She served from to and was probably the longest-serving Dreadnought of all. Launched between and , all these ships had fairly modest naval careers—except for Dreadnought V , which served at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Dreadnought VI is where things start to get interesting. The sixth ship to bear the name was an ironclad battleship, the first with a metal hull and steam engines instead of a wooden hull and sails. Armed with four At some point in history, "dreadnought" became a loose term for any battleship, and that's because of the Dreadnought VII. The Grand Fleet's enormous number of first-class battleshipssome 35 ships, including a half-dozen from the USplayed a key role in the war effort. They forced Germany to pour huge sums into its own navy, making it difficult to effectively finance its war effort.
However, the massive cost of the ships, at a time when the British Empire was in severe financial distress, was ruinous in the long term. By the end of the war, the nation had nearly bankrupted itself building close to 30 dreadnoughts that faced significant threats from torpedo ships operated by even small navies.
In so doing, she bankrupted the Empire and lost her position as the world's premier navy forever. The Dreadnoughts were developed to do more with less while simultaneously addressing issues with previous battleships. For one thing, battleships of the era found it difficult to hit their targets. All ship guns were unguided, with gunners using splashes in the water to judge missed shots and adjust their aim. However, because both the target and the gun were constantly moving, by the time the gun was reloaded and ready to fire, any information gleaned about range and direction was nearly useless.
Dreadnought brought together for the first time a series of technologies which had been developing over several years. Most important was her firepower. She was the first all big-gun battleship - with ten inch guns. Each gun fired half-ton shells over 4ft tall and packed with high explosive.
They weighed as much as a small car. Standing next to one today, it is easy to see how a single broadside could destroy an opponent - and do so at 10 miles' distance. These great distances caused problems of their own - in controlling and directing the fire - and Dreadnought was one of the first ships fitted with new equipment to electrically transmit information to the gun turrets. For potential enemies on the receiving end this was a terrifying prospect. Admiral Lord West, a former head of the Royal Navy, calls Dreadnought "a most devastating weapon of war, the most powerful thing in the world".
Potential adversaries would also have trouble outrunning her. New steam turbine engines gave her a maximum speed of about 25mph. They made her more reliable than previous ships, and able to sustain a higher speed for much longer.
But there was something else, too. A few small guns were carried on the superstructure, and on it the boats were stowed. In armament, except for numbers of guns and their height above water, this Dreadnought was a distant prototype of her namesake designed thirty years later. The most striking instances of the domination of armaments over warship design are to be found in the Dreadnought and her successors. In the Dreadnought there were ten inch guns and twenty-seven pounders. The inch guns are mounted in pairs in five armoured positions.
One pair is carried above a high forecastle which rises 28 feet above the normal water-line, the axes of the guns being about 6 feet higher. These guns are on the centre line of the deck and command large arcs of horizontal training on each side. Another pair is placed similarly on the centre line of the upper deck towards the after part, and commands a corresponding arc of training astern. A third pair is placed on the centre line of4 the upper deck at some distance before the after turret: these guns are available on either broadside, and command large arcs of training, but cannot fire directly astern because of the interference of the after turret.
The remaining four inch guns are mounted in two armoured stations, one on each side of the upper deck at some distance abaft the forward turret. Each pair can be fired directly ahead past the side of the high forecastle, and they command large arcs of training abaft the beam, but each pair is available only on one broadside. The eight guns on the upper deck are carried about 24 feet above the normal water-line.
As the official description puts it: ' Eight inch guns 80 per cent, of the main armament can be fired on either broadside, and four or possibly six inch guns can be fired simultaneously ahead or astern. The other impact of HMS Dreadnought was the propulsion system. Prior to Dreadnought, major combatants used the triple expansion reciprocating steam engine.
It limited the maximum speed for a battleship to around 18 knots. The huge rods and pistons of the engine caused great vibration throughout the ship, which interfered with accurate targetting with the optical rangefinders then in use. The reciprocating machinery broke down frequently when run at top speed, and a high-speed run of any great eduration would result in the ship sitting for days making repairs.
HMS Dreadnought adopted the Parsons turbine, previously used only in small ships. The turbine's advantages were enormous.
0コメント