Although the new steam turbine had proved itself in smaller vessels, it had never been installed in a battleship. That engine used steam to turn a series of fan blades attached to a shaft, which in turn drove the propeller screws. The only engine that could run fast and long enough to meet Fisher’s requirement was the Parsons steam turbine engine. The navy’s standard reciprocating engines were simply unreliable under the stress of a long cruise. King Edward VII, then the Royal Navy’s most advanced battleship, could only sustain 18.5 knots for short periods before its engines broke down. The speed requirement proved tougher to meet. For protection against torpedo boats, the new vessel would carry secondary armament of 27 12-pounder guns, five torpedo tubes and side-mounted torpedo netting. The six heavy guns mounted on the ship’s centerline, plus another two at each waist position, could throw a broadside of 6,800 pounds of steel and explosives, smashing an unlucky foe with great precision. With an all-big-gun battlewagon, only one range needed to be found. Furthermore, if the smaller guns were inadequate to penetrate enemy armor, or lacked the range to hit the enemy, the battleship effectively would be fighting with only four guns. The heavier guns would have to find the correct angle and powder charge for themselves amid a confusing medley of shell splashes. The trajectory of each gun type differed, so once a 6-inch gun found its mark on an enemy target, the elevation and propellant for that gun could not be transmitted to the others. The problem, as Fisher saw it, was fire control. The latest battleships of the Royal Navy, the King Edward VII class, typically carried a mixed battery of four 12-inch guns, four 9.2-inch guns and 10 6-inch guns. The second requirement was a radical departure from the past. The proposed vessel had to meet two basic requirements: It needed to sustain a top speed of 21 knots, and it had to mount an offensive battery consisting only of 12-inch guns. In December 1904, Fisher formed the Commission on Designs to produce drawings for an ultramodern capital ship. In cutting out the venerated battleships that had maintained Queen Victoria’s empire for generations, Fisher repeated his clarion call for reform, enjoining his subordinates: “No pandering to sentiment! No regard for susceptibilities! No pity for anyone! We must be ruthless, relentless and remorseless!” Over the next three years, Fisher’s reforms cut 5.4 million pounds sterling from the navy’s annual budget, and he was about to put the savings into something entirely new. The blow fell when Fisher took 154 warships out of active service. Fisher’s dream was to scrap the old expensive ships of the line in favor of fast, heavily armed but lightly armored battle cruisers. Long-range guns were rarely used except in target practice, where they were embarrassingly inaccurate except at short ranges. The Royal Navy of 1904 was dominated by old, slow battleships dating back to the Sans Pareil class, laid down in 1885. By 1904, when he was appointed first sea lord (director of fleet operations), he was determined to replace the dogma of Queen Victoria’s navy with a technologically advanced fleet. Putting to sea in 1854, “Jacky” Fisher had come up through the ranks in a navy that was making the uncertain transition from sail to steam, and in the process he built his reputation as the Royal Navy’s most relentless voice of reform.Īppointed director of naval ordnance in 1886, Admiral Fisher helped develop a quick-firing breechloading gun and sped innovations in torpedo and mine technology. The ship that shocked naval ministries around the world was the product of the fertile mind of Sir John A. But as bluish cordite smoke faded over the waters and the echoes of the guns’ thunder died down, Britannia realized it had not just launched a battleship, it had started a revolution. Naval experts had predicted the recoil from this barrage would damage and perhaps even sink the steel leviathan. On that day, the waters of the English Channel churned under a frightful salvo fired from the eight 12-inch guns of a new British warship, HMS Dreadnought. On October 18, 1906, every battleship in the world, save one, became irrelevant. Dreadnought revolutionized naval warfare | HistoryNet Close
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