HMS Inflexible (1881)
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | February 24, 1874 |
| Launch | April 27, 1876 |
| Commissioning | July 5, 1881 |
| Whereabouts | 1903 scrapped |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement | |
| length |
L pp : 97.54 m |
| width |
22.86 m |
| Draft |
7.77 m |
| crew |
440-470 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
14.75 knots (27 km / h) |
| Range |
"An Atlantic crossing" |
| Armament |
|
The HMS Inflexible was an armored tower ship in which the main armament was set up in the middle of the ship in two diagonally offset towers.
construction
Despite the still existing sail rigging (removed in 1885) there were many innovations in the ship's construction. Their armor and armament were the strongest in the Royal Navy to date . She was the first ship that was fully electrified and had underwater torpedo tubes . The ship was divided into watertight compartments and was supposed to remain buoyant even when the unarmored ends were flooded.
Armament
artillery
The main armament consisted of four rifled muzzle loading cannons, which had a caliber of 406 mm. Each cannon weighed 81 tons. The diagonal setup made it possible to shoot broadsides with all four cannons . For this purpose, special openings were provided in the ship's superstructure. The narrowly held ship superstructures theoretically also allowed both towers to be fired along the long side in battle. In practice, however, this was avoided because the air pressure of the launch always posed the risk of damaging loose parts - such as the dinghies.
For loading, the cannons always had to be turned to a loading device outside the tower, which was located below the upper deck. There was no space inside the tower for the long rammers required by muzzle loaders to ram the ammunition. The end of the pipe was lowered and reloaded from there (see picture on the left). The rate of fire was one shot every two minutes (not counting the approach to the loading position). The hydraulic slewing mechanism took about one minute to turn the tower.
Ramming device
The ship was equipped with a ram at the bow below the waterline. Since the sinking of the Re d'Italia by Ferdinand Max in the naval battle of Lissa in 1866, this combat tactic has experienced a renaissance.
Armor protection
The inflexible had a heavily armored central citadel, in which the drive system and the ammunition chambers were and on which the two towers were erected. The fore and aft were protected by an armored deck and a strong subdivision.
The side armor of the citadel was 1.20 m high and consisted of several layers of iron and teak ( see above, sandwich armor ): Outside was a 30.5 cm thick iron plate in the waterline . Behind it was a 28 cm thick teak reinforcement, which also contained the transverse ribs . Another 30.5 cm thick iron plate followed and then the 15.2 cm thick longitudinal ribs with a teak wood filling. The system was closed on the inside by two 15.9 mm thick panels. Overall, the armor was a little over 1 m thick and weighed almost 5.4 t per square meter. The inner armor plate was 20.3 cm thick above the waterline and 10.2 cm below it. The teak panels were correspondingly thicker so that the overall thickness was retained. It is unclear why the armor consisted of two plates. As early as 1877, 55.9 cm thick armor plates were honored, and it was already known that a solid plate was more resistant than two thinner plates with the same total thickness.
The arched armored deck in the fore and aft was made of 7.6 cm wrought iron and was about 2 m below the waterline. The deck above was divided into numerous storage rooms, the cargo of coal and supplies of which would have limited the amount and thus the impact of water ingress. In addition, there were cork-filled tanks with a height and depth of 1.2 m each, which were 61 cm deep [cofferdamm (shipbuilding) | cofferdamms]], which contained canvas filled with werg . A careful, contemporary study by the British Navy concluded that with the ends completely filled with water, the ship would be incapable of fighting, but would be viable. It is now clear that in such an extreme condition the watertightness of the armored citadel would be questionable. In any case, the system offered good protection.
The towers also had sandwich armor : an outer layer of 10 inch compound armor , followed by 18 inch teak and 17.8 cm wrought iron.
drive
Although it was equipped with a 6,183 kW three-cylinder compound expansion machine, the Inflexible had a rigging with 1,700 m² of sail area. In 1885 the sails were removed and the ship received two battle masts.
Calls
She took part in the 1882 bombing of Alexandria during the Urabi Uprising ( Urabi Movement ).
Remarks
- ↑ L pp = length between perpendiculars or length between perpendiculars: distance between the axis of the rudder stock and the trailing edge of the leading edge in the construction waterline.
- ↑ The "crooked" metric data result from the conversion from the Anglo-American measuring system : The thicknesses correspond to 12, 6, 4 or 5/8 inches (unit) , the bottle density 1100 lbs per square foot .
- ↑ Completely filled with water means that the load has been completely flushed out. The source does not make it clear whether only the rooms above the armored deck or also those below were assumed to be flooded.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e David K. Brown: Warrior to Dreadnought. Warship Design and Development 1860-1905. Seaforth Publishing, Pen & Sword Books Ltd, Barnsley 2014 (reprinted 2010 edition), first edition Chatham Publishing 1997, ISBN 978-1-84832-086-4 , pp. 63-66.
literature
- Oscar Parkes: British Battleships . ISBN 0-85052-604-3 .
- Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships . ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
