Iron Duke Class battleship – HMS Emperor of India

From SN Guides

The name Emperor of India

This is the first and only ship to be named Emperor of India, she was originally to be named Delhi but was renamed very shortly before her launch in honour of King George V, who was the Emperor of India.

An undated image of the Emperor of India, I think the date will be early to mid 1920's - courtesy of Wikipediea

Class information

The Iron Duke class were a modified King George V class battleship , they were followed by the Queen Elizabeth class which was a radically different design and a far better class making the Iron dukes the final development of the Dreadnought battleship. A major difference was that at last the very weak 4” secondary battery gun used in all previous classes was replaced with a 6” weapon, far more capable of repelling the larger destroyers and torpedo boats then being built, these guns were no longer fitted in the deck houses, although still in casemates ten were situated five either side of the foc’sle deck and two right aft in the hull below the quarter deck. Although only 2” larger in calibre the additional weight of these 12 guns resulting in the ships being 25 feet longer, 1 foot wider and 10 inches deeper and 2,000 tons heavier. Fire direction was now an established need and to carry the weight of the direction gear the class had heavy tripod masts fitted from new, and compared to the preceding KGV class the funnels were taller and thinner which made them very easy to distinguish from the KGV class. Although the Iron Duke was initially fitted with Anti Torpedo nets these were removed during her sea trials, these nets were not fitted to the Emperor of India or the others in the class.

Building data

Ordered under the 1911 naval estimates the Empeor of India was built by Vickers at their barrow in Furness yard being laid down on the 31st May 1914 and launched on the 27th November 1913, on completion on the 10th. November 1914 she commissioned into 01st Battle squadron (1BS) of the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow.

Basic Details

L 622'09" B 90'00" Draft 29'06" standard to 32'09" full load. Disp 25,000 tons standard and 29,560 tons full load.

Machinery

The machinery for the ship was built by Vickers using virtually the same layout as that of the preceeding King george V and earlier classes of Dreadnought was used with quadruple propellers being driven by Parsons direct drive steam turbines. The machinery spaces were split into three with the inboard shafts leading to the centre engine room and the outer shafts the port and starboard wing engine rooms. The two inboard shafts were driven by the high pressure ahead and astern turbines with the ahead turbines having an extra stage for cruising, this was separated from the main turbine by a bypass valve. The outer shafts were driven by the ahead and astern low pressure turbines, for cruising the out board turbines would be shut down , the ship relying on the inboard shafts alone. The eighteen Yarrow boilers remained in three groups of six , although coal fired oil spraying equipment was fitted for quickly raising steam. The normal power for the iron Duke was 29,000 SHP giving 21.25 knots on her trials in late 1912 she attained 29,654 SHP which gave 21.5 knots over 30 hours.

Bunker capacity was up to 3,250 tons of coal and 1,050 tons of oil, this gave a range of 7,780 miles at 10 knots.

Finding details of the machinery layout of these old ships is quite daunting, I obtained details of the layout from studying a minute plan with a magnifying glass, the details are as accurate as I can get them for the moment SW 21 oct 2007

Armament

Main battery

Ten 13.5" C45 Mk5 guns were carried in five twin turrets all on the centre line with B and X superfiring over A and Y turrets , Q turret sited amidships was the only one with restricted firing arcs although B and X were still restricted from firing directly over A & Y due to the very real possibility of muzzle blast entering the lower turrets sighting hoods which were still placed in the forward ends of the turret roofs, because of this B & Y guns were restricted from firing over from right ahead / astern to 30 degrees either side.

The main battery of the Iron Duke class was identical to that of the preceeding KGV class and was very similar to that of the preceeding Orion class battleships. Britain had learnt from the rather poor performance of the high velocity 12" C50 gun fitted to the St Vincent, Neptune and Colossus classes that higher velocity was not the answer to greater range and hitting power, the answer lay in a heavier shell. The 13.5" gun which had reappeared in the Royal navy after a gap of many years, and was first fitted in the Orion class, was an excellent weapon with very good range, accuracy and hitting power, it also had a good safety margin allowing it to fire a heavier shell, the increase from the 1260lb early shells fired by the Orions to the 1410 lbs heavy shell did not increase the range even though the propellant charge was now four quarter charges of almost 106 lbs of MD450 (rod based) cordite, the gun still had a maximum range of just under 24,000 yards. The barrel construction was of a liner in an inner tube (A) which was wire wound with many miles of flat wire, over this was shrunk a steel jacket, there were problems with wire winding, the barrel could droop and it is often quoted that the german solid guns were better made. Solid guns took a lot longer and much more machining to make whereas the wire wound gun was much quicker in manufacture. With a navy with such a large number of weapons speed of manufacture was of the essence and the Royal Navy never had supply problems for replacement barrells that the German navy had. There were five main magaines and an associated shell room, each serving it's own gun, there were 112 rounds for each gun so each magaine would hold 896 106lb quarter charges of cordite a total of 474,880 lbs of explosive and a total of 1,120 shells weighed 1,568,000 lbs or 700 tons. The excellent barrel life of 400 rounds for the lighter shell was reduced to 220 rounds, which was still good.

Secondary battery

The Iron Dukes were the first of the Dreadnought classes to drop the under-weight 4" secondary gun and instead fitted twelve 6" C45 Mk7 guns all in case mates, Initially ten guns were mounted in casemates under the focsle deck, five either side and a further two guns in the stern of the vessel in case mates below the quarter deck either side of Y turret - these two guns proved so wet and useless they were removed and the case mates plated over. They were re-installed at the aft end of the focsle deck above the original foward guns in an unarmoured placement. Case mate guns tended to be wet so the Iron Dukes mounted theirs as far aft as possible even still this caused problems, the clam shell type doors which were intended to keep out the weather leaked badly and rubber seals were designed which improved matters but by no means cured the problem.

To compare the two weapons the 4" fired a shell of 31lbs whilst at just 2" bigger in bore the the 6" fired a 100 to 112lb shell, the 6" had a much bigger stopping power when used against an attacking torpedo boat or destroyer. The rate of fire was given at 12 rounds per minute (RPM) but in reality this would be closer to 6 or 8 RPM , it should be noted that this was not a new weapon, designed and manufactured arround 1900 by Vickers and was of partially wire wound construction, a very large number of these wepaons was produced -about 900 - and some remained in service until britain scrapped it's remaining 6" coastal guns in the mid 1950's. The range of these weapons was just under 18,000 yards using a charge of 28 to 29 lbs of SC140 cordite contained in a silk bag. SC140 cordite is a solvent free cordite contained rod shaped elements of the propellant 140 being the diameter of the rods in thousands of an inch.

The class were also fitted with four 3 pounder signalling guns and a first for a British battleship, two 3" or 12 pounder anti aircraft guns fitted in 1914 to the aft deck house.

Torpedo armament

The stern torpedo tube was dropped on this class and all subsequent battleships, they were however fitted with four 21" submerged beam mounted ( two a side) submerged torpedo tubes. They were fitted for Whitehead type RGF Mk2 torpedoes, these were about 24 feet long long with a 515lb TNT warhead and having a range of 4,500 yards at 45 knots and 11,000 yards at 30 knots.

RGF is short for the Royal Gun factory which is were these weapons were made when the Royal navy took over the manufacture of these weapons.

Armour Protection

Very similar to previous designs, however the internal protection was better than the King GeorgeC class, the main armour belt was of Krupp Cemented Armour (KCA) and 12 inches thick at the water line trapering down to 8" at the lower edge. The upper armour belt being 4" KCA. The fore and aft armoured bulkheads were of 8" KCA tapering down to 3" at the lower edges, whilst the discontintinous foer and aft torpedo or screen bulkheads were just 1.5" thick, these covered the engines rooms and magazines only, the boiler room torpedo protection was afforded by the wing coal bunker spaces. Barbettes were of 10" KCA were they were either above deck or outside of other armour but inside other armour they reduce to just 3", turret faces were of 11" KCA with lesser armour on the sides,roofs and backs. The decks remained rather lacking at just 2.5" over machinery psaces and magazines reducing to 1" in non-vulnerable areas.

Service History

The fourth and last ship of the class to be completed originally called Dehli she was renamed Emperor of India just one month before her launch, a unique feature of the Emperor of India was that the wood of her quarter-deck was oak, all other ships used teak for the planking. On her commissioning on the 10th November 1914 she joined the 1st Battle Squadron (1BS) of the Grand fleet a month later she joined the 4th BS under the flag of Rear Admiral A.L. Duff. In May 1916 the Emperor of India was in the floating dry-dock for refit at Invergordon until the 03rd June 1916 and so missed the battle of Jutland, Rear Admiral Duff having transferred his flag to Superb. In 1917 became second flagship of the 1st BS replacing Marlborough and was in this role at the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet in November 1918. In 1919 she was assigned to the Mediterranean fleet with Rear Admiral Culme-Seymour hoisting his flag in her, the four ships of the Iron Duke class lent support to the White Russians in the Black Sea in there civil war against the Red Russians, one notable incident was the Bombardment of the Local Bolshevik base at Vladilovoska , a railway junction to the north of Theodosia, this was carried out with her sister-ship Iron Duke using their 13.5 inch main battery guns. Emperor of India returned to the Uk for refit in 1922 before returning to the Mediterranean until 1926 when she was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. The London naval treaty spelt the end for many fine ships and the Emperor of India was one of them, she was paid off for disposal in 1931 and used as a target ship being sunk on the 01st September 1931. She was raised and sold for scrap on the 06th February 1932.

Taken in 1929 this shows the Emperor of India in her final years of service, photo courtesy of MartimeQuest

Bibliography

Bibliography:

1. IWM
2. Jutland – John Campbell,
3. Jutland - Geoffrey Bennett,
4. Conway’s 1906-21
5. History of the Torpedo by Geoff Kirby
6. website MaritimeQuest for the picture of E of I

This article was completed on the 08th december 2007 by Steve Woodward