WW1 British 7.5 and 9.2 in gunned cruisers

[Justin Moretti]

Perhaps not strictly on-topic, but it concerns the capabilities of WW1-era ships, so I thought it belonged here.

I am writing a novel in which warships armed similarly to the Brit cruisers of the WW1 era (the Warrior, Minotaur, Good Hope, Cressy etc.) take on battleships of the 1870-1880 vintage, e.g. Inflexible and others of the midship-turret (or central citadel) muzzle-loader-armed variety. In other words, could the Warrior- and Cressy-class ships have taken on the ships present at, say, the Bombardment of Alexandria, and won? (Assume free movement at sea for both.)

I have up until now been of the opinion that advances in metallurgy of shells would permit the newer cruisers to defeat the armour of the much older battleships - or that their armament would at least permit them to smother and destroy the older ships whilst remaining relatively immune to anything but chance hits.

Would it be a slaughter? Or would the contest be more even than I have suspected?

[Michael Lowrey]

A slaughter, for a variety of reasons, some obvious, some not. The rate of fire (or lack there of) of a ship like Inflexible would be a serious problem, especially when trying to hit a relatively fast ship like a cruiser at range. Also, the faster, more modern ships would likely cross the T, and could simply run if circumstances warranted. The lack of an effective secondary armament of the older generation of ships (as built) would also be a problem.

Best wishes,

Michael

[joseph]

The Inflexibles 24 inches of “Compound" hard-steel-faced wrought iron armour, would simply be no match for a modern day (1914) projectile.

Regards Charles

[SiegeGunner]

It makes a nice change to think of vessels like Good Hope and Cressy as state-of-the-art warships, especially as another thread is currently dissecting the reasons for the destruction of Good Hope and Monmouth at Coronel.

On the face of it, the outcome of Justin's battle seems a foregone conclusion - but then one of the joys of fiction is that you can tinker with the odds to your heart's content and throw in as many strange factors as you like. With modern computer-generated technology, you could probably even make it into a film.

Mick

[joseph]

Inflexible did have some claims to fame, the first underwater torpedo tubes on a surface ship, the first to have electric lights and Jackie Fisher as its first Captain. "A lucky shot could win the day"

Regards Charles

[SiegeGunner]

"A lucky shot could win the day"

Exactly what I was thinking. It all depends how Justin wants his story to work out. Perhaps the most interesting challenge to the Forum would be to construct a scenario in which the 'oldies' could win. A few other quirky factors might add spice too - e.g. the commanders of the respective 'fleets' are grandfather and grandson.

Mick

[FAAAEd]

It may be worth your while consulting a few books on the topic:

'Steam, Steal & Shellfire: The Steam Warship 1815-1905', various authors, Conway-Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-608-6,

'Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870-1881' John Beeler, Chatham Publishing, ISBN 1-86176-167-8. Also available as a Caxton print ISBN 1-84067-534-9.

'Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship Development 1860-1905' D K Brown, Chatham Publishing (ISBN not to hand), Also available as a Caxton print ISBN 1-84067-529-2.

'The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922', D K Brown, Chatham Publishing (ISBN not to hand), Also available as a Caxton print ISBN 1-84067-531-4.

All will provide you with elements that you will need to know in order to make your narrative plausible besides being an absorbing read for those even only vaguely interested.

Beeler's book has interesting information on early armoured cruisers and is a must for information regarding Infelxible.

Also The Mariner's Mirror, The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research has contained many interesting articles since its foundation in 1911. Issues prior to 2002 were available on a 5 CD set in Acrobat format with search facilities (takes a little effort to learn its use) whicxh may be available in a library near you.

All the above books have been reviewed in the last few years in the MM (indeed I did the review of Beeler which appeared in the Feb 2006 issue). If you need precise ref's for these let me know.

With that, others have made valid points which should help.

[Justin Moretti]

The battle takes place in relatively confined waters, so the ability to scoot out of range is less of an issue, and so is manoeuvering a long line across the enemy's T. The good guys (modern ships) are also handicapped by the need to cover a landing force which may need to extract the troops at short notice (a planned, rather than a panicked, Dunkirk - though a Dieppe which works might be nearer the truth), and to try and provide naval gunfire coverage for the withdrawal. The bad guys are honour-bound to stay to the bitter end, and are also religious fanatics - no, not Muslims, in case you were wondering. The good guys must also stay to the end and eliminate the bad guys' fleet as a threat in being. Imagine a Jutland at which the Germans were eager to stay and fight.

I have no doubt about what the Inflexible's shells would do if they hit the Warrior or the Cressy. Does anyone else? Yes, the bad guys do get to fire shell from rifled ML's, and the guns do elevate to sufficient range. I have assumed that both sides' fuzes are adequate, and in exchange for the good guys having director firing with Pollen mechanical computers in the better ships and Dreyers in the lesser, the bad guys have a Percy Scott, to whom they have listened. (I have also given the good guys a primitive radar, but it's not good enough for gun direction, only instantaneous distance and bearing, and it scratches a line on a smoked drum, not a CRT!)

The bad guys lose this battle, but they have numbers on their side and it's a damn near run thing: at one stage the landing ships are using jury-rigged land artillery bolted to deck mounts in order to defend themselves against the enemy's lesser craft, because the Fleet is fully occupied and fighting for its life.

One thing I have the good guys do before they set out, when they are still actually building their modern fleet, is to read the history of Jutland and all that led up to it: essentially the relevant lessons of Barnett's "Swordbearers" (the chapter on Jellicoe) and the lessons, if not the text, of Andrew Gordon's "The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command."

They read and they accept and they learn instead of just going out and winning because they're the good guys. I think that makes for a better novel, and that's something I have to thank all you Pals for.

[joseph]

Justin,

Sounds good to me hope its a success, Im not to sure about the outcome of shells on armour but this chap studies it and has some software to work it out?. I have never used it but it may help.here

Regards Charles

[Justin Moretti]

On another note, I seem to recall the Japanese battleship Hiei coming off worst (left shattered to be finished by aircraft) in a close-range action against US destroyers and cruisers armed with 5 inch and 8 inch guns. Even granted that these were ballistically better than the British weapons we are talking about, it would seem that capital ship armour is no defence at close range when everything else can be riddled to uselessness. (And was Hiei, or was she not, one of the WW1 hold-overs, and thus of the technological era covered by our board?)

At least as far as the big-gun-armed ships go, the battleship of an earlier age seems not to be necessarily safe from the next generation's cruisers if the circumstances are in the smaller ship's favour, though the 9.2 inch guns that the Warriors carried might have been a leap ahead from that carried by, say, an Orlando-class belted cruiser of the early 1890s. In this respect, it might be interesting to see what would have happened if Sturdee's battlecruisers had been forced to engage Scharnhorst and Gneisenau well within the range of their 8.2 inch guns. I wonder if Sturdee didn't have a warning crystal-ball vision of his flagship's eventual fate when he chose to engage them at the range he did.