When the torpedo made its appearance in about 1873, consideration was given in warship design towards a suitable method of protection against the menace. Progress was slow, and the torpedo’s menace seen as limited by its slowness and short range. By 1885, however, the torpedo-boat had arrived, capable of delivering a much-improved Whitehead torpedo reaching 30 knots and holding 200lb of gun cotton. When Dreadnought was completed in 1906, the Hardcastle torpedo then in use reached a speed of 33 knots, and had a range of approximately 7,000 yards. Countermeasures until then had been in the form of partially-armoured bulkheads within the ship’s hull, and anti-torpedo nets. The former in its original form, which did not cover all of the important areas of the hull, was limited in value; the latter in practice was not that successful either.
The idea went back to approximately 1876. The method was to surround the ship with heavy wire netting, which would catch the torpedo in its path and render it harmless. The nets were suspended from long booms fitted along the ship’s side; the depth of the nets when thrown out in to the water usually corresponded with the ship’s keel, and the nets hung vertically while she was at rest. If the ship were moving, however, the nets tended to drag and sway, which reduced their effectiveness.
EVOLUTION OF THE BATTLESHIP
In the event, the nets proved useless even when the ship was stationary. The old battleship Majestic was torpedoed during the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, while stopped and with her nets out. She was sunk, nevertheless, simply because the torpedo in question had been fitted with wire cutters in its nose.
Provision for anti-torpedo nets within the Royal Navy’s capital ship designs continued until 1911 (Iron Duke class), and was discarded in following designs. Those already fitted in ships were retained as late as 1916, even though it was accepted that they were of limited value.
Machinery
When Dreadnought was completed in October 1906, the Royal Navy was provided with the world’s first turbine-driven battleship. The German Navy, however, although conducting experiments, were prepared to procrastinate so far as turbine installation was concerned, and fitted their first four dreadnoughts with standard triple-expansion reciprocating engines. The Nassau class was provided with 20,000shp driving three screws, which gave them a designed speed of 19½knots. Their second group of four ships, the Helgoland class laid down in 1908, were also given reciprocating machinery, with a slight increase in power to 25,000shp, to provide a nominal speed of 21 knots – which gave them parity with British ships.
Ramillies, November 1917. Port quarter.
The German battlecruisers Von der Tann and the Moltke class, however, were fitted with Parsons turbines, which were much the same as those fitted in the Invincible class. Von der Tann was given a nominal 46,000shp for a speed of 24–25 knots, while Moltke’s was 52,000shp for 25–26 knots. On trials, however, the former reached 27½knots at 79,000shp; the latter 28½knots at 85,700shp. The boiler/machinery installation was pressed far beyond British safety limits, which reflects the great importance the Germans attached to having ships that could match or outstrip their British contemporaries.
One feature peculiar to the German ships was the weight saved in machinery and boiler rooms by using small-tube boilers and lighter materials than in British ships. The percentage of space and weight saved made the British designs look bulky in comparison. By Royal Navy standards, however, the German installations were decidedly cramped.
During the war there were frequent reports that the German dreadnoughts, both battleships and battlecruisers, suffered from machinery problems. Von der Tann had trouble with her turbine installation and both the Nassau and Helgoland classes were prone to engine-room trouble. Many of the difficulties were overcome in later ships. The British standard, well-proven turbine and large tube boiler installations were generally very reliable in all sea conditions throughout the war.
Camouflage
Although camouflage itself pre-dated the First World War, it was only in 1914 that protective colouring on warships began to make an appearance. The paucity of photographic evidence leaves some degree of uncertainty as to the patterns used, but it is certain that a high proportion of capital ships received such treatment at one time or another. During September 1914, in an experiment to ascertain what shades were most effective in making ships less visible, and in what lighting the shades would change, the battleships Audacious and Orion were treated to a ‘leopard’ pattern that featured large splashes of light grey, almost white tones, mixed on to a darker grey.
In some of the early schemes, black was the colour most frequently used, but it seems to have been confined to the smaller vessels (up to the size of destroyer), and soon became discredited in favour of a light-blue with greyish tints. Observations were carried out by Admiralty-appointed specialists with art experience, and G. Clark, who was one of these investigators, claimed that ‘of all the colours used, light grey, in my opinion, is best; it reduced visibility under nearly all atmospheric conditions, and when other ships painted normally stood out quite sharply in the early grey morning, the light-grey definitely made for better hiding.’ Such suggestions were passed on to the Admiralty, and the result was the appearance of more experimental schemes during the winter of 1914/15. The battlecruisers Princess Royal and Indomitable were painted in very strange patterns during the last months of 1914, as the evidence of existing photographs shows. During the winter of 1915, Superb sported a scheme of light patches on a medium-grey background; the light patches were white – see layout of camouflage in the colour plates section.
Taken from King George V showing Ajax and Centurion 1917/18, cleared for action giving a good ‘show’ from their funnels. Probably during a routine sweep in the North Sea.
Many of the ships deployed to the Dardanelles were camouflaged, the speciality of the time being a false bow wave intended to give a misleading impression of a ship’s speed through a U-boat’s periscope; it was soon discredited, however. If photographic evidence is anything to go by, most of the experiments were abandoned during the summer of 1915, especially in the big ships, but they reappeared in the spring of the following year, when various battlecruisers were to be seen with tiger-stripes around the funnels and long, dark-grey panels on their hulls to give the impression of a ship alongside. St Vincent, Bellerophon, Superb, Collingwood, Conqueror, Monarch, Tiger, New Zealand, Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Repulse were all photographically recorded with some type of experimental camouflage between 1915 and 1918, as the illustrations in the pages of this book show. How successful these unofficial experiments were is not certain because of the scarcity of official records on the subject. They can but have been of limited effectiveness, however.
A standard approach to camouflage did not appear until late 1917, when ‘dazzle’ was introduced by Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson, RNVR, who had submitted his ideas to the Admiralty in April of that year after being allowed to paint a test-piece, ‘HMS Industry’. It was generally recognized that it was impossible to render warships totally invisible at sea, especially to a submarine, when the ship was seen in full silhouette against the sky. No matter how light the shade of paint used, parts of the ship would always be in deep shadow, providing an angular contrast to betray her. However, the principal factors required by an attacking submarine were an accurate estimate of the target’s course and speed. The relative perspective position of masts and funnels provided the key to this. If invisibility were out of the question, at least it might be possible to mislead the enemy submariner: by painting a ship in such strongly contrasted colours and shapes, estimating her course or speed should be made considerably more difficult.
In June, experiments were carried out at the Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington House, London, where rooms were allotted for a ‘camouflage