Bellerophon Class Battleship - HMS Bellerophon

From SN Guides

Introduction

Bellerophon class of Dreadnought type battleships – preceding class Dreadnought, follow-on class St Vincent class The Bellerophon class comprised three ships, in order of completion they were Bellerophon, Temeraire and Superb.

The name Bellerophon

Bellerophon was named after the Greek Mythical hero who rode Pegasus the winged horse and slew the monster Chimera.

The first Bellerophon of 1786 was a 74 gun third rate ship, she was converted into a prison ship in 1815 and aptly renamed captivity - famed for transporting Napoleon Boneaparte, she was scrapped in 1836.

The second Bellerophon I have no data on other than she saw action in the Crimean war

The third Bellerophon was a Victorian central battery ironclad battleship of 1856 she paid off for the last time in Plymouth in 1892, re-commissioned as port guardship at Pembroke until 1903, she was then renamed HMS Indus and connverted into a stokers' training ship in 1904, after a mere 53 years in service she scrapped in 1922.

Bellerophon in 1909 a crown copywrite photograph

Construction

As the Dreadnought was completed in December 1906 Bellerophon the lead ship of the follow on Bellerophon class was being laid down by Portsmouth Dockyard being laid down on 06th. December 1906, launched 27th. July 1907 and commissioned on the 20th. February 1909, her building costs were £1,763,491 – the most expensive of the three sisters . Although supeficially smilar to dreadnought the main external distinguishing feature was the second tripod mast, dreadnought had a single tripod mast immediately aft of the forward funnel with a heavy boat derrick facing aft from this mast, whilst the Bellerophon’s had a second mast immediately forward of the aft funnel with the boat derrick facing forwards off this mast. Another not so easy to tell feature was the rather weak secondary battery of twenty-four 12 pounder guns of the Dreadnought were replaced with sixteen singly mounted 4” guns which recognised the increasing risk of attack by torpedo carying small craft and the rapidly increasing size of these ships. Internally the the main difference was the improvement to the under-water protection from torpedo damage, a continuous fore and aft torpedo bulkhead now ran from the forward end of the forward magazine to the aft end of the after magazine, called a screen bulkhead as it was intended to screen the magazines from torpedoes. Size wise the Bellerophon’s were one foot shorter than the Dreadnought and just 5 inches greater in beam however the Bellerphons were just under 500 tons heavier in standard displacement reflecting the greater use of armour, they were also 1,800 tons heavier in full load displacement. The two masts on this class were located on the for-side of the funnels and an improvement on Dreadnoughts single mast which was placed behind the fore funnel but in certain wind condition smoke and hot gasses could make the spotting tops untenable, a novel feature of this class having two masts is that when fitted with fire-control systems they were fitted with two sets.

Basic dimensions

L 526’ B 82’06” Dr 31’05” Disp 18,596 tons standard and 22,540 full load crew approx 730

Machinery

Machinery : virtually identical to the Dreadnought with Quadruple propellers driven by Parsons direct drive steam turbines, built by Fairfields of Govan , the turbines consisted of a high pressure ahead and astern turbine on the outboard shafts and a low pressure ahead and astern on the two inboard shafts, the inboard shafts also incorporated an ahead cruising turbine for fuel economy, the turbines developed a total of 23,000 SHP and gave 21 knots. Ssteam was from 18 Babcock coal fired boilers.- in three boiler rooms with six boilers in each with a working pressure of 230 psi. The range of the class was not particularly good being about 5,700 miles at 10 knots.

The two following images are from a Fairfield publication of 1909:

The image below shows the steam turbine casings for HMS Bellerophon being fitted with their impulse blading.

The image below is believed to show a HP and a LP turbine unit that have been assembled together for testing on a test bed. This arrangement was not how the turbines were fitted when installed in the ship. The outboard shafts had the HP ahead and astern turbines and the two inboard shafts had the LP ahead and astern turbines along with a cruise turbine.

Main Armament

Armament : Main battery – ten 12” C45 Mk10 guns ( identical to the Dreadnough, Invincible and Indefatigable classes) construction being identical using steel inner tubes and liners and reinforced with flat wire winding and finally enclosed I a steel jacket, the gun houses themselves were Vickers Mk 9. Tthe guns fired a shell weighing 850lbs for the HE to 859 lbs for the AP, post Jutland when it was realised that British shells had performed poorly and that rather than just make a hole in the armour of an enemy ship what was needed was a shell to penetrate the armour before exploding a new shell was designed called the ‘Green Boy’ which weighed 854 Lbs . Dependant on type the shells ranged from 38 to 48 inches in length and the rate of fire of the guns was about one round every 40 sconds. The range was just under 19,000 yards at 13.5 degrees elevation and used a charge of 258lbs of MD45 propellant, MD45 is a cordite or colloidal propellant consisting of long rods of explosive, cordite being a somewhat unstable blend of nitro-cellulose and nitro-glycerine with added stabilisers. Shore versions of these guns had a longer range of around 25,000 yards with a much higher elevation ( in excess of 40 degrees) not achievable on a ship . During the building of the Bellerophon class attention was now being paid to the streamlining of the shells a measure to this is the formula ‘CRH’ which stands for Calibre Radius Head, and the 4crh shells carried on the class indicated that the length of the curvature of the nose of the shell in relation to it’s length earlier ships including the Dreadnought had used 2crh shells but trials with the 4crh giving longer ranges ended in all 12” gunned ships using the more streamlined shell.

This image from Wikipedia is a copy of an admiralty plan of Bellerophon showing the location of her main and secondary armaments, The main turrets were identified the same way as Dreadnought, A forward on the Focsle, P to port and Q to starboard of midships, X & Y aft. It should be noted that the plan gives this as the 'Temeraire' class in fact it should be Bellerphon class.

Secondary armament

Secondary battery : Sixteen 4” Mk7 guns all in single mounts, eight of these guns were placed two each on A, P, Q, and Y turrets and the remaining eight in casemate mounts , 4 on either beam in the deck house at forecastle deck level. Their still prevailed the thought that defence of the ship against torpedo attack would only come either before or after a fleet action using the main battery, so that whilst the main battery was in action the eight 4” on their roofs could not be used, at least the eight casemate guns, usable during a fleet action were a step in the right direction, although the open mounts on to of the turrets had one advantage – they could be fired through 360 degrees whilst the case mates were limited to 60 degrees either side of their stowed position. Designed in 1904 700 of these guns were produced and something like 500 of them remained in use on merchant vessels in WW2, the construction of these weapons was very similar to the main battery using wire winding., on some of the later Dreadnought’s the turret mounted weapons were high angle AA guns but to date I have found no evidence of these being fitted on the Bellerophon class ships.
The guns fired three types of shell , CPC ( Common Percussion Cap) HE ( High Explosive) and Shrapnel all weighed 31lbs and could be fired either electrically or by percussion, range was 11,500yards using a charge of just over 9lbs of cordite and the rate of fire was up to 8 rounds per minute. Bellerophon also carried two 3 pounder guns which would in all probability be used for saluting

Three below water torpedo tubes were fitted for 18” Whitehead torpedoes these fired one on either beam and one ahead.

Armoured protection

Armour: Main belt - 10” tapering to 8” , Transverse Bulkheads - 8”, Longitudinal torpedo bulkheads 1 to 2" with 32 in the vicinity of the midships wing turrets, Barbettes - 10” tapering to 9”, Turrets : faces - 11” crowns 3" , decks - 3” tapering to 0.5”

The above wikipedia image copied from an admiralty manual shows the disposition of the armour (in black)

Operational career

Ships career. When completed Bellerophon joined the 01st battle squadron, part of the Home fleet and the only incident of note occurred on the 26th May 1911 when she collided with the battle-cruiser Inflexible. With the onset of war she joined the 4th battle Squadron and on the way to Scapa Flow collided with the civilian steamer St Clair on the 27th of August damage was only slight. She had a refit in May/June 1915.

Bellerophon was present at the battle of Jutland were she was under the command of Captain Edward F. Bruen,(Rear Admiral Alexander Duff) in 4th Division part of the 4th BS led Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee in Benbow followed by Bellerophon, Temeraire and Vanguard. Her first action at Jutland came at 1828 with a brief period of fire at the hapless german light cruiser weisbaden, disable earler by the Inflexible she was fired at by a large number of british ships as they passed her. At 1830 bellerophom opened fire on the Derfflinger straddling several times and hitting her once, the 12" shell did little damage, it hit the armoured section of the contol tower and did not penetrate the 12" armour - british shells performed very poorly at this time. Shortly after 1900 she joined in the general melee' to repulse a torpedo attack by the German 6th and 9th destroyer flotilla's this attack was most likely a brave attempt to rescue the crew of the Wiesbaden. In all Bellerophon fired a total of 62 rounds of 12” shell, these were 41 rounds of APC and 21 rounds of CPC plus 14 rounds of 4", she was not hit in return. CPC = Common Percussion Capped APC = Armour Piercing Capped, the cap refers to a ballistic cap attached to the shell to increase the ballistic characteristics of the shells and thus the range.
Post Jutland she carried out regular patrols of the North Sea with other ships of the Grand Fleet as the relief Flagship of the 4th Battle Squadron her Admirals were RA’s Roger Keyes and Douglas Nicholson she had a quiet existence with no events of note and unlike her sisters Temeraire and Superb was not sent to the Mediterranean. Post war now superseded by the super-dreadnoughts with 13.5 inch guns she was placed in reserve in 1919 and converted to a Gunnery Training School . Bellerophon lasted just over two years in this role, a victim of the 1920 Washington arms reduction Treaty she was sold to the breakers in November 1921 and broken up in 1923.

Bibliography

Bibliography IWM own knowledge of the class, Jutland – John Campbell, Jutland - Geoffrey Bennett, Wikipedea -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Bellerophon_%281907%29

Contributors

• Completed by Steve Woodward 10th August 2007
• Additional information and photos of turbines added by Benjidog 12 July 2008
• Turbine photos from Alistair Russell