The Ultimate Battlecruiser
The Ultimate Battlecruiser
HMS Furious, the largest and most powerful warship in the world, was commissioned for sea trials on 18th March 1918. She was as great a leap forward in firepower and speed as had been seen since the launch of HMS Dreadnought. Each of her three turrets could fire a pair of shells that weighed as much as Dreadnought’s entire broadside, while in anything other than a flat calm she could outrun any destroyer.
Jane's noted that her guns were ‘believed to be of 16.5" calibre’ and could fire a shell that ‘weighs more than a ton, over a range limited only by maximum visibility’. Armour was described as being ‘on the scale of a battleship’, and the optimistic tone continued as displacement was listed as being approximately 40,000 tons, a guess which supported the claims of an extensive armour scheme. The nautical almanac also listed the ship’s speed as being 32 knots, but with ‘higher speeds certainly available in service’.
For once, the guesswork and propaganda was not exaggerated.
Furious' six 18” guns could fire a newly-designed 4-crh, 3,332lb ‘Greenboy’ shell at 2,270fps, which could penetrate the armour of anything afloat, at any likely battle range. Her engines were more powerful than those of any two foreign warships put together, and her 12” inclined armour belt provided protection as good as that of any battleship.
Since her design prior to the Battle of Stavanger, additional armour had been added to the roofs of her magazines, and following experienced with the ‘Glorious’ class, strengthening plates had been added along her foc’sle and sides. Even so, her true normal displacement was only 35,185 tons, and full load was just over 39,500 tons.
On trials off Arran in May, she comfortably achieved her design speed of 33½ knots, even while almost 3,000 tons over normal load displacement.
Three weeks later, with the machinery better bedded in and the crew more used to handling it, she was ordered out for a series of maximum-power trials, on which she was deliberately run a little lighter, at 36,160 tons. Her machinery was designed for 160,000 shp, and she reached a mean of 33.51 knots over four runs with 159,500 shp. For the next series, she used full forcing and closed condensers to achieve the staggering total of 189,120shp, with a mean speed over two runs of 35.03 knots.
This impressive achievement came at a cost, revealing many areas of weakness in the machinery, including among the coupling of the reduction gears and the alignment of the twin sets of turbines to each of the shafts. When she was docked after trials, severe pitting was found around the edges of the propeller blades, indicating that cavitation was occurring at these extreme loads. During her post-trial refit, the flexibility of the machinery mounts was addressed and a replacement set of props had a slightly larger area. The cavitation problems were largely solved, but no-one tried to push her up to 35 knots ever again.
Throughout her life, the ‘double turbines’ required a great deal of maintenance, as the gear sets wore out quickly due to flexing of the hull as she rode the seas. The strengthened machinery bedding helped, but the problem never entirely went away. The entire stern was also found to vibrate badly when she ran at certain speeds, which was only partly solved by a practice of running inboard and outboard shafts at slightly different rates.
In service, none of her Chief Engineers ever gladly pushed her machinery beyond 295 revolutions, which corresponded to about 162,000shp if everything else was working well. Nevertheless, this would give her close to 33 knots with a clean hull, even when at full load.
She was an incomparable thoroughbred; tetchy and injury-prone, but when fit and healthy, very, very fast.
Beneath the headline figures, her armour was limited, her hull was highly stressed and early firing trials showed that the immense blast of her guns damaged the decks and superstructure almost whenever they were fired. On firing her first full broadside in June 1918, several sailors swore that they saw the upper deck above their heads bend, while several members of the bridge crew suffered from mild concussion. She was promptly restricted to firing half-salvos or using reduced charges until a better solution could be developed.
However, none of these faults were widely known.
On the 18th August, her Captain welcomed the man who inspired her construction on board. Now showing his age and visibly tired after the strains of war, Admiral Fisher couldn’t help smiling as he boarded the largest and last of ‘his’ battlecruisers.
After lunch in the mess, the Admiral was presented with a model of the ship, inscribed with an adapted version of his own motto;
‘Fear God and Dread Nought but Furious’.
HMS Furious, the largest and most powerful warship in the world, was commissioned for sea trials on 18th March 1918. She was as great a leap forward in firepower and speed as had been seen since the launch of HMS Dreadnought. Each of her three turrets could fire a pair of shells that weighed as much as Dreadnought’s entire broadside, while in anything other than a flat calm she could outrun any destroyer.
Jane's noted that her guns were ‘believed to be of 16.5" calibre’ and could fire a shell that ‘weighs more than a ton, over a range limited only by maximum visibility’. Armour was described as being ‘on the scale of a battleship’, and the optimistic tone continued as displacement was listed as being approximately 40,000 tons, a guess which supported the claims of an extensive armour scheme. The nautical almanac also listed the ship’s speed as being 32 knots, but with ‘higher speeds certainly available in service’.
For once, the guesswork and propaganda was not exaggerated.
Furious' six 18” guns could fire a newly-designed 4-crh, 3,332lb ‘Greenboy’ shell at 2,270fps, which could penetrate the armour of anything afloat, at any likely battle range. Her engines were more powerful than those of any two foreign warships put together, and her 12” inclined armour belt provided protection as good as that of any battleship.
Since her design prior to the Battle of Stavanger, additional armour had been added to the roofs of her magazines, and following experienced with the ‘Glorious’ class, strengthening plates had been added along her foc’sle and sides. Even so, her true normal displacement was only 35,185 tons, and full load was just over 39,500 tons.
On trials off Arran in May, she comfortably achieved her design speed of 33½ knots, even while almost 3,000 tons over normal load displacement.
Three weeks later, with the machinery better bedded in and the crew more used to handling it, she was ordered out for a series of maximum-power trials, on which she was deliberately run a little lighter, at 36,160 tons. Her machinery was designed for 160,000 shp, and she reached a mean of 33.51 knots over four runs with 159,500 shp. For the next series, she used full forcing and closed condensers to achieve the staggering total of 189,120shp, with a mean speed over two runs of 35.03 knots.
This impressive achievement came at a cost, revealing many areas of weakness in the machinery, including among the coupling of the reduction gears and the alignment of the twin sets of turbines to each of the shafts. When she was docked after trials, severe pitting was found around the edges of the propeller blades, indicating that cavitation was occurring at these extreme loads. During her post-trial refit, the flexibility of the machinery mounts was addressed and a replacement set of props had a slightly larger area. The cavitation problems were largely solved, but no-one tried to push her up to 35 knots ever again.
Throughout her life, the ‘double turbines’ required a great deal of maintenance, as the gear sets wore out quickly due to flexing of the hull as she rode the seas. The strengthened machinery bedding helped, but the problem never entirely went away. The entire stern was also found to vibrate badly when she ran at certain speeds, which was only partly solved by a practice of running inboard and outboard shafts at slightly different rates.
In service, none of her Chief Engineers ever gladly pushed her machinery beyond 295 revolutions, which corresponded to about 162,000shp if everything else was working well. Nevertheless, this would give her close to 33 knots with a clean hull, even when at full load.
She was an incomparable thoroughbred; tetchy and injury-prone, but when fit and healthy, very, very fast.
Beneath the headline figures, her armour was limited, her hull was highly stressed and early firing trials showed that the immense blast of her guns damaged the decks and superstructure almost whenever they were fired. On firing her first full broadside in June 1918, several sailors swore that they saw the upper deck above their heads bend, while several members of the bridge crew suffered from mild concussion. She was promptly restricted to firing half-salvos or using reduced charges until a better solution could be developed.
However, none of these faults were widely known.
On the 18th August, her Captain welcomed the man who inspired her construction on board. Now showing his age and visibly tired after the strains of war, Admiral Fisher couldn’t help smiling as he boarded the largest and last of ‘his’ battlecruisers.
After lunch in the mess, the Admiral was presented with a model of the ship, inscribed with an adapted version of his own motto;
‘Fear God and Dread Nought but Furious’.
