A Quiz for You! - Became Battleships vs Battlecruisers

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

The most damaging hits were caused by HMS Invincible (along with Inflexible) So much so that Lutzow was out of action by 1837. The Death ride of the Battlecruisers was ordered by Scheer at 1913. Lutzow did not participate in this action as she was mortally wounded and disabled.

Ach - you are right. I thought she had participated, but I guess I was thinking about the Derfflinger, her sister ship, which suffered mightily in the Death Ride (but survived).

After looking it up - Lutzow suffered 10 hits, 6 from BC, 4 from the Fast BB squadron with 15" guns (according to one source, anyway). It looks like most of the BC hits were from 12" from Invincible/Inflexible. They are said by most sources to have caused the most damage, but the 15" shell is about double the weight of the 12" ones, so, I think the BBs made a big contribution here to the Lutzow's demise.

[Nikademus]

Well location of hit as well as shell size factor greatly in such a situation as this. All things being equal, yes i'd expect greater things from a 15inch vs a 12inch shell. Unfortunately for the British, their APC and CPC shellls of the time were prone to premature detonation before or as they were penetrating armor so the full potential of the big guns so to speak was much muted.

Invincible and Inflexible's hits were in the right area at the right time and are most responsible for her crippling. If you want a nausiating level of analysis on all the hits, i highly recommend John Cambell's "Jutland, an analysis of the fighting" It gives (litterally) a blow by blow accounting of the battle.

[rtrapasso]

Thanks for the reference - I'll have to check this out.[:)]

[Tiornu]

I believe Warship had a listing of losses to accidental explosion in one of the annuals a few years back. Perhaps the strangest incident was with the British monitor Glatton. After her loss, an inquiry discovered that the cork insulation had not been installed in the bulkhead between her boiler rooms and the magazines. In its place, someone had jammed some old newspapers. (No joke.) Her sistership Gorgon was then inspected and found to be in similar condition, with the newspaper blackened by heat.
"I have read the reasoning about the PE and Hood, but I never thought it stood up."
It can't stand up, despite all the outrageous legs they keep trying to glue onto it.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Tiornu

I've often see the "speed is armor" quote ascribed to Fisher, but I've never seen any documentation on its context. If he was referring to the use of large cruisers against the enemy's battle line, then I'd have to say the historical precedents tend to support his idea. I don't know of any disproportionate losses we can pin on him for it.
As far as I can tell, the only reason for proposing the disappearing mounts would be to indulge the appetite for newfangled whatevers.

The losses in BCs can't be pinned on Fischer (stupid freak designs like Furious, Courageous and Glorious which wasted resources could be), but on the Admirals commanding and deploying them. As cruisers got bigger and faster, so too did BCs, as the need for speed increased size and cost passed that of BBs. Because of this, many felt them a waste unless used in the battleline. Kaboom!

Excessively reactive "powder bags" for the 12-inch and 13.5-inch ammo seems to have been the immediate cause of the ships that blew up at Jutland. HMS Tiger was hit by more big shells than any RN ship at Jutland except Warspite and she didn't blow up.

If the "powder bags" had been less reactive, then BCs might have gotten less of a bad rep...Renown and Repulse did fine in surface actions and Hood might have blown up due to her own torpedoes being hit.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: fbastos

the navy with the largest sub fleet was......Britian

The Navy with the largest number of everything was British...

In this case it proves that the navy with most underutilized submarines was the Royal Navy.. [:D]

You mean the most-under-reported submarine work was done by RN submarines. Did the Germans ever have a large merchant marine to sink? No. But RN subs beat up the Turks in WWI and the Italians in WWII.

F.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Well location of hit as well as shell size factor greatly in such a situation as this. All things being equal, yes i'd expect greater things from a 15inch vs a 12inch shell. Unfortunately for the British, their APC and CPC shellls of the time were prone to premature detonation before or as they were penetrating armor so the full potential of the big guns so to speak was much muted.

Invincible and Inflexible's hits were in the right area at the right time and are most responsible for her crippling. If you want a nausiating level of analysis on all the hits, i highly recommend John Cambell's "Jutland, an analysis of the fighting" It gives (litterally) a blow by blow accounting of the battle.

Exactly: a hit from Invincible probably caused catastrophic flooding of the forward torpedo flat that resulted in the loss of Lutzow.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

The most damaging hits were caused by HMS Invincible (along with Inflexible) So much so that Lutzow was out of action by 1837. The Death ride of the Battlecruisers was ordered by Scheer at 1913. Lutzow did not participate in this action as she was mortally wounded and disabled.

Ach - you are right. I thought she had participated, but I guess I was thinking about the Derfflinger, her sister ship, which suffered mightily in the Death Ride (but survived).

After looking it up - Lutzow suffered 10 hits, 6 from BC, 4 from the Fast BB squadron with 15" guns (according to one source, anyway). It looks like most of the BC hits were from 12" from Invincible/Inflexible. They are said by most sources to have caused the most damage, but the 15" shell is about double the weight of the 12" ones, so, I think the BBs made a big contribution here to the Lutzow's demise.

the BC HMS Tiger took more than 15 11 and 12-inch hits and remained at speed with all guns firing for the whole battle. The fast BB HMS Warspite took about twice as many big hits and ended up going in circles for a while, but survived.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

There were a couple of other battleships that blew up supposedly due to "cordite" deterioration. Alas, I got rid of most of my books before leaving, so I can't remember who or what nations they belonged to... French? Italian? Russian? I think they are mentioned in passing in The World's Worst Warships. This has lots of fascinating stuff, prime material for quizzes.

I can think of a few "spontaneous" explosions: the BB HMS Vanguard, the pre-dreadnought battleship Bulwark, a German surface raider in Japan in WWII, the Maine (remember the Maine?). I'm sure there are more.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

ORIGINAL: madmickey

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

YOu mean Fisher acknowledged the submarine as a weapon? I thought that was back when the submarine "was not a gentleman's weapon, as it did not fight in plain view." Gotta love the British.

Not quite as goods as Beatty saying "There is something wrong with our ships" at Jutland or the British officer complaining that the German use of the 88-mm flak gun against tanks was not very sporting.

According to a documentary I saw on the BBC the other day, apparently all those battlecruiser of Beatty's that were blown away were destroyed by ammunition fires flashing from the turrets and handling rooms to the magazines. That was theorised for some time now.

But a bit more interesting, apparently at the time it was thought that ships wouldn't carry enough ammunition to cause a decisive blow the enemy - ie, they would run out of ammo before the battle was conclusively decided. A bit like how the ironclads of the American Civil War emptied their magazines into each other with minimal effect, I suppose.

Apparently Beatty's battlecruisers were carrying 110% or so of their designed ammunition capacity because of this, trying to squeeze in as much ammo and propellant as they could. Also, the British gunnery focused on rate of fire, to try and fire as many shells as they could in as short a time as possible. As a result of these policies, those battlecruisers had bags of cordite and shells lying around in the handling rooms, to speed reloading times and allow more ammo to be physically packed into the ships.

Needless to say, a spark in the turret caused by a penetrating shell hit didn't do this arrangement much good at all.

This documentary included some divers going down to the wrecks, and finding shell cases lying around in the handling rooms which shouldn't be there, which supports this theory.

Precisely. Apparently what happened was a chain-reaction, low-level explosion of the propellant bags. If one bag caught fire in the turret, the fire proceeded down the line of bags being passed up from the magazine. Supposedly on HMS Lion, a crewman was able to slam the doors to the magazine for Q turret shut before the fire got there.

[Nikademus]

The explosions suffered by the British were the result of a combination of unsafe ammunition practices (Doors left open between compartments and extra charges laid out...all to speed up rate of fire. (The Germans, despite the lesson learned at Dogger Bank were still guilty of the same thing as well)) and unstable proplellant that was prone to violent spontanious ignition....much more so than German propellant which was safer and was partially stored in brass cases.

Lion was was the ne plus ultra example. After her Q turret was partially penetrated ammunition charges ignited violently and swept through the upper portions of the barbette. The fire was doused but smouldering cordite reignited later on (around 30min), the sheet of flame reputedly shooting out as high as the mainmast of the ship. The ship though was saved from her half sister's fate because Q's magazine had been previously flooded. But it was a grim demonstration of how volitile British cordite could be.

German charges, even when they ignited, tended to burn out more slowly vs the violent combustion and compression wave of the British product, thus they were spared similar fates though Seydlitz was definately lucky at Dogger Bank. Only the Pommern suffered a magazine explosion due to a torpedo hit. The Deutchland class had a known weakness for poorly protected secondary magazine and an explosion here was the likely culpret

[madmickey]

Sarcasm on
I guess Admiral Beatty had no control how the ships were handled (including ammo loading) in his fleet.
Sarcasm off

[Nikademus]

As the Admiralty as a whole thought their cordite safe, cant see how Beatty can be blamed. While the prewar Admiralty conducted several tests that seemed to indicate a low risk of detonation, they ignored a key test that aptly and violently demonstrated the danger.

As mentioned, the Germans were just as guilty of ignoring saftey procedures for the sake of increased ROF.

[madmickey]

He was the one who made the comment about something wrong with the bloody ships and he allowed overloading of ammo.

[Nikademus]

Assuming he was aware that it was being done, again, it was not an uncommon practice throughout the navies of the world at the time. In hindsight of course, its easy to turn around and say all parties should have known better. Beatty's comment in of itself was proof that most did not suspect such a thing could happen much less so frequently.

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: madmickey

He was the one who made the comment about something wrong with the bloody ships and he allowed overloading of ammo.

Beatty can be blamed for a lot, but he basically did a very good job at Jutland and everyone knew it and he got command of the Fleet eventually after the battle.

The RN had not had bad propellant fires before Jutland, but the problem was more with the propellant casings than with the handling anyway. The Germans had safer propellants but still had a number of massive fires, though these did not result in ships blowing up.
The fires that wiped out turrets on several German ships at Dogger Bank and Jutland would almost certainly have completely blown up the ships if they had had RN-style propellent bags/casings.

[herbieh]

I think what Beatty said after the comment "there seems to be something bloody wrong with our ships today" is even more insightful - " turn 2 points towards the enemy"[X(]

Steadfast Englishman that

[MengCiao]

ORIGINAL: herbieh

I think what Beatty said after the comment "there seems to be something bloody wrong with our ships today" is even more insightful - " turn 2 points towards the enemy"[X(]

Steadfast Englishman that

I know this is what Beatty was quoted as saying after the Inflexible and the Queen Mary blew up, but the ship track turns away from the Germans at that point and no more of his squadron was blown up. The Flagships of Arbothnot and Hood were the next Armored Cruisers and Battlecruisers to blow up.

Perhaps Chapman heard him wrong. Anyway about an hour later Beatty's squadron went in a complete circle because the helmsman was told to make a turn of such and such degrees but not to stop. That was after Warspite's out-of-control circle under the guns of the High Seas Fleet.

I've never seen a good simulation of Jutland. You need smoke and signals being misread and smokesignals.

[Hornblower]

Not to turn this into the Dreadnought threat but here I go anyway. After Jutland the RN realized that the quality of there shells resulted in many a German ship reaching port that shouldn’t have – Seydlitz which actually ran aground on the way home, Derfflinger, Koing & G.Kurfurst- come to mind. Issue was that there nose caps on the AP shells were too brittle and the burster they used, too sensitive, so when it hit it either broke up or detonated prematurely before reaching the ships vitals. Subsequently they redesigned it with a TNT burster.

On the subject of the cordite, the Brits used a Vaseline based solvent to stabilize the propellant, that actually increased the instability of the cordite making it much more likely to flash off. Whereas the Germans used a solvent less formula, which meant that the Germans tended to Burn while the Brits flashed. So when the Seydlitz was hit at Dogger Bank her cordite burned not flashed, and allowed time to flood the Magazines. This gave them insight into another problem.. Single doors in the handling room, hoists, ect. The explosion had a good likelihood of passing the single doors of the main host and handling room to the depth of the magazine. After Dogger Bank the Germans doubled up the doors, reducing the likelihood of the flash of the shell exploding penetrating down to the magazine. The brits not having suffered this type of hit prior to Jutland had no knowledge of the inherent weakness of there design. After Jutland they too installed new flash-tight scuttles and extra deck armor

[madmickey]

ORIGINAL: MengCiao


Beatty can be blamed for a lot, but he basically did a very good job at Jutland and everyone knew it and he got command of the Fleet eventually after the battle.

Allowing Battlecruiser to be exposed to heavy plunging fire was a good idea.
Yeah the British learned that lesson well, notice how they used the Hood against the Bismark in WWII.
I am a Canadian and it usually us colonials, who pay the price of British arrogance and promotion of nobles in the British military