Why Did Early Dreadnoughts Have Wing Turrets?

Delta Force

Banned
I think it has to do with how dreadnoughts appeared: a progressive evolution where secondary guns of battleships getting bigger and bigger until they're as big as the main guns, so the wing turrets were just where the secondary gun turrets would be (and will be again).

It makes sense for secondary turrets because a torpedo boat or aircraft can strike from anywhere, but generally capital ships focus their main battery on a single target.
 

Delta Force

Banned
There were designs with superfiring but as mentioned blast issues were a concern.

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Design C can fire four turrets fore/aft and all four broadside, which is comparable or superior in performance to everything except the broadside potential of Design E. Why did Design B and Series D approaches prevail if they didn't maximize firepower or required two additional turrets to achieve the same salvo weight?
 

Delta Force

Banned
There were several thoughts behind wing turrets.
The main reason was the Admiralty were worried that a single hit could take two superfiring turrets out of action, spreading the turrets out lessened this risk.
Their was a worry that two turrets close together weakened the structure of the hull with two large holes extending almost to the keel.
The wing turrets were protected by the coal bunkers iirc a foot of coal was considered equal to an inch of plate and when ships went to oil firing this protection disappeared.
Experience with Black powder firing guns firing across the beam and ahead or astern showed it caused an aceptable amount of blast damage but it wasnt realised till too late that Nitro propellants and higher velocities meant the wing turrets could not fire any closer than about 30 degrees from centreline without causing structural damage.

Wouldn't the hull be heavier due to more weight being carried in the corners? It seems handling would suffer too if the guns were mounted further from the center of gravity. The wing turrets would also never has as much protection against horizontal and underwater penetration as those mounted in the middle of the ship, and they would probably be unsuitable for fast ships because the magazines need a certain amount of room.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Another factor, IIRC, though one that affected the Germans the most, was the retention of reciprocating machinery. VTE engines are very tall, and so eat up midships centerline space that could otherwise have gone to gun turrets. But the turrets had to go somewhere, so onto the wings they went. The Germans also had the idea that the wing turrets on one side could be used as a reserve in case of battle damage, though I'm not sure whether that was a design consideration or a retroactive justification.

Wouldn't that only work for cruisers, battlecruisers, and other independently operating ships? A battleship can't reverse course and sail against the direction of the rest of its line to use its functional turrets.
 
Design C can fire four turrets fore/aft and all four broadside, which is comparable or superior in performance to everything except the broadside potential of Design E. Why did Design B and Series D approaches prevail if they didn't maximize firepower or required two additional turrets to achieve the same salvo weight?
Design C can fire 4 turrets broadside only if ship has no bridge, smokestacks, cranes and boats, as soon as you put these in the picture you can see that model C is much more restricted in firing arc's than it seems.

Even with no superstructure wing turrets can't shot full ahead or full astern beacause they damage the deck
 
Wouldn't that only work for cruisers, battlecruisers, and other independently operating ships? A battleship can't reverse course and sail against the direction of the rest of its line to use its functional turrets.
I never said it was a good idea. Of course, considering how often the Germans practiced simultaneous battle turnaway, I suspect it might have more use than you'd think.
 

Driftless

Donor
Was there concern about center of gravity and such on smaller hulls of the 1890's, if they went with super-firing turrets? Plus potential blast damage too?

When you think about it, there was a long naval tradition for tiered broadsides with the old ships-of-the-line. So in partial effect, there was earlier superfiring guns after a fashion.....
 
It makes sense for secondary turrets because a torpedo boat or aircraft can strike from anywhere, but generally capital ships focus their main battery on a single target.
You got it backwards, wing turrets were the norm, superfiring turrets were the new experimental design, so for obvious reasons most ships were built in the old way until the new design proved itself.
 
It makes sense for secondary turrets because a torpedo boat or aircraft can strike from anywhere, but generally capital ships focus their main battery on a single target.
In the pre-Dreadnought era, the secondary (usually 6") and intermediate (usually 8"-10") batteries were part of the main armament for use against other capital ships. The idea was that a hail of fire from smaller guns would devastate the enemy ship.
 
In the pre-Great War era, the reason wing turrets for main battery guns on dreadnoughts were abandoned was simply because of weight. While more compact machinery did play a role in keeping the size of the ships down to a manageable and cost-efficient scale, the move to centerline turrets came because turrets and barbettes for guns larger than 12 inches were simply too heavy. There was no way turrets and barbettes of that size could be safely and securely mounted away from the structural rigidity provided by the keel of the ship.

The peculiar case of the US Navy, which never deployed wing turrets on dreadnoughts, came because of self-imposed tonnage limitations during the era in which wing turrets were in use. For example, while HMS Dreadnought and the Nassau-class battleships both had full load displacements over 20,000 tons, the South Carolina-class dreadnoughts were built on predreadnought hulls that displaced up to about 17,000 tons.
 
Design C can fire four turrets fore/aft and all four broadside, which is comparable or superior in performance to everything except the broadside potential of Design E. Why did Design B and Series D approaches prevail if they didn't maximize firepower or required two additional turrets to achieve the same salvo weight?
Design C can fire 4 turrets broadside only if ship has no bridge, smokestacks, cranes and boats, as soon as you put these in the picture you can see that model C is much more restricted in firing arc's than it seems.

Even with no superstructure wing turrets can't shot full ahead or full astern beacause they damage the deck
Design C (the en echelon layout) was used for the Invincible, Indefatigable, Von der Tann, Moltke, and Derfflinger class battlecruisers, and largely failed due to the reasons mentioned above, as well as the fact that the muzzle blast would damage the boats and cranes when fired across the deck (the muzzle wasn't long enough to clear the opposite side of the deck, and as a result its blast would impact the ship).
 
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