Tell me about WWI Battleships

Factual Questions
1

I am currently reading The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. In the chapter “Goeben… An Enemy Then Flying” she recounts Britain’s fruitless pursuit of the battlecrusier Goeben and Breslau in the Mediterranean. Saving the details, what I am interested in is the battleships themselves and how they operated.

General type of questions I have: Did WWI era ships need a nearly constant supply of coal? Was there a legion of men employeed to constantly shovel coal into the burners? How long did it take for a ship to produce enough steam to propel itself? How did “coaling” play in strategy for naval commanders? How far could a ship travel on a single load of coal? Etc, etc. Please just tell me all you know about WWI warships. (I’ve read the obligatory Wikipedia page on Dreadnoughts, etc.)

2

By WWI, the British navy had switched to oil (look up the Mesopotamian campaign to see one of the more appalling side effects of that decision). I would assume some coal-fired ships were still in service, though.

3

The Goeben was coal-fired, I believe. Coaling was definitely a strategic consideration, since running out of fuel far from home is not good for your longevity. Figure about 6000 miles sailing at conservative speeds, maybe 3500 at high speed. That is based on a 2700 ton load of coal. See here for some extracts on the general design.

4

[QUOTE=Spezza]
How long did it take for a ship to produce enough steam to propel itself?
[/QUOTE]

When I was on a destroyer with a steam powerplant (oil fired, but that shouldn’t make much difference to this question) it took something like 2 hours to go from a “cold” plant to “ready to get underway.” Obviously, if you were anywhere that required power at shorter notice, you kept the plant warm. Unless shore services were available, even while in port you’d need steam to make electricity & fresh water.

5

Several innovations came about for the big gun ships in WW1:

  1. The HMS Dreadnought pioneered the concept of prioritizing the number of big guns, at the
    expense of the small calibers. Before then you typically had 4 12 inchers, and a number of
    medium calibers (5-7 inches). The Dreadnought upped the number of big caliber pieces to 8,
    while still keeping several secondary pieces (usually 5 inches).

  2. One weakness of the Dreadnought was that 2 of the turrets were on the wings near amidships:
    these turrets could only fire on the side of the ship where they were mounted. Subsequent
    designs put them all on the centerline.

  3. Casemate guns (secondaries mounted in the sides of the ship, firing through holes in the
    hull) were on their way out too. Casemate guns were a holdover from the days of Nelson et al.,
    and later were discovered to be useless vs. planes (but that’s not the only reason they went
    extinct).

  4. The USS Nevada pioneered the so-called “all or nothing” armor scheme: all compartments
    midships were designed to keep the ship afloat even if the bow and stern were totally
    flooded. An application of the “He who protects everything protects nothing” principle.

  5. Guns increased in size, eventually reaching 15 inches in some mid-late war designs.

  6. The battlecruiser turned out to be a flawed design. Ostensibly able to outgun those ships
    it couldn’t outrun, and vice-versa, in general fleet actions (Jutland) they suffered some rather
    high casualty rates, often having an enemy shell penetrate a magazine and blowing the
    ship sky high (a la Hood 25 years later).

6

[QUOTE=Xema]
When I was on a destroyer with a steam powerplant (oil fired, but that shouldn’t make much difference to this question) it took something like 2 hours to go from a “cold” plant to “ready to get underway.” Obviously, if you were anywhere that required power at shorter notice, you kept the plant warm. Unless shore services were available, even while in port you’d need steam to make electricity & fresh water.
[/QUOTE]

Xema, you are the person I am looking for!

2 hours to get underway, eh? Tuchman does mention that, at one point, the captain keeps the boilers stoked to be ready to make flight with 15 minutes notice. So, for a ship at sea, is it constantly burning oil/coal, or will it shut down and weigh anchor? Or, were these old ships basically static ships that could only move by chewing into their fuel reserves? How much (what percentage) of their fuel reserves would it take to get underway? How much fuel does keeping “the plant warm” require? Or, how long (not distant, but time), could a ship travel for with one load of fuel?

When the ship is in port, how is the power generated? Is there a plant on shore burning oil/coal to provide the steam for the ship?

How much water is in these ships to provide the steam?

On a coal burning ship, wouldn’t the massive pillars of smoke give away its location for miles? Was there some technology to conceal the coal smoke screen?

If anybody knows of a book to read that concerns WWI era naval ships and tactics, I would appreciate the recommendation.

7

[QUOTE=John DiFool]
6. The battlecruiser turned out to be a flawed design. Ostensibly able to outgun those ships it couldn’t outrun, and vice-versa, in general fleet actions (Jutland) they suffered some rather high casualty rates, often having an enemy shell penetrate a magazine and blowing the ship sky high (a la Hood 25 years later).
[/QUOTE]

They were used wrong. They looked like battleships; they had the same armament as battleships–so the Brits used them like battleships. But, as you imply, battlecruisers didn’t have the armor needed for a general fleet action. So that was an error of doctrine. As anti-commerce-raider ships, they would have been fine.

But in WWI there weren’t that many surface commerce raiders anyway. Submarines were the real problem, and you could fight subs with light ships like destroyers. So all the money spent on battlecruisers was essentially wasted–Jackie Fisher’s biggest error; a strategic one: misallocation of resources.

But the Brit battlecruisers also had a serious design flaw: Insufficient isolation of the magazines. hits on turrets could result in the fire travelling back through the ammunition passages and igniting the magazines, in which case you were dead.

8

Their misuse was inevitable. Every naval doctrine of the era said that the key to victory was having as many guns as possible. Battle cruisers might not be battleships but they had guns. So when the war started, they were sent into battle alongside the battleships. No admiral was going to intentionally pull any ships off his battleline and thereby diminish the amount of guns he could bring to bear on the enemy.

9

[QUOTE=Spezza]
2 hours to get underway, eh? Tuchman does mention that, at one point, the captain keeps the boilers stoked to be ready to make flight with 15 minutes notice.
[/QUOTE]
Right - to be ready to go on short notice, the steam plant would have to be hot. This certainly consumes fuel, though nothing like as much as when underway. (The analogy would be a car that’s idling.)

(Note that “weigh anchor” means to hoist it aboard, as when getting underway.) Even when anchored and not underway, it would be necessary to keep the steam plant warm: you’d need electricity and water, and anchors are notoriously flaky - they can drag, in which case you’d better be able to move under your own power pronto.

Not sure I understand this question - except for a sailing ship, all ships move only by burning fuel.

Not much - well less than one percent.

Not too much - perhaps a percent or so per day.

Depends on the bunker (i.e. fuel) capacity and greatly on the speed at which she’s traveling. The hourly rate of fuel consumption at max power could easily be 5 to 10 times that at “economy cruise”. A very rough estimate for a naval ship at typical speeds might be 10 to 15 days.

There might be, in which case the ship will connect to electrical, fresh water and steam services and the probably shut down its own plant. Otherwise, the ship’s steam plant will operate (at greatly reduced load) to run electrical generators and evaporators (which make fresh water).

There will be condensers that make the steam plant a “closed” cycle (without this, efficiency would be hopeless). But there will always be some leaks, so it is necessary to distill “makeup” water, and to have some reserve in case of a problem - certainly thousands of gallons for a sizeable ship.

Certainly with oil (and probably with coal) efficient combustion is associated with light smoke. So I doubt that dense smoke was a regular or constant thing. But it’s true that a sharp-eyed lookout may well see smoke when a ship is below the horizon.

Weather or night might conceal dense smoke. But once it’s floating around in broad daylight, I’ve never heard of any technology that could conceal it.

10

[QUOTE=Rocketeer]
hits on turrets could result in the fire travelling back through the ammunition passages and igniting the magazines, in which case you were dead.
[/QUOTE]

Does this explain the convoluted route of shells from the magazine to the turret in the 1942 British film In Which We Serve ?

In the same film, the ribbons on crewman’s caps says HMS TORRIN before, but only HMS during the war. Is that an effort to hide ship movement?

11

IIRC — as usual, no guarantees — one of the causes of disproportionate British losses at Jutland was that many RN turret crews had fallen into the habit of leaving the flash doors at the top of the ammunition hoist open (the idea being to shorten the reloading cycle*).

You can certainly argue about whether the flash doors would provide adequate protection against a direct hit with a major calibre projectile; but having them open was a recipe for disaster.

*In a book I read about WWII US Navy battleship operations, a gunner’s mate described the process: unlock and open the breech, ram in the projectile first, then three bags of powder (being careful not hit the casing with the foremost bag, which could be hazardous to one’s health), then another three bags, insert the primer, close and lock the breech. The “book” specified thirty seconds from firing to ready; they got it down to fifteen.

12

[QUOTE=OttoDaFe]
IIRC — as usual, no guarantees — one of the causes of disproportionate British losses at Jutland was that many RN turret crews had fallen into the habit of leaving the flash doors at the top of the ammunition hoist open (the idea being to shorten the reloading cycle*).
[/QUOTE]
For what it’s worth I recall hearing the same; on the History Channel I think.

13

Regarding coal smoke: coal (particularly anthracite) can burn relatively cleanly (meaning there is always a small trail of smoke, but it is not necessarily a huge black plume. However, there are two situations in which it is much more visible.

When operating under high speed or maneuvering conditions, coal is simply thrust into the burners as fast as possible and it does not burn as cleanly because no one is maintaining the “burn.” In those cases, the plumes become dense. (Most photographs of battles will show the heavy cloud of smoke.)

When cruising, while tending the fires carefully will reduce the amount of smoke, it does not seriously reduce the amount of ash that accumulates inside the funnels. After a while, the rising hot smoke begins to drag the ash off the sides of the funnel walls and the smoke gets thick, again. The solution to the latter problem is to periodically vent steam through the funnels, clearing the ash (and covering the downwind decks with flyash), and reducing the trail. This means that while cruising, there are only a couple of times a day when the smoke is visible for very long distances (and if the stacks can be blown after dark, there is much less chance of being spotted).

The only caveat on this second situation is that I do not actually know that blowing the stack was genuinely practiced in WWI era warships. I know we used it on the coal-fired ship I sailed, but that ship was built in 1958 for use on the Great Lakes and reducing the amount of heavy smoke while passing through rivers lined with cities was an issue. It would make sense that the practice would have been implemented as soon as warships began burning coal for fuel, but I do not have citable references that such was the case. I have been looking for photos of cruising warships, but all the ones that are clearly under way are blowing lots of smoke. Whether this is because they had no way to clear the funnels or because photos were generally taken with the most smoke to provide an image of their power, I have no idea.

By the way, while not answering most of your direct questions, you can ferret out some answers by poring over this World War 1 Naval Combat site.

14

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
For what it’s worth I recall hearing the same; on the History Channel I think.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t think it was the History Channel — it was a source I found trustworthy. :dubious:

BTW, here is a cutaway of a battleship turret structure. Granted, it’s a WWII USN design; but since there weren’t a lot of Dreadnought-level revolutions in the interim, it’s probably pretty close.

15

There were still many coal-burning RN ships post-WWI; I have (somewhere) a real photo postcard of the exhausted crew of HMS Norfolk after coaling, dated something like 1924. (She was a Bristol-Class light cruiser, launched in 1910). They are utterly, completely black from the dust.

The need for re-coaling led to the establishment of a world-wide chain of coaling stations on British-controlled soil; there were first- and second-class coaling stations (Hong Kong, Trincomalee and Jamaica are examples of firsts; Aden, Esquimalt and St. Helena were second-class).

It was important to protect these bases (which often had other facilities, such as drydocks and victualling stations), so a series of coast defence forts grew; these were manned by British gunners (sometimes Royal Marine Artillery, sometimes Royal Garrison Artillery), generally assisted by a locally-raised militia. A fine example is Fort Rodd Hill, at Esquimalt, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

And well spotted, carnivorousplant! The named ships cap tallies were replaced during hostilities by “security” titles, which merely said “H.M.S.” (or “HMCS,” “HMNZS,” “HMIS,” etc.). I do have in my collection an oddball couple of tallies saying “HM Cruiser” and “HM Submarine.”

16

Some time ago, I watched a documentary about the german battleship “Dresden” at te beginning of WWI.

How important an issue coal supply and intelligent use of coal while at sea were was highly stressed in thi documentary, because it covered all the operations of the british and german fleets from the beginning of the war to the scuttling of the Dresden, last surviving German ship in the area.
I quickly googled and checked Wikipedia, but unfortunately, though the battles themselves (Coronel and Falklands) are described, there’s nearly nothing about the logistics, while apparently almost everything (including the activities of british and german agents in south America, trying frantically to get their hands on coal/preventing coal from being provided to the ennemy) revolved around coal supply, and how and when sea battles took places was a mere consequences of these concerns, especially since the ships were a long way from Europe and resupply ports not aplenty.
You might want to try to dig up more informations about these particular events.
By the way, I remember that the quality of the coal used was of upmost importance, since the capacity of a ship could be severely affected by the use of a poor grade combustible.

17

[QUOTE=OttoDaFe]
Don’t think it was the History Channel — it was a source I found trustworthy. :dubious:
[/QUOTE]

You know, I tend to disagree with you here Otto. Unless you live with Der Trihs, I don’t think you are in a position of authority to dictate WHERE he came across a certain bit of info. :stuck_out_tongue:

Incidentally, I came across the same info in a book called Days of Infamy, though it was written by the same guys who did a series on the History Channel called “History’s Blunders” or something like that. Basically, the whole thing is about big screwups different people made during wartime.

18

Oh, so now that I think about it, there is a campaign from the Spanish American War (so Pre-WWI, but still related) which had the ships of the US Navy’s Atlantic Squadron and Flying Squadron trying to locate and neutralize a small squadron of Spanish warships which had been dispatched from Europe. While the Spanish ships were generally quite outclassed by their American opponents, they could still cause considerable damage if they turned up where the American ships weren’t.

The American commander figured (correctly, it turned out), that the Spanish commander would need to replenish his ship’s coal bunkers, and so managed to find them at one of the only suitable places to do this in the region, Santiago Harbor in Cuba. The American ships blockaded the harbor, and at one point, attempted to block the entrance with one of their own supply vessels, a coaling ship that had been giving them problems far out of proportion to the value of it’s coal (probably moreso now that the American ships were at anchor and the ready availability of coal was less of an immediate concern). The collier was sunk before it could position itself to block the harbor, but the Spanish were reportedly impressed enough with the attempt to keep the prisoners recovered from the ship’s skeleton crew in fairly comfortable accommodations until the end of the war.

The siege ended when the Spanish squadron attempted to flee the harbor, and were in short order sunk or run aground by the American ships, which were able to engage them from beyond the range of the Spanish ships’ guns.

Also, on the subject of the need for fuel in general, around 1940 or 1941, the US gave the British 40 WWI-era destroyers for use against German U-Boats in exchange for the British letting the US Navy make use of their extensive network of bases and fueling networks. The use of British bases would likely become a moot issue on December 7th with the declaration of war between the US and Japan (and moreso on December 11th, with the declarations of war between the US and Germany/Italy), but it’s the thought that counts. 40 warships (old, but apparently still perfectly capable) was a fair trade for being sure they could get fuel when they’d need it.

19

Spezza, I think you’ll enjoy a couple of Robert Massie’s historical works on the subject.

Dreadnought is basically about the naval race between Britain and Germany leading up to the Great War and includes a lot of information about ship design, coal and oil fueling and reciprocating engines vs. turbines.

Castles of Steel is a followup that covers all the major naval actions of WWI.

Both are excellent.

20

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
Spezza, I think you’ll enjoy a couple of Robert Massie’s historical works on the subject.

Dreadnought is basically about the naval race between Britain and Germany leading up to the Great War and includes a lot of information about ship design, coal and oil fueling and reciprocating engines vs. turbines.

Castles of Steel is a followup that covers all the major naval actions of WWI.

Both are excellent.
[/QUOTE]

Heh, so fun trivia: While the British were building HMS Dreadnought, the Americans were building USS Michigan, and had actually started first, but not realizing that anyone else was building the same kind of ship, didn’t build it quickly enough to finish it before the Brits finished theres. We could have ended up calling them “Michigans”, though that wouldn’t be as catchy a name as “Dreadnoughts”.