Spar torpedo
A spar torpedo is a weapon consisting of a bomb placed at the end of a long pole, or spar, and attached to a boat. The weapon is used by running the end of the spar into the enemy ship, spar torpedoes were often equipped with a barbed spear at the end, so it would stick to wooden hulls. A fuse could be used to detonate it, the spar torpedo was invented during the American Civil War by E. C. Singer, an engineer who worked on secret projects for the benefit of the Confederate States of America. Singers torpedo was detonated by means of a mechanism adapted from a rifle lock. The spring-loaded trigger was detonated by means of a cord attached to the attacking vessel. The attacking vessel rammed its target, embedding the barbed torpedo in its hull, when the attacker reached the limit of the trigger cord, the torpedo was detonated. The most famous use of a torpedo was on the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley. Spar torpedoes were used on the David-class of semi-submersible attack boats. At night on October 27–28,1864, Lieutenant Cushing employed a spar torpedo to sink the Confederate ironclad ram CSS Albemarle, the sinking of the Albemarle was the Union navys only successful sinking of a Confederate vessel by torpedo.
Lieutenant Cushing employed a spar torpedo designed by John Lay, the innovative semi-submersible 1864 Union craft USS Spuyten Duyvil employed a spar torpedo, but not with a barbed attachment to the target. Owing to an innovative directable and extensible spar, this craft could release a slightly buoyant mine underneath the target, spar torpedoes were used on small wooden launches in the late 19th century, although they were not very useful weapons. The locomotive torpedo replaced the torpedo as a weapon for submarines. Spar torpedoes were used by Romanian forces during the countrys war of independence. On May 26,1877, the craft Rândunica sank the Ottoman river monitor Seyfi on the Danube
Water-tube boiler
A watertube boiler is a type of boiler in which water circulates in tubes heated externally by the fire. Fuel is burned inside the furnace, creating hot gas which heats water in the steam-generating tubes, in smaller boilers, additional generating tubes are separate in the furnace, while larger utility boilers rely on the water-filled tubes that make up the walls of the furnace to generate steam. The heated water rises into the steam drum. Here, saturated steam is drawn off the top of the drum, in some services, the steam will reenter the furnace through a superheater to become superheated. Superheated steam is defined as steam that is heated above the point at a given pressure. Superheated steam is a dry gas and therefore used to drive turbines, cool water at the bottom of the steam drum returns to the feedwater drum via large-bore downcomer tubes, where it pre-heats the feedwater supply. To increase economy of the boiler, exhaust gases are used to pre-heat the air blown into the furnace. Such watertube boilers in thermal power stations are called steam generating units.4 MPa.
A water tube boiler was patented by Blakey of England in 1766 and was made by Dallery of France in 1780. e, approximately 16 megapascals and high temperatures reaching up to 550 °C are generally required. For example, the Ivanpah solar-power station uses two Rentech Type-D watertube boilers, modern boilers for power generation are almost entirely water-tube designs, owing to their ability to operate at higher pressures. Where process steam is required for heating or as a chemical component and their ability to work at higher pressures has led to marine boilers being almost entirely water-tube. This change began around 1900, and traced the adoption of turbines for propulsion rather than reciprocating engines – although watertube boilers were used with reciprocating engines. There has been no significant adoption of water-tube boilers for railway locomotives, a handful of experimental designs were produced, but none of these were successful or led to their widespread use. Most water-tube railway locomotives, especially in Europe, used the Schmidt system, most were compounds, and a few uniflows.
The Norfolk and Western Railways Jawn Henry was an exception, as it used a steam turbine combined with an electric transmission, LMS6399 Fury Rebuilt completely after a fatal accident LNER10000 Hush hush Using a Yarrow boiler, rather than Schmidt. Never successful and re-boilered with a conventional boiler, a slightly more successful adoption was the use of hybrid water-tube / fire-tube systems. As the hottest part of a boiler is the firebox, it was an effective design to use a water-tube design here. One famous example of this was the USA Baldwin 4-10-2 No, operating as a compound at a boiler pressure of 2,400 kilopascals it covered over 160,000 kilometres successfully
Scout cruiser
All these ships served in World War I, when the advent of better machinery and larger, faster destroyers and light cruisers had already made them obsolete. The other major operator of scout cruisers was Italy, with no conventional protected cruisers or light cruisers planned between 1900 and 1928, the Regia Marina instead operated a number of scout cruisers from 1912 onwards. Ranging in size from enlarged destroyers to substantial, light cruiser-like ships, such as the Leone class, carried extremely heavy armament for their modest size, capable of outgunning any destroyer of the early 1920s. However, by 1938 the surviving esploratori were re-rated as destroyers, admiral Spaun Novara class Bahia class Almirante Grau class Note, this list includes the ‘super-destroyers’ rated as scouts by Italy
Channel Fleet
The Channel Fleet was the Royal Navy formation of warships that defended the waters of the English Channel from 1690 to 1909. By 1801 its main role was still to stop French ships from the French naval bases at Brest, during the 19th century, as the French developed Cherbourg as a base for steam-powered ships, the Royal Navy developed Portland Harbour as a base for the fleet. The harbour was built between 1849 and 1872 when the Royal Navy created a breakwater made of blocks from local quarries on the Isle of Portland, the Channel Squadron only became a permanent formation in 1858. With the amelioration of Anglo-French relations, and the rise of German militarism towards 1900, the need for the Channel Fleet diminished, admiral Sir Arthur Wilson was officially Senior Officer in Command of the Channel Squadron from 1901 to 1903. His subordinate flag officer in that squadron was the Second-in-Command, who commanded a division of battleships, on 14 December 1904 the Channel Fleet was re-styled the Atlantic Fleet and the Home Fleet became the Channel Fleet.
On 24 March 1909, under a fleet re-organisation, the Channel Fleet became the 2nd Division of the Home Fleet, the fleet features in several of the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick OBrian. The novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville is set on ships of the Channel Fleet, in the immediate aftermath of the Spithead. In the novel The War of the Worlds, the Channel Fleet protects the huge mass of refugee shipping escaping from the Essex coast in the face of the Martian onslaught. The initial heroic fight of HMS Thunder Child and the subsequent general engagement, is detailed in the chapter entitled The Thunderchild
SM U-21 (Germany)
SM U-21 was a U-boat built for the Imperial German Navy shortly before World War I. The third of four Type U-19-class submarines, these were the first U-boats in German service to be equipped with diesel engines, U-21 was built between 1910 and October 1913 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig. She was armed with four torpedo tubes and a deck gun. In September 1914, U-21 became the first submarine to sink a ship with a torpedo when she destroyed the cruiser HMS Pathfinder off the Firth of Forth. She sank several transports in the English Channel and the Irish Sea in the year, in early 1915, U-21 was transferred to the Mediterranean Sea to support the Ottoman Empire against the Anglo-French attacks during the Gallipoli Campaign. Shortly after her arrival, she sank the British battleships HMS Triumph, further successes followed in the Mediterranean in 1916, including the sinking of the French armored cruiser Amiral Charner in February. Throughout 1916, U-21 served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy as U-36, since Germany was not yet at war with Italy and she returned to Germany in March 1917 to join the unrestricted commerce war against British maritime trade.
In 1918, she was withdrawn from front line service and was employed as a submarine for new crews. She survived the war and sank while under tow by a British warship in 1919, U-21 was 64.15 meters long overall with a beam of 6.10 m and a height of 8.10 m. She displaced 650 metric tons surfaced and 837 t submerged, U-21 and her sister boats were the first German submarines to be equipped with diesel engines. The electric motors were powered by a bank of two 110-cell batteries, U-21 could cruise at a top speed of 15.4 knots on the surface and 9.5 knots submerged. Steering was controlled by a pair of forward and another pair aft. U-21 was armed with four 50-centimeter torpedo tubes, which were supplied with a total of six torpedoes, One pair was located in the bow and the other was in the stern. She was initially fitted with a gun for use on the surface. In 1916, a second 8.8 cm gun was added, U-21 had a crew of four officers and twenty-five enlisted sailors. U-21 was built at the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig and she was laid down in 1910 and launched on 8 February 1913.
After fitting-out work was completed, she was commissioned into the fleet on 22 October 1913, at the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, U-21 was based at the island of Heligoland in the German Bight, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Hersing. In early August, Hersing took U-21 on a patrol into the Dover Straits, on 14 August U-21 went on a second patrol, this time in company with her sister boats U-19 and U-22, to the northern North Sea between Norway and Scotland
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability, the term most commonly refers to a large, crewed vessel. It is used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely operated vehicles and robots, as well as medium-sized or smaller vessels, such as the midget submarine. The noun submarine evolved as a form of submarine boat, by naval tradition, submarines are usually referred to as boats rather than as ships. Although experimental submarines had been built before, submarine design took off during the 19th century, Submarines were first widely used during World War I, and now figure in many navies large and small. Civilian uses for submarines include marine science, salvage and facility inspection, Submarines can be modified to perform more specialized functions such as search-and-rescue missions or undersea cable repair. Submarines are used in tourism, and for undersea archaeology, most large submarines consist of a cylindrical body with hemispherical ends and a vertical structure, usually located amidships, which houses communications and sensing devices as well as periscopes.
In modern submarines, this structure is the sail in American usage, a conning tower was a feature of earlier designs, a separate pressure hull above the main body of the boat that allowed the use of shorter periscopes. There is a propeller at the rear, and various hydrodynamic control fins, deep-diving and specialty submarines may deviate significantly from this traditional layout. Submarines use diving planes and change the amount of water, Submarines have one of the widest ranges of types and capabilities of any vessel. Submarines can work at greater depths than are survivable or practical for human divers, modern deep-diving submarines derive from the bathyscaphe, which in turn evolved from the diving bell. In 1578, the English mathematician William Bourne recorded in his book Inventions or Devises one of the first plans for an underwater navigation vehicle and its unclear whether he ever carried out his idea. The first submersible of whose construction there exists reliable information was designed and built in 1620 by Cornelis Drebbel and it was propelled by means of oars.
By the mid-18th century, over a dozen patents for submarines/submersible boats had been granted in England, in 1747, Nathaniel Symons patented and built the first known working example of the use of a ballast tank for submersion. His design used leather bags that could fill with water to submerge the craft, a mechanism was used to twist the water out of the bags and cause the boat to resurface. In 1749, the Gentlemens Magazine reported that a design had initially been proposed by Giovanni Borelli in 1680. By this point of development, further improvement in design stagnated for over a century, until new industrial technologies for propulsion. The first military submarine was the Turtle, a hand-powered acorn-shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell to accommodate a single person and it was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion
Belt armor
Belt armor is a layer of heavy metal armor plated onto or within the outer hulls of warships, typically on battleships and cruisers, and aircraft carriers. The belt armor is designed to prevent projectiles from penetrating to the heart of a warship, the main armor belt covers the warship from its main deck down to some distance below the waterline. If, instead of forming the hull, the armor belt is built inside the hull, it is installed at a sloped angle for improved protection. Furthermore, the spaces around the main belt in some designs were filled with storage tanks that could contain fuel oil, seawater. The liquids in these tanks absorb or scatter much of the force of warheads. To deal with the leakage from the tanks and incoming seawater and this multilayer design is featured in the cross-sectional drawings of Tirpitz and King George V. In combat, a warship can be seriously damaged underwater not only by torpedoes, to improve protection against both shells and torpedoes, an air space can be added between the armor belt and the hull to increase the buoyancy of the warship.
Some kinds of naval warships have belt armor thinner than actually necessary for protection against projectiles and this is common especially with battlecruisers and aircraft carriers to reduce their weight, thus increasing their acceleration and speed. Another possible reason is to meet treaty restrictions on ship displacement, one such method is all-or-nothing armoring, where belt armor is stripped from areas deemed non-vital to the functioning of the ship in battle. Agility gained from such processes are an asset to offensive warships that seek to quickly bring their heavy striking power to the enemy. In carriers, the maneuverability is exploited when deploying and recovering aircraft, since planes take off and land most easily when flying into the wind, the aircraft carrier steams rapidly into the wind in both maneuvers, making take-off and landing safer and easier. S. Comparison of WW2 battleship armor schemes Torpedo belt Protected cruiser Armored cruiser
Home Fleet
The Home Fleet was a fleet of the Royal Navy that operated in the United Kingdoms territorial waters from 1902 with intervals until 1967. Rear-Admiral George Atkinson-Willes was Second-in-Command of the Home Fleet, with his flag in the battleship HMS Empress of India, in May 1903 Noel was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief by Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson. On 14 December 1904, the Channel Fleet was re-styled the Atlantic Fleet, in 1907, the Home Fleet was reformed with Vice-Admiral Francis Bridgeman in command, succeeded by Admiral Sir William May in 1909. Bridgeman took command again in 1911, and in the year was succeeded by Admiral Sir George Callaghan. On 4 August 1914, as the First World War was breaking out, John Jellicoe was ordered to command of the Fleet. The name Home Fleet was resurrected in March 1932, as the new name for the Atlantic Fleet, the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet in 1933 was Admiral Sir John Kelly. Its chief responsibility was to keep Nazi Germanys Kriegsmarine from breaking out of the North Sea, for this purpose, the First World War base at Scapa Flow was reactivated as it was well placed for interceptions of ships trying to run the blockade.
The operational areas of the Home Fleet were not circumscribed, only with the destruction of the German battleship Tirpitz in 1944 did the Home Fleet assume a lower priority, and most of its heavy units were withdrawn to be sent to the Far East. With the Cold War, greater emphasis was placed on protecting the North Atlantic from the Soviet Union in concert with other countries as part of NATO, Admiral Sir Rhoderick McGrigor supervised combined Western Union exercises involving ships from the British and Dutch navies in June–July 1949. Admiral McGrigor flew his flag from the aircraft carrier Implacable, taking part in the exercises were Victorious and Anson, along with cruisers and destroyers. During the exercise, the combined force paid a visit to Mounts Bay in Cornwall from 30 June-4 July 1949, Admiral Sir Philip Vian, who was Commander-in-Chief from 1950-1952, flew his flag in Vanguard. In late 1951, Theseus joined the fleet as flagship of the 2nd Aircraft Carrier Squadron, the Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet still flew his flag however in Tyne at Portsmouth.
During Exercise Mainbrace in 1952, NATO naval forces came together for the first time to practice the defence of northern Europe, navys Atlantic Fleet, in his NATO position as SACLANT, by the end of 1952. The submarine tender Maidstone was the flagship in 1956. In 1960, C-in-C Home Fleet moved to Northwood, and in 1966 the NATO Channel Command moved to Northwood from Portsmouth, in April 1963, the naval unit at the Northwood Headquarters was commissioned as HMS Warrior under the command of the Captain of the Fleet. The Home Fleet was amalgamated with the Mediterranean Fleet in 1967, the British Admirals of the Fleet 1734 –1995
Deck (ship)
A deck is a permanent covering over a compartment or a hull of a ship. On a boat or ship, the primary or upper deck is the structure that forms the roof of the hull, strengthening it. Decks for some purposes have specific names, the main purpose of the upper or primary deck is structural, and only secondarily to provide weather-tightness and support people and equipment. The deck serves as the lid to the box girder which is the hull. It resists tension and racking forces, the decks scantling is usually the same as the topsides, or might be heavier if the deck is expected to carry heavier loads. The deck will be reinforced around deck fittings such as the capstan, cleats, on ships with more than one level, deck refers to the level itself. The actual floor surface is called the sole, the term refers to a structural member tying the ships frames or ribs together over the keel. In modern ships, the decks are usually numbered from the primary deck. So the first deck below the deck will be #2. Some merchant ships may alternatively designate decks below the deck, usually machinery spaces, by numbers.
Ships may call decks by common names, or may invent fanciful and romantic names for a deck or area of that specific ship. Equipment mounted on deck, such as the wheel, fife rails. Eastern designs developed earlier, with efficient middle decks and minimalist fore, in vessels having more than one deck there are various naming conventions, alphabetically, etc. However, there are various common historical names and types of decks,01 level is the term used in naval services to refer to the deck above the main deck. The next higher decks are referred to as the 02 level, the 03 level, afterdeck an open deck area toward the stern-aft. Berth deck, A deck next below the gun deck, where the hammocks of the crew are slung, Boat deck, Especially on ships with sponsons, the deck area where lifeboats or the ships gig are stored. Boiler deck, The passenger deck above the vessels boilers, may refer to the deck of a bridge. Flight deck, A deck from which aircraft take off or land, flush deck, Any continuous unbroken deck from stem to stern
Marine steam engine
A marine steam engine is a steam engine that is used to power a ship or boat. Reciprocating steam engines were replaced in marine applications during the 20th century by steam turbines. The first commercially successful engine was developed by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. The steam engine improvements brought forth by James Watt in the half of the 18th century greatly improved steam engine efficiency. In 1807, the American Robert Fulton built the worlds first commercially successful steamboat, simply known as the North River Steamboat, following Fultons success, steamboat technology developed rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic. The first successful transatlantic crossing by a steamship occurred in 1819 when Savannah sailed from Savannah, Georgia to Liverpool, the first steamship to make regular transatlantic crossings was the sidewheel steamer Great Western in 1838. As the 19th century progressed, marine engines and steamship technology developed alongside each other. A wide variety of reciprocating steam engines were developed over the course of the 19th century.
The two main methods of classifying such engines are by connection mechanism and cylinder technology, most early marine engines had the same cylinder technology but a number of different methods of supplying power to the crankshaft were in use. Thus, early engines are classified mostly according to their connection mechanism. Some common connection mechanisms were side-lever, walking beam, steam engines can be classified according to their cylinder technology. One can therefore sometimes find examples of engines which were classified under both methods, such as the walking beam. Over time, as most engines became direct-acting but cylinder technologies were growing more complex, Some of the more commonly encountered types of marine steam engine are listed in the following sections. Note that not all of these terms may have been used exclusively in relation to marine applications, the side-lever engine was the first type of steam engine to be widely adopted for marine use in Europe. The side-lever was an adaptation of the earliest form of steam engine and these levers extended, on the cylinder side, to each side of the bottom of the vertical engine cylinder. A piston rod, connected vertically to the piston, extended out of the top of the cylinder and this rod attached to a horizontal crosshead which, at each end, was connected to vertical rods.
These rods connected down to the levers on each side of the cylinder and this formed the connection of the levers to the piston on the cylinder side of the engine. The other side of the levers were connected to each other with a horizontal crosstail and this crosstail in turn connected to and operated a single connecting rod, which turned the crankshaft
QF 12-pounder 12 cwt naval gun
The QF12 pounder 12 cwt gun was a common, versatile 3-inch calibre naval gun introduced in 1894 and used until the middle of the 20th century. It was produced by Armstrong Whitworth and used on Royal Navy warships, as the Type 41 3-inch /40 it was used on most early battleships and cruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, though it was commonly referred to by its UK designation as a “12-pounder” gun. They were fitted as deck guns on D and E-class submarines and it was estimated that out of the 4,737 Mk I and Mk II guns produced there were still 3,494 on hand for the RN in 1939. The gun was primarily a high-velocity naval gun, with its heavy recoil suiting it to static mountings, an exception was made when the British Army were outgunned by the Boer artillery in South Africa and the Royal Navy was called on for help. Their 10, 000-yard range provided valuable fire support for the army throughout the war. They were known as long twelves to distinguish them from the BL 12-pounder 6 cwt and QF 12-pounder 8 cwt which had shorter barrels.
He reported switching to percussion tubes for firing and recommended percussion for future field operations, perhaps uniquely, the guns were donated directly to Lord Roberts, the British commander in South Africa and became his personal property. They were known as the Elswick Battery and were manned by men from Elswick, the Elswick guns served throughout the war. There were 103 of these employed in coast defence around the UK as at April 1918. Many of these were still in service in World War II although they had by been superseded by more modern types such as twin QF6 pounder 10 cwt mounts. In World War I a number of coast defence guns were modified and mounted on special wheeled traveling carriages to create an effective mobile anti-aircraft gun. UK shells weighed 12.5 lb filled and fuzed, the cordite propellant charge was normally ignited by an electrically-activated primer, with power provided by a battery. The electric primer in the cartridge could be replaced by an adaptor which allowed the use of electric or percussion tube to be inserted to provide ignition, the Japanese Type 41 3-inch naval gun was a direct copy of the QF12 pounder.
The first guns were bought from the UK firms as Elswick Pattern N, thereafter production was in Japan under licence. It was the secondary or tertiary armament on most Japanese warships built between 1890 and 1920, and was still in service as late as the Pacific War. The gun was designated as “Type 41” from the 41st year of the reign of Emperor Meiji on 25 December 1908. It was further re-designated in centimeters on 5 October 1917 as part of the process for the Imperial Japanese Navy to the metric system. Although finally classified as an 8cm gun the bore was unchanged at 7.62 cm, the Type 41 3-inch naval gun fired a 12. 5-pound high-explosive shell
United Kingdom
