Bellerophon Class Battleship - HMS Superb

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 Superb

There have been nine ships in the Royal navy bearing the name Superb:

1. The first ship was actually a french vessel captured in 1710 by HMS Kent of the Royal navy, she was a 64 gun ship she was scrapped in 1732
2. The second ship was 60 gun 4th rate launched in 1736 and scrapped in 1757.
3. The third ship was a 74 gun 3rd rate, of 1760, she was wrecked on the Indian coats in 1783.
4. The fourth ship another 74 gun 3rd rate was launched in 1798 and scrapped up in 1826.
5. The fifth Ship was an 80 gun 4th rate and was launched in 1842 scrapped in 1869
6. The sixth ship built in Britain by Thames Ironworks for the Turkish navy originally called the Hamidieh she was seized by Britain whilst under construction, a 9,700 ton battleship similar to HMS Hercules she was heavily modifiied for use in the RN she was scrapped in 1906
7. The seventh ship is the subject of this article
8. The eighth ship was a light cruiser of the swiftsure class launched in 1943 and scrapped in 1960
9. The ninth ship is still in use and is the Nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine HMS Superb.

Superb, a crown copywrite photograph, this appears to be the only available image of the Superb

Construction

Superb was built by Armstrongs at their Elswick works at Newcastle on Tyne, laid down on the 06th February 1907 she was launched 07th November 1907 and commissioned on the 29th may 1909, she took much longer than her sisters owing to labour disputes and strikes.

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 790 to 840 in war

Machinery

Machinery : virtually identical to the Dreadnought with Quadruple propellers driven by Parsons direct drive steam turbines, built by the Wallsend company , 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 and Wilcox 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.

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 class ship 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. Superb also carried four 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

On commissioning she joined the 1st Division of the Home Fleet and was transferred to 4th Battle Squadron in 1915.

At Jutland with the 3rd Division of the 4th BS Led by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe in Iron Duke followed by Royal Oak, Superb and Canada, Her action during Jutland began at 1826 when the hapless Weisbaden a disabled German light cruiser appeared out of the smoke, one of many british ships to fire on this target, Superb fired four salvoes claiming two hits. Although in the general action against the German battleships arround 1900 when some firing was carried out at 9 miles Superb could only see 5 miles and did not open fire. At 1920 she opened fire on the derfflinger and fired seven salvos in 41/2 minutes with two claimed hits at 12,200 yards. During the battle she fired 54 12 in shells, 16 CPC and 38 HE she did not use her 4 " batteries at all, she received no damage. In 1918, she was detached with HMS Temeraire to the Mediterranean, becoming flagship of the British Eastern Mediterranean Squadron and later flagship of the British Naval Forces in the Black Sea the first British flagship to enter the Black Sea. Back in Uk waters in 1919 she was paid off into the Nore Reserve. Placed on the Disposal list in 1920 and was used as a gunnery and aerial bombing target until sold for scrapping in 1922.

Bibliography

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

Article completed by Steve Woodward 11th september 2007