Orion class battleship- HMS Thunderer

From SN Guides

The name Thunderer

An undated shot of Thunderer scanned from an old postcard.

There have been six ships in the Royal Navy bearing the name Thunderer which dates back to 1760

1. A 74 gun 3rd rate ship of the line built in 1760 and wrecked in 1760
2. was a 14 gun Radeau, a sort of floating fortress and was used on Lake Champlain built in 1776 she sank a year later.
3. Another 74 gun third rate ship of the line a Trafalgar veteran she was built in 1783 and was scrapped in 1814
4. Was an 84 gun second rate ship of the line launched in 1831 and became a target ship in 1863
5. was a devastation class battleship built in 1972 and scrapped in 1909.
6. Was an Orion class battleship and the subject of this article

There was to have been a 7th Thunderer , one of the cancelled Lion class battleships, she was laid down in 1939 but due to the pressing need for small escort type ships work was sporadic and she was finally scrapped in 1944

Although the name Thunderer does not appear in the navy list anymore it is still alive and well and used by the West Ham Sea Cadets, one of their ships a former tug is called Thunderer

See :- :http://www.westhamscc.org.uk/1153/8725.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*

Class information

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

Thunderer was ordered under the 1909 naval estimates and built by the Thames Ironworks at a cost of cost £1,892,823., her keel was laid down on the 16th April 1910, launching took place on the 01st February 1911 she was comissioned in May 1912.

Thunderer was the last battleship built on the Thames, Thames Iron works had been struggling for some time with most orders going to the Northern yards, Arnold Hills the Chairman of the works threatened parliament with the prospect of some awkward questions and as a result Thames Ironworks received the order for the Thunderer. Although an important order the building of the Thunderer broke the shipyard, banks withdrew their loans and even though britain was in the grip of a massive naval ship-building race the yard at Bow creek close causing massive unemployement in Blackwall and Canning town

Thunderer on her launch day 01st February 1911

Basic Details

L 581' B 88'06" draft 27'06" Displacement 22,200t standard and 25,870t full load. Crew 755 rising to about 1100 in war

An undated shot of Thunderer courtesy of MartimeQuest

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 Babcock and Wilcox 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 Thunderer was 27,000 SHP giving 21 knots on her trials she developed 27,427 SHP giving 20.79 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 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, or gun houses 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 hoists 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 nine foot six inch 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

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

This is a scanned image of an old postcard, Identifying the ship was fairly easy, the photograph was taken from the port quarterdeck of the ship and shows two of the 4"C50 guns within their casemates, the length of these guns are 4" x C50 = 200 inches or 5.08 mts The long spar on the deck will be one of the boat booms, these were rigged at right angles to the ships side, the ships boats were morred from these keeping them off the ships side and protecting them from damage.

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

'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

On commissioning in June 1912 Thunderer and her three Orion class sisters – Orion, Conquerer and Monarch formed the 2nd Division of the 2nd Battle-squadron ( BS) and she remained with her sisterships throughout. At Jutland on the 31st May 1916 all four of the Orions were present under the leadership of Rear Admiral Arthur Leveson flying his flag in Orion, her CO was Captain O. Backhouse, followed by : Monarch – Captain G.H. Borret, Conqueror - Captain H.H.D. Tothill and Thunderer- Captain J.A. Fergusson.

Thunderer first came to action at 1830 when indistinct ranges of 22 to 18,000 yards were obtained on some German ships due to poor visibility from smoke she did not open fire at this time, it must be remembered Thunderer was at the rear of the 2nd division and her visibility would be affected by the smoke of the three leading ships. At 1915 Thunderer sighted two enemy battleshipsvisible between the royal Oak and the Iron Duke, she fired two salvoes of Common Percussion Capped shell ( CPC or semi armour piercing) at the leading ship , no hits were made and the second salvo was actually fire over the top of the Iron Duke. Thunderer did not sight the enemy again however during the German fleets run to the south after they broke off the engagement the Moltke sighted four large ships at 2240, these were the four Orion class ships, so she had a lucky escape that the British lookouts did not see her. In total Thunderer fired just 37 rounds of 13.5” all being CPC, she did not use her 4” batteries at all.

Post Jutland the Orions spent their time on routine fleet manoeuvres and in 1917 Thunderer was fitted with flying-off platforms on her upper turrets – B & X . Following the war she became a cadet training ship in 1921 and as such out-lived the others of her class, if she had not been a training ship she would have been scrapped that year under the terms of the Washington treaties. In November or c December 1926 she was sold for scrap, partial scrapping was carried out at Rosyth to reduce her draft so that she could be finished off at Blyth.

In November 1926 Thunderer was sold for scrap she is seen here arriving at Blyth, she was too deep drafted to enter Blyth so was partially stripped down at Rosyth, even so she grounded at the entrance and it took six days to get her light enough to be floated to Hughes Bolckow for scrapping. Although stripped of her guns and large ammounts of her upperworks she still arrived under her own steam, although with only the fore funnel remaining only the forward group of six boilers would be working ( the other 12 used the aft funnel) also just two of the four shafts would probably be in use.

Picture is courtesy of SN member Blythspirit

Article completed by Steve Woodward 23rd October 2007

Bibliography

1. IWM
2. Jutland – John Campbell
3. Jutland - Geoffrey Bennett
4. Wikipedia for list of ships named Thunderer
5. picture courtesy of MaritimeQuest

http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_directory/great_britain/battleships/thunderer/hms_thunderer.htm