facilities?

Stockpile the main guns if they have already been ordered so that a year or two later you can just out build the first nation to go all 12" gun with your new supper heavy fast battleships?

Are you saying don't build dreadnought. Wait for someone else and then win the race?

The key thing as far as I understand about hms dreadnought is that she rendered all other battleships afloat obsolete.

This fits nicely in with Fishers main objective from his political masters (to cut the budget). Everyone looks at the expense of the dreadnoughts. No one looks at her and the battlecruisers as revolutionary technology that allowed between 1905 and 1906 a full dozen predreadnoughts to be released to the reserve and almost as many older battleships to be finally scrapped. The same for armoured cruisers and protected cruisers. You can't do this without HMS Dreadnought and the Invincibles. Or maybe you can give credit to the Russia Japan war for the cuts.

1904/05 36.9 million
1905/06 33.4 million
1906/07 31.9 million
1907/08 31.4 million
1908/09 32.3 million
1909/10 35.1 million we want 8 and we will not wait

What's more you would give up the British lead. Historically they had 4 battleships and 3 battlecruisers in commision before anyone else had a single one of either. If they wait someone will catch them and Britain will need to chase.
 
Last edited:
Light Cruisers

IOTL construction of smaller cruisers lapsed in the first half of the 1900s. That is:
2 Challenger second class protected cruisers were ordered in the 1900-01 Navy Estimates.
2 Gem class third class protected cruisers were ordered in the 1903-04 Navy Estimates
4 scout cruisers intended to lead the destroyer flotillas were ordered in the 1903-04 Navy Estimates​

Amethyst one of the 2 Gem class ordered in the 1902-03 Navy Estimates was the first cruiser powered by steam turbines.

Construction of scout cruisers resumed with the 2 Boadicea class ordered in the 1907-08 Navy Estimates, but none were ordered in 1908-09 and 2 Blonde class were ordered in 1909-10.

Construction of second class protected cruisers did not resume until the 1908-09 Navy Estimates when 5 Bristol class were ordered.

A total of 15 small cruisers (10 Town class and 5 scouts) were ordered in the 3 financial years from 1909-10 to 1911-12 for an average of 5 per year. That brought the total to 15 Town class (not including the 4 ordered for the RAN and 2 ordered for Greece) and 7 turbine powered scout cruisers.

After that the orders were:
8 Arethusa class in 1912-13
8 C class in 1913-14
6 C class in 1914-15
Quote from Cruisers of the Royal and Commonwealth Navies by Douglas Morris
In 1911 the old system of cruiser classification was abolished. Instead, ships over 6,000 tons, effectively meaning all armoured and first class protected cruisers, were rated simply "cruisers", while the smaller protected cruisers, scouts and the new Towns became "light cruisers".
Some sources (including Morris) say that 4 Gems were in the 1904-05 Navy Estimates, but were not ordered. I suspect that Fisher had them deleted when he became First Sea Lord. Had they been built I suspect that at least one and possibly all of the 4 ships would have been fitted with turbines like Amethyst.

Similarly the Navy Estimates for 1904-05 included 14 destroyers, which were not built. I also suspect that they were cancelled by Fisher when he became First Sea Lord. If they had been built I suspect that they would have been turbine powered versions of the River class.

This was because Fisher wanted to replace the existing categories of small cruiser with what for the time was a very large and very fast destroyer. The prototype HMS Swift was ordered in the 1905-06 Navy Estimates and was a failure.

I wrote in an earlier post that I thought the Royal Navy should have bought turbine powered River class destroyers instead of the Tribal class and the coastal destroyers.

I also think that the Royal Navy should have bought an additional 15 to 20 light cruisers in the 4 financial years 1904-05 to 1907-08. The first 4 ships would be the Gem class in the original 1904-05 Estimates and the rest a mix of Town class and Boadicea class.
 
Last edited:
Top