Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  When she was designed and built, the Dreadnought was the supreme embodiment of these concepts. Her main armament consisted of ten 12-inch guns, each capable of hurling an 850-pound projectile. If all eight guns of the Dreadnought's broadside fired simultaneously, 6,800 pounds of steel and high explosive would plummet down on an enemy. Until she appeared, standard battleship armament in all major navies had consisted of four 12-inch guns, supported by a mixed battery of guns of smaller calibers. The summit of this earlier design had been reached in Dreadnought's immediate predecessors, Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, designed to carry four 12-inch and ten 9.2-inch guns. At three thousand or four thousand yards, ranges which the smaller guns could manage, these ships were formidable. But Fisher, since his days with the Mediterranean Fleet, had dreamed of six thousand, eight thousand, even ten thousand yards. At these distances, all previous British battleships and all foreign battleships could fire only four guns.

  The genesis of the Dreadnought traditionally is traced to an Italian, Vittorio Cuniberti, the chief constructor of the Italian Navy. Cuniberti had already designed four light battleships, the Vittorio Emanuele class, each carrying two 12-inch and twelve 8-inch guns, for his own navy. When his design for a larger, more heavily armed ship for the Italian Fleet was rejected, he received permission to write; an article for Jane's Fighting Ships, calling for a 17,000-ton ship carrying twelve 12-inch guns. The article appeared in the 1903 annual edition of the publication and although it galvanized naval thinking on the matter of the all-big-gun ship, it may not have had quite; the pioneer effect claimed for it at the time. Several powers, including the United States and Japan, were moving in the direction of larger, faster, heavier-gunned ships. In the spring of 1904, the U.S. Navy presented to Congress an appropriation request for two 16,000-ton ships each carrying eight 12-inch guns. The Americans moved slowly; the South Carolina and Michigan were not authorized until the spring of 1905 and not laid down until the autumn of 1906. Japan laid down two large 20,000-ton, 20-knot "semi-dreadnoughts" (they carried four 12-inch and twelve 10-inch guns) in the spring of 1905.

  Cuniberti's article and reports of American and Japanese designs nay have reinforced Fisher's belief that the fast, all-big-gun ship was the warship of the future, but, in his Memoirs, the British admiral gives no credit to Cuniberti or any other foreigner. He states that he personally first conceived the fast, big-gun battleship (which he half-facetiously dubbed H.M.S. Untakeable, at Malta in 1900, where he discussed his ideas with W. H. Gard, then chief constructor of the Malta dockyard. When he returned to England, he talked with Sir Philip Watts, the navy's chief designer, whom he had known since serving as captain of the Inflexible, for which Watts had designed a set of then unique antiroll tanks. Their friendship had continued, and in 1902 Watts, who also believed in fast, powerful ships, had succeeded Sir William White as civilian Director of Naval Construction. In October 1904, on becoming First Sea Lord, Fisher immediately reinforced his staff by bringing Gard to London as Watts's Assistant Director of Naval Construction.

  On December 22, 1904, Fisher created the Committee on Designs to work out details and produce drawings for his new battleship. The committee had a membership of nine civilians and seven naval officers, most of them Fisher's proteges. The officers included Rear Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, then Director of Naval Intelligence and future First Sea Lord; Captain John Jellicoe, Director of Naval Ordnance and future Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet; and Captain Reginald Bacon, who was naval assistant to the First Sea Lord and would become the first captain of the Dreadnought. Fisher was not a member of the actual committee and did not sit in on their deliberations, but he supervised. As he explained the arrangement in a letter to Esher: "Selborne has agreed to my being President of a committee to devise new types of fighting ships. I explained to him that I had got the designs out of what had to be, but it was a politic thing to have a committee of good names,… [so that critics] will fire away at them and leave me alone."

  Fisher knew what he wanted when he formed the committee and, although their instructions were to advise, a better description of their task would be that they were to "confirm," "refine," and "implement" the First Sea Lord's ideas. The basic decision had already been made by Fisher with Gard's help: they were to consider a battleship with uniform armament of 12-inch guns and 21 knots of speed. But the committee were not puppets, although it was later charged that the Dreadnought was entirely a product of Fisher's megalomania and that he imposed his views on a helpless committee. Fisher did not know quite how to get what he wanted, and he kept an open mind as different ideas were proposed and explored. He respected the men on the committee, the more so because they were youthful and exceptionally able-and also because they had shown themselves eager to embrace new ideas.

  The committee sat for seven weeks, from January 3 to February 22, 1905. At the first meeting, Fisher stood up and read a statement of purpose: "Two governing conditions [of naval warfare] are guns and speed. Theory and actual experience of war dictate a uniform arrangement of the largest guns, combined with a speed exceeding that of the enemy so as to be able to force an action." About the same time he laid a memorandum before Balfour and the Cabinet explaining his priorities, first guns, then speed: "In designing this ship, the most powerfully arranged armament has been made the first consideration. Absolutely nothing has been allowed to stand in the way of the most nearly perfect power and scope of the guns.

  … Being a battleship, she will have to fight other battleships. Having speed, she can choose the range at which she will fight."

  Some of the reasons for uniform big-gun armament were obvious. The purpose of battleships was to throw the maximum weight of shells at the enemy battle line; thus, why not make all the guns the biggest possible? Uniform big-gun armament meant that a ship would have to stock only a single caliber of ammunition, and parts for all her guns would be interchangeable. There was a more important reason, developed and hotly urged by dedicated gunnery officers like Percy Scott and Jellicoe: accurate fire control. An enemy ship moving fast ten thousand yards away is a difficult target to hit. Percy Scott discovered that the problem was a little easier if one used salvo firing-that is, firing a number of similar-caliber shells simultaneously at the target. If the splashes of the shells striking the water are behind the target, the guns should be lowered slightly; if in front, if they should be raised; if before the target, they should be trained back a bit; if behind, they should be trained forward. This salvo firing continues until finally the huge columns of water straddle the target. Then the gunners know they have the correct range and sooner or later they will obtain hits. It was impossible to use guns of different caliber for this purpose; different-sized shells would have to be fired at different angles of gun-barrel elevation, at different velocities, and on different trajectories, and once they hit the wafer, no one could tell which splash was a product of which gun.

  The argument that larger, uniform armament was more effective was; supported by the experience of Admiral Count Heihachiro Togo's victory over the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima on May 27, 1904. There, firing at seven thousand yards, both sides demonstrated the hitting power and accuracy of large naval guns at long range, and, further, the advantage of a maximum number of big guns. Captain William Pakenham, a Royal Navy observer aboard Admiral Togo's flagship, noted that "when 12 inch guns are fired, shots from 10 inch guns pass unnoticed, while, for all the respect they instill, 8 inch or 9 inch might just as well be pea shooters."

  The new ship's speed and the range of her heavy guns also entered the equation. Speed would enable her to choose the range at which: she would fight and, with her uniform armament of great guns, she could stay out of range of any lesser guns mounted by the enemy. Six-inch guns would be useless, as she would fight beyond the range of these guns; further, she would not need 6-inchers as a defense against torpedo-carrying destroyers, for she would fight well out of range of torpedo attack. Thus, all available weight devoted to guns shoul
d be invested in the heaviest guns possible. Fisher summed up these arguments: "The fast ship with the heavier guns and deliberate fire should absolutely knock out a vessel of equal speed with many lighter guns, the very number of which, militates against accurate spotting and deliberate hitting… Suppose [once the range was obtained] a 12 inch gun to fire one aimed round each minute. Six guns would allow a deliberately aimed shell with a huge bursting charge every ten seconds. Fifty percent of these should be hits at 6,000 yards. Three 12 inch shells bursting on board every minute would be hell!"

  Along with deciding the number of heavy guns, the committee wrestled with the problem of siting the turrets. A sailing ship fired broadsides from rows of guns running down both sides of the hull and thus had to turn on a course roughly parallel to that of an enemy in order to fire her guns. At that, she could only fire half of her armament at the enemy (unless a second enemy ship conveniently appeared on her opposite side). Modern battleship guns, usually mounted two to a turret, revolved in the turret so that the guns could fire in almost any direction. Turrets placed on the bow or stern could fire to either side as well as forward or aft. Fisher wanted as many guns as possible able to fire forward; the proper position of a British battleship should be in pursuit of an enemy. "I am an apostle of 'End-on Fire,' for to my mind broadside fire is peculiarly stupid. To be obliged to delay your pursuit by turning even one atom from your straight course on to a flying enemy is to me being the acme of an ass!"

  Various arrangements were tried, including superimposing of turrets on the bow and stern so that a higher turret was mounted above and slightly behind a lower turret. This novel arrangement was rejected, it being wrongly supposed that when the upper-turret guns were fired, the blast effect on the turret beneath would make the lower turret unlivable. This view was disproved when the first two U.S. dreadnoughts, Michigan and South Carolina, were built with superimposed turrets which worked perfectly well. Not until 1909, when the American dreadnoughts were completed and Great Britain had already built ten dreadnought battleships and four battle cruisers, did the British Navy switch, in the Orion-class battleships and the battle cruiser Lion, to superimposed turrets.

  In the end, three of the Dreadnought's five turrets were placed in a position to fire ahead. This was done by placing one turret in front of the bridge on the bow and a wing turret on either side just aft of the bridge (see diagram). The wing turrets could also fire broadside or astern, so that the ship was ready to fire six 12-inch

  guns forward, six astern, or eight on either broadside. As theretofore no previous battleship, British or foreign, had carried more than four 12-inch guns, two firing ahead, two astern, or four broadside, the Dreadnought was the equivalent of two or even three earlier ships. Or, from the point of view of an admiral, a line of ten dreadnoughts would be equal to thirty pre-dreadnoughts firing ahead or astern, and twenty pre-dreadnoughts firing broadside.

  A related problem was to raise the turrets as much as possible above the main deck without unbalancing the ship and making her top-heavy. In earlier ships with low bows and gun turrets placed on the main deck, the sea often poured over the bows and into the turrets, swamping guns and gunners. Fisher demanded that "no guns be carried on the main deck. In this position they are practically useless. Half the time they cannot see the objective for want of a view and may hit a friend as readily as an enemy, and the other half they are flooded out by the sea." On January 12, the committee partially obliged and placed at least the forward turret on a raised fo'c's'le so that it could be fought even when the ship was taking waves over the bow.

  The committee then turned to the problem of attaining the high speed on which Fisher was adamant. "It is clearly necessary to have superiority in speed," Fisher had written to Selborne, "in order to compel your opponent to accept battle or to enable you to avoid battle and lead him away from his goal 'till it suits you to fight him." (This was as close as Fisher would come to admitting that occasionally a British warship might have to run away.) Here, too, the lessons of Tsushima were relevant. Admiral Togo had had an advantage of six or seven knots over Admiral Z. P. Rozhestvensky. This enabled him to stay at the greater range at which his gun crews had been trained. Eventually, he was able to execute the classic naval maneuver, crossing the Russian "T," bringing all his guns to bear on the ships at the head of the Russian line. Fisher argued that Togo's success at Tsushima was due primarily to superior speed.

  Fisher wanted 21 knots for the Dreadnought, a speed clearly impossible with the standard reciprocating steam engines which then powered the British Fleet. Although most British pre-dreadnoughts were designed for 18 or 19 knots, they rarely attained this speed and certainly could not sustain it for long periods. Experience showed that British squadrons steaming at even 14 knots for more than eight hours began to suffer breakdowns. The problem lay in the nature of the engines themselves. Reciprocating engines had cylinders, inside of which were heavy pistons which steam pressure pushed once up and once down during each revolution of the propeller shaft. The engines revolved at 120 revolutions a minute, so the huge momentum of the heavy pistons and other moving parts had to be created and destroyed four times every second. As a result, the brass bearings were subjected to heavy stress and wear. After a few hours' steaming at high speed, a number of bearings had to be adjusted and if the engines were not stopped, a breakdown would occur. After a battleship had run a four-hour full-speed steam trial, she often had to spend ten days in port to adjust her main bearings. It was this characteristic which caused Cuniberti to refer disparagingly to the eight new British battleships of the King Edward class, then under construction and scheduled to join the fleet in 1905 and 1906, as "monsters with short legs."

  A solution was available in the form of turbine engines: discs mounted on a single shaft which spun continuously in the same direction as steam pressed against their blades; thus, no motion or energy was lost and little stress or wear ensued. But in January 1905 turbines were still on the frontier of technology. Many naval officers remembered the performance of Charles Parsons' launch Turbina at the 1897 Diamond Jubilee Review, but most considered this a tasteless spectacle rather than a vision of the future. Two destroyers, Viper and Cobra, completed in 1905, had been equipped with turbines and, at 36 knots, were to leave all other destroyers far astern. The small cruiser Amethyst was given experimental turbine engines, but when she went to sea for trials in 1904, she cracked a large casting and had to be brought home for repairs. Cunard, to which speed; meant profit, had decided to install turbines in its two great liners Lusitania, to be launched in 1906, and Mauretania, scheduled for completion in 1907. Weighing what they knew and what they didn't Fisher's committee hesitated. To go ahead and order an essentially untried system for a ship of the size and significance of the Dreadnought was an enormous risk. As the moment of decision approached, Philip Watts, who had expressed no opinion, was asked what he thought. Watts replied succinctly. "If you fit reciprocating engines," he said, "these ships will be out of date within five years." That decided it; the Dreadnought would have turbines.

  The engine room of the Dreadnought was transformed to a place unrecognizable to British naval officers. As Bacon, the ship's first captain, and previously captain of the battleship Irresistible, described the difference: "[The turbines] were noiseless. In fact, I have frequently visited the engine room of the Dreadnought when at sea steaming 17 knots and have been unable to tell whether the engines were revolving or not. During a full speed run, the difference between the engine room of the Dreadnought and that of the Irresistible was extraordinary. In the Dreadnought, there was no noise, no steam was visible, no water or oil splashing about, the officers and men were clean; in fact, the ship to all appearances might have been in harbor and the turbines stopped. In the Irresistible, the noise was deafening. It was impossible to make a remark plainly audible and telephones were useless. The deck plates were greasy with oil and water so that it was difficult to walk without slipping. Some gland [valve] was certa
in to be blowing a little which made the atmosphere murky with steam. One or more hoses would be playing on a bearing which threatened trouble. Men constantly working around the engine would be feeling the bearings to see if they were running cool or showed signs of heating; and the officers would be seen with their coats buttoned up to their throats and perhaps in oilskins, black iii the face, and with their clothes wet with oil and water." These old engine rooms, Bacon said elsewhere, resembled "a glorified snioe marsh."

  Armor, the defensive shield, was next. Heavy armor was of less importance to Fisher than gunpower or speed and he begrudged the weight alloted to inert steel plates. "Speed is armor," he declared, and "Hitting is the thing, not armor." The Dreadnought's skin, however, was to be thick. She carried five thousand tons of armor, almost eight hundred tons more than either of the two Lord Nelsons. This was redistributed, and more was added to the belt and below the waterline so that the ship could absorb at least two torpedo hits and still survive. Turret armor was reduced on Jellicoe's recommendation that the concussive effect of a direct hit on a 12-inch gun turret, even if the projectile did not penetrate the turret before exploding, would almost certainly put the turret out of action at least temporarily.

  Although "speed is armor," no ship could outrun all shells or avoid all torpedoes and Fisher wanted the Dreadnought to be unsinkable. Most warships of the day had extensive watertight compartmentation below the waterline, each compartment being sealed off from those adjacent by watertight doors that remained open most times for easy access within the hull, and then were bolted shut when action impended. But there were occasions-as in the ramming of H.M.S. Victoria-when danger struck unexpectedly; the doors remained open and the sea, once admitted, spread rapidly, taking the ship to the bottom. Fisher's solution was radical: all watertight doors were to be eliminated; "no holes in the bulkheads whatsoever," he decreed. Instead, each compartment in the hull was to become a self-contained unit with no horizontal access at all. Men were to enter these spaces on ladders or electric elevators, from a hatch on the main deck. Once inside, enclosed in steel, they could communicate by telephone with other parts of the ship (tiny holes were permitted to pierce the bulkheads for electric wires and steam and hydraulic pipes), but otherwise they lived in a little, metallic world of their own. If the sea came in, they would drown, but the rest of the ship would live.