HMS Britannia (1904)
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 The HMS Britannia |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Ship of the line |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | February 4, 1902 |
| Launch | December 10, 1904 |
| Namesake | Roman name of the island and the province |
| Commissioning | September 8, 1906 |
| Whereabouts | sank on November 9, 1918 after being hit by torpedoes |
| Technical specifications | |
| last British warship lost in World War I. | |
| displacement |
16,350 ts, max. 17,500 ts |
| length |
pp : 133.3 m (437 ft) |
| width |
23.8 m (78 ft) |
| Draft |
8.15 m (26.75 ft) |
| crew |
777 men |
| drive |
15 Babcock & Wilcox and 3 cylinder |
| speed |
18.5 kn |
| Range |
5270 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
• 4 × 305 mm L / 45 Mk.X cannon |
| Fuel supply |
2,164-2,238 tons of coals; 380 ts of oil |
| Belt armor |
203 to 229 mm (8-9 in) |
| Armored deck |
25 to 63 mm (1 - 2.5 in) |
| Artillery towers |
305 mm (12 in) or |
| Barbeds |
305 mm (12 in) |
| Casemates |
178 mm (7 in) |
| Command tower |
305 mm (12 in) |
| Armored bulkheads |
203 to 305 mm (8-12 in) |
The sixth HMS Britannia British Royal Navy was a ship of the line of King Edward VII class , which was put into service the 1,906th Last used in the Atlantic to secure convoy, it was the last warship that the Royal Navy lost in World War I when it was sunk by a German submarine two days before the armistice off Cape Spartel .
Building history
The Britannia and her seven sister ships of the King Edward VII class represented a considerable further development of the Majestic class .
They were not only about 1,000 ts larger, but also carried an intermediate battery of four 234 mm cannons in addition to the usual 152 mm battery for the first time on a British ship of the line. The 234mm cannons were also rapid fire guns like the 152mm battery, and their heavier projectiles made them a significant weapon at the time the class was designed. They were installed because the British ships were thought to be underarmed for their size and other navies had already started installing an intermediate battery of 203 mm guns. The four 234-mm cannons were set up in four individual turrets to the side of the masts, so that each broadside contained two of these guns. The installation of 234-mm cannons as a uniform central artillery was briefly considered, but discarded, as a total change would have required a considerably longer time for the revision of the basic design. In fact, the installation of 305 mm and 234 mm guns also proved to be less than happy, as it was very difficult to distinguish the impacts of the different weapons in the water. And this despite the fact that the battle masts of the predecessor series had been given up and platforms for fire control had been installed instead.
Like all British ships of the line since the Majestic class, the King Edward VII class carried four 305 mm cannons in two twin turrets (bow and stern turret) as the main artillery. The Britannia was one of the last three ships of the class to have L / 45 Mark X guns , while the first five ships of the class had received the 12-inch L / 40 Mark IX gun. The installation of the 6-inch (152-mm) guns in casemates was abandoned in the King Edward class and they were placed in a battery amidships, which received 178-mm armor. Otherwise, the armor of the Britannia and its sister ships was similar to that of the London class, despite many differences in detail .
Britannia and her sisters ran primarily on coal. However, with the exception of the HMS New Zealand , the ships also received a device for spraying the coal with oil for the first time on British ships of the line. This allowed a rapid increase in steam pressure, which made it easier for the ships to accelerate. For comparison purposes, the eight ships of the class received four different installation variations of the boiler. The Britannia's boiler installation is said to have consisted of three cylinder boilers and twelve or 18 Babcock and Wilcox boilers, with which it reached 18.24 knots during the test drives .
Britannia and her sisters were the first British ships of the line to have balanced rudders since the 1870s, and they were very agile with a tactical radius of 340 yards at 15 knots. It was difficult to keep her on a straight course, which led to the nickname "the Wobbly Eight". The ships rolled earlier than other British ships of the line, but proved to be very stable fire platforms. However, they were also very wet in rough seas.
The Britannia was a very strong ship at the time of her construction and also achieved the planned performance. At the same time, however, there were significant further developments in all areas of the design of battleships . Just three months after its commissioning, the HMS Dreadnought took place , which had a considerably higher firepower and speed. The following battleships based on their basic design made the Britannia and its sister ships of the King Edward VII class, like all ships of the line previously manufactured, appear obsolete, their use until 1916 only at the head of the battleship divisions of the Grand Fleet for protection Mining made sense.
The Britannia was completed as the sixth ship of the class and was the second ship of the class to be built at the Portsmouth naval yard at a cost of £ 1,408,053. After her keel was laid on February 4, 1902, she was launched on December 10, 1904 and completed her acceptance tests in September 1906. Her sister ship from the same shipyard was New Zealand , which was completed a year earlier . The Portsmouth Dockyard had delivered six ships of the line with two 305 mm twin towers as the main armament , beginning with HMS Majestic in 1895 .
Mission history
The completed HMS Britannia was assigned to the reserve in Portsmouth for the first time on September 6, 1906 , but was then put into service on October 2, 1906 for service with the Atlantic Fleet .
Missions before the world war
The Britannia and her sister ships will replace the Duncan- class liners used in this fleet . On March 4, 1907, the HMS Britannia was assigned to the Canal Fleet, which became the "Second Division" of the Home Fleet when the fleet was reorganized on March 24, 1909 and where the Britannia was also used as the flagship of the Second Division from April 1909 . It was overhauled in Portsmouth from 1909 to 1910. On July 14, 1910, she then collided with the barque Loch Trool , where she suffered minor damage.
The reorganization of the fleet in May 1912, made Britannia and her seven sister ships of King Edward VII class ( HMS King Edward VII . , HMS Commonwealth , HMS Dominion , HMS Hindustan , HMS New Zealand , HMS Africa , HMS Hibernia ) the 3rd Home Fleet Battle Squadron. The squadron relocated to the Mediterranean in November 1912 because of the First Balkan War (October 1912 to May 1913). It arrived in Malta on November 27, 1912 and took part in the international naval blockade of Montenegro and the occupation of Scutari . In 1913 the squadron returned home and joined the Home Fleet on June 27th. The Britannia left the active squadron and was assigned to the Second Division, Home Fleet.
First World War
_Forecastle_ca,_October_1914.jpg)
When the First World War broke out , the Britannia was transferred back to the 3rd Battle Squadron, which was subordinated to the Grand Fleet and stationed in Rosyth . The squadron initially supplemented the cruisers of the Grand Fleet in the Northern Patrol . From November 2 to November 13, 1914, it moved to Portland to reinforce the Channel Fleet. On January 26, 1915, the Britannia ran near Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth . She was released after 36 hours, but had sustained considerable damage to the ship's bottom. The repair and an overhaul then took place at the naval shipyard in Devonport . Thereafter, the Britannia returned to the Grand Fleet and served there until April 1916. During the advances of the fleet, she and her sister ships were often used as barrier breakers against mines in front of the battleship divisions.
On April 29, 1916 the 3rd Battle Squadron moved to Sheerness and from May 3, 1916 was no longer subordinate to the Grand Fleet, but to the Nore Command . Britannia stayed with the squadron until August 1916, when it was overhauled in Portsmouth Dockyard until September. After the repair, the Britannia moved to the Mediterranean Sea to Taranto to the 2nd Detached Squadron, which was formed in 1915 to support the Italian Regia Marina against the Austrian Navy on the Adriatic .
In February and March 1917 she was overtaken in Gibraltar and then switched as the flagship to the 9th cruiser squadron used in the convoy protection in the Atlantic, where she replaced the armored cruiser HMS King Alfred and was used at the same time with the sister ship Africa . Most of the time she was stationed in Sierra Leone . In May 1917 she was overhauled again in Bermuda , with her 152 mm battery being removed and replaced by four 152 mm guns on the upper deck. Between October 1917 and July 1918 she accompanied several convoys between Sierra Leone and South Africa ( Simonstown ). On October 29, she left Dakar for her last trip.
loss
_sinking_on_9_November_1918.jpg)
On the morning of November 9, 1918, the Britannia ran under Captain Francis F. Caulfield from Sierra Leone with two destroyers from the west into the Strait of Gibraltar , when she was torpedoed off Cape Spartel by the German submarine SM UB 50 at 8:08 a.m. She received two torpedo hits in quick succession. The ship was listed immediately and there was an explosion in the 234 mm magazine, which could not be flooded in time after a power failure. Nevertheless, the Britannia could be kept afloat for more than three hours so that the crew could be removed. After the failure of towing attempts by the sloops HMS Rocksand and HMS Coreopsis , she sank at 11:31 a.m. at position 35 ° 53 ′ N , 5 ° 53 ′ W . Nevertheless, 51 crew members died and the 80 injured who were recovered were mostly poisoned by the burning cordite . 39 officers and 673 men were saved. The German UB III submarine under Oberleutnant zur See Heinrich Kukat (1891–1920) had passed the destroyers who secured it. His first two torpedo shots failed. It was able to evade the chase of the security ships.
The sinking of the Britannia took place two days before the conclusion of the armistice on November 11, 1918 in Compiègne , which ended the World War. She was the penultimate British warship to be lost in the World War.
Individual evidence
- ^ Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1806-1905. P. 38, names only 4 torpedo tubes
- ↑ 9.2 "/ 47 (23.4 cm) Mark X
- ^ A b c d Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. P. 38
- ↑ 12 "/ 45 (30.5 cm) Mark X
- ↑ 12 "/ 40 (30.5 cm) Mark IX
- ↑ 6 "/ 50 (15.2 cm) BL Marks XI and XI
- ↑ Burt, p. 232
- ↑ Burt, p. 235
- ↑ Burt, p. 233
- ↑ a b c Burt, p. 251.
- ^ A b Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906–1921. P. 9
- ↑ Burt, pp. 235, 251.
- ↑ Burt, pp. 251, 253.
- ↑ a b Burt, p. 253.
- ^ HMS Britannia Sunk. In: The Daily Telegraph . November 11, 1918.
literature
- RA Burt: British Battleships 1889-1904. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1988, ISBN 0-87021-061-0 .
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Eds.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Mayflower Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-8317-0302-4 .
- FJ Dittmar, JJ Colledge: British Warships 1914-1919. Ian Allen, London 1972, ISBN 0-7110-0380-7 .
- Tony Gibbons: The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships and Battlecruisers: A Technical Directory of All the World's Capital Ships From 1860 to the Present Day. Salamander Books, London 1983.
- Randal Gray (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1985, ISBN 0-87021-907-3 .
- Randolph Pears: British Battleships 1892–1957: The Great Days of the Fleets. G. Cave Associates, 1979, ISBN 0-906223-14-8 .
Web links
King Edward VII | Commonwealth | Dominion | Hindustan | New Zealand , Zealandia | Britannia | Africa | Hibernia