February 10. / TASS /. Exactly 110 years ago, on February 10, 1906, the British warship Dreadnought was launched in Portsmouth. By the end of the same year, it was completed and entered into the Royal Navy.
The Dreadnought, combining a number of innovative solutions, became the ancestor of a new class of warships, to which it gave its name. This was the final step towards the creation of battleships - the largest and most powerful artillery ships ever to go to sea.
However, the Dreadnought was not unique - the revolutionary ship was the product of a long evolution of battleships. Its analogues were already going to be built in the USA and Japan; Moreover, the Americans began to develop their own dreadnoughts even before the British. But Britain came first.
The Dreadnought's trademark is artillery, which consisted of ten main-caliber guns (305 millimeters). They were complemented by many small 76-mm guns, but the intermediate caliber on the new ship was completely absent.
Such armament strikingly distinguished the Dreadnought from all previous battleships. Those, as a rule, carried only four 305-millimeter guns, but were supplied with a solid medium-caliber battery - usually 152 millimeters.
The habit of supplying battleships with many - up to 12 and even 16 - medium-caliber cannons was easily explained: 305-millimeter guns took a long time to reload, and at this time 152-millimeter ones had to shower the enemy with a hail of shells. This concept proved its worth during the war between the United States and Spain in 1898 - in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, American ships achieved a depressingly small number of hits with their main caliber, but literally riddled the enemy with medium-caliber "rapid-fire".
However, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 demonstrated something completely different. The Russian battleships, which were much larger than the Spanish ships, withstood the mass of hits from 152-mm guns - only the main caliber inflicted serious damage to them. In addition, the Japanese sailors were simply more accurate than the American ones.
12-inch guns on HMS Dreadnought
© Library of Congress Bain collection
Idea authorship
Italian military engineer Vittorio Cuniberti is traditionally considered the author of the concept of a battleship equipped with extremely heavy artillery. He proposed to build a battleship for the Italian naval forces with 12 305-mm guns, a turbine power plant that uses liquid fuel, and powerful armor. Italian admirals refused to implement Cuniberti's idea, but allowed it to be published.
In the 1903 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships, there was a short - only three pages - article by Kuniberty "The ideal battleship for the British fleet". In it, the Italian described a giant battleship with a displacement of 17 thousand tons, equipped with 12 305-mm cannons and unusually powerful armor, and even capable of developing a speed of 24 knots (which made it one third faster than any battleship).
Only six of these "ideal ships" would be enough to defeat any enemy, Kuniberti believed. Due to its firepower, its battleship had to sink an enemy battleship with one salvo, and due to its high speed, it would immediately move on to the next one.
The author considered rather an abstract concept, without making precise calculations. In any case, it seems almost impossible to fit all of Kuniberty's proposals into a 17,000-ton ship. The total displacement of the real "Dreadnought" turned out to be much higher - about 21 thousand tons.
So, despite the similarity of the Cuniberty proposal with the Dreadnought, it is unlikely that the Italian had a great influence on the construction of the first ship of the new class. Cuniberty's article was published at a time when the "father" of "Dreadnought" Admiral John "Jackie" Fisher had already reached similar conclusions, but in a completely different way.
Cannons on the roof of the tower. HMS Dreadnought, 1906
© US Library of Congress Bain collection
"Father" of "Dreadnought"
Admiral Fisher, pushing the Dreadnought project through the British Admiralty, was guided not by theoretical but by practical considerations.
While still commanding the British naval forces in the Mediterranean, Fischer empirically established that shooting from different caliber guns made aiming extremely difficult. The artillerymen of that time, aiming the guns at the target, were guided by the bursts from the fall of shells into the water. And at a great distance, bursts from shells of 152 and 305 mm caliber are almost impossible to distinguish.
In addition, the rangefinders and fire control systems that existed at that time were extremely imperfect. They did not allow to realize all the capabilities of the guns - the British battleships could shoot at 5.5 kilometers, but according to the results of real tests, the recommended range of aimed fire was only 2.7 kilometers.
Meanwhile, it was necessary to increase the effective distance of the battle: torpedoes became a serious enemy of the battleships, the range of which at that time reached about 2.5 kilometers. A logical conclusion was drawn: the best way to fight at long distances would be a ship with the maximum number of main battery guns.
Dreadnought deckhouse USS Texas, USA
© EPA / LARRY W. SMITH
At some point, as an alternative to the future "Dreadnought", a ship was considered, equipped with a variety of 234-mm guns, which were then already used by the British as medium artillery on battleships. Such a ship would combine a rate of fire with enormous firepower, but Fischer needed a truly "big gun".
Fischer also insisted on equipping the Dreadnought with the latest steam turbines, which allowed the ship to develop over 21 knots per hour, while 18 knots were considered sufficient for battleships. The admiral was well aware that the advantage in speed allows him to impose an advantageous distance on the enemy. Given the vast superiority of the Dreadnought in heavy artillery, this meant that several of these ships were able to defeat the enemy fleet, while remaining virtually inaccessible to most of its guns.
© H. M Stationery Office
Without a single shot
The Dreadnought was built in record time. As a rule, they call an impressive year and one day: the ship was laid down on October 2, 1905, and on October 3, 1906, the battleship went out for the first sea trials. This is not entirely correct - traditionally, the construction time is counted from the bookmark to the inclusion in the combat composition of the fleet. The Dreadnought entered service on December 11, 1906, a year and two months after the start of construction.
The unprecedented speed of work had a downside. The photographs from Portsmouth show not always a high-quality assembly of the hull - other armor plates are crooked, and the bolts that fasten them are of different sizes. No wonder - 3 thousand workers literally "burned" at the shipyard for 11 and a half hours a day and 6 days a week.
A number of flaws are associated with the ship's design itself. Operation showed insufficient efficiency of the newest fire control systems of the Dreadnought and its rangefinders - the largest at that time. Rangefinder posts even had to be moved so that they would not be damaged by the shock wave of a gun salvo.
The most powerful ship of the era never fired at the enemy from its main caliber. The Dreadnought was not present at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 - the largest clash of fleets of dreadnoughts - it was being repaired.
But even if the Dreadnought were in service, it would have to remain in the second line - in just a few years it was hopelessly outdated. It was replaced in Britain and Germany by larger, faster and more powerful battleships.
Thus, representatives of the "Queen Elizabeth" type, which entered service in 1914-1915, were already carrying 381 millimeter guns. The mass of a projectile of this caliber was more than twice that of a Dreadnought projectile, and these guns fired one and a half times further.
Nevertheless, the "Dreadnought" was still able to achieve victory over the enemy ship, unlike many other representatives of its class. His victim was a German submarine. Ironically, the mighty dreadnought destroyed it not with artillery fire and not even with a torpedo - it simply rammed the submarine, although it was the Dreadnought that the British shipbuilders did not equip with a special ram.
However, the submarine sunk by the Dreadnought was by no means ordinary, and its captain was a famous sea wolf. But that's a completely different story.
