Bellerophon Class Battleship - HMS Temeraire

From SN Guides

Introduction

Bellerophon class of Dreadnought type battleships – preceding class Dreadnought, follow-on class St Vincent class Temeraire was the second of the three Bellerophon class ships, in order of completion they were Bellerophon, Temeraire and Superb, there have been four ships in the Royal Navy bearing the name.

This 1907 picture of Temeraire is a crown copywrite (expired) photograph.

The Name Temeraire

1. The first vessel to bear the name Temeraire was a 74 Gun Ship captured from the French navy in 1759 and sold on in 1784 the Royal navy kept the name, perhaps to annoy her previous owners.
2. The second ship to bear the name Temeraire was a second-rate ship of 98 guns launched in 1798. She was astern of HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. Temeraire achieved fame as the subject of two paintings by J. M. W. Turner, one of her at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 - 'The Fighting Temeraire' the second depicts her being towed to the breaker's yard in 1838.
3. The third Temeraire was an iron-hulled screw-propelled ship launched in 1876, renamed Indus II in 1904, Akbar in 1915, and sold 1921.
4. The fourth Temeraire, a battleship, and is the subject of this arcticle.

For a short while there was a fifth Temeraire - one of the cancelled Lion class Battleships, weighing 42,500 tons - these would have been impressive ships. Construction started in June of 1939 but was suspended in October the same year as materials and man-power was needed to build large numbers of escort vessels, Temeraire was finally cancelled in 1944.

The name has also been assigned to two shore establishments, the first at South Queensferry in Scotland and when that establishment closed in 1960 the name was trasferred to the Directorate of Naval Physical Training and Sport(DNPTS) in Portsmouth.

Overview of the Class

Although superficially similar 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 class 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.

Temeraire was built by the Royal Dockyard at DevonPort Plymouth, laid down on the 1st January 1907, launched on the 24th August that same year, and commissioned on the 1st May 1909. Her building costs were £1,641,114, the cheapest of the the three ships.

Crown copywrite ( expired) photo of Temeraire, it is undated but will be circa 1907-8

Basic Dimensions

L 526’ B 82’06” Dr 31’05” Disp 18,800 tons standard and 22,540 full load crew approx 790

Machinery

Machinery : virtually identical to the Dreadnought with Quadruple propellers driven by Parsons direct drive steam turbines, built by Hawthorne Leslie on the Tyne , 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. steam was from 18 Yarrow coal fired boilers.- in three boiler rooms with six boilers in each with a working pressure of approximately 230 psi. The range of the class was not particularly good being about 5,600 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 over 20,000 yards at 16 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.

the above Image is a copy from an Admiralty manual showing the gun layout of the Bellerophon class Dreadnought battleships, gun ID is the same as Dreadnought with 'A' turret forwards on the focsle, 'P' to port of midships and 'Q' to starboard with 'X' behind the after funnel and 'Y' on the quarter deck. The image was obtained from Wikipedia

Seondary 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.

In addition to the low angle guns two 4 " and two 3" HA AA guns were fitted. Four 3 pounder saluting guns were also carried

Torpedoes

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

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”

imaged copied from an Admiralty Manual and obtained from Wikipedia showing the layout of the armour scheme on the Temeraire - the armour is in black.

Operational History

On completion the temeraire joined the 4th Battle squadron (BS) of the Grand Fleet and remained in this squadron for most of WW1 on the 18th March 1915 she attempted to ram a german submarine. A Jutland veteran she was third of four ships in the 4th Division under Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee in Benbow( leading) followed by Bellerophon, Temeraire and Vanguard, temeraire was under the command of Captain E.V. Underhill. temeraire commence her action at jutalsn at 1834hrs by opening fire at the Wiesbaden with five salvo's of 12" HE claiming two or three hits, Wiesbaden had been hit earlier by the Invincible and disabled, as she appeared out of the smoke she was shot at by a large number of british ships, she sank under this attention. Her next action was arround 1910-30 when she fired 11 salvo's of HE at a range of 12,500 yards at the German battle-cruiser derfflinger no hits were claimed at this time. The next action was at 1930 ish with a torpedo attack by the German 6th and 9th destroyer flotilla's when Temeraire joined in the general melee with her 4" battery, no hits could be claimed in this partially due to the density of gun and funnel smoke obscuring the battle but mainly the difficulty of spottiing the fall of shot of the puny 4" batteries against the 6" of the newer ships, no torpedoes actually hit the British ships.

During the battle she fire a total of 72 twelve-inch HE shells, for some reason although firing at times on a battle-cruiser she did not fire any APC or CPC, she also fired 50 rounds of 4". she received no damage herself during the action.

In October 1918 she was detached to the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron under the overall command of Vice-Admiral Gough-Calthrope.

At the end of WW1 the Bellerophon class was now outdated by the newer 'Super' Dreadnoughts fitted with 13.5" guns so the Temeraire became a cadet training ship. This career was short lived and in 1921 she was sold for scrap

Crown copywrite(expired) image of Temeraire under way circa 1907-8

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