Orion class battleship- HMS Orion

From SN Guides

The name Orion

Undated shot of orion scanned from an old postcard of my fathers, the fact that she still carries her tall topmast and is still fitted with anti-torpedo net booms shows that this picture was taken before 1915 when the net booms were removed.

Orion is the name of a constellation, which gets its name from a legendary Greek hunter killed by a scorpion sent by Artemis, the actual origin of Orion is not known but may be related to Greek ‘οριον (horion).

Ther have been seven ships in the Royal navy bearing the name which dates back to 1787, there was also another ship to be named Orion, an armoured cruiser planned for 1904 but the order was cancelled before construction started

1. 1787 a 74 gun ship of the line scapped in 1814
2. 1854 an 80 gun screw driven ship she was scrapped in 1867
3. 1879 was an armoured corvette built for Turkey but bought off the stocks by the RN, in 1909 she became the depot ship Orontes.
4. 1904 she was a planned but not built armoured cruiser
5. 1910 is the battleship subject of this article
6. 1932 was a 7,000 ton Leander class light cruiser scrapped in 1949
7. was a French submarine captured in 1940
8. 1974 was an Oberon class submarine scrapped in 1996

Class information

'another scan from my fathers collection this shows purports to show the four Orion class ships as the second division of the 2nd BS - L to R, Orion (leading) Monarch, Conqueror and Thunderer. undated but pre WW1 say circa 1913', I think the lead ship of the four belongs to another class and this shows three of the Orions : Orion, Monarch and Conqueror with the two bands on the funnel) Thunderer had three bands on the aft funnel

Following the Colossus class Britain’s next class of Battleship the Orion’s were the first ships to dispense with the unsatisfactory wing turret arrangement, beaten to a world’s first by the American South Carolina class commissioned in 1910, these were the first battleships in the Royal Navy to feature an all big gun armament on the centre line and where a major step forwards and were called Super-Dreadnought’s, in reality these ships and others of their ilk far outclassed the Dreadnought and did to her what she had done to the pre-Dreadnought’s, made her obsolescent. As stated although the South Carolina’s pre-dated the British ships the Orion’s were far bigger ( 581’ and 22,000 tons against 453’ and 16,000 tons) and although their machinery was still essentially that of the Dreadnought the Carolina’s were still driven by Steam reciprocating engines, the turbines were faster, needed less maintenance, more economical, compact and lighter leaving more space and more importantly weight for additional armour. With the possibility of war looming the cost saving used of the Dreadnought types were dispensed with resulting in a far better and larger ship, the Orion’s also saw the introduction of the new 13.5” gun, to achieve greater hitting power on the later variants of the Dreadnought the barrels of the 12” guns had been lengthened to increase the muzzle velocity and hence the range and hitting power, this was an unsatisfactory gun with poor accuracy and wear levels. With the 13.5” gun a return to lower muzzle velocities was made, instead the hitting power was raised by the heavier shell fired by the bigger gun, an altogether better weapon.

On examining the Orion class the design comes across as sleeker and more refined than earlier ships, outwardly similar to the following King George the 5th class the two could be told apart by the Orion's fore mast being placed behind the forward funnel, this reulted in the fire control top at the mast head being heavily affected by smoke, heat and gasses from the funnel, not a good design feature at all.

One other feature of the ships was dictated by the size of the dry-docks available at the time, the size of the ships was the maximum that could fit into these drydocks and something had to give, the bilge keels were omitted, initially the ships rolled heavily and if reports in the tabloids of the times had to be believed the class would capsize in any sea. In truth the rolling whilst undesirable was not this severe and the class were fitted with bilge keels but the size and design was a compromise between effect and dock size.

Another problem facing the designers was were to place the mast, place it in front of the funnel and the spotting top would be clear of smoke and heat with a head wind but another problem then appeared, where to put the derrick needed to hoist the boats. The Orion class would seem to have bowed to the seamanship problem and placed the mast aft of the fore funnel to allow the fitting of a large derrick for hoisting the ships boats, this did cause problems with smoke and heat in the spotting top. To partially alleviate this the fore funnel was smaller in diameter than the aft funnel and only vented six boilers and the remaining twelve vented via the aft funnel.

Building data

Built by Portsmouth Dockyard under the 1909 naval estimates, she was laid down in November 1909, and commissioned in January 1912, building costs were £1,855,917.

Basic Details

Length 581' beam 88'06" , draft 27'06" displacement 21,922 tons standard and 25,596 tons full load

Machinery

The machinery arrangement for the Orion class was very similar to that of the earlier Colossus class 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 boilers of greater power remained in three groups of six with eighteen boilers in total, although coal fired oil spraying equipment was fitted for quickly raising steam. The normal power for Orion was 27,000 SHP giving 21 knots on her trials on the 19th November 1911 she attained just over 31,000 SHP which gave 21.045 knots this would seem to indicate that she could not quite achieve her design 21 knots at normal power.

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 deatails are as accurates as I can get them for the moment SW 21 oct 2007

Armament

Main battery The main battery consisted of ten 13.5” guns arranged in five twin turrets all mounted on the centre-line and enabled this class to fire a ten gun broadside without any risk of structural damage to the ship, problems still existed with the open sighting hoods of the lower turrets ( A & Y) in that to prevent muzzle blast of the two upper turrets ( B & X) entering the lower turrets via the sighting hoods, firing of the upper turrets was prevented from right ahead to 30 degrees on either bow for A turret and 30 degrees either side of right astern for X turret, the mid-ships turret was designated ‘Q’.

The Orion class were the first British ships to carry the new gun, designed in 1909 by Vickers and built at their Barrow in Furness workshops the 13.5” gun and was designated the Mark V L, the L indicating it fired the lighter of the 13.5” shells, later classes had the Mk VH guns which fired the heavier shells, the guns were just over 52 feet long and the barrel alone weighed more than 70 tons each with a working pressure of 18 tons per square inch, construction was of wire winding, so good were these weapons that they were still in use during WW2 as shore guns at Dover. A superb weapon, although just 1.5” larger than the earlier 12” gun it fired a shell weighing 1,266.5 lbs against the 859 lbs of the earlier gun, although of lower velocity than the 12 C50 gun the 13.5 C45 weapon’s heavier shell maintained it’s in-flight velocity and so had greater hitting and penetrative power, the new gun was also very accurate and possessed very good wear rates – up to 450 rounds per gun, tests also showed that the gun had a very good safety margin so that the following King George 5th class ships could fire an even heavier I,410lb shell, although this lowered the wear rate to 220 rounds per gun. Using a charge of 293 lbs of cordite ( MD45) ranges of just short of 24,000 yards were achieved at 20 degrees elevation, although this was of little real use, the gun range finders had been designed with closer ranges in mind and so could only work up to 16 degrees elevation. Used as a railway gun and using an elevation of 40 degrees the range was then 49,000 yards using 400 lbs of propellant what this did to the wear rate is unknown. Projectile details : the ships carried three types and weights of shell. CPC – common Percussion Capped or semi Armour Piercing , APC – Armour Piercing Capped and HE – High explosive, Both the HE & CPC weighed 1,250 lbs and the APC 1,266.5 lbs with the length being circa 50” the explosive or bursting charge in the shells was 30 to 40lbs for the APC, 117 lbs for the CPC rising to 176.5 lbs for the HE

At 10,000 yards the APC shell could penetrate just over 12” of Krupps cemented armour plate. Five Mk2 turrets were fitted to the Orion’s, these were very similar to those fitted on the earler 12” Dreadnought designs and each weighed about 600 tons, they were a cramped compromise and not very satisfactory, in case of failure of the magazine hoist 8 ready use shells were stowed within the gun houses and could be loaded using manually powered davits, a further six rounds were stowed in the handling room under the gun with the cordite charges stowed in the turret trunk – the rotating section of the turret reaching down from the handling room down to the magazines and holding the hoists.

Fire control was effected by a fifteen foot Co-incidence type rangefinder in the fire control tower high in the ship, this data was fed into a Dreyer table ( invented and developed by Frederic Charles Dreyer) this was an early mechanical computer into which was fed range and bearing of the target, wind own course and speed targets course and speed, temperature and wind direction and adjustments for corriolis effect, this produced a firing solution which was fed electrically to the guns were the gun layers would follow the pointers, when the guns were load the interceptor switches would be closed and gun ready lamps would light in the fire control tower, when all guns were ready they would be fired electrically by the gunnery officer

Courtesy of MaritimeQuest, this is another early image of Orion, she is still carrying her tall top mast which was removed during WW1

Secondary battery

As with the Dreadnoughts the secondary batteries of the Orion class were rather weak comprising sixteen 4" C50 Mk7 installed in 14 casemate mounts and two open mounts, I can find no data on the two open mounts but the may well have been HA weapons for use against aircraft, the case mate mounts would be useless for this kind of assailant. Approximately 700 of these guns were produced in the early 1900's and nearly 500 of them were still in use in the second world war but in civilian DEMS ( Defensively Armed Merchant Ships). They fired a 31lb shell to 11,500 yards and a good crew could achieve a rate of fire of 8 RPM but normally this would be 6 RPM ( rounds per minute). This weapon lacked the stopping power to prevent a determined attacking torpedo boat.

four 3 pounder signalling guns were also fitted

Torpedo armament

This remained the same as the earlier Colossus class with three submerged 21" torpedo tubes , one firing on each beam and one astern. The torpedoes used by the Orion class battleships were the Whitehead 21" Mk2 these had a range of 4,000 yards at 35 knots or 5,500 yards at 30 knots and had a TNT warhead of about 400 lbs. Although Robert Whitehead had been born in Bolton, England he was running another buisness in Milan when he started out in the torpedo manufacturing buisness, however although the British Admiralty wanted to order his torpedoes ( and they did in vast numbers) they were not prepared to buy them from Italy so a factory was set up in England near Portland - this was were they tested the torpedoes so it was logical to set the factory up there, in 1914 at the outbreak of war the Admiralty seized control of the factory.

Armour Protection

The earlier Dreadnoughts had one major failing, the side armour belt was quite shallow in depth and at full load was often submerged making it useless as a shell could pass over the top of and cause flooding- quite apart from the internal damage it would cause. The Orion class cured this defect by being the first British battleships to carry the side armour belt up to the upper deck, the belt was also increased in thickness to 12” tapering down to 8” below the waterline, all vertical armour being Krupp Cemented Armour Plate ( KC). The armoured bulkheads which closed off the citadel were 10" thick both forward and aft, in previous designs the aft bulkhead was of lighter construction, presumably assuming attack would come from ahead not astern. The main turret barbettes were 10” thick tapering to 3” were they were inside other armour. Turret faces were of 11” plate other thicknesses on the turrets are not known at the time of writing. Decks the armour deck was of 4” Non Cemented NC armour , the maximum thickness was maintained over the machinery and magazine spaces and tapered down to 1” in non vulnerable areas, for details of the cementing process see :- HMS Warspite armour.

Service History

When she was commissioned in January 1912 Orion became the flagship of 2nd Division of the Home Fleet, on the 07th January 1912, around the time of her commissioning, whilst at anchor the old pre-dreadnought Royal sovereign class battleship Revenge broke loose from her moorings and drifted into Orion. However, neither ship experienced any significant damage as a result of this.

This image comes courtesy of Dick Sloan SN member, and shows the two ships after the collision, Orion's bow is in the left of the shot with the Revenge filling the centre of the photograph, it can be seen that the revenge has open type barbette mouted guns, the guns of both the Orion and the Revenge are of 13.5" calibre but 18 years separates the two designs, the Orion's were the first ship to use the 13.5" gun since the Revenge class but the two weapons are widly different and the later gun is not based on the earlier model.

In August 1914 Orion became part of the Grand Fleet, where she was the flagship of the 2nd Division of the 2nd Battle Squadron.

On May 31, 1916 Orion participated in the Battle of Jutland were under the leadership of Rear Admiral Arthur Leveson flying his flag in Orion, her CO was Captain O Backhouse, followed by : Monarch – Captain Borret, Conqueror - Captain Tothill and Thunderer- Captain Fergusson.

Orion’s battle commenced at 1832 when she opened on a German battleship, the Markgraf, with four salvoes of APC ( armour piercing capped) scoring one hit at a range of 13.300 yards. This 13.5” shell hit the Markgraf on the 6.75” armour of the no.6 port 5.9” gun casemate , although the shell burst outside the armour the armour was pierced and the upper-deck below the gun torn open for a length of several feet, armour and shell fragments did a great deal of local damage the gun was put out of action with all but 2 of the crew killed. A near miss possibly from the same salvo severely shook the ship which may have bent the port propeller shaft ( German battleships had triple screws) putting it out of action later due to over-heated bearings. At 1915 Orion opened on the Lutzow at a range of 1,9800 yards with six salvoes of APC shell straddling the target, at the same time the Monarch was also firing at the Lutzow so it difficult to determine who hit her, , the Lutzow’s escorting destroyers then made smoke to shield their charge from the British gunfire, at some time during this Orion engaged the destroyer G38. There were five hits on the Lutzow by either the Orion or Monarch or both, the first struck the forward turret on the 10.75” face plate armour close to the gun port, the entire outer jacket of the gun was torn off completely disabling the gun but the armour kept out most of the effect although two men were injured. The second hit entered through the port-side battery roof deck just abaft the third gun barbette and exploded on the upper-deck causing heavy casualties in the after dressing station, power cables to the after turret were severed , The 1.2” upper-deck was torn up badly by this shell but the ammunition spaces below were not affected however the aft turret now reduced to hand power was virtually useless. The Lutzow turning to starboard now exposed that side to the British ships and the third shell hit the armoured belt below the second turret causing the no1 starboard magazine to flood and be abandoned,. The fourth shell hit the 8.75 side of the second turret making a large 2.5 foot square hole, although the shell did not enter armour fragments did a lot of damage internally the right gun upper hoists, loading and elevating gear were wrecked putting the gun out of action a 76lb fore charge caught fire but the flash doors kept this fire out of the magazines. The turret officer and a large proportion of the right gun crew were killed, fortunately the Lutzow had a 1” splinter bulkhead between the guns and this saved the left gun crew but the turret was out of action for 30 minutes until the fire was out. The fifth shell hit the No4 starboard 5.9” gun 6” casemate armour although damaged the armour was not penetrated and the gun remained in action. The Orion nor her sisters engaged the German fleet which was now in retreat to the south and although chased there was confusion as to were the Germans were headed and thus contact was permanently lost In total Orion fired 51 rounds of 13,5” shell – all APC she did not use her 4” secondary bat at all. Orion is reported to have produced better shooting as she was the only ship of her class fitted witha 15 foot range finder the rest had 9’06” models reports from the German destroyer indicated that the salvoes fire at her by the Orion had a very small spread, indicating accurate shooting – the destroyer obviously had a lucky escape that day.

Post Jutland her life was that of other battleships, with the German ships rarely putting to sea routine patrols and manoeuvres were the norm. On the 19th March 1919 Orion transferred to the 3rd battle squadron , she then took over from the King George V as flagship of the reserve fleet and from June 1921 to march 1922 she was a gunnery training ship based at Portland. The Washington Treaty of February 1922 ended her career as she was one of the ships listed for disposal under the arms limitation terms of that treaty and on the 12th April 1922 she was paid off for the last time and sold for scrap in December 1922 In February 1923 she arrived at the Queenborough scrapyard, Queenborough is located on the River Medway at the mouth of the River Swale two miles South of Sheerness

Orion (foreground) at the Scrapyard along with HMS Erin - Photo courtesy of SN member Stein.

The after funnel is at the extreme right of the picture and the large ring showing aft of the funnel is the upper edge of 'Q' turret's 10" barbette Armour.

Article completed by Steve Woodward 23 October 2007

Bibliography

1. IWM
2. Jutland – John Campbell
3. Jutland - Geoffrey Bennett
4. Image of Orion courtesy of MaritimeQuest at :-

http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_directory/great_britain/battleships/orion/hms_orion.htm