WI: Western navies had realized the torpedo was lethal?

And I am saying that you are mistaking enemy casualties with actual achievement of the objectives.

Conversation was about the naval doctrines prevailing at the time. During the WWI things were not happening according Mahan's doctrine and a major battle between the battleships did not decide situation on the seas. No need to start getting too deep into the specifics of Jutland because this is not the point.
 
Um... 1890s was the heyday of secondary armaments, just look at every British Pre-dreadnought class from the Royal Sovereign to King Edward VII (ok so most of them were pretty much clones of each other, but that's the point); they were packed with many smaller quick firing guns. Originally those guns were meant to counter the shit ton of torpedo boats that were expected to bum rush them in the event of a war, it was just a bonus that their quick firing nature also made them really good at taking out the superstructure of opposing battleships. This is not even getting into all the other things that went into battleship designs to protect them from torpedoes like torpedo nets and stuff.

The HMS Dreadnought doing away with most secondaries was more of a fluke not really followed by anyone else (see the Nassau class dreadnought, still carrying 15cm secondaries) and even the British themselves wised up later on and decent secondaries made a return to dreadnoughts (until Fisher came back again, but this is getting complicated enough as is).
I think you're conflating the smaller guns in mixed-caliber main batteries (a defining feature of pre-dreadnoughts) with secondary batteries. Basically, pre-dreads carried 3-ish sets of guns: a small number of heavy guns (four 13.5" guns on Royal Sovereign), a larger number of medium guns (ten 6" guns on Royal Sovereign), and a whole bunch of quick-firing light guns (ten 6-pounders (2.2") and twelve 3-pounders (1.9") on RS). Later "semi-dreadnoughts" like the Edwards split the medium guns into medium and medium-heavy (9.2" in the case of the Edwards) batteries. The medium, medium-heavy, and heavy guns were all considered the ship's main battery, intended to fight other capital ships. The mixed battery concept was a compromise based on the limitations of early heavy guns, which were very slow-firing and not terribly accurate, so despite their advantages in armor penetration, damage potential, and range, the big guns weren't really ready for prime time as the primary armament of a warship. So the ships retained lighter "main" guns that could make up for their lower caliber at short ranges with a vastly superior rate of fire.

The Dreadnought Revolution (at least the gunnery portion of it: ship size and the switch to turbine engines were also very significant) was based on the conclusion that 12" guns were ready for prime time, based on improvements in long-range fire control, gunnery training, and in the guns themselves, as demonstrated by their performance in the Russo-Japanese war. It was the medium and medium-heavy guns that were dropped, not the light guns: HMS Dreadnought had a secondary battery of 27 12-pounder (3") guns to go with the ten 12" guns in her main battery. Dreadnought's secondary battery is often ignored, probably because guns measured in pounds rather than inches aren't big enough to be counted as "real" guns by many observers and analysts. The apparent return of secondary armaments in later classes of dreadnoughts was more a case of Dreadnought's 12-pounders getting scaled up a gun type or two and crossing the threshold into being big enough to get noticed.

You're correct that the light guns were there to deal with torpedo boats and the like.
 
The Dreadnought Revolution (at least the gunnery portion of it: ship size and the switch to turbine engines were also very significant) was based on the conclusion that 12" guns were ready for prime time, based on improvements in long-range fire control, gunnery training, and in the guns themselves, as demonstrated by their performance in the Russo-Japanese war. It was the medium and medium-heavy guns that were dropped, not the light guns: HMS Dreadnought had a secondary battery of 27 12-pounder (3") guns to go with the ten 12" guns in her main battery. Dreadnought's secondary battery is often ignored, probably because guns measured in pounds rather than inches aren't big enough to be counted as "real" guns by many observers and analysts. The apparent return of secondary armaments in later classes of dreadnoughts was more a case of Dreadnought's 12-pounders getting scaled up a gun type or two and crossing the threshold into being big enough to get noticed.

You're correct that the light guns were there to deal with torpedo boats and the like.

The thing is, the larger secondaries (4-6in quick firing guns) never really left for a lot of other countries, the Germans with their 5.9in (a consistent feature in their transition from pre-dreadnoughts to dreadnought), or made a quick return (Italian battleships made a return to the 6in by the Andrea Doria class). Meanwhile the US settled with the 5in and the UK was setting on the 6in before the return of Jackie Fisher.

The 6in (or 5.9in, 5in, 4.7in, etc.) of the secondaries during this entire period were to deal with torpedo boats. The 3in or smaller were usually considered to be tertiary weapons. It was thought with the Dreadnought that the 12pdr guns were enough to deal with torpedo attacks. It was quickly realized that with the ever increasing size of torpedo boats and destroyers that those guns were rather inadequate. Hence the return of larger guns.

The intermediate guns were always lumped more with the primary/heavy guns, and I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be do away with or anything, they're done in the era of centralized fire control. What I'm saying is that the 6in guns were firmly part of the secondary and the ones of the pre-dreadnoughts and the ones on the dreadnoughts both serve the purposes of dealing with torpedo attacks (sure, the ones in the latter won't be doing much in the way of the "hail of fire" but it's not like the former did much of that as far as being the decisive part of battles are concerned)
 
I took a look at the Deutschland class (Germany's last pre-dread class) vs the succeeding Nassau class just now, and you're right that both have secondary batteries in the 6-inch range. The Nassaus have downsized them a bit (from 17cm to 15cm, which looks like about a 50% savings in the weight of each gun according to wikipedia) and reduced the gun count from 14 to 12, but they didn't do away with them completely in favor of an expanded tertiary battery the way the British did.

It also struck me how small the Deutschlands were: they're only around 13.2k tons under normal load, compared to 14.1k for a Royal Sovereign, 16.3k for an Edward, 18.1k for Dreadnought, or 18.6k for a Nassau.
 
It also struck me how small the Deutschlands were: they're only around 13.2k tons under normal load, compared to 14.1k for a Royal Sovereign, 16.3k for an Edward, 18.1k for Dreadnought, or 18.6k for a Nassau.
German pre-dreadnoughts were very... Okay-ish. Not as good as the British ones, and not as exoitc/unique as the French ones (which in hindsight was probably a good thing)...

Conway's all the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 said:
Though in most respects workmanlike designs, there were a number of weaknesses, such as the arrangement of the magazine for the secondary armament, almost certainly the cause of the Pommern's destruction by a single torpedo. None of the classes compares well with their British contemporaries. It was not until after Germany began building dreadnoughts that her naval architects were to enter their brief but brilliant period of success, producing world-beating capital ship designs.

Conway's all the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 said:
The weakness in the protection and magazine arrangements of the secondary armament was almost certainly the cause of the loss of the Pommern to one torpedo fired by a British destroyer at the battle of Jutland, where these ships were the only pre-dreadnoughts present.
 
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You do know those ships were known as the Live Bait Squadron at the time in recognition of their vulnerability?
And AFAIK, nobody in Britain expected submarines to be a threat, which was the point.
destroyers were not seaworthy enough to ride out the storm lie the cruisers could.... Subs could get closer...
And those are the things I had hoped to change, for a start. Going from a "torpedo gunboat" to actual destroyer need not have taken so long.
Destroyers, subs and torpedoes got an aritficial handicap OTL vis a vis cruisers and battleships and still did not take over completely until after WWII
IMO, that's true, & that's something that could have been bypassed (it not eliminated). The "gun club" mentality doubtless hampered development of torpedoes, & so development of DDs & subs.
 
I was thinking "obsolete" as to existing form: an 1890s or so *Dreadnought that went from numbers of heavy guns to all-light (anti-escort) guns & TT as "main battery". When CVs mature, that maybe turns to heavy AA & a few anti-escort guns, on a hull more like a small Tico than (say) Montana, or a much bigger Burke: it replaces both CAs & DDs.

I wouldn't go that far... I'm thinking more that they see the potential clearly, & sooner, & start development.

A torpedo-based fleet has been considered and actually built (to certain extent) by the 19th century French Navy, but the problem was that such navy cannot exercise sea control, power projection and other missions that requires capital ships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_École

http://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=nwc-review
Aube and his contemporaries were right in their intuition that technology could provide for the rise of a form of asymmetric warfare that would benefit the weaker navy, threatening the supremacy of the battle fleet and strangling vital lines of communications. The torpedo eventually would constitute such a threat, but the Jeune École erred in focusing on a delivery vehicle meant to make the battleship obsolete before the technology was available and proven. It was the German submarines of the Great War that carried the torpedoes that directly threatened Great Britain’s supremacy at sea, not the French torpedo boats of the 1880s. France’s famed student of strategy Hervé Coutau-Bégarie indeed mused that “the fault of Aube was perhaps to be right too early.”

Another flaw was the strident militancy of the Jeune École disciples. They strenuously refused to listen to their opponents, neglecting to admit that technological advances would spur not only the rise of asymmetric warfare but the development of defensive measures against such means, just as during the ironclad era the development of the explosive shell had been followed closely by that of armor plating. To promote their views, the disciples allied themselves to radical politicians, which deeply fractured the naval officer corps amid the cabinet instability that was a hallmark of the Third Republic, preventing the formulation and sustainment of a single, long-term shipbuilding plan. This may have been the greatest, if unintended, harm that the Jeune École caused, as the debate initiated in the 1870s contributed to the country’s poor state of readiness at sea up to the First World War

One need to remember technological is not unilateral, but dynamic.
 
And AFAIK, nobody in Britain expected submarines to be a threat, which was the point.
Actually the loss of obsolete ships in WWI usually has more to do with the rapid pace of tech advances of the decades prior (many of them weren't that old when WWI broke out but were already obsolete) while the expense of constructions & limited dockyards meant that there was no way of refitting the masses of older vessels to new standards. So they get the short end of the stick.
And those are the things I had hoped to change, for a start. Going from a "torpedo gunboat" to actual destroyer need not have taken so long.
It didn't take long for the "torpedo boat destroyer" to also take over the role of the torpedo boat's role of launching mass torpedo attacks against enemy fleets. The existing torpedo boats just hang around because navies tend to not throw away things unless they're really shitty (note the sheer numbers of armored cruisers & pre-dreadnought battleships remaining at the start of WWI, though the bulk of them being in secondary roles)

IMO, that's true, & that's something that could have been bypassed (it not eliminated). The "gun club" mentality doubtless hampered development of torpedoes, & so development of DDs & subs.
Actually there were a lot of development poured into torpedoes and related development from the late 19th century onwards, precisely because a lot of countries (specially the ones with smaller navies & budgets) wanted a cheaper (and faster) way to equalize the field against traditional battlefleets. Despite their hopes and dreams reality didn't pan out that way.

One of the biggest hurdles was the have the ability to have small, highly maneuverable vessels... that are also capable of operating on the high seas. Those 2 needs are kinda mutually exclusive, but it sure as hell didn't stop countries from trying. Just look at this:

foudre_torpedo_boat_cruiser_by_darthpandanl-d795lhe.png


It's basically a steampunk Cylon basestar (in terms of designed role, as in a vessel that relies on launching smaller vessels to do most of the attacking). Idea didn't really work out in practice but it showed that countries were willing to spend quite a bit in experimenting with torpedo and related developments.

------------

Now for an actual bit that might be dealt with hindsight was the development of British destroyers of the 1890s to early 1900s, in which OTL development was obsessed with top speed on trials (which turned out to translate into jack shit in actual service as conditions in the North Atlantic did a number of those vessels as their speed tend to drop significantly in rough conditions, '+30kts' on trials quickly turned into 'less than that of the battleline and they need to turn back before being swamped by the waves'). Of course that would also have to educated the public (public opinion of the time only concerned with paper specs... actually nothing has really changed from then). That being said there's a problem:

-good handling in rough seas require high freeboard
-high freeboard increase weight
-increase weight requires more powerful engine
-more powerful engine requires larger hull
-bigger hull increase expense

... and the cycle continues, its really difficult to find a balance (except increasing displacement, which is pretty much what happened OTL).
 
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A torpedo-based fleet has been considered and actually built (to certain extent) by the 19th century French Navy, but the problem was that such navy cannot exercise sea control, power projection and other missions that requires capital ships.

There are arguments that the Royal Navy, in the late 19th Century and under Fisher, had a similar concept, called 'Flotilla Defence' by Nicholas Lambert - though I will point out that this is contested by other historians. Under 'Flotilla Defence', the task of defending the British coast would be left to torpedo-armed craft (either torpedo boats or submarines, if not both), and minelayers. The main fleet could then be deployed as a whole to control the seas in the main theatre of the war; originally the Mediterranean, but moving to the North Sea and further afield. Fisher may also have hoped to combine the defensive flotillas with large fast ships operating in more of a cruiser role (but Dreadnought fits into this pattern when compared to the pre-dreadnoughts).
 
And AFAIK, nobody in Britain expected submarines to be a threat, which was the point.

And those are the things I had hoped to change, for a start. Going from a "torpedo gunboat" to actual destroyer need not have taken so long.

IMO, that's true, & that's something that could have been bypassed (it not eliminated). The "gun club" mentality doubtless hampered development of torpedoes, & so development of DDs & subs.
Ah but they did expect them to be a threat, which is why Britain had more of them than Germany. They just didn't fully understand the dimensions of the threat, but they saw them as a threat, under certain circumstances. They were not fully aware of what those circumstances were because the tech was just used for the first time, but they were aware

6-8 years is not a long time to go from torpedo gunboat to destroyer. The issue is engine technology, to get that sort of speed you need to either go large and get a torpedo cruiser or small and get an overgrown torpedo boat. It's only as propulsion tech improved (and was fitted to destroyers first before larger ships) that destroyers could grow large enough to be seaworthy, and still be able to catch torpedo boats

I think you misunderstand, destroyer, submarine and torpedoes got a handicap, as in an advantage, over battleships and cruisers OTL with the limits of the WNT. Even with the effective hiatus on Battleships R&D and the compromises forced on cruisers, the submarine and destroyer were not fully dominant until after WWII. As for hampering development of torpedoes, basically every battleship until the start of WWI, and many afterwards, carried torpedoes, same with cruisers. In smaller navies (well relatively) torpedo craft were considered

Could you still have pushed forward submarine and destroyer evolution, certainly, but at a cost as you have to get closer to the limits of the technology of the day, and you almost certainly can't run into a situation where the first Dreadnought is obsolete when she is commissioned
 
Ah but they did expect them to be a threat, which is why Britain had more of them than Germany. They just didn't fully understand the dimensions of the threat, but they saw them as a threat, under certain circumstances. They were not fully aware of what those circumstances were because the tech was just used for the first time, but they were aware

6-8 years is not a long time to go from torpedo gunboat to destroyer. The issue is engine technology, to get that sort of speed you need to either go large and get a torpedo cruiser or small and get an overgrown torpedo boat. It's only as propulsion tech improved (and was fitted to destroyers first before larger ships) that destroyers could grow large enough to be seaworthy, and still be able to catch torpedo boats

I think you misunderstand, destroyer, submarine and torpedoes got a handicap, as in an advantage, over battleships and cruisers OTL with the limits of the WNT. Even with the effective hiatus on Battleships R&D and the compromises forced on cruisers, the submarine and destroyer were not fully dominant until after WWII. As for hampering development of torpedoes, basically every battleship until the start of WWI, and many afterwards, carried torpedoes, same with cruisers. In smaller navies (well relatively) torpedo craft were considered

Could you still have pushed forward submarine and destroyer evolution, certainly, but at a cost as you have to get closer to the limits of the technology of the day, and you almost certainly can't run into a situation where the first Dreadnought is obsolete when she is commissioned
I was thinking there's more slack in the system than that.:oops:

I'd be inclined to go from gunboat all the way to small cruiser, but then we're back to foresight/hindsight, & handwaving it isn't really an option (not if credibility is an issue, anyhow).

Let me repeat one, tho: does that still apply if the Howell is the baseline, instead of the Whitehead? Even if the Howell proves a dead end in the long run, it makes me thing the tactical, & technical, issues sill arise, only 20-some years sooner.
 
I was thinking there's more slack in the system than that.:oops:

I'd be inclined to go from gunboat all the way to small cruiser, but then we're back to foresight/hindsight, & handwaving it isn't really an option (not if credibility is an issue, anyhow).

Let me repeat one, tho: does that still apply if the Howell is the baseline, instead of the Whitehead? Even if the Howell proves a dead end in the long run, it makes me thing the tactical, & technical, issues sill arise, only 20-some years sooner.
Okay so you have a cruiser, to get the speed to catch a torpedo boat, and same armament/range/seaworthiness of a torpedo gunboat (1885), assuming no armor (which the gunboat has), you can just do it in 1892 (when the DD appeared OTL), at a cost more than double that of the Gunboat (or a DD), with very delicate machinery and it still isn't all that seaworthy

The Howell entered service 4 years before the Whitehead, and the Whitehead had prototypes years before Howell came up with the idea
 
I'd be inclined to go from gunboat all the way to small cruiser, but then we're back to foresight/hindsight, & handwaving it isn't really an option (not if credibility is an issue, anyhow).
That's pretty much what the RN did though:

Conway's all the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 said:
The question of how the new weapon was to be used was answered in four ways by the Committee set up in 1873. First ordinary ships' boats could be adapted to carry it and soon the steam boats beginning to be carried on board larger warships at this time (and some of the larger rowing and sailing boats as well) were fitted with 'dropping gear' for Whiteheads, and also spar torpedoes.

Secondly, torpedoes could be fitted as part of the armament of conventional types of warship and by the end of the decade most ironclads and large cruising vessels carried several of the new weapons. In 1877 the large frigate Shah was the first vessel to use a torpedo in action, though without obtaining a hit, against the piratical Peruvian ironclad Huascar. At first above water launching carriages were used (legend has it that the Shah found the upended wardroom table more effective for tipping torpedo over the side) but soon tubes both above and below the waterline became a regular feature of major warships, and remained such well beyond the end of our period.

Thirdly specialized ships could be built for torpedo warfare - comparatively large, fast and probably armoured. Finally small and very fast steam launches specially built for carrying torpedoes could be used. This prescient document outlined the development of the specialised torpedo vessel for the rest of the century.

The plan to cram torpedoes on pretty much everything that floated was formed in the 1870s, and all kinds of experimental vessels were constructed, from the Vesuvius and Polyphemus to Lightning. Most of those experiments didn't really pan out for various reasons, usually because various techs weren't mature enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vesuvius_(1874)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Polyphemus_(1881)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Lightning_(1876)
 
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That's pretty much what the RN did though:

The plan to use cram torpedoes on pretty much everything that floated was formed in the 1870s, and all kinds of experimental vessels were constructed, from the Vesuvius and Polyphemus to Lightning. Most of those experiments didn't really pan out for various reasons, usually because various techs weren't mature enough.
Okay so you have a cruiser, to get the speed to catch a torpedo boat, and same armament/range/seaworthiness of a torpedo gunboat (1885), assuming no armor (which the gunboat has), you can just do it in 1892 (when the DD appeared OTL), at a cost more than double that of the Gunboat (or a DD), with very delicate machinery and it still isn't all that seaworthy

The Howell entered service 4 years before the Whitehead, and the Whitehead had prototypes years before Howell came up with the idea
*sigh* It seemed so easy, when I came across this idea. Then you insist on confronting me with facts.:mad::openedeyewink:
 
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