The Battleship Book. Robert M. Farley
participate in the naval campaign to force the straits, which used a large number of old French and British battleships. On the afternoon of March 19, 1917, Danton cruised into the patrol area (just south of Sardinia) of U-64, a German submarine operating from Austria-Hungary. Danton would become one of U-64′s forty-six victims; 296 men would sink with her. Danton was one of several pre-dreadnought battleships lost to submarines in World War I, all in French and British service. Curiously, no dreadnoughts were lost until World War II. U-64 was herself destroyed on June 17, 1918.
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Danton, torpedoed March 19, 1917 by U-64. Le Miroir
During surveys for a trans-Mediterranean pipeline, the wreck of Danton was discovered in an excellent state of preservation. Although the ship apparently rolled over several times on her way down, she landed upright, and retains many of her guns and superstructure. Plans for the pipeline were moved by about 300 meters at the request of the French government, which views the wreck of Danton as a war grave.
Author’s Note
In retrospect, the decision to go with an all-big-gun armament seems obvious. Mixed armaments required different types of ammunition, created problems with training and fire control, and reduced a battleship’s overall “punch.” At the time, however, the immaturity of armor and fire control schemes made a mixed armament plausible. The high rate of fire of the smaller weapons appealed to many officers, who believed that the destruction of the unarmored superstructure of enemy ships would leave them helpless. As battleship protection became optimized around heavy calibers, however, the utility of large secondary armaments declined.
Related Entries:
Contemporary of… HMS Dreadnought
Preceded… Bretagne
Shared a fate with… HMS Barham
Battlecruiser, Dreadnought, Super-dreadnought, Fast Battleship
The pre-dreadnought and the armored cruiser dominated the naval landscape in the years preceding the construction of Dreadnought. The ship types were relatively close in size Both fleets at Tsushima had examples of each, and most major navies kept both in the line. Tsushima helped demonstrate the pre-dreadnought’s advantages over the armored cruiser, although naval architects in the United States and elsewhere had already begun to notice shortcomings of the type.
In any case, HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible made both pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers obsolete. This inaugurated two types of capital ship: the dreadnought and the battlecruiser. Dreadnoughts would compose the line of battle fleet, while battlecruisers would use their greater speed to act as fleet scouts and to perform other necessary duties.
The dreadnought was soon superseded by the super-dreadnought, which essentially cleaned up all the architectural problems with the earliest modern battleship. Reciprocating engines and wing turrets were out; super-dreadnoughts took advantage of superfiring weapons, and rationalized the armor scheme. They largely kept the same speed as dreadnoughts, meaning that the battleship/battlecruiser distinction remained useful. Even among battlecruisers, however, second-generation ships (super-dreadnought battlecruisers, essentially) were distinctly different, better balanced than their earlier sisters.
And then came the fast battleships. The first real fast battleship was probably HMS Hood, which was classified as a battlecruiser but much more heavily armored than earlier ships. The Japanese followed up Hood with HIJMS Nagato, which could make 26 knots. They also reconstructed the Kongo class ships in an effort to bring them up to battleship standards. The first post-treaty fast battleships were the Dunkerques, which combined high speed, heavy armament, and heavy armor. The battleships of the Second World War were distinctly superior to their predecessors, both because of more optimized armor and armament schemes, but also because they effectively combined the characteristics of dreadnought and battlecruiser.
II
The World War I Era
HMS Dreadnought
Laid Down: 1905
Launched: 1906
Completed: December, 1906
Displacement: 18,200 tons
Main Armament: ten 12” guns (five twin turrets)
Secondary Armament: twenty-seven 3” guns (single mounts)
Speed: 21 knots
Treaty: Pre-Washington Naval Treaty
Major Engagements: Sinking of U-29
Fate: Scrapped, 1923
State of the art battleship armament in the late nineteenth century involved a mix of large and small caliber weapons. Naval architects believed that most engagements would take place within the range of the smaller guns, and that a variety of guns would combine penetrating power with volume. Indeed, some argued that large armored ships with small weapons (armored cruisers, which were roughly the same size as battleships) could defeat battleships by saturating them with fire.
HMS Dreadnought
However, developments in optics and improvements in gun accuracy at the beginning of the twentieth century began to tilt the balance toward heavier guns. The increased accuracy meant that ships could engage and expect hits at previously unimagined ranges. Moreover, the high rate of fire of smaller guns was mitigated by the fact that it was difficult to acquire the range by gun splashes when there were so many splashes around the target. Indeed, the presence of smaller weapons made it more difficult to get hits with larger guns. In 1904, the Japanese and the Americans began thinking about “all big gun” ships, which would carry a larger main armament at the expense of the secondary weapons. Satsuma, laid down in 1905, was designed to carry twelve 12” guns, but ended up carrying four 12” and twelve 10” because of a shortage of 12” barrels. The Americans didn’t lay down South Carolina (which would carry eight 12” guns in four twin turrets) until December 1906, about the time that HMS Dreadnought entered service.
In October 1905 John “Jackie” Fisher became First Sea Lord. Fisher was, in organizational terms, a committed revolutionary. He retired many of the older ships and set others to reduced commission. His vision of the Royal Navy centered on a new kind of ship, the battlecruiser, that would have the speed and armament to either destroy or run away from any potential foe. This would answer the threat posed by German merchant cruisers (or French armored cruisers), while also providing for a powerful offensive capability. The Admiralty agreed to pursue the battlecruiser project, but also called for significant attention to the line of battle. Fisher compromised on a new design for a battleship, to be called Dreadnought. The Royal Navy has used the name Dreadnought (meaning “fear nothing”) throughout its history (a Dreadnought served with Nelson at Trafalgar), with the 1906 version being the sixth to carry the moniker. The name was later applied to the Royal Navy’s first nuclear attack submarine.
Admiral Sir John Fisher, December 28, 1915. Bain News Service.
Dreadnought, like Satsuma and South Carolina, would carry a single main armament of large guns, rather than the mixed armament of previous ships. But Fisher wanted more than big guns. What distinguished Dreadnought from South Carolina or Satsuma was the decision to use turbines instead of reciprocating engines, resulting in a higher speed, faster cruising, and less vibration. It was this contribution that helped make Dreadnought a revolutionary design. Neither the Americans nor the Japanese had envisioned their new ships as part of a fundamental break with the past.