Warship
The British âLâ class Submarine â return to sanity
The âLâ class were originally designed as improved âEsâ but the changes were so great that they were re-classified as a new class. They were very successful. This photo of L 4 shows the original, low, gun position. L 6 had her gun raised which became standard for the class. The âLâ class began as âImproved Esâ â in fact, L 1 and…
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SMS Derfflinger I
Length: 210m Beam: 29.0m Draught: 9.20m Displacement: 26.600 tonnes Armament: 8-30.5cm L/50 12-15cm L/45 12-8.8cm 4-50cm torpedo tubes Speed: 26.5 knots Range: 5.600nm at 14 knots Design In mid-April 1910 the (K I E) â the design section (E) of the construction departmentâs shipbuilding section (K) I â requested that…
SMS Derfflinger II
A decision was also finally made about the roll-damping tanks, and despite the negative report by the commander of von der Tann saying they reduced the roll by just 33 per cent, it was decided to proceed with them, perhaps because preparations had already progressed too far to remove them…
SMS Derfflinger III
Derfflinger was struck only once during the battle. At 11.40 a 13.5in shell struck the belt armour 1.15m above the waterline to starboard at frame 181 and detonated without penetrating. Here the belt was 300mm thick. The plate was pushed in approximately 10cm and was left with an indentation 30mm…
ITALIAN CARRIER DEVELOPMENT DURING WORLD WARÂ II
The Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) explored various projects for adding one or more aircraft carriers to the fleet in the 1930s but took no action beyond developing a basic design for constructing a new vessel and identifying suitable candidate merchant ships for conversion. In mid-1940, as Italy prepared to…
USN Fire-Control Interwar I
National Archives â Few photographs of the Ford Rangekeeper Mark 1 were taken or preserved because of the secret nature of the device, the limited use of photography during its era, and the fact that it became obsolete long before the beginning of World War II. Introduced in the early…
USN Fire-Control Interwar II
IMPLICATIONS OF THE SYSTEM The Navyâs complete fire-control system, as it emerged in the years immediately after World War I and installed on its most modern battleships, the 16-inch-gunned Colorado class, was the most sophisticated in the world. The various elements of the systemâthe Ford rangekeeper, the stable vertical, reconfigurable…