Battleship: Encyclopedia II - Battleship - Industrial Age

Battleship - Industrial Age

However, from the early 1840s onwards, several technological innovations started to revolutionize the conception of warships. Reliable steam power made warships much more maneuverable, and became the obvious choice against sail as soon as the issue of long-distance travel and re-coaling was solved. Naval guns with exploding shells, capable of penetrating wooden hulls and setting them on fire, were invented by the French Admiral Henri-Joseph Paixhans, and adopted from 1841 by the navies of France, England, Russia and the United States. Their efficacy, largely proven during the Crimean War in turn led to the development of the first ironclad warships in 1859, and the subsequent generalization of iron hulls. In the 1860s major naval powers built "armoured frigate" type ships, which, although having only one gundeck, were used as battleships, not frigates. The first steel-hulled ships then appeared in 1876, with the launch of the French Redoutable.

Battleship - Explosive-shell naval guns

Although explosive shells had long been in use in ground warfare (in howitzers and mortars), they could only be fired at high angles in elliptical trajectories and with relatively low velocities, which rendered them impractical for marine combat. Naval combat had required flat-trajectory guns in order to have some odds of hitting the target, so that naval warfare had consisted for centuries in encounters between flat-trajectory cannons using inert cannonballs, which a wooden boat could rather easily absorb.

The French general Henri-Joseph Paixhans developed a time-delay mechanism which, for the first time, allowed shells to be fired safely by high-powered and hence flat-trajectory guns. The effect of explosive shells against wooden hulls causing fires was devastating. The first Paixhans guns were produced in 1841 and France, Great Britain, Russia and the United States adopted the new naval guns in the 1840s. The change on naval warfare was demonstrated to its greatest effect when the Russian Navy equipped with these guns annihilated the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Sinop in 1853.

From 1854, the American John A. Dahlgren, took the Paixhans gun, which was designed only for a shell, to develop a gun capable of firing shot and shell, and these were used during the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Battleship - Ironclads

Britain's naval supremacy was further challenged in 1859 when France launched Gloire, the first ocean-going ironclad warship. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most of her journeys, Gloire was fitted with a propeller and her wooden hull was protected by a layer of thick iron armour. This ship instantly rendered all British battleships obsolete, as British vessels would easily be outmaneuvered and their cannonballs would simply bounce off Gloire's revolutionary metal armour. Britain sparked a massive naval arms race by launching the much-superior Warrior in 1860. The improvements in ship design that followed, meant that both ships were obsolescent within 10 years. With the Royal Navy's "wooden walls" rendered obsolete by the new breed of ironclad ships, other world powers seized the opportunity to build high-tech warships to rival British vessels, and major warship construction programmes began in earnest in Britain, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Prussia/Germany. Desperate to maintain naval superiority (under the premise that the Royal Navy had to outnumber the world's next two largest navies combined), the British government spent more and more money on up-to-the-minute warship designs.

Battleship - Turrets and rifled guns

Soon after, however, turreted guns began to be used, following the designs of the shipwright John Ericsson. This was largely necessitated by the introduction of paddle wheels, which prevented ships from displaying lines of guns along their sides. Turrets allowed the guns to fire on both beams, so fewer guns needed to be carried. In the 1870s the armoured frigate type, with its side-ported guns, dropped out of fashion. Armoured cruisers, which were first built with broadside guns, soon adopted turrets as well. The transition from smoothbore cannon to Rifled Muzzle Loaders and Rifled Breech Loaders greatly affected the design of the ships. The fear that an enemy naval power could launch an attack with ships that were only slightly superior became a major factor in British defence policy during the late 19th Century. Warship technology was advancing so rapidly from 1865-1906 that new battleships were often rendered obsolete within a few years of construction. This created a huge financial strain - by 1870, the British government was spending a staggering 37% of its annual national budget on the construction of new battleships.

Battleship - Brown powder

Various technological advances affected the naval arms race. The development of brown powder was a critical step in the creation of the modern battleship—black powder combusted rapidly, and therefore useful cannons required relatively short barrels, otherwise the friction of the barrel would slow down the shell accelerated by the violent expansion of the powder. The sharpness of the black powder explosion also meant that guns were subjected to extreme material stress. Brown powder, which combusted less rapidly, allowed longer barrels, which allowed greater accuracy; and because it expanded less sharply than black powder, it put less strain on the insides of the barrel, allowing guns to last longer and to be manufactured to tighter tolerances. This permitted a battleship to mount fewer guns to greater effect than its predecessors.

Battleship - Design experiments

From 1870 to 1890 battleship design was in a wildly experimental phase, as different navies experimented with different turret arrangements, sizes and numbers, with each new design rendering the previous ones largely obsolete overnight. Unlike the English the French often built a single example of each new design. Therefore the French navy was mocked as a " fleet of samples". Bizarre experimental warships appeared—a series of German warships were built with dozens of small guns to repel smaller craft, a British vessel was built using a turbine engine (which ironically became the main propulsion system for all ships), whilst an entire class of French battleships — known as "fierce-face" — were designed without regard to symmetry or harmony of appearance, sometimes even trying to intimidate enemy crews through their aggressive appearance. The main battleship nations during this period were Britain, France and Russia, plus newcomers Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, while Turkey and Spain built small numbers of armoured frigates and cruisers, and Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands built smaller "coastal battleships" ("Pantserschip" or "Panzership" (depending on the language) of up to 5,000 tons. Some navies experimented with "second class battleships," vessels which were designed to be less expensive than full battleships but also at the cost of power; these were not, however, particularly popular, especially in navies of nations with global ambitions. The United States experimented with four such ships, including the first two American battleships, Maine and Texas.

The first warships resembling modern battleships were built in Britain around 1870 with the Devastation class of low-freeboard turret ships, a few years after the first battle between ironclad warships (the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia). However, it was not until around 1880 that battleship design became stable enough for larger classes to be built to a single design. Later in the period battleship displacement grew rapidly as more powerful engines and more armour and minor guns were added. Many experimental ships were built, but all navies finally converged on a design known after-the-fact as Pre-dreadnoughts, which were battleships built in the period 1890–1905 and usually having a displacement of 9,000–16,000 tons, a speed of 13–18 knots, and an armament of four "big guns", usually 12" (305mm) in bore diameter, in two centreline turrets, fore and aft, plus a heavy intermediate battery of typically eight 8" guns carried in double turrets on the superstructure corners, and a secondary battery of smaller guns. The 12" mains and 8" intermediates were generally used for battleship to battleship combat, while the secondaries (typically 7" to 5") were reserved for smaller threats, cruisers and the new destroyers. A small number of designs, including the American Kearsarge and Virginia classes, experimented with the 8" secondary superimposed over the 12" primary, with less than stellar results. Turrets, armour plate, and steam engines were all improved over the years, and torpedo tubes were introduced. However, events in 1906 sparked off another naval arms race.

Battleship - All-big-guns

In 1905 the Russian Navy was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tsushima by the modern Japanese Navy, which was equipped with the latest battleships. The events of the battle revealed to the world that only the biggest guns mattered in modern naval battles. As secondary guns grew in size, spotting gun splashes (and aiming) between main and secondary guns became problematic. The Battle of Tsushima demonstrates that damage from the main guns was much greater than secondary guns. In addition, the battle demonstrated the practicability of gun battles beyond the range of secondary guns (12,000 yards).

The United States, Japan, and Britain all realized this and launched plans for all-big-gun ships. The Imperial Japanese Navy's Satsuma was the first battleship in the world to be designed and laid down as an all-big-gun battleship, although gun shortages only allowed her to be equipped with four of the twelve 12-in guns that had been planned.

Britain, led by Head of Admiralty Jacky Fisher, took the lead and completed Dreadnought in only 11 months. Dreadnought carried ten 12-inch guns in 5 turrets, and was powered not by reciprocating engines, but by revolutionary (for large ships) steam turbines. Previous ships powered by reciprocating steam engines were, in practice, limited by engine vibration to 18 knots. Even at that speed vibration limited aiming ability and the engines wore out quickly. Dreadnought had a top speed of 21 knots. It was the first of the new breed of "all-big-gun" battleships. Major naval powers raced to build their own dreadnoughts to avoid being overtaken by Britain. The Royal Navy, labouring under the expectation that it match any two of its competitors combined, began demanding increasingly unaffordable sums from the government for dreadnought construction. The government, already burdened with financial crises caused by the military catastrophe of the Second Boer War and a voting population demanding more government expenditure on welfare and public works, could not afford to squander precious money on even more dreadnoughts, allowing rival navies (particularly the Kaiserliche Marine) to catch up with Britain's battleship forces. Even after Dreadnought's commission, battleships continued to grow in size, guns, and technical proficiency as countries vied to have the best ships. By 1914 Dreadnought was outmoded. This expensive arms race would not end until the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty limited the number and size of battleships that each major nation could possess.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Industrial Age", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki