One thing that has always fascinated me is the number of British Capital ships which suffered catastrophic explosions despite receiving comparitivly little punishment, the three Battle Crusiers and one Heavy Crusier at Jutland and HMS Barham and HMS Hood in the Second World War.
Other nations ships suffered from mag explosions as well, but usually after being pounded, and German ships were able to shrug off obscene amounts of punishment and survive, the Derfflinger at Jutland for instance.
What was the flaw that made British ships so vulnerable.
Well, Hood wasn’t really a flawed design - it was just outclassed. It was considered a battle-cruiser - it was built to go fast and pack a punch comparable to conventional battleships, but the trade-off was that it was less heavily armored than a battleship. It was a glass cannon, and it really shouldn’t have engaged the Bismarck. In addition - capitol ships of that era were always vulnerable to high, plunging fire that would hit the deck of the ship. That area, as I understand it, almost always had thinner armor.
So, Hood was outclassed and took an unlucky hit besides.
As Mr. Excellent noted, and as you pointed out in the OP, a significant number of those disasters involved battle cruisers. Unfortunately for British seamen, the Admiralty fell in love with the concept of a heavily armed ship that could go really fast while still delivering an enormous punch. It would be strong enough to overwhelm anything it could catch while fast enough to run away from anything that could fight back.
The way to do that was to build a ship with a battleship’s hull length, (to gain speed and provide a platform for the big guns), while not weighing it down with a battleship’s armor. Had they built a modest number of these things to employ as designed, the design might have worked. (Think of having a really fast ship able to track down and destroy all those German light cruisers running around below the Equator in WWI or the pocket battleships of early WWII without having to send whole squadrons of cruisers out to fight them.)
Unfortunately, in a serious battle it is a good idea to have as many ships on your side as possible, so they tended to get placed into the line of battle as though they were actual heavily armored battleships. Then, when the shells started falling, they were out of luck.
(The Hood was slightly different in that it had had its armor upgraded, although not enough to stand up to the Bismarck’s primary guns, but it was also one of the few ships available to goafter the Bismarck after its breakout, leaving the Hood vulnerable to the Bismarck.)
The Barham was a bit different. It was actually sunk by the near simultaneous striking of three torpedoes. The magazine explosion occcurred during the sinking when extra anti-aircraft ammunition that had been stored in unsecured locations near the magazines, (because the Mediterranean was a place where you wanted to have as much AA ammo ready as quickly as possible), happened to get set off by the torpedo-lit fires.
I agree with **tomdebb’s **comments about the inherent problems with the battle cruiser concept - it was a definite case of Jackie Fisher enthusiasm over-riding coherent thought - but remember that the German *Derfflinger *was also a battle cruiser and did not blow up.
Peter Padfield analyses this – at least in relation to the ships at Jutland – in his book Battleship. His conclusion is that it was not primarily differences in design that made the difference but the extremely lax application of the designed in precautions on the British ships and the instability of the high explosive used by the RN.
The original concept of the battle cruiser was to move relatively quickly to remote parts of the world and make a decisive change in the local balance of power, much in the way that US carriers do today.
Their role was not intended to be part of a fleet as such, and not as part of a battle group.
The problem is that the British Admiralty simply could not ignore all that firepower, when you are stretched right across the globe, the idea of having a super heavy raider that was not part of the regular fighting formation could not be accepted, and battle cruisers instead were given the role of working within battle fleets - a role for which they were simply not equipped.
If you want to look at how the battle cruiser was supposed to work then you could look at the WW1 Battle of the Falklands, which was a response to the German victory at Coronel.
The battlecruisers Inflexible and Invincible were accompanied by a number of other fast warships and destroyed the German fleet - although today we might think of the journey time from the UK down to the Falklands a long one, in those days military logistics were very differant, it took only a month to get these heavy units down to the South Atlantic and carry out their mission, would was considered ‘rapid response’.
The idea would be that battlecruisers would overmatch anything except main battlefleets.
HMS Hood had been due for a major refit shortly before WWII began, and the major work to be done was to increase he thickness, depth and shape of her armour belt, and some analysts suggest that had this been done instead of postponed, she would have survived the Bismarck attack, and probably have destroyed or severly damaged Bismarck, especially as she was in company to Prince of Wales.
It also turns out that had Hood engaged Bismarck at a shorter range, then any incoming shells would have hit the existing armour protection, and the diastrous magazine explosion would not have ocurred.This range reduction was part of the original battle plan, which would also have had Bismarck silhoutted against a setting sun and the Hood against a darkened sky, but as often happens in battle, plans are often disrupted by fairly minor occurance, and in this case it was loss of radr contact of the German ships for a crucial period by HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk and its during this crucial time that the range between the main protagonists would have been less than 10 miles, and also importantly, the British would almost certainly had the element of surprise.
But for a few changes, and quite small ones, this battle would almost certainly gone very differantly, the British Admiralty were well aware of the strengths and shortcomings of Hood and had a very good plan, just didn’t quite work out that way.
As casdave explains, the concept of a battlecruiser was not flawed – the problem lay in using it for purposes it was not intended for. A ship with the firepower of a battleship (but not the defensive armor) and the speed of a cruiser can be an overawing presence able to respond rapdily over a wide area. But putting a battlecruiser against a battleship is a major mistake, akin to putting a 12-year-old martial artist against a fullgrown street fighter. The kid might win with a lucky blow or two at the beginning of the fight, but if not, he’s doomed. Likewise a battlecruiser has the oomph to fight but not the ability to take the kind of punishment that the battleship can.
The problem with the Hood was that despite best efforts, Britain barely had the forces to deal with the Bismarck, so it threw everything available into the fight. The Prince of Wales, its newest battleship, was not even fully completed – launched, but with construction crews putting the final touches on its systems when it sailed into combat alongside the Hood. There had not even been a shakedown cruise to ensure that crew and officers knew what to do on that ship in that circumstance. (It’s all very well for orders to read to send #1 gun crew to the forward turret – but how, exactly, do you get there belowdecks on this particular ship, when the enemy is firing on you? That, among other things like identifying what particular changes need to be made, is what a shakedown cruise accomplishes.) When the Hood went down, the PoW ltried to relocate the Bismarck then left the scene – a sensible decision for an unseasoned ship and crew, despite the circumstances.)
I was under the impression the Barham was considered a fullfledged battleship, though one of the oldest in the Fleet.
Ok, but how come German Battlecruisers were able to take the massive amount of punishment that they sustained. I think both Lutzow and Derfflinger took close to 30 heavy hits (including many from '15 Inch guns of the QE Class) and nither was sunk, though Lutzow had to be scuttled as she could not cross a sandbank safely after disengaging.
And was’nt the AA ammo being set off the reason for the Arizona being lost as well, ala Barham
The German designs were better in terms of survivability. For example the bulkheads that seperated the water tight compartments had no openings below deck. To get from the forward section to an aft compartment meant climbing up above deck moving back and then down again. This meant that the integrity of the water tight compartments could not be compromised by sailors leaving water tight hatches open.
The germans also tended to favour armour over firepower, their ships typically had slightly smaller guns than their British counterparts but heavier armour.
And as the quote MarcusF gave shows, the British had a terrible tendency to ignore safety precautions in order to increase their rate of fire.
The German ships had greater compartmentalisation, which reflected the fact that their crews lived in barracks when in harbour and that German ships were not configured for world cruises lasting many months or years. Also British shells were poorly designed and broke up on the armour belt without exploding. Hood was recognised as an unsatisfactory design even before it entered service. More armour was poured on the upper works at that point but it was always recognised that the ship was deficient in overhead protection. Had the scheduled reconstruction taken place in 1941 she would have emerged resembling a modified Renown. Compare with the reconstructed Warspite which absorbed significant damage in the war without exploding.
The nature of British propellant probably contributed as well. Consider the magazine explosions in Natal, Bulwark and Vanguard, all without enemy intervention (and we can safely discount the inevitable rumours at the time).
Mk VII nailed it pretty well above as have other contributors. The British battle cruisers were designed to roam the world to destroy commerce raiders - not to stand with battle ships in a brawl- and had to be given sufficient crew accommodation which made other things, such as armour, less of a priority.
As stated, the intention of the battle cruiser was to eliminate commerce raiders and act as scouts for the fleet- this became distorted into fighting with the fleet. Also, at the Battle of Dogger Bank, a hit on Seydlitz almost demolished the German battle cruiser but they learned the lesson and instituted new anti flash measures- something the British didn’t institute until after Jutland.* (I will come back to this).
One thing also is that explosions of magazines in vessels was not unknown- especially in pre dreadnoughts.
*In a book I read recently it stated that when Beatty was in charge of the battle cruiser squadron of the Grand Fleet, it came to his notice the poor shooting results. Instead of more shooting practice, he decided if they fired more rapidly they would obtain more hits. To effect this, he ordered the anti flash doors of the battle cruisers be removed to speed up firing. This contributed to the disasters at Jutland. As I mentioned, I had never heard this stated before so I cannot comment on the accuracy.
I am glad that Warspite is mentioned. All the QE’s were at Jutland (excpet QE herself) and were engaged througout the battle except the first 20 minutes, and they all survived BUT came off worse in the battle against the Derfflingers a battlecruiser class. Of course Barham would suffer her mag explosion a generation later.
Why did the British ships have glass jaws so to speak. I get the less armour bit, but it goes against 300 years of tradition, British ships had in the age of sail a reputation for being able to withstand immense punishment and surviving, HMS Victory at Trafalger for instance. Why was the policy changed?
I’d have to disagree with the assessment that the QE’s came off worse than the German battlecruisers. Of the five German battle cruisers Lutzow was sunk, Sedlitz would have sunk except for such a short voyage home and all required dry docking for repairs. The Derrflinger was unavailable until 15 October. In contrast,the Valiant was not hit by heavy shells and the one with the most serious damage (due to jammed steering) was out of dry dock by 20 July. Barham and Malaya were out of dry dock earlier in July.
Even though three of the German battle cruisers received more hits than the QE’s I can not see how they came off worse in battle against the battle cruisers.
And to be precise, the damage to the QE’s was not caused by the German battle cruisers. In the run to the south only the Barham suffered any hits (two). The damage was caused later- principally by the guns of the High Seas Fleet.
MarcusF is right about the major reason that British battle cruisers suffered horrifying losses during WWI and comparable German ships did not - the disabling of design features that were supposed to prevent magazines from blowing up (along with weaker armor protection). There’s an account in one of Massie’s books (“Castles of Steel”, I think) about how there was one near-catastrophic explosion aboard a German battle cruiser early in the war that occurred because of magazine vulnerability. The Germans learned from this experience and fitted comparable ships with protective features. The British didn’t.
It could have been even worse for the British. At the Battle of Jutland the mortally wounded Royal Marine Major Francis Harvey saved the HMS Lion by ordering the magazine flooded.
Castles of Steel is a great book. My copy puts this at 419. The battle was the battle of the Dogger Bank, and the ship was SMS Seydlitz. Battle of Dogger Bank (1915) - Wikipedia
I have to say I buy Massie’s argument (and not just because he’s a first-rate scholar in the field)–but because it makes sense. His point was that neither navy really understood how dangerous an explosion could be–how it could flash into a turret, or start somewhere in the ship, and quickly spread to the magazines.
The Germans figured this out after the object lesson of Seydlitz. The protection that was installed didn’t require redesign–for example, making much better use of the available precautions by ensuring they were always used, including installing anti-flash devices and curtains in turret trunks and along the ammunition route (which served to stop an explosion spreading–especially to the magazines) . These were either absent (as nobody really understood how bad the problem was), or removed because they made it awkward to move around.
No cite (sorry), but I recall reading that another factor was that the British fire control systems in general — and optics in particular — were inferior to the Germans’. This led to the emphasis on rate of fire (to counter the Germans’ greater accuracy), which in turn led to safety measures being disabled/disregarded, which led to. . . .
(All of which may be complete bushwa and/or the product of a deranged memory. In which case it’s open to the mocking it richly deserves.)
The Germans were pretty dissatisfied themselves with their rangefinders, as it transpired after the war, and didn’t consider them vastly superior to that of their enemies.
Arthur Pollen certainly thought his fire-control system was better than the Dreyer Table which the RN adopted and which he claimed plagiarised his ideas. I will merely say that argument continues as to the merits of the various systems with no consensus.
At the Battle of the Falklands, the British opened fire at ranges exceedng 12,000 yards. They fired off more than 1200 shells, and achived about a 1% hit rate.
Was this due to bad rangefinders, or siply the inability to compensate for the inaccuracies in such a long range?
I think you’ll find the battle of Dogger Bank was mentioned in my post at #11, as was the Seydlitz.
In regard to the post above, long range gunfire was quite poor in the British Battlecruiser squadrons in particular. The accuracy of the British battleships differed little to the accuracy of the German battleships at Jutland.
The difference of accuracy between the British battleships versus battlecruisers was attributed to Jellicoe ensuring more practice than Beatty insisted upon. At the Falklands however the Navy had only recently passed out of the era of close range fire and the battle cruisers were trying to fight at long distances- that is outside the range of the German guns. It was only realized later in the war that at ranges of greater than 10,000 yards the expectation of a hit was as low as 5 %.