Mind you said belts on the French Dreadnoughts were not very thick
Dread Nought but the Fury of the Seas
- Thread starter sts-200
- Start date
No, and the ships had a great many other flaws. But in this, they got something right.
We may be about to violently agree with each other about 'full length' belts.
Just to clarify - I mean the thickest part of the belt (i.e. 9" on the Cats) extending between end barbettes. I don't mean the thin extensions to near the bow and stern.
Most battleships of this period had such a scheme, including all German dreadnoughts and battlecruisers. They did however have a tendency to have an impressive thickness over just a few feet of height, tapering significant towards the bottom and the top (e.g. the Moltkes had a 10.8" belt between end barbettes, but it was only 5'9" high).
The British were a bit more variable on the details with the 12" battleships, but most of their design had the full thickness extending between A and Y. The Invincibles did too, but then things started to go wrong with Indefatigable.
As you rightly point out, often the belt ended somewhere in the middle of the end barbettes and was closed with diagonal bulkheads.
Not so Full Ahead
Not so Full Ahead
Aboard HMS Lion, problems and frustration were mounting. Smoke from her fires was entering the port engine room, making conditions inside almost impossible. The ship was maintaining speed, but crew were taken from the aft gun turrets to help fight the flames as paint lockers and stores filled with flammable materials led to the fires spreading steadily aft.
On the bridge, the focus was on the enemy, but the slow rate of closure shocked everyone. Over the past few minutes the range seemed hardly to have changed, and Admiral Beatty reportedly said to his Flag Captain, ‘Why aren’t gaining; can’t we go faster, Chatfield?’, to which the Captain seems to have replied merely 'No, Sir'. German battlecruisers were supposed to be 25 or 26-knot ships, and yet the faster British vessels were proving unable to swiftly overhaul them.
Every fifty seconds or so the guns thundered, sending another four 13.5” shells at the enemy, and every few minutes anyone with a telescope would be rewarded by the sight of a white flash as one of them struck home. After two flashes occurred in the space of a minute, the Admiral asked,
‘What’s the range’.
‘Nineteen thousand two hundred yards Sir’, came the reply from a sub-lieutenant at a voice-pipe a moment later.
‘Excellent shooting gentlemen. If we can’t catch the buggers, at least we’re hurting them.’
Nevertheless, in the minutes after 1115, events conspired to start to bring the battle to its conclusion. Still unable to see the High Seas Fleet, Hipper’s concern was acute. Despite the extreme range, his enemy had been scoring hits for over 40 minutes, and yet his own guns were barely able to reply. If a shell were to slow or cripple one of his ships, he would have to either fight it out as a squadron or abandon it to its fate.
With only the fastest three British battlecruisers engaging his four ships, it was tempting to turn and try to cripple them now, but he hesitated. It would be against his orders, and British gunnery was clearly superior to that of his own fleet. The other two British battlecruisers were behind, but only by a few miles. If he turned, he would only have ten or fifteen minutes before they caught up and engaged, putting him back at a 5:4 disadvantage.
Nevertheless, the situation was growing worse; Goeben had lost the use of two turrets, and Derfflinger had lost one, while he could see Moltke was badly on fire, even though she was holding her place in the line for now.
He decided to buy a little more time; and ordered his destroyers to turn and engage the British battlecruisers to try force them to break off, or at least to turn away for a few minutes.
At 1116, the bridge officers of Lion were informed that the range had hardly changed in the last 10 minutes (it had probably fallen by no more than 200 yards), and while a further hit had been observed on the Goeben, the Germans had turned again and were now steering south-southeast. Given the distance covered during the battle so far, it seemed likely that the German squadron might have sighted reinforcements ahead of them and had turned to lead the British into a trap. Beatty knew he would be badly outnumbered if the action developed, and so if he was to knock out a German ship or two, it had to be within the next few minutes. Again, the Admiral asked if Lion could go faster, and was told both ‘no’, and that conditions in the port engine room meant that the current speed could not be sustained for much longer.
As he was digesting this bad news, a jet of white vapour erupted from HMS Panther. A few seconds later, the sound reached them, and the roaring screech of escaping gas drew everyone’s attention. For a heart-stopping moment, everyone wondered what had happened, and if Panther was about to explode, but Lion’s First Lieutenant was first to observe, ‘She’s venting steam’. She was also turning to starboard, and visibly slowing down as she did.
As steam continued to be blown out of the vents on her funnels, she started to turn back towards her original course, but was now visibly falling behind. A signal lamp flashed to say, ‘Port engine out of action’.
Casting his eye back at the burning stern, where half-choked men were staggering in and out of Lion’s own port engine room, Beatty saw the lagging Panther beyond and the Indefatigable and Indomitable far astern. He turned to his Flag Captain and uttered one of the most memorable phrases of the war,
‘There's something wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatfield.’
Lion’s forward guns crashed out their measured salvoes twice more, before at 1120, enemy destroyers were spotted ahead, on a closing course. The Admiral ordered British destroyers to counterattack, and the three battlecruisers to turn six points to port, followed by a further two points a few minutes later.
Although the pursuit was clearly over, the battle was not, and the German destroyers faced a barrage of 13.5" and 4" shellfire, as the full weight of the British fleet was brought to bear on them. None of the German ships pressed home their attacks, as their main job was to disrupt the pursuit, but even so V39 and V64 were stopped dead by heavy shells on their way in, while V40 was hit repeatedly by the 4" guns of British destroyers and was left crippled. She was a sitting duck and would have been torpedoed if she hadn’t been obliterated by Queen Mary’s guns as she passed less than 6,000 yards away. There were no survivors.
The Germans had their revenge in the form of the destroyer HMS Turbulent, which was hit by 4.1” gunfire, before she crossed the path of one of the few torpedoes the Germans actually launched.
The battle with the destroyers lasted less than a quarter of an hour before the survivors withdrew; the Germans under smoke, the British under the threat of German torpedoes. By midday, Beatty was heading north, and the two I-class ships were able to re-join the squadron. Lion’s fires were now under control and her port engine was restarted, but Panther reported herself capable of no more than 18 knots, as her port engine was entirely out of commission. Her fighting ability was also reduced, as X turret shell room was partly flooded.
Despite the various levels of damage, the remaining ships safely returned to Wilhelmshaven and Rosyth, and there would be important lessons for both sides.
It was no glorious victory, but the British could claim success. They had stopped another raid and put the enemy to flight, and the jingoistic press had a field day about how the ‘baby-killing Hun turned and ran as soon as the Royal Navy appeared’, with follow-up reports suggesting ‘heavy damage to German ships, while little was sustained by our own’.
Aboard HMS Lion, problems and frustration were mounting. Smoke from her fires was entering the port engine room, making conditions inside almost impossible. The ship was maintaining speed, but crew were taken from the aft gun turrets to help fight the flames as paint lockers and stores filled with flammable materials led to the fires spreading steadily aft.
On the bridge, the focus was on the enemy, but the slow rate of closure shocked everyone. Over the past few minutes the range seemed hardly to have changed, and Admiral Beatty reportedly said to his Flag Captain, ‘Why aren’t gaining; can’t we go faster, Chatfield?’, to which the Captain seems to have replied merely 'No, Sir'. German battlecruisers were supposed to be 25 or 26-knot ships, and yet the faster British vessels were proving unable to swiftly overhaul them.
Every fifty seconds or so the guns thundered, sending another four 13.5” shells at the enemy, and every few minutes anyone with a telescope would be rewarded by the sight of a white flash as one of them struck home. After two flashes occurred in the space of a minute, the Admiral asked,
‘What’s the range’.
‘Nineteen thousand two hundred yards Sir’, came the reply from a sub-lieutenant at a voice-pipe a moment later.
‘Excellent shooting gentlemen. If we can’t catch the buggers, at least we’re hurting them.’
Nevertheless, in the minutes after 1115, events conspired to start to bring the battle to its conclusion. Still unable to see the High Seas Fleet, Hipper’s concern was acute. Despite the extreme range, his enemy had been scoring hits for over 40 minutes, and yet his own guns were barely able to reply. If a shell were to slow or cripple one of his ships, he would have to either fight it out as a squadron or abandon it to its fate.
With only the fastest three British battlecruisers engaging his four ships, it was tempting to turn and try to cripple them now, but he hesitated. It would be against his orders, and British gunnery was clearly superior to that of his own fleet. The other two British battlecruisers were behind, but only by a few miles. If he turned, he would only have ten or fifteen minutes before they caught up and engaged, putting him back at a 5:4 disadvantage.
Nevertheless, the situation was growing worse; Goeben had lost the use of two turrets, and Derfflinger had lost one, while he could see Moltke was badly on fire, even though she was holding her place in the line for now.
He decided to buy a little more time; and ordered his destroyers to turn and engage the British battlecruisers to try force them to break off, or at least to turn away for a few minutes.
At 1116, the bridge officers of Lion were informed that the range had hardly changed in the last 10 minutes (it had probably fallen by no more than 200 yards), and while a further hit had been observed on the Goeben, the Germans had turned again and were now steering south-southeast. Given the distance covered during the battle so far, it seemed likely that the German squadron might have sighted reinforcements ahead of them and had turned to lead the British into a trap. Beatty knew he would be badly outnumbered if the action developed, and so if he was to knock out a German ship or two, it had to be within the next few minutes. Again, the Admiral asked if Lion could go faster, and was told both ‘no’, and that conditions in the port engine room meant that the current speed could not be sustained for much longer.
As he was digesting this bad news, a jet of white vapour erupted from HMS Panther. A few seconds later, the sound reached them, and the roaring screech of escaping gas drew everyone’s attention. For a heart-stopping moment, everyone wondered what had happened, and if Panther was about to explode, but Lion’s First Lieutenant was first to observe, ‘She’s venting steam’. She was also turning to starboard, and visibly slowing down as she did.
As steam continued to be blown out of the vents on her funnels, she started to turn back towards her original course, but was now visibly falling behind. A signal lamp flashed to say, ‘Port engine out of action’.
Casting his eye back at the burning stern, where half-choked men were staggering in and out of Lion’s own port engine room, Beatty saw the lagging Panther beyond and the Indefatigable and Indomitable far astern. He turned to his Flag Captain and uttered one of the most memorable phrases of the war,
‘There's something wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatfield.’
Lion’s forward guns crashed out their measured salvoes twice more, before at 1120, enemy destroyers were spotted ahead, on a closing course. The Admiral ordered British destroyers to counterattack, and the three battlecruisers to turn six points to port, followed by a further two points a few minutes later.
Although the pursuit was clearly over, the battle was not, and the German destroyers faced a barrage of 13.5" and 4" shellfire, as the full weight of the British fleet was brought to bear on them. None of the German ships pressed home their attacks, as their main job was to disrupt the pursuit, but even so V39 and V64 were stopped dead by heavy shells on their way in, while V40 was hit repeatedly by the 4" guns of British destroyers and was left crippled. She was a sitting duck and would have been torpedoed if she hadn’t been obliterated by Queen Mary’s guns as she passed less than 6,000 yards away. There were no survivors.
The Germans had their revenge in the form of the destroyer HMS Turbulent, which was hit by 4.1” gunfire, before she crossed the path of one of the few torpedoes the Germans actually launched.
The battle with the destroyers lasted less than a quarter of an hour before the survivors withdrew; the Germans under smoke, the British under the threat of German torpedoes. By midday, Beatty was heading north, and the two I-class ships were able to re-join the squadron. Lion’s fires were now under control and her port engine was restarted, but Panther reported herself capable of no more than 18 knots, as her port engine was entirely out of commission. Her fighting ability was also reduced, as X turret shell room was partly flooded.
Despite the various levels of damage, the remaining ships safely returned to Wilhelmshaven and Rosyth, and there would be important lessons for both sides.
It was no glorious victory, but the British could claim success. They had stopped another raid and put the enemy to flight, and the jingoistic press had a field day about how the ‘baby-killing Hun turned and ran as soon as the Royal Navy appeared’, with follow-up reports suggesting ‘heavy damage to German ships, while little was sustained by our own’.
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No, we’re both talking about the main thickness of the belt. Though I’m mostly going by Jane’s Fighting Ships for my information, which may be incorrect. Still, I think I’ll trust it over the online sources I have.
I did wonder, and yes, I'd trust Jane's over most online nonsense any day.
However, if you you have the same version of Jane's as I do (the 1919 edition), it can be both fascinating and a magnificent piece of British/American propaganda. I particularly like the comment about how Renown is said to have achieved 41 knots. Downhill, maybe
The diagrams are valuable, but 'illustrative'. If you have a look at texts that have been revised, such as Conways, or some of the more recent works by folks who've had access to the covers and plans (Friedman, Roberts, DK Brown are good authors), I think you'll find that the battleships tended to have full or near-full length belts - not that it made them perfect!
Fair enough.I did wonder, and yes, I'd trust Jane's over most online nonsense any day.
However, if you you have the same version of Jane's as I do (the 1919 edition), it can be both fascinating and a magnificent piece of British/American propaganda. I particularly like the comment about how Renown is said to have achieved 41 knots. Downhill, maybe
The diagrams are valuable, but 'illustrative'. If you have a look at texts that have been revised, such as Conways, or some of the more recent works by folks who've had access to the covers and plans (Friedman, Roberts, DK Brown are good authors), I think you'll find that the battleships tended to have full or near-full length belts - not that it made them perfect!
So what was the reason for the German ships being able to match the faster British ships for speed - I may have missed the POD for that but the Derfflinger class never exceeded 26.5 Knots on trials (Derfflinger herself a knot slower at 25.5), Moltke and Goeben on the other hand did exceed their designed for speed exceeding 28 knot but obviously they would not leave their younger sisters behind!
Tiger managed to exceed her 28 knot design speed on trials, Princess Royal Also did but her sister Lion struggled to hit 28 knots and Queen Mary only just exceeded 28
So this gives the British (leaving the I's behind - although Indomitable was capable of 25.5+) a rough fleet speed of 27.5 knots and the German fleet 25.5 knots
Cheers
Tiger managed to exceed her 28 knot design speed on trials, Princess Royal Also did but her sister Lion struggled to hit 28 knots and Queen Mary only just exceeded 28
So this gives the British (leaving the I's behind - although Indomitable was capable of 25.5+) a rough fleet speed of 27.5 knots and the German fleet 25.5 knots
Cheers
Actually, Derfflinger and Lutzow and Seydlitz all cracked the 28-knot mark on their trials. Source.
Anderman
Donor
Siegfried Beyer in "Schlachtschiffe und Schlachtkreuzer 1905 1970" gives numbers closer to Cryhavoc101 numbers, 25,8 kn for Derfflinger but as Kriegsmeilenfahrten (guess this means wartime condition) which under normal conditions would lead to at least 2 kn highter speeds.
As regards the hows and whys of the story, there's more to come regarding the battle, but I won't spoil it.
Trial speeds are numbers to be wary of. All of you are right, despite the fact that you've given wildly different numbers.
Most books don't say are the conditions under which trials were run; they very often don't even give the estimated power output. Displacement, sea state, number of runs and water depth are all vital information.
In this case, the early German BCs used deep-water at Neukrug for their trials, allowing ships to achieve higher speeds. In war this was too dangerous and a shallower mile was used (that's the Kriegsmeilenfahrten - roughly 'War Mile Run' - I've also seen it referred to as 'the Belt Mile'). Consequently the wartime ships achieved much lower speeds on trials. Derfflinger did indeed make 25.8kts on trial - roughly equivalent to 28 knots in deep water.
On a similar note, I've seen references to Princess Royal being a 'lame duck', because she only made 27.8kts even when wound up to 96,000shp in 1913. Those numbers are right, but she did it when displacing 29,700 tons, rather than at load condition of about 26,500. Had she been lighter, her designers said she would have done about 29 knots.
With the exception of the Princess Royal special trial above, trials of this time were usually run with the ships at close to load displacement (i.e. not very heavy), meaning that in service, they were always slower. It could be quite a game with smaller ships, as there were often bonuses paid for speed; some RN destroyers made 40 knots on trials, but they could only do about 33-34 in service.
Of course at the real Dogger Bank, Hipper was hamstrung by the Blucher. Once he left her, the others were wound up to their top speeds.
JSchafer
Banned
The ships are suffering way too much damage from hits. Armor is a mighty thing, just because a ship is hit doesn’t mean it will be damaged.
To expand on it. A destroyer will take around 3 to 4 direct HE hits by 16 inch gun before going under. AP will slice right trough and come out the other end. Ships sinking also takes time, even when critical damage is done it can take hours unless damage control is purposefully used wrongly. Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers are quite hardy as well. Battlecruiser armor was sufficient for their original role of cruiser killer rather than fleet line battleship and it was Beaty and RNs misuse of them as well as the decision to base them down south rather than Scapa which changed the gunnery practice from target practice to rate of fire emphasis that led to stockpiling of cordite in the turrets making them susceptible to spontaneous explosions.
To expand on it. A destroyer will take around 3 to 4 direct HE hits by 16 inch gun before going under. AP will slice right trough and come out the other end. Ships sinking also takes time, even when critical damage is done it can take hours unless damage control is purposefully used wrongly. Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers are quite hardy as well. Battlecruiser armor was sufficient for their original role of cruiser killer rather than fleet line battleship and it was Beaty and RNs misuse of them as well as the decision to base them down south rather than Scapa which changed the gunnery practice from target practice to rate of fire emphasis that led to stockpiling of cordite in the turrets making them susceptible to spontaneous explosions.
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???
I think you may be engaging in 2nd WW thinking there (trivial point - no-one had 16" guns in the Great War).
More relevantly, early Great War destroyers/torpedo boats were not tough ships, they were smaller and much more lightly built than their 2nd WW counterparts.
The reason Britain switched to 6" secondaries on battleships was a single 6" hit stood a good chance of putting a destroyer out of action (probably not sinking it, but a 'mission kill' for it's torpedo run). As you say, it can take time for a ship to sink (war records show it's actually a nice U-shaped curved - ships tended to sink either in a few minutes or took an hour or more).
In the battle, we've had two destroyers sunk - one by gun and torpedo, the other by a mix of 4" and 13.5" guns. Two more were wrecked by 13.5" fire - they won't make it home, but I didn't say they'd sunk instantly.
edit - I see I used the phrase 'stopped dead' - I can see how that would be misleading. I meant that they'd been damaged for'ard or suffered engine/boiler damage and were dead in the water, not necessarily sunk.
None of the battlecruisers are wrecked (there's more to come about what happened to Panther - so far I've only said what observers saw)
A couple of turrets burned out and some fires - all to be expected.
More Power
More Power
Back in Britain, the mood of senior naval commanders following the Battle of the Dogger Bank was far less triumphant than the bombastic articles in the press. After the Fleet's return, Admiral Beatty’s frustration at not being able to overhaul the Germans had turned to anger when he was told that HMS Panther had slowed down due to a mechanical failure, and not due to a shell hit as he had supposed during the battle. At the Admiralty, Fisher’s wrath immediately fell on Panther's Captain for allowing his ship to be so poorly maintained that she broke down in the middle of the battle.
Beatty’s anger cooled once Panther was docked, and he even played a part in convincing Fisher not to have her Captain court-martialled once it had been established that cracked bolts had led to her losing her port inboard propeller. Panther had been completed in August 1914 and was rushed into service just as the war started, with little time for trials or a proper work-up period before she joined the Fleet. Shipwrights concluded that the fault might have been there for months, unnoticed until the demands of maximum power put it under heavy strain.
Her engine room crew had managed to shut off steam before the turbine dangerously over sped, but seals must have been damaged as the prop came off, leading to flooding in the shaft tunnel and in adjacent compartments. With full power on the starboard engine, she had initially turned that way before the bridge was told what was happening and took action. With the furnaces still at full power, steam had to be vented, leading observers on Lion’s bridge to assume she had been hit.
It was no fault of the Captain or crew, and Fisher soon dropped his demands for a Court-Martial. To preserve the fiction that there was little damage to British ships, the problem was subsequently hushed-up and Panther was only docked briefly, to be fitted with a spare propeller.
By contrast, Beatty praised the fleet's gunners, whose ‘steady firing and observation resulted in numerous hits, despite the extreme range at which we engaged the enemy’. Despite this, it was clear that fire-control equipment and techniques needed to be improved. Although director fire had been used throughout the battle, both the Admiral and his Captains demanded changes that would allow gunsights to operate at elevations greater than 15.5 degrees, and there were complaints that the run-out of the guns sometimes ‘stalled’ at high elevations due to lack of hydraulic pressure. Crews had to lower the barrels to reload, slowing the reloading process. At long ranges, with salvoes fired every 45-50 seconds, it hadn’t had much effect, but at shorter ranges the delay caused by having to elevate and re-sight the guns could slow the rate of fire.
Beatty took this problem very seriously, as in a closer-range action, continuous aim and a high rate of fire would be much more important. Within weeks an extra hydraulic pump was ordered for each ship and all the battlecruisers in home waters were fitted with these by the end of May.
Gunnery Officers and control table operators had their own list of requirements; in particular, their transmission and plotting systems needed to be capable of handling ranges greater than 17,000 yards. Queen Mary’s Gunnery Officer observed that his 200-yard corrections while trying to find the range were too small, and that a quicker process to establish the range and line of shot was needed. Several improvements to methods of spotting and the use of range-finding salvoes were suggested. Spotters needed to be able to inform the table operators of the fall of shot more easily, while their ‘spots’ needed to be recorded on the plot in some way.
Equally importantly, there were the consequences of Beatty's famous comment about his ‘bloody ships’; what he’d meant was that they hadn’t been able to close with the Germans, and that therefore his ships weren’t fast enough.
The first reason for this was that the German battlecruisers were obviously faster than had been thought, although there had been evidence of their true top speed available before the war. At Dogger Bank, they had fled at 25-26 knots; once course changes were allowed for, this suggested a true ship speed of somewhat over 26 knots. Analysis of logs and plots suggested that the fastest British ship (Queen Mary) only reached 27 1/2 knots in the later stages of the battle, and Lion and Panther barely reached 27.
Most immediately therefore, the British ships had not achieved their potential maximum speed. Even allowing for wartime displacements, the two later ‘Cats’ should be capable of over 28 knots in service, while Lion could be forced up to near that speed. However, steam logs suggested that none of the ships achieved more than 82,000 shp, despite pre-war trials which showed that they were capable of over 90,000.
The vast clouds of black smoke that had poured from the funnels suggested ships straining to reach their maximum possible speed, however besides making life more difficult for the gunners, unburned fuel could degrade the performance of the ships. Unlike their German counterparts, the British ships were expected to burn both oil and coal, allowing them to sustain high speeds for longer without taking crews from the guns, as well as boosting their maximum power output. However, during the battle, both oil and coal had been used liberally - it seemed too liberally - as furnaces failed to burn all the fuel they were being fed. Too much fuel led to a reduction in power, as unburned particles were carried out of the boilers, while low-temperature gases laden with soot were not quite as effective at transferring heat to the tubes.
This was a training problem, not an engineering one, and so could be fixed relatively quickly. The cause lay in the rapid expansion of the Navy and the call-up of reservists, which had left the RN short of stokers and engineers who were experienced with mixed-fuel boilers. Stokers used to coal-firing had performed as they had been taught, but the use of oil required different techniques.
Within weeks, a stokers' training ship had moved to Rosyth and instructions was also underway on-board the battlecruisers themselves. Over time, there would also be improvements to the oil-sprayers inside the furnaces, and to help offset heavier wartime displacements, orders were given for oil loads to be reduced from 800 to 500 tons.
By the middle of April, all seven battlecruisers (Princess Royal and New Zealand had by then re-joined the Fleet) had completed steaming trials. The four available ‘Cats’ demonstrated over 88,000shp and 27.75 knots, with Panther and Queen Mary both achieving over 92,000shp and 28 knots, all while loaded to normal wartime displacements. Not only did this increase the speed of Beatty's fleet by about 1/2 knot, the improved firing of the furnaces allowed the crews to achieve quicker increases in power, meaning in any future battle, there would be less time spent working up to maximum speed.
It could be argued that this extra ½ knot would not have helped at Dogger Bank, but in the minds of the C-in-C and the First Sea Lord, it reinforced the need for faster ships; if current German battlecruisers could reach 26-27 knots, it seemed certain that their future vessels would be capable of 30.
Admiral Fisher’s opinion that ‘speed is everything’ was confirmed; in order to hit the enemy hard, you needed to catch him first. His concept for swift ‘large cruisers’ moved forwards, and he asked whether the ‘Renowns’ could lose their Q turret in return for an additional four boilers. Superficially, the answer was yes, and the result would be machinery capable of delivering about 138,000 shp, with a reduced displacement and a top speed of about 32.5 knots. However, there was some question as to whether the engines could handle the additional steam, and the construction of eight new boilers would delay completion of the ships. With the expectation that the Lutzow and Hindenburg would be in service by mid-1916, both probably armed with 14” guns, Admirals Beatty and Jellicoe wanted the ‘Renowns’ as soon possible, and trading 1/4 of their firepower for an extra knot was not thought worthwhile.
Ultimately, the ships would complete with their original machinery design, and on trials in September 1916, Renown would make 31.54kts with 129,400shp at 29,760 tons; about 1,300 tons over her design load displacement. In actual service, at closer to 31,000 tons, they could reliably achieve 30 knots without unduly straining their engines.
Back in Britain, the mood of senior naval commanders following the Battle of the Dogger Bank was far less triumphant than the bombastic articles in the press. After the Fleet's return, Admiral Beatty’s frustration at not being able to overhaul the Germans had turned to anger when he was told that HMS Panther had slowed down due to a mechanical failure, and not due to a shell hit as he had supposed during the battle. At the Admiralty, Fisher’s wrath immediately fell on Panther's Captain for allowing his ship to be so poorly maintained that she broke down in the middle of the battle.
Beatty’s anger cooled once Panther was docked, and he even played a part in convincing Fisher not to have her Captain court-martialled once it had been established that cracked bolts had led to her losing her port inboard propeller. Panther had been completed in August 1914 and was rushed into service just as the war started, with little time for trials or a proper work-up period before she joined the Fleet. Shipwrights concluded that the fault might have been there for months, unnoticed until the demands of maximum power put it under heavy strain.
Her engine room crew had managed to shut off steam before the turbine dangerously over sped, but seals must have been damaged as the prop came off, leading to flooding in the shaft tunnel and in adjacent compartments. With full power on the starboard engine, she had initially turned that way before the bridge was told what was happening and took action. With the furnaces still at full power, steam had to be vented, leading observers on Lion’s bridge to assume she had been hit.
It was no fault of the Captain or crew, and Fisher soon dropped his demands for a Court-Martial. To preserve the fiction that there was little damage to British ships, the problem was subsequently hushed-up and Panther was only docked briefly, to be fitted with a spare propeller.
By contrast, Beatty praised the fleet's gunners, whose ‘steady firing and observation resulted in numerous hits, despite the extreme range at which we engaged the enemy’. Despite this, it was clear that fire-control equipment and techniques needed to be improved. Although director fire had been used throughout the battle, both the Admiral and his Captains demanded changes that would allow gunsights to operate at elevations greater than 15.5 degrees, and there were complaints that the run-out of the guns sometimes ‘stalled’ at high elevations due to lack of hydraulic pressure. Crews had to lower the barrels to reload, slowing the reloading process. At long ranges, with salvoes fired every 45-50 seconds, it hadn’t had much effect, but at shorter ranges the delay caused by having to elevate and re-sight the guns could slow the rate of fire.
Beatty took this problem very seriously, as in a closer-range action, continuous aim and a high rate of fire would be much more important. Within weeks an extra hydraulic pump was ordered for each ship and all the battlecruisers in home waters were fitted with these by the end of May.
Gunnery Officers and control table operators had their own list of requirements; in particular, their transmission and plotting systems needed to be capable of handling ranges greater than 17,000 yards. Queen Mary’s Gunnery Officer observed that his 200-yard corrections while trying to find the range were too small, and that a quicker process to establish the range and line of shot was needed. Several improvements to methods of spotting and the use of range-finding salvoes were suggested. Spotters needed to be able to inform the table operators of the fall of shot more easily, while their ‘spots’ needed to be recorded on the plot in some way.
Equally importantly, there were the consequences of Beatty's famous comment about his ‘bloody ships’; what he’d meant was that they hadn’t been able to close with the Germans, and that therefore his ships weren’t fast enough.
The first reason for this was that the German battlecruisers were obviously faster than had been thought, although there had been evidence of their true top speed available before the war. At Dogger Bank, they had fled at 25-26 knots; once course changes were allowed for, this suggested a true ship speed of somewhat over 26 knots. Analysis of logs and plots suggested that the fastest British ship (Queen Mary) only reached 27 1/2 knots in the later stages of the battle, and Lion and Panther barely reached 27.
Most immediately therefore, the British ships had not achieved their potential maximum speed. Even allowing for wartime displacements, the two later ‘Cats’ should be capable of over 28 knots in service, while Lion could be forced up to near that speed. However, steam logs suggested that none of the ships achieved more than 82,000 shp, despite pre-war trials which showed that they were capable of over 90,000.
The vast clouds of black smoke that had poured from the funnels suggested ships straining to reach their maximum possible speed, however besides making life more difficult for the gunners, unburned fuel could degrade the performance of the ships. Unlike their German counterparts, the British ships were expected to burn both oil and coal, allowing them to sustain high speeds for longer without taking crews from the guns, as well as boosting their maximum power output. However, during the battle, both oil and coal had been used liberally - it seemed too liberally - as furnaces failed to burn all the fuel they were being fed. Too much fuel led to a reduction in power, as unburned particles were carried out of the boilers, while low-temperature gases laden with soot were not quite as effective at transferring heat to the tubes.
This was a training problem, not an engineering one, and so could be fixed relatively quickly. The cause lay in the rapid expansion of the Navy and the call-up of reservists, which had left the RN short of stokers and engineers who were experienced with mixed-fuel boilers. Stokers used to coal-firing had performed as they had been taught, but the use of oil required different techniques.
Within weeks, a stokers' training ship had moved to Rosyth and instructions was also underway on-board the battlecruisers themselves. Over time, there would also be improvements to the oil-sprayers inside the furnaces, and to help offset heavier wartime displacements, orders were given for oil loads to be reduced from 800 to 500 tons.
By the middle of April, all seven battlecruisers (Princess Royal and New Zealand had by then re-joined the Fleet) had completed steaming trials. The four available ‘Cats’ demonstrated over 88,000shp and 27.75 knots, with Panther and Queen Mary both achieving over 92,000shp and 28 knots, all while loaded to normal wartime displacements. Not only did this increase the speed of Beatty's fleet by about 1/2 knot, the improved firing of the furnaces allowed the crews to achieve quicker increases in power, meaning in any future battle, there would be less time spent working up to maximum speed.
It could be argued that this extra ½ knot would not have helped at Dogger Bank, but in the minds of the C-in-C and the First Sea Lord, it reinforced the need for faster ships; if current German battlecruisers could reach 26-27 knots, it seemed certain that their future vessels would be capable of 30.
Admiral Fisher’s opinion that ‘speed is everything’ was confirmed; in order to hit the enemy hard, you needed to catch him first. His concept for swift ‘large cruisers’ moved forwards, and he asked whether the ‘Renowns’ could lose their Q turret in return for an additional four boilers. Superficially, the answer was yes, and the result would be machinery capable of delivering about 138,000 shp, with a reduced displacement and a top speed of about 32.5 knots. However, there was some question as to whether the engines could handle the additional steam, and the construction of eight new boilers would delay completion of the ships. With the expectation that the Lutzow and Hindenburg would be in service by mid-1916, both probably armed with 14” guns, Admirals Beatty and Jellicoe wanted the ‘Renowns’ as soon possible, and trading 1/4 of their firepower for an extra knot was not thought worthwhile.
Ultimately, the ships would complete with their original machinery design, and on trials in September 1916, Renown would make 31.54kts with 129,400shp at 29,760 tons; about 1,300 tons over her design load displacement. In actual service, at closer to 31,000 tons, they could reliably achieve 30 knots without unduly straining their engines.
No complaints about rate of fire (apart from that hydraulic pump tweak), so if nothing else the RN's battlecruisers should avoid that unfortunate cordite stacking and exploding issue. That's a major plus right there.
Will we see a German equivalent? I'll admit I am hoping for Hipper to make demands that he urgently needs "improved" gunnery to counter the superior RN gunnery and it all goes wrong for him in hilarious fashion. Super-charged rounds to boost range that end up exploding in the barrel, but only after a dozen rounds have been fired, so his ship's turrets start exploding mid-battle for no obvious reason. Something like that.
Will we see a German equivalent? I'll admit I am hoping for Hipper to make demands that he urgently needs "improved" gunnery to counter the superior RN gunnery and it all goes wrong for him in hilarious fashion. Super-charged rounds to boost range that end up exploding in the barrel, but only after a dozen rounds have been fired, so his ship's turrets start exploding mid-battle for no obvious reason. Something like that.
SsgtC
Banned
More likely that he'll demand either increased main gun elevation or range finders that are effective at longer ranges allowing him to engage at greater distances and hit back at the BritishNo complaints about rate of fire (apart from that hydraulic pump tweak), so if nothing else the RN's battlecruisers should avoid that unfortunate cordite stacking and exploding issue. That's a major plus right there.
Will we see a German equivalent? I'll admit I am hoping for Hipper to make demands that he urgently needs "improved" gunnery to counter the superior RN gunnery and it all goes wrong for him in hilarious fashion. Super-charged rounds to boost range that end up exploding in the barrel, but only after a dozen rounds have been fired, so his ship's turrets start exploding mid-battle for no obvious reason. Something like that.