HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

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petsan
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HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by petsan »

I have a Battleship HMS Vanguard question.....
"NAVWEPS" site claims that....Quote "To increase magazine protection, Vanguard's magazines were relocated below the shell rooms which was the

reverse of the arrangement used for all other British capital ships with 15" guns, but was similar to the design used for the 14"mountings on the King

George V class" un-Quote

But Wikipedia claims....Quote "HMS Vanguards 15-inch turrets had been designed when the customary practice was to place the magazine above

the shell room and it was not cost-effective to modify the ammunition hoists to accommodate the opposite arrangement adopted after the Battle of

Jutland demonstrated the dangers of exposing the magazines to long-range gunfire. The ship was provided with a powder-handling room above the shell

room to mimic the arrangement that turret's hoists were designed to handle, and another set of hoists moved the propellant charges from the magazines

to the powder-handling room" un-Quote

As all my extensive litterature is on American BBs.....I dont know who is right, if anyone had a Dulin Gartzge etc book on the subject I would like to who is

right.....even though my bets are on "NAVWEPS" as Wikipedia is not canon.
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paulcadogan
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Re: HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by paulcadogan »

Hello Petsan,
"The ship was provided with a powder-handling room above the shell room to mimic the arrangement that turret's hoists were designed to handle, and another set of hoists moved the propellant charges from the magazines to the powder-handling room"
I'm no expert, but I don't think that Wiki is saying that the mags were above the shell rooms. What I'm interpreting is that because the turret arrangement - specifically the ammo hoist system - was structured for mags above the shell rooms (since they were of WW1 vintage), they had to place a separate powder "handling room" above the shell rooms and put in a separate set of hoists to bring the charges up there from the magazines which were placed below the shell rooms. In other words - they put in a half-way house for the charges.

So no conflict between the two sources - Wiki just gives more detail in this case.

Paul
Qui invidet minor est - He who envies is the lesser man
petsan
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Re: HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by petsan »

I think youre correct after reading again
Thanks
paul.mercer
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Re: HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by paul.mercer »

Gentlemen,
I may be entirely wrong in this, but I'm sure that I read somewhere that some of the explosions on our battlecruisers was due to cordite being stored in the turrets to aid the rate of fire, am I correct?
Byron Angel
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Re: HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by Byron Angel »

paul.mercer wrote:Gentlemen,
I may be entirely wrong in this, but I'm sure that I read somewhere that some of the explosions on our battlecruisers was due to cordite being stored in the turrets to aid the rate of fire, am I correct?
..... Interesting thought - I know that certain British pre-dreadnoughts were fitted to carry some "ready-use" charges in their turrets to enhance rate of fire early in an action. I'll have to ferret around in my files to confirm whether that was also the case with British dreadnoughts and battle-cruisers.

One other point - I'm drawing upon an occasionally faulty memory, but one of the unspoken potentially causative factors involved in the losses of the BCs at Jutland was that ammunition stowage had been steadily increased from a pre-war designed capacity of 100 rounds and charges per gun to 125-150 rounds and charges by the time of Jutland. Much of the additional propellant was stowed in a very make-shift (and not necessarily flash-proof) manner.

B
Byron Angel
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Re: HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by Byron Angel »

Permit me to amend my previous post regarding ready-use charges being stowed in pre-dreadnought turrets. Upon re-consideration, I'm not prepared to say that this included propellant charges as well as projectiles. I suspect it was projectiles only.

B
paul.mercer
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Re: HMS Vanguards powder mags over or under shell room

Post by paul.mercer »

Byron Angel wrote:
paul.mercer wrote:Gentlemen,
I may be entirely wrong in this, but I'm sure that I read somewhere that some of the explosions on our battlecruisers was due to cordite being stored in the turrets to aid the rate of fire, am I correct?
..... Interesting thought - I know that certain British pre-dreadnoughts were fitted to carry some "ready-use" charges in their turrets to enhance rate of fire early in an action. I'll have to ferret around in my files to confirm whether that was also the case with British dreadnoughts and battle-cruisers.

One other point - I'm drawing upon an occasionally faulty memory, but one of the unspoken potentially causative factors involved in the losses of the BCs at Jutland was that ammunition stowage had been steadily increased from a pre-war designed capacity of 100 rounds and charges per gun to 125-150 rounds and charges by the time of Jutland. Much of the additional propellant was stowed in a very make-shift (and not necessarily flash-proof) manner.

B
On the point of the ready to use charges, the suggestion that I read about was that there was considerable rivalry between the turret crews to be the best at loading and being ready to fire and that was one of the reasons for storing cordite in the turret. I do wonder if that eagerness to be 'top turret' may have occasionally caused a 'flashback' by the breech being opened before the water spray had done its job of putting out any un-burnt cordite which in turn ignited the unused charges.
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