Ship Design

[Pips]

Have never understood why British ship designers went for the massive block bridge structure on the revamped Warspite, Nelson class and KGV class battleships. What advantage did they hope for? To me it's always made them seriously vulnerable given the size of the target the structure makes.

[Tomg44]

Battleships sit remarkably low in the water.

This presents a command and control problem for the Bridge.

1 To see the opposition before it sees you.
2 To estimate its range.
3 To observe its manouevres.
4 To judge the fall of your shots.
These require an observation post as far above the water as practicable (Crows Nest).

The commander on the bridge is hostage to to competence and communication
skills of the of the observers - Think Titanic!
Ideally the commander should be able to make 1st hand observations of the rapidly
changing situation, and react promptly - be in the Crows Nest.

The designers problem is to raise the bridge to the maximum height
without making the vessel top heavy and compromising its stability.


There are lots of photos here which show how various navies tried to cope.
http://www.maritimequest.com/photo_gallery.htm

The Japanese and Americans seem to adopted the most extreme solutions.

Regards,
Tomg44

[Pips]

Great site Tom, many thanks.

Many of those photo's just strengthen my question. German, Japanese and American designers all 'layered' their bridge superstructure so that they gained height, saved weight and avoided creating a massive target to opposing gunners. The British didn't.

Can't understand why they chose the direction in design they took. Can't see the benefits.

[Sheldrake]

Great site Tom, many thanks.

Many of those photo's just strengthen my question. German, Japanese and American designers all 'layered' their bridge superstructure so that they gained height, saved weight and avoided creating a massive target to opposing gunners. The British didn't.

Can't understand why they chose the direction in design they took. Can't see the benefits.

I suspect much of this is aesthetics. There isn't any real difference in target size. In any event the superstructure was rarely the target - or the engagement was from far enough away that hitting the ship was a real achievement. US and Japanese ships have similar volumes of superstructure, but positioned in a different way, with more open platforms. The RN designs for their ships designed in the 1920s and 30s have a big structure with clean lines. Several possible reasons:-

1.British ships were designed to minimise weight and cost while being seaworthy, at the expense of being under armed.
2. British ships carried aircraft amidships which meant the flats and cabins in the superstructure clutter midships fitted under the bridge in a tidy block.
3. Other navies valued open air upper desks for light weapons

[Takao]

From Man O' War #3 on Rodney & Nelson.

As battleship bridgework had grown during the war years so had the problem of associated draughts, and the adoption of the streamlined tower bridge was in diect response to a stream of complaints from sea concerning draughty bridges. The new shape also reduced funnel gasses being drawn back into the bridge, and served as a solid support for the fire control equipment. It also gave personnel increased protection against the weather and in general was considered to be a tremendous advance over anything that had gone before.

[Paul Lakowski]

British & American capital ships had huge staff requirements for plotting boards along with Radar & FCS , which were all labour intensive functions.

In time with all post war restructuring of warships weapons and systems put the bulk of this down below deck especially with increasing automation.

[Andy H]

[quote="Sheldrake In any event the superstructure was rarely the target - or the engagement was from far enough away that hitting the ship was a real achievement. [/quote]

Hi Sheldrake

That's a very pertinent point and often overlooked or wrongly assumed that 'specific areas' could be targeted from ships many miles different moving at speed. Just hitting the ship was an achievement, one just has to look at the single figure % hits recorded in most WW2 Naval gun engagements. As you say just hitting the ship was a great achievement.

Regards

Andy H

[Terry Duncan]

Have never understood why British ship designers went for the massive block bridge structure on the revamped Warspite, Nelson class and KGV class battleships. What advantage did they hope for? To me it's always made them seriously vulnerable given the size of the target the structure makes.

Some of the reasons others have mentioned, but the size of the structure matters little compared to its weight as adding topweight effects the ships stability and capabilities as a gun platform. The Japanese went to the greatest extremes, which eventually led to the Tomazuru capsizing and a major redesign of many Japanese ships;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ ... t_Tomozuru

A good illustration of how the ship changed is given by the following link, which although it shows models, it is probably the clearest in showing just how much topweight was added to even small ships in an attempt to have everything and give up nothing!

http://www.aeronautic.dk/Warship%20Tomo ... sukari.htm

The bridge structure on the Nelson class had some problems, but solved the problem of how to get the staff high up in the structure, allow good all round observation, keep the staff warm and dry, and offer at least reasonable protection to the extent the staff on these ships said they were far better than anything previous to them even if they did have faults due to the strange properties of the design leading them to act as sails! They did retain the armoured conning tower, but it was almost never used by the staff, so removed from future requirements.

On the Hood the armoured conning tower provided was the heaviest fitted to a British ship, coming in at 600 tons or so, and was seldom used by admirals and captains because it offered such a restricted view they prefered to be on the standard bridges above it! When Warspite, then Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were rebuilt from the layered bridge and trunked funnel structure the QE's had in the 1920's and 30's, the armoured conning towers and existing bridge structures were removed entirely saving hundreds of tons of weight compared to the bridge structures that replaced them, which had only light splinter plating over the entire area other than a communications tube rising from below the armoured deck to the new armoured bridge, which was high in the structure, but only had somewhere in the region of 3.5"-4.5" of armour, in theory allowing heavy shells to pass though without setting off the fuses, and still being heavy enough to keep out cruiser gun shells. This worked well in practice when one of Bismarcks shells passed though the compass platform on Prince of Wales without exploding, though the senior staff had all migrated to that area and were killed other than Captain Leach, rather than the new armoured bridge just because it was one level higher (it seemed to be a thankless task being a designer)! The shell did pass through though, and the people that had remained on the armoured bridge were unscathed.

The bridge itself isnt really that great a target area given that even with gunnery improvements in WWII, hitting enemy targets at normal battle ranges yielded a similar 3%-5% hit rate similar to that of the ships at Jutland, so hitting the superstructure gives about a 17%-20% chance from a 3%-5% chance of getting the shells into the right area in the first place! Curiously the turrets comprised a similar target area to the superstructures on most ships and were obviously more important than the bridges themselves as places to armour.

Sadly, although I have books showing the armour layout, I have no scanner, and I am useless at finding this sort of thing online it seems (although I did get an armour layout for a KGV starship from the Star Trek universe), so the best I can offer is a blurred image from a book taken from a web page and a comparison with the first Iowa class ships. Hopefully somebody more internet competent will be able to supply a clear picture for you?

This is the KGVs internals (they are similar to those on the earlier ships with the tower bridges), and whilst really poor quality, you can just about make out a small thin tube running up from the armoured deck to just below where the bridge structure overhangs the front of the tower like in a medieval house. At the top of the tube, below the overhang still you can just about make out a small cylinder maybe 2 - 3 times the size of the tube itself, that is the armoured bridge! It is small, reasonably armoured, and a tiny target side on.

http://www.shop.kagero.pl/media/product ... 1393875579

In the following photo of the KGV you can see a small line of slits just below the bridge overhang, that is the vision from the armoured bridge;

http://i.imgur.com/Zce2L.jpg

As you can see, the vision is still really restricted compared to the main bridge windows above, and why the command staff tended to be found where the best view was available, just as in WWI.

By comparison, the Iowa armour layout that I can find easily, and also gives an idea where to look in the blurred image above, shows a far larger armoured bridge with its attendent topweight penalties - and from what I have read, was just as unpopular with the US command staff as the position was for their British counterparts;

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/or ... b48948.jpg

I hope this is of help and clear enough for you, if not please feel free to ask, I tend to presume people are possibly more familiar with the designs than they are.