Landships II

You're right about the thickness - that'll teach me for relying on Wiki when I'm at work (and should be working!). Annoyingly, none of my books state what type of steel it was - I wouldn't want to assume it was mild steel. I might badger some Germans on some ship forums (fora?)...

Hi Ironsides - clearly you're into battleships and know your stuff! You're probably right about it not being nickel steel. The extreme thickness of the belt strongly suggests the use of compound armour, so mild steel for the hoods is very likely.

The inclined slide mounting rather reminds me of the Vavasseur mounting. As for similar carriages on other vessels, well, so far as I know only a few examples existed, all either German or German-influenced...

The 'Dreadnought Project' site has a page with many magnificent downloadable ships' plans:
http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/plans/

Of particular interest in this case is the coast defence battleship Hagen:
http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/plans/SM_Hagen_1894/

The following cross-section reveals similar main-gun inclined-slide carriages (BEWARE: large file alert! 1.4Mb!):
http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/plans/SM_Hagen_1894//langsschnitt_100dpi.jpg

And in Pantserschepen, Pantserdekschepen, Monitors by Mulder & Scully (sorry, Mulder & Ruygrok), there is a reproduction of the ship's plans for the Evertsen class Kortenaer of 1892 which also reveals similar inclined-slide carriages.

I'm doubtful that it was a modified fortress mounting, mainly because it is so similar to the Vavasseur mounting. In the Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects of 1888, there is a paper by Lord Armstrong and Vavasseur himself titled 'The Application of Hydraulic Power to Naval Gunnery'. At the back of the volume are numerous gatefold drawings, in great detail, of a wide variety of naval gun mountings, ranging from a centre-pivot 6" gun to the 105-ton 17" guns mounted on the Italian Italia and Lepanto. Of particular interest is a drawing of a circular barbette mounting for a single 9.2" gun on a Vavasseur carriage. It is very similar to the German mountings discussed earlier. Now, although Vavasseur mountings were used for coastal defence guns, this usage came later; they were developed as naval gun mountings during the 1880s.

BTW, there is a splendid model of Beowulf, a sister of Hagen, on this page:
http://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/modell/2004/beowulf/beo1.htm

It shows her in her orignal form, with a single funnel, which IMHO makes for a more handsome vessel than the reconstructed version with two funnels.

EDIT: Another magnificent model can be seen here:
http://www.marinemodell-fotoarchiv.de/fotoarchiv/flottenparade/flottenparade2002/Deutsch/beowulf.html

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 21:59, 2007-07-12

Hi Lafettenheini, generally speaking this type of disapearing mounting was used in forts or in the redoughts or barbettes in early ironclads where it seems to have been favoured particularly by the french, the barrel is counter-balanced and this allows it to be raised to firing position easily, the recoil from firing would bring the gun back to its loading position behind the armour of the fort or ship redought/barbette where it could be loaded safely by the gun crew, plus at least on warships the positioning of weapons was crucial to the stability of the ship, large amounts of armour etc high above the water line can be dangerous, this mounting allows a higher firing position with a lower center of gravity which means you can carry bigger guns .......

Cheers

Hi Lafettenheini, you might try these sites:

look under ships, weapons, tactics section at:

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/n0000000.htm

extracts from brasseys naval annual-very interesting contemporary info on guns armour and ships:

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/bras1913.htm

Cheers




-- Edited by Ironsides at 11:42, 2007-09-01

Ironsides wrote:

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extracts from brasseys naval annual-very interesting contemporary info on guns armour and ships:

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/bras1913.htm

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That's a fantastic link, many thanks Ironsides! I went to the hassle of ordering Brassey's 1913 via IIL at work a while ago for the drawings of the Vickers triple mounting - but there it is, on the site you linked to!

Ironsides wrote:

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Hi Lafettenheini, generally speaking this type of disapearing mounting was used in forts or in the redoughts or barbettes in early ironclads where it seems to have been favoured particularly by the french...

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Curiously, the Russian too used disappearing mountings in at least two ironclads, the circular Vice-Admiral Popov and later Ekaterina II, all of which mounted big breechloading 12" guns.

Hi Roger and Gerd, I have discover new information concerning the Brandenburg turret pic posted earlier.... from a distant memory.....
two of this class of ship were sold to Turkey in 1910 the "Kurfurst Friedrich Wilhelm"(Renamed "Heiraddin Barbaroosa") and "Weissenburg"(renamed "Turgut Reis") apparantly both these ships had nickel steel armour so the turret illustrated could well be nickel steel....
Both ships played a very active role in the turkish navy before and during WW1 taking part in the "Battle of Lemnos" unsuccesfully in 1913 against the greek navy during the first balkan war , and at the dardanelles where "Heraddin Barbaroosa" hit HMS Queen Elizabeth with indirect fire causing some damage, quite a feat.....
Heiradin Barbaroosa was sunk by HMS E-11 on the 8th August 1915...
Turgut Reis survived the war and was finally decomissioned in 1938 her turrets were mounted in a fort at the dardanelles and as far as I know are still there....

-- Edited by Ironsides at 09:05, 2007-09-03

Hi All, I'm no expert on metal but perhaps I can help a little here on the development of armour plate so here goes.....

Wrought iron, used for the earliest iron clads (Hms Warrior is a surviving example) made by taking basic cast iron and mixing it with slang from the smelting process with a kind of paddle, initially this was done by hand later by machine this gives a grain to the metal and makes it very tough but not hard.

Mild Steel, refined from from cast iron using a Bessemer converter, this gets rid of the excess carbon in the cast iron and produces a steel which is easy to work and can be cast, is soft but can be hardened by carborising producing plates with a hard surface....

Carbon Steel, mild steel with carbon added, more then 1% produces cast iron, less then 0.3% carbon has  little effect, Hard but not tough the more carbon the more the plates are likely to shatter...a major problem....

Nickel Alloy Steel, carbon steel with the addition of nickel, tougher then carbon steel but still prone to shattering....

Harveyised Steel, the nickel steel plates were laid in a furnace with the outside surface covered with a carbon rich material over time (weeks or even mounths depending on the thickness) the carbon would be absorbed by the steel producing a plate with a progressively harder structure through the thickness of the plate, producing a hard and tough steel plate...leading too...

Krupp Cemeted steel, krupp took the harvey process and went one stage further  using a special furnace where carbon rich gases were blown over the suface of an alloy steel plate this process was both quicker and produced a better quality plate with a significant improvement in the metal....very hard and very tough.....

Types of armour....much early armour was backed by very thick wood ...

Wrought Iron, as above sometimes 2 layers with wood bettween...

Carbon Steel, had a tendency to shatter....

Compound, made by poring liquid steel in to the gap bettween a wrought iron plate and a carbon steel plate producing a solid mass in tests the different layers sometimes seperated.....

Nickel steel, better then compound

Harvey nickel, 50+% better then compound

Krupp Cemented, 100% better then compound


Cheers

Hi Roger, no one was more suprised then me the info came from 4 or 5 different sources none of them connected but when I saw the turret pic I just had to post it, I think it was taken around 2002 so fairly recent......
from what I can gather compound armour was used on the other 2 ships not because it was'nt available at the time but because krupp as Gerd pointed out could not produce enough for 4 ships..... so compound  was substituted, this must have caused some problems with the design spec as the compound was thicker to compensate and therefore heavier, it is possible that they simply put in a shorter or narrower belt......the rest of the armour such as the turrets therefore was probarbly nickel steel (compound was only used for very thick armour) and it may be this material that Gerd mentions as "temper-guss".....it was a real  problem  putting holes in the stuff so much so that special techniques were developed to do this, one of was "electric arc errosion drilling" (not sure if this is the correct title) ......

I'm allways happy  to share...

Cheers

-- Edited by Ironsides at 20:02, 2007-09-04

Before one asks : I used 2 X 10 mm steel roundhead rivetts .
The sliding up lafette is 30X 30 mm angle steel. Lafette walls 1.5 mm tin plate both side
sandwiched with 5mm full - steel . All wheels self milled .
The cannon is offered at E-gun 10x for sale .

http://www.egun.de/market/item.php?id=1713501

I know it is a bit priecy but hand made is not a mass pruduct !