Quiet here...

[Bullethead]

I can't imagine having to deal with the sails and rigging. Nightmarish.

No kidding. In bad weather, those oldtime sailormen would sometimes be dancing on the footropes for hours, working their butts off the whole time trying to get control of some flailing piece of evil canvas. All the while, they were getting blasted by high-velocity rain, probably very cold, and swinging through a huge arc as the ship rolled 30-40^ each way with every sea. And then they'd have to do something similar the next watch, and the next, all the way for however many months it took them to get anywhere. With nothing to eat except salt horse and weevil-filled biscuit. It can only have been that gallon of beer per day, plus the tot, that kept them going.

Ironically for the black battlefleet, Temeraire was painted white for a time.

Yeah, IIRC, when the Duke of Edinburgh was CinC of the Med Squadron, he was able to get some of his ships painted white because they suffered from the heat there. Otherwise, the only white ships were in the tropics or on the China Station.

 

[Hood]

My question ...... I hope Iam correct in my thinking ....
Which WW1 capital ship has had the longest active duty ....

 

[Firestorm]

Easy. The SMS Goeben or the TCG Yavuz Sultan Selim after she was transfered to the Turkish Navy and was active untill she was decommissioned in 1960. Spending almost 50 years in active service.

 

[Hood]

It was far too easy - I had hoped it was obscure enough .... well done , your question ?

 

[Firestorm]

What was the first Battleship in the world to be commissioned with superimposed, or superfiring turrets?

 

[Bullethead]

What was the first Battleship in the world to be commissioned with superimposed, or superfiring turrets?

I'd have to say that weird French thing Henri IV.

 

[JebUSMC]

Unless you mean the main armament being superfiring, in which case its the USS South Carolina. Very nearly the first all big gun battleship (laid down before HMS Dreadnought)

 

[TBR]

No kidding. In bad weather, those oldtime sailormen would sometimes be dancing on the footropes for hours, working their butts off the whole time trying to get control of some flailing piece of evil canvas. All the while, they were getting blasted by high-velocity rain, probably very cold, and swinging through a huge arc as the ship rolled 30-40^ each way with every sea. And then they'd have to do something similar the next watch, and the next, all the way for however many months it took them to get anywhere. With nothing to eat except salt horse and weevil-filled biscuit. It can only have been that gallon of beer per day, plus the tot, that kept them going.

In Germany all naval officer candidates do a voyage on the sail training ship "Gorch Fock" (named after Germanys "sailor poet" who fell on "Wiesbaden" at the Skagerrak/Jutland). Since the classes, "crews", are usually too large to fit in one go, the "normal voyages" are split in two halves, the first leaving Germany in summer and exchanging with the second half in autumn, for instance in the Mediterranean, the second half sailing back to Germany and into winter.

Guess which part of the voyage I took part in. I can feel with those old-time sailors even though we only had two weeks of near or below zero degrees celsius sailing in that voyage. Late autumn in the Med was pleasantly warm and, with the exception of force 9 winds in the Agean and foce 11 gales near Gibraltar, remarkably calm. Of course we had no weevils and the food was usually better than salt horse, but we DID have mushrooming bug juice because the provisioning chief did miscalculate the "best before..." dates.

 

[Firestorm]

Unless you mean the main armament being superfiring, in which case its the USS South Carolina. Very nearly the first all big gun battleship (laid down before HMS Dreadnought)

Yeah I should've said main armament. I was thinking of the South Carolina. The French Henri IV seemed to be more of an experimental ship to me. She was only 8,807 tons while the Suffren built at the same time was 12,750 tons. Your turn Jeb.

 

[Bullethead]

I can feel with those old-time sailors even though we only had two weeks of near or below zero degrees celsius sailing in that voyage.

I don't know whether to be envious or sympathetic . I've done some pulley-hauley but only on a small schooner where everything was worked from the deck. Never climbed the rigging.

Over here, the sailing training ship is Eagle, a sister of your Gorch Fock. The USN stole her from the Kriegsmarine at the end of WW2 but ended up turning her over to the Coast Guard. I belive her original name was Horst Wessel. Anyway, I almost joined the Coast Guard just to sail aboard her, but decided that was a bad way to choose a career, so I passed on it.

 

[Bullethead]

The French Henri IV seemed to be more of an experimental ship to me.

Besides your other grounds, I might have found another disqualifaction for my choice. You said the ship had to be commissioned with superfiring turrets. But I just looked at the original plans of Henri IV over at this site. Strangely, they don't show the superfiring aft 2ndary turret, just a shielded mount there like the other 2ndary guns had. So now I don't know if she was really commissioned with the turret or had it added later in life. .

 

[JebUSMC]

You were right about the superfiring secondary turret Bullethead. According to http://www.steelnavy.com/CombrigHenriIV.htm Henry IV was designed with a superfiring 5.5 in a turret. Now for the question. Which nation was the first to design an all big gun battleship?

 

[Fairweather]

Italy, I think. Someone called Vittorio Cuniberti.

 

[PepsiCan]

Japan, although a shortage of large calibre guns still led to a mixed guns build. The name of the ship is Satsuma.

Source: Jane's "Battleships of the 20th century"

 

[Bullethead]

Japan, although a shortage of large calibre guns still led to a mixed guns build. The name of the ship is Satsuma.

But the earlier Brit Lord Nelson had the same mixed armament, except 9.2" instead of 10" guns.

This is a tough question. If you can go back to the wood and then ironclad eras, there were plenty of "all big gun" battleships. If you look at predreadnoughts, the German Brandenburgs kinda fit the bill, with extra big guns at the expense of 2ndary guns, even if the extra big guns were short-barreled. Then you've got transitional things like Lord Nelson, Satsuma, etc. OTOH, if you're thinking in dreadnought terms, IIRC South Carolina was on the drawing board before Dreadnought and Satsuma, although she didn't have turbines (like Satsuma).

Cuniberti's sketches I'm not sure really count. As I understand it, the stuff he published in Jane's were just rough sketches showing in general what was then possible, without going into all the details of a complete design. And of course, those ships were never built anyway.

 

[Hinchinbrooke]

Yes, it's funny, but the Brandenburgs, with their 6-gun main armament were an interesting design. Of course, the middle turret housed different calibre 11" guns................ and then later German pre-dreadnoughts returned to fewer, smaller guns for their main battery until the Braunschweig and Deutschland classes turned up............. themselves not terribly compelling ships.

 

[Firestorm]

Cuniberti's sketches I'm not sure really count. As I understand it, the stuff he published in Jane's were just rough sketches showing in general what was then possible, without going into all the details of a complete design. And of course, those ships were never built anyway.

From what I understand Cuniberti actually submitted the "all-big gun" design to the Italian Navy but they rejected it before he was asked for some of his stuff to be published in Jane's.

 

[Bullethead]

From what I understand Cuniberti actually submitted the "all-big gun" design to the Italian Navy but they rejected it before he was asked for some of his stuff to be published in Jane's.

The Russians were busy in the "what-if" game, too, though, even earlier. There was a Lt. Kolchak at Port Arthur, for instance. His DD's mines had sunk Takasago but his health had been broken by an Arctic expedition. So, during 1905, he was in the hospital, where he passed the time he spent in the hospital sketching up new BBs. One of his ideas was for a ship with 8x 12" (twins forward, aft, and each side amidships) and 12x 8" (2x twin turrets each side and 1 on each end atop the 12" turrets). He sent in his ideas once the war was over and they were taken into consideration, although ultimately rejected.

However, the arrangement of the 12" turrets is the same as originally envisioned for Dreadnought. Had it not been for improvements in engineering during the sketch-up period, allowing volume for another barbette amidships, Dreadnought would have just had 4 main turrets, arranged just as Kolchak's sketches.

Also in mid-1905, the official Russian warship designers submitted a design for a semi-dreadnought with 4x12" and 12x10", pretty much the same as Satsuma. Again, never built, but it further cloudies up the issue of who thought of it first.

 

[JebUSMC]

I was looking for Japan. If it hadn't been for the shortage of 12" guns, they'd be called Satsumas rather than Dreadnoughts. They would have mounted the weapons much the same way the German Nassau class had them. While the Brandenburgs are a very interesting concept, they aren't considered all big gun ships because they were still intended to fight at close range with the secondary guns being a primary offensive weapon. PepsiCan is up.

 

[PepsiCan]

Okay, here it goes.

What was the name of the flagship of the allied fleet during the battle of the Java Sea and what does the name of that ship stand for/represent?

And as a bonus question: who was the fleet commander and who was the commander of the flagship (full names please)?