Was the mag explosion something that killed the ship or was she doomed anyway and the mag explosion merely the coup de grace?
When you look at the film of it, she’s capsizing and she’s not coming back. The explosion was irrelevant to the sinking.
edit – I see now MarcusF’s point has been echoed by others. Here’s a bit more on the topic.
Most of the books I’ve read emphasize that the Royal Navy specifically ignored/overrode its own safety equipment.
The explosions of all the British battlecruisers at Jutland, and also the Hood, took place after hits to the turret trunk – the huge cylinder running down from the turret into the “armored box” that contained the magazine. Turret trunks were compartmentalized with anti-flash shields that were supposed to work something like airlocks – you’d open one shield, move the propellant and shells into the compartment, close that shield, and only then open the next shield and move the propellant into the next compartment, and thus up to the turret.
This process was time-consuming. In numerous engagements, British gunners repeatedly left the anti-flash shields entirely open to speed firing rate. Occasionally this caught up with them – a shell would penetrate the turret trunk, and the explosion would pass right down the cylinder (which was crowded with propellant and shells being brought up, propagating the explosion) into the magazine.
The reduced deck armor and the use of battlecruisers in the line of battle increased the likelihood that someone, sooner or later, would take a penetrating hit to the turret trunk – but when that happened, the main cause of the ship losses was the neglected anti-flash barriers.
As if to prove that point, HMS Lion was penetrated in the turret trunk at Jutland, but a new gunnery officer had ordered stricter adherence to ammunition-handling safety rules, and the resulting flash fire propagated “more slowly” (we’re talking quite fast in actuality) allowing a quick-thinking Royal Marine to flood the magazines before the flash arrived, saving the ship. Cite – skip to “Battle of Jutland.”
Why didn’t they learn? Well, they did learn. But turret-trunk penetrations were rare, and a high volume of fire is enticing. Offensive power is more seductive than opening and closing flash doors and other boring safety procedures.
.
Naval battles were less survivable period in the modern era due to the much deadlier artillery available. Basically nothing, not even a battleship, could survive many hits from another battleship’s main guns. In this context armor simply meant being resistant to catastrophic single-point failure from a lucky hit, rather than being in any sense invulnerable to fourteen-inch guns.
I should add, thus winning a posthumous Victoria Cross.
Churchill’s famous summation of this change was to say that Jellicoe (the commander at Jutland) “could have lost the war in an afternoon.” Dreadnoughts individually were mighty, but as a system they could crumble faster than, and take longer to replace than, Nelson’s wooden fleet of a hundred-odd years earlier.
Another great quote on this topic comes from the admiral in charge of the British battlecruiser fleet, Beatty. Two battlecruisers, Queen Mary and Indefatigable, had already been blown up by magazine explosions. Informed (erroneously, it turned out) that Princess Royal had just been destroyed (she’d actually been obscured by spray while under heavy fire), Beatty remarked with the sort of sang-froid the Royal Navy prides itself on, “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”
I think its pertinent to note that the battlecruiser Tiger took more than a dozen hits at Jutland and survived. So Battlecruisers could take hits it seems.
This makes me wonder: what determined the optimum number of guns per ship? Would it have made any military sense to build more numerous ships with just one or two big guns each than one ship bearing a large battery?
After the Seydlitz disaster the Germans discovered the danger of magazine fires. The British did not. Further, German ships were tougher than the British due to design trade-off. The Germans held the first duty of a naval ship was to stay afloat.
This led to greater compartmentalization and greater damage-control capability. The British ships were designed to operate all over the world. This led to more open spaces for better livability during long cruises.
While ship can suffer a deadly blow (SMS Seydlitz, HMS Hood) British ships were more prone to such a thing due to their design.
(THat was a poor post. Sorry, when I get back I will try to be clearer.)
The advantage of multiple guns is that you get a spread of shells around the aiming point increasing the chances of a hit. Also with multiple guns a turret can be put out of action but the ship can still hit back with its remaining weapons.
The HMS Furious was a light cruiser built with two 18 inch guns in single turrets, the concept was found to be lacking and Furious was converted into a carrier.
Also, from the Twenties you have the treaty restrictions on the number of ships you can build and the tonnage. The 35,000 ton limit imposed on the King George V class, on the assumption that the Washington limits would be renewed in the London Treaty (which did not happen because the Japanese withdrew) resulted in mediocre ships which were just not in the class as the Iowas, designed without regard to treaty limits.
Well, they came pretty close to that, in comparison to earlier times. Typical was nine big guns or so for battleships. Compare that to the wooden ship era, where the biggest ships had over a hundred guns (though I think something like 70 was more common).
You need a pretty big ship to act as a stable platform for the big guns. If you mounted them on something smaller than a battleship, they might very well capsize with every shot. The Russian navy tried a few experiments here, prior to the development of dreadnoughts, and the result was a round ship with two of the biggest currently available guns. It couldn’t manuever well at all, and was awkward to the point of being useless, so the design was abandoned. See the Wiki article on the Novgorod, and a picturefor reference.
Here is an article that touches on that. The various scenarios provide excellent illustrations of the effects of different design philosophies such as heavier guns vs better protection and the like.
I don’t think more numerous ships is a good idea.
In Jutland, the British brought 24 Battleships in it’s main force (the Grand Fleet, not the Battlecruiser force). This formed a “line ahead” line rather long. The ships in the tail end of the line barely saw the enemy line before he disengaged, and didn’t get any shots off.
If you had 50 ships with 2 guns a-piece, they need more sea room than 10 ships with 10 guns a-piece. (I bet you’ll need more manpower to crew all that, as well.)
But the limit is the crew. A large ship requires less crew-per-gun than a smaller. This is because a single large ship pays the same overhead costs (in crew positions) as smaller one. Several smaller one pay the overhead several times.
Magazines can be dangerous even at anchor. Case in point The battleship IJN Mutsu blew up in harbour in 1943.
Sorry to revivive an old thread, but the last is wrong. Barham suffered 4 hits from Derfflinger and Warspite 4 from Seydlitz during the run to the north, when the Battlecrusers and QE’s were attempting to escape.
I fail to see your point. I was talking of the run to the South then you have mentioned the run to the North. If you are trying to make something of the statement that the QE’s suffered principally from the guns of the High Seas Fleet, again I don’t think you have much of a point.
In the run to the north Seydlitz only scored three hits, yet you say she scored four hits on Warspite alone. The records show that Warspite received only two hits from heavy gunfire during the period 5.54 to 7.15 (the run to the North). Again, these figures do not support your assertion.
Warspite later received 11 hits from the German High Seas Fleet. Those 11 hits from the heavier guns did the principal damage.
Barham did receive 4 hits in the run to the North, but which ship fired them is unclear. It may have been the battle cruisers but equally it could have been by the Konig.
My stats are from Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting (1986) and Der Kreig zur See (1925).
Sorry its two hits from Seydlitz on Warspite. My mistake. Still, thats not something the QE’s should be proud off, especially considering that their own hits which should have destroyed the Derfflinger’s did not.