The Battleship Book. Robert M. Farley

      Dreadnought and Victory at Portsmouth. Henry J. Morgan, 1907.

      The British didn’t believe that superfiring turrets would work (and, in their defense, superfiring experiments in American battleships had yielded poor results), so arranged the turrets one fore, two aft, and one on each wing. This gave Dreadnought an eight gun broadside and six gun head on fire in either direction. Dreadnought was armored on roughly the same scale as the Lord Nelson class pre-dreadnoughts.

      Dreadnought became Fisher’s political cause. Fisher began stockpiling material for Dreadnought before finalizing the design, and delayed all other construction to accelerate her completion (Lord Nelson and Agamemnon were so delayed by this concentration that they didn’t commission until 1908). Laid down in October 1905 (five months after Satsuma), she was launched in February 1906. HMS Dreadnought was commissioned in December 1906 (accounts vary as to whether on the third, sixth, or eleventh of the month).

      Dreadnought represented what theorists of design refer to as an “architectural innovation.” Her planners took a set of pre-existing technologies and re-arranged them into something transformative, without necessarily exploring new innovation in any one of these categories. As such, it was not difficult for other countries to adopt the same architecture. Her construction forced the navies of the world to reappraise their own battleship designs, with the result that Dreadnought remained the most powerful ship in the world for only a brief period of time. By 1910, even Brazil (through British contracts) owned more powerful battleships than Dreadnought. But however quickly other ships might have eclipsed Dreadnought, she so clearly outclassed everything that had come before that the preceding ships were considered obsolescent and virtually useless for front-line service.

      Her actual war career was less consequential. Dreadnought served as flagship of the Home Fleet until 1912, eventually taking a secondary role as newer and larger battleships entered service. Still, she remained a squadron flagship while she stayed with the Grand Fleet.

      On March 18, 1915, the German submarine U-29 slipped into Pentland Firth (in the Orkneys) to attack the Grand Fleet at exercise. The U-boat inadvertently surfaced after firing her torpedoes, and the nearby Dreadnought rammed her at speed, sinking the German submarine. Dreadnought is the only battleship to ever sink a submarine. Ironically, the number of dreadnoughts sunk by submarine in World War I is smaller than the number of submarines sunk by Dreadnought.

      Dreadnought missed Jutland while in refit, and served for a while as flagship of a squadron of pre-dreadnoughts stationed on the Thames, intended to deter German battlecruisers from bombarding English coastal towns. Although she returned to the Grand Fleet in March 1918, she was placed in reserve when the war ended, and scrapped in 1923. She survived First Baron John Fisher (who had taken “Fear god and dread nought” on his family’s coat of arms) by three years.

      Author’s Note

      It’s interesting to consider what modern battleships would have been called if another ship had preceded Dreadnought. I doubt, for example, that the navies of the world would have come to call their ships “South Carolinas.” Satsuma has a decent ring to it, but the Japan is probably too remote for the name to catch on. Dreadnought was followed on the slips by HMS Bellerophon and HMS Temeraire, neither of which, I suspect, would have become popular.

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      HMS Dreadnought. Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1906-07.

      The notion that a warship could go from being the world class to obsolete in a decade (perhaps less, given how quickly new ships outclassed Dreadnought) is almost entirely alien to modern sensibilities. Between 1905 and 1915, this essentially happened twice in a ten year period. HMS Queen Elizabeth was probably as far ahead of Dreadnought in terms of raw power as Dreadnought was ahead of the latest pre-dreadnoughts, although in the case of the former the innovation was more incremental (fast incremental) than disruptive. This degree of innovation was outmatched by everything except the fighter aircraft design industry during the twentieth century. Remarkably, however, many of the ships built just a decade after Dreadnought remained in service until the mid-1940s.

      Related Entries:

      Contemporary of… Danton

      Inspired… SMS Ostfriesland

      Served alongside… HMS Iron Duke

      Turrets

      In the pre-dreadnought era, naval architects faced few difficult choices with respect to arranging the main guns. Nearly every pre-dreadnought carried two twin turrets, one fore and one aft. Dreadnought, with five turrets, presented a much more complicated problem. Different potential turret arrangements each had their own benefits and drawbacks.

      Wing turrets promised heavy end-on fire, but typically could only fire on one broadside. Some designs kept firing space open on either side, but this often caused blast damage and put strain on the hull. Wing turrets also created the need for more ammunition spaces, which increased weight and made the ship more vulnerable to explosion. Nevertheless, many early dreadnoughts and battlecruisers adopted wing turrets, especially in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Dreadnought herself sported a pair of wing turrets, giving her six gun end on fire, but only an eight gun broadside.

      Other navies decided on superfiring turrets, which positioned one turret above and slightly behind another. The first dreadnoughts to carry superfiring turrets were the US South Carolina class, which carried eight 12” guns on four turrets, two forward and two aft. This gave them the same broadside as Dreadnought, on a smaller displacement. Several navies resisted the move to superfiring turrets because they were concerned that blast from the lower guns would throw off the aiming of the upper, but experience demonstrated that these concerns were groundless.

      Still other navies adopted triple turrets, which were more complex than twin, but promised a savings in weight and space. The first ship to carry triple turrets was Dante Alighieri, which carried four non-superfiring triple turrets along the centerline. The first seven Russian dreadnoughts adopted the same arrangement. The Austrian Tegethoff class combined superfiring with triple turrets, giving it a twelve gun broadside and six gun end on fire. Some navies preferred to stick with less complex, quicker firing twin turrets. Others, including the Royal Navy and the Marine Nationale, opted for quadruple turrets.

      Over time, certain practices faded; wing turrets fell out of favor by the beginning of World War I. Center turrets (not on either end) were big during the super-dreadnought era, but eventually faded as well. Most fast battleships used a three turret arrangement, with two superfiring turrets fore and one aft, but even this practice varied.

      HMS Invincible

      Laid Down: 1906

      Launched: 1907

      Completed: March, 1909

      Displacement: 17,250 tons

      Main Armament: eight 12” guns, four twin turrets

      Secondary Armament: sixteen 4” guns (single mounts)

      Speed: 26 knots

      Major Actions: Battle of the Falklands, Battle of Jutland

      Treaty: Pre-Washington Naval Treaty

      Fate: Sunk by German gunfire, May 31,