Orion class battleship - HMS Conqueror

From SN Guides

The name Conqueror

There have been nine ships named Conqueror in the Royal Navy with a tenth scrapped whilst under construction

A scan of an unnamed Orion class battleship from an old postcard, the two bands on the after funnel indicate this most likely the Conqueror

1. The name was French in Origin and dates back to 1745 when the Royal navy captured a small eight gun fore ship from the French, she was sold on in 1748.
2. The second ship was a 68 gun third rate ship of the line built in 1758 she lasted just two years before being wrecked off Plymouth
3. was a 74 gun third rate ship of the line launched in 1773 and scrapped in 1794
4. Launched in 1801 the fourth ship was also a 74 gun third rate ship of the line, a Trafalgar veteran she was scrapped in 1822
5. was a screw driven 101 gun first rate ship launched in 1855, she was wrecked in the Bahama’s in 1861
6. built in 1827 as the Caledonia class three deck ship she was renamed Waterloo in 1827 and in 1859 became a steam driven 2 deck ship. In 1877 she was renamed Warspite and became a cadet training ship on the Thames at Greenhithe, she was destroyed by fire in 1918
7. Was a Conqueror class iron Ram launched in 1881 and scrapped in 1907
8. was the Orion class battleship and the subject of this article
9. Was to be a Lion class battleship of 46,000 tons mounting nine 16” guns, although laid down August 1939 the pressing need for small escort ships led to the suspension of work on this class, she was scrapped in 1940
10. was the Churchill class nuclear submarine built in 1967-71, she remains the only nuclear submarine to sink an enemy warship – the General Belgrano (ex USS Phoenix) during the Falklands war in which 323 Argentine sailors died

Conqueror was decommissioned in 1990

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

Conqueror, ordered under the 1909 naval estimates was built by William Beardmore & Co at their Clydebank Dalmuir works at a cost of £1,891,164. she was laid down on the 05th. April 1910, launched on the 01st May 1911 and commissioned in November 1912.

Basic Details

L 581' B 88'06" draft 27'06" Displacement 22,200t standard and 25,870t 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 Babcock and Wilcox boilers of greater power remained in three groups of six, although coal fired oil spraying equipment was fitted for quickly raising steam. The normal power for the Conqueror was 27,000 SHP giving 21 knots but on trials she developed 33,198 SHP for 22.13 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 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 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

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.

This undated shot shows conqueror still with her torpedo net booms, these were removed in 1915 to prevent them fouling the stearing of propellors should net arrangements be dammaged during battle, therefore this shot must predate 1915

Service History

Conqueror commissioned in November 1912 and was the last of the four Orion class to be completed, together they formed the Second division of the 2nd. Battle squadron (BS) with the Home fleet. In 1914 the 2nd BS joined the Home Fleet, on the 27th December 1914 she was rammed by the Monarch which caused serious damage to both ships, Conqueror was given temporary repairs at both Scapa Flow and Invergordon before being fully repaired at Devonport. On completion of these repairs she rejoined the 2nd BS and the home fleet in March 1915. 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. It is though that Conqueror had engine problems during the battle and was having trouble maintaining 20 knots as a signal from Admiral Jellicoe at 1717 instructed Thunderer to overtake the Conqueror if she could not maintain speed Conqueror first came to action at 1831 when she sighted a König class battleship at 12,000 yards and fired 3 salvoes of 13.5” the shell type is unknown, no hits were claimed and the target rapidly disappeared in the smoke and mist. A few minutes later and the disabled German light cruiser Wiesbaden appeared, this ship had the misfortune to have been disabled by the battle-cruiser Invincible and was then fired at by a large number of British battleships as they passed and she appeared to them out of the mist, the number of hits she took before sinking and who actually hit her was impossible to tell by the sheer number of ships which fired at her. At 1912 the Conqueror engaged the German destroyers of the 3rd. 6th. and 9th flotilla’s which were attacking with torpedoes to distract the Grand fleet and allow the German High seas fleet to escape to the south, There was also an attempt to rescue the crew of the sinking Weisbaden, Conqueror engaged with 13.5” CPC ( Common Percussion Capped) shells but again claimed no hits. This was the last action by the Conqueror the main German fleet was now fleeing south and contact was not regained. In total Conqueror fired a total of 57 rounds, of which 16 were APC and 41 HE she did not use her 4” secondary batteries , she suffered no damage or casualties. Post Jutland with few sorties made by German ships her life became one of routine patrols and sweeps, post war she was placed in lay-up and decommissioned in 1921, under the 1922 Washington naval treaties she was sold for scrap in 1922.

Bibliography

Article completed 05th November 2007

1. IWM
2. Jutland – John Campbell
3. Jutland - Geoffrey Bennett
4. Wikipedia for the list of ships named Conqueror