![]() Would the navies of the world have come to call their battleships “South Carolinas” or “Satsumas”? Unlikely “Dreadnought” has just the right ring of menace for a revolutionary killing machine. It’s interesting to consider what modern battleships would have been called if another ship had preceded Dreadnought. It survived Baron John Fisher (who had taken “Fear god and dread nought” on his family’s coat of arms) by three years. Although it returned to the Grand Fleet in March 1918, it was placed in reserve when the war ended, and scrapped in 1923. Ironically, the number of dreadnoughts sunk by submarine in World War I is smaller than the number of submarines sunk by Dreadnought.ĭreadnought missed the Battle of Jutland while in refit, and served for a while as flagship of a squadron of pre-dreadnoughts stationed on the Thames, intended to deter German battlecruisers from bombarding English coastal towns. Dreadnought is the only battleship to ever sink a submarine. The U-boat inadvertently surfaced after firing its torpedoes, and hunted down by the nearby Dreadnought, which rammed it at speed, sinking the German submarine. On March 18, 1915, the German U-boat U-29 slipped into Pentland Firth (in the Orkneys) to attack the Grand Fleet at exercise. Still, it remained a squadron flagship while stayed with the Grand Fleet. Dreadnought served as flagship of the Home Fleet until 1912, eventually taking a secondary role as newer and larger battleships entered service. Its actual service in war was less consequential. But however quickly other ships might have eclipsed Dreadnought, it so clearly outclassed everything that had come before that the preceding ships were considered obsolescent and virtually useless for frontline service. By 1910, even Brazil (through British contracts) owned more powerful battleships than Dreadnought. Its construction forced the navies of the world to reinvent their own battleship designs, with the result that Dreadnought remained the most powerful ship in the world for only a brief period of time. Laid down in October 1905 (five months after Satsuma), it was launched in February 1906, and commissioned in December 1906 (accounts vary as to whether on the third, sixth, or eleventh of the month). Indeed, the construction of the two Lord Nelson–class battleships was so delayed by the concentration on Dreadnought that they weren’t commissioned until 1908. Fisher began stockpiling material for Dreadnought before finalizing the design, and delayed all other construction to accelerate its completion. The name was later applied to the Royal Navy’s first nuclear attack submarine.ĭreadnought became Fisher’s political cause. The Royal Navy has used the name Dreadnought (meaning “fear nothing”) throughout its history (a Dreadnought served with Nelson at Trafalgar, for example), with the 1906 version being the sixth to carry the moniker. Fisher compromised on a new design for a battleship, to be called Dreadnought. The Admiralty agreed to pursue the battlecruiser project, but also called for significant attention to the line of battle. This would answer the threat posed by German merchant cruisers (or French armored cruisers), while also providing for a powerful offensive capability. His vision of the Royal Navy centered on a new kind of ship-the battlecruiser-that would have the speed and armament to either destroy or run away from any potential foe. He retired many of the older ships and set others to reduced commission. Fisher was, in an organizational sense, a committed revolutionary. In October 1905 John “Jackie” Fisher became First Sea Lord. The slower Americans didn’t lay down South Carolina (which would carry eight twelve-inch guns in four twin turrets) until December 1906, about the time that HMS Dreadnought entered service. Satsuma, laid down in 1905, was designed to carry twelve twelve-inch guns, but ended up carrying four twelve-inch and twelve ten-inch guns, because of a shortage of twelve-inch barrels. In 1904, the Japanese and the Americans began thinking about “all big gun” ships, which would carry a larger main armament at the expense of the secondary weapons. This meant that the presence of smaller weapons could make it more difficult to get hits with larger guns. Some were concerned that the high rate of fire of smaller guns was mitigated by the fact that it was difficult to acquire the range by gun splashes when there were so many splashes around the target. The increased accuracy meant that ships could engage and expect hits at previously unimagined distances, giving an advantage to bigger, longer-ranged weapons. However, developments in optics and improvements in gun accuracy at the beginning of the twentieth century began to tilt the balance towards heavier guns.
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