The Ship Model Forum

Interesting information on Russian battleship projects aborted by WWI.

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/irn16bb.htm

I don't know when exactly the Japanese and Americans committed themselves to building 16" gunned battleships, but it appears that had WWI not intervened, Russian battleships would have been in the first wave of 16 inchers. (Yes, I recognize the Germans were already thinking in terms of 16.5 inches)

Some of the Russian projects involve 16 X 16" guns on a moderately protected and moderately fast 45,000 ton hull. Had these been built, they would undoubtedly have been a significant factor in direction of battleship development in other nations.

These design also shows clearly that, as result of detailed improvements not easily recognized from a simple spec sheet, battleship designed to WWII standards needed to be far larger than those with comparable armamement, nominal armor thickness and speed designed around WWI. A WWII era battleship with 16 X 16" guns would have be > 70,000 tons.

Some of the armor schemes on these ships are quite novel and unlike any ever installed elsewhere.

The US 16-inch/45 Mk.1 was proposed on 6 November 1911, approved by SecNav in October 1912, drawings are dated August 1913, and the gun was proof-fired 16 July, 1914.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

One wonders about the ability of Russian industry to produce 16in guns. An upgrade to 16-inchers was suggested for the Izmails, but there were never realististic prospects for completing them in any guise.
If anybody cares, Vladimir and I have a book due out next year from Spellmount, called Raising the Red Banner. It deals with Soviet warships 1920-45 and has 200+ photos.

Before WWI, Britain was very willing to assist countries on the verge of being able to produce a naval gun of desired caliber. Examples include Italy and Japan. In the case of Japan, Britain supplied the expertise to built a bigger gun than is commonly in service in the RN.

It is interesting to note the Russian designs feature just a single open space in the torpedo defense. Apparently the expansion of the torpedo explosion is to be entirely contained in that single space, with a bulkhead behind to stopping splinters. I can not believe this system would work very well against standard sized torpedo warheads.

These fascinating designs are dealt with at great length in Sergei Vinogradov’s ‘Last Giants of the Imperial Russian Fleet’, a Russian-language publication that is now, I understand, quite hard to get hold of. For Anglophone readers such as myself, however, Stephen McLaughlin treats the subject well in ‘Russian & Soviet Battleships’ (which appeared mere months after I got hold of the Vinogradov book - curses!).

Undoubtedly, Britain would have assisted the Russians with the 16” guns. Indeed, Armstrongs had proposed a number of 16” gun designs for the Brazilians as early as 1910, part of the interminable series of designs which finally resulted in the Rio de Janeiro, later HMS Agincourt (see Topliss, Warship International, No.3, 1988, and Brook, ‘Warships for Export’), so there was no shortage of ability or ambition in that direction. Indeed, had the Brazilians gone for the 16" gun battleship in 1910, one wonders at the effect on battleship development from that point on...

As it was, Vickers built a number of the 14” guns for the aborted Izmail class battlecruisers, and Vickers also designed and built a 16” gun for the Russians, which they tested in August 1917, which was to have been the prototype for the 16” series (see Campbell, Warship No.10, April 1979; curiously, with the end of Russian involvement, the one 16" prototype was used to build an ultra-long-range 8" gun inspired by the Paris Gun - it was a failure). On the other hand, McLaughlin says the 16" had been studied by the Obukhovskii Works since 1912, with orders for prototype guns being placed there and with Vickers in 1914. The design of the Vickers gun was quite different from that of the Obukhovskii Works design.

The 16 x 16” 45,000-tonner was a speculative study by the Reval shipyard, not an officially sanctioned design. It featured innovations such as a two-stage AP-shell de-capping armour scheme, and Foettinger hydraulic transmission for the turbines. Few drawings have been found, and Sergei Vinogradov did much work reconstructing the appearance and characteristics of the design. Having said that, the interesting Kostenko design was also unofficial, and it would appear that only the Bubnov design had any chance of being realised (the Great War and Revolution notwithstanding).

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

A few years ago, I scratch 2 of these design 1/700 WL

Putilov design




Kostenko design



Oups... I have not the Bubnov & Revell


Jef

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Current 1/700 WL
HMS Repulse

It seems even the post Jutland design did not keep pace with many trends of the battleship design elsewhere. There is almost no superstructure and only a small pole mast to support a small director position. Even at this late date the Russians are still more willing to accept the layout difficulties and the massive deck space demands of multiple turrets on the same level instead of adapting superfiring turrets that has become universal everywhere else. The mixed turret/casemate secondary armament is also usual, as is the fact that the secondary turret could not fire dead ahead.

It must be noted that the Kostenko design (the second model) was not chosen for construction. The winner was by Bubnov, which had three quads, one forward, one aft and one amidships. Sergei Vinogradov's 1/100 scale model can be seen here:
http://www.steelnavy.com/BubnovGUKbbDA.htm

The French Normandie design is quite similar in layout. Otherwise, fair criticisms, although oddly enough, a couple of the designs in the long series of studies the British carried out for their 1921 capital ships featured turrets on the same level, with a non-superimposed B turret abaft an A turret. In the case of the Russians, this appears to have been to maximise survivability, dispersing the turrets to minimise the risk of more than one being knocked out by a single lucky hit. Perhaps, too, they were still obsessed with stability so long after Tsushima, and were willing to accept the penalties of not adopting superimpostion by keeping weights low. And in any case, even when the Russians did examine superimposed turrets, as with the Putilovskii design (the first model above), the turrets are still widely spaced apart, as far apart as if they were on the same level (see survivability, above).

BTW, nice models Jefgte, and good luck with the book Tiornu.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

They are interesting designs. Perhaps I will build one of the odder ones in 1/350 some day.

From Chuck's post:


I recall reading somewhere (Conway's?) that these ships' protective system was to be along the lines of the Italian Pugliese system, where the single void space was filled with tubes which were supposed to crush and thus absorb the force of a torpedo explosion. Of course, one wonders what would happen if the ship were hit by more than one torpedo in close proximity.

Later Soviet battleship designs featured Pugliese TDS. But that system hasn't been invented yet during this period.

There were a lot of different mechanisms. Ramilles & Hood both have crushing tubes. If I recall, one of the other "R"s was completed with blisters as a simple void.

One of the best outcomes of the Washington Treaty for the USN was the use of South Carolina to proof test a number of anti-submarine "bulge" schemes. Different than tests of Washington & Tosa, these were conducted in harbor under highly controlled conditions. The USN system of alternating voids descends from this test.

The Japanese tests of Tosa showed that a shell striking a short distance from a ship's side will stabilize under water. Modifications to their standard AP shells made them into "diving shells", designed to strike the water short of the target, descend to 10m or thereabouts and then carry on into the enemy ship's hull well below the armor belt.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, it appears the Tosa's damage was kind of a fluke. In all of WW.II, there is only one documented incident of a Japanese shell actually performing as expected. It struck Boise in the forward magazine, and the ship would have exploded except the sudden inrush of water through the hole at 30+ knots quenched the magazine before a catastrophe could occur.

Their tests proved to them that an armored torpedo bulkhead carried down to the turn of the bilge was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, armor at this point on the ship can generate many more fragments if a torpedo explodes there. The result is these fragments of armor (instead of mild steel) fly off in a cone and penetrate the watertight and retaining bulkheads. South Dakota and Iowa were designed similarly, but they were well under way when caisson tests proved this system made the ships more vulnerable to torpedo hits. The last two Iowas, Kentucky & Illinois were designed without this extension to the armor.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Looks a little like the design for the N3 battleships, without the large tower superstructure.

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Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

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It was comparatively lightly armored and quite fast, so it was more like the G-3 battlecruiser. However, if one were to compare the armor, displacement and speed, then one gets the impression that the Russian design was substantially less efficient than the G-3 battlecruiser. Despite not having a heavy tower bridge, the Russian design was still slower and less heavily armored despite having the similar armament and displacement.

Both Bismark and Prince of Wales were struck by underwater shell hits that went below the belt armor. The hit on Bismark did substantial damage and shut down a boiler room if I recall correctly.

Also, the Tosa experiment shows that the trajectory of shells entering water at steep angle rapidly flattens out. Consequently a shell entering water at 45 degrees can strike at a substantially greater distance from the ship than than the ship's beam, and yet still strike the ship's side under water. Statistically, in a long range engagement using shells with long fuses, there is substantially higher probability for shells to strike ship via underwater trajectory than there is via direct impact against deck.

Incidentally, the extension of the belt to the bottom of the ship is needed on more counts than just diving shells with underwater trajectory. In ships with sloping internal belts and no lower belt, it is possible for the shell to strike the side plating just above the water line, and then penetrate all the way through the TDS into the ship's vitals without ever encountering armor other than the torpedo bulkhead itself, which can be easily penetrated. The British was extremely weary of this possibility, and consequently abandoned the benefits of a sloping belt to adapt a fairly deep vertical external belt precisely to prevent shells hitting above water from having a clear unarmored internal path into the ship below the bottom of the armor belt.

BTW, the Japanese had been concerned about shells diving below the belt since long before Tosa. They insisted on a lower belt in the Kongo battle cruiser. Apparently Japanese warships rolling in heavy seas suffered below-belt penetrations during the Russo-Japanese war.

Of course it was a 'less efficient' design than the G3, given that the Kostenko design dates from 1916 and the G3 from 1920/21. They are virtually two different generations of ships. Far fairer to compare them with their true peers, the Japanese Nagato and American Colorado classes. Do that and I suspect you'll find the Russian design rather efficient.

And I'm not sure what your point is when you say 'Despite not having a heavy tower bridge, the Russian design was still slower and less heavily armored' when you then immediately go on to say '...despite having [a] similar displacement'. It doesn't matter how heavy the bridge structure is if the overall displacement is the same.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

I think it was concluded that the crush tubes did more harm than good. The original idea of the tubes was they would absorbe some explosion force, but also keep air and exclude water from the outboard spaces if the bulge was opened by an explosion. In reality they impeded the free expansion of the explosion gas, resulting in the tubes being physically used to push in the next bulkhead. They also disintegrated to generate splinters which penetrated the next bulkhead.

WWII systems (Pugliese excepted) uses an outboard empty air space into which the torpedo explosion gas can freely expand to take the peak pressure off the rest of the system. Most systems (Yamato system excepted) then use an inboard liquid filled space to distribute what remains of the explosion pressure evenly onto the torpedo bulkhead to allow the bulkhead to deform elastically to absorb the explosion force.

The displacement of the Russian ship does not have to support a high bridge, and therefore ought to be able to support somewhat more hull armor.

The Russian design appears to be less heavily armored than Nagato, and much less heavily armored than Colorado, despite being substantially larger.

They would have compared poorly against Amagi, a closer equivalent in tonnage and other bulk characteristics than Nagato.