SMS Nassau

From the birth of the Dreadnought to the period immediately after the end of World War I.
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Gary
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SMS Nassau

Post by Gary »

Hi guys. :cool:

Germanys first battlecruiser the Von Der Tann was a better all round ship than Britains first BC (or their second for that matter :lol: ).

What about Germanys first dreadnought though?

The Nassau class mounted a smaller cannon but the designers believed that any combat would occur at short ranges and therefore a faster firing weapon would be more of an advantage.
The Nassau's rolled horribly but later in their lives, bilge keels were fitted which greatly improved the problem.
From what I can see, their armour scheme appears better than early British dreadnoughts (up to but not incuding Orion class?).
The Germans learned their lesson and switched to the better 12" cannon for the Helgoland class but were the Nassau's a decent enough dreadnought for their time?




............Is it just me or are German ships always more intresting than Britsih or American ones :think:

:lol:
:lol:
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marcelo_malara
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Post by marcelo_malara »

Hi Gary:

The Nassau was powered by triple expansion engines in an era that turbine was the norm.
The gun scheme doesn´t look clever either: the wing turrets could not fire over the other side, so you have 12 guns but the max number that can fire on a single direction is 8 on a beam target. That is the same that Dreadnought, carrying two less guns and one less turret. This distribution was more common in predreadnoughts, the wing turrets carrying the secondary guns.
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Gary
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Post by Gary »

Hi Marcelo.

Thanks for posting.

I believe the machinery layout dictated the turret layout which is why it had the hexagon pattern.
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marcelo_malara
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Post by marcelo_malara »

I believe the machinery layout dictated the turret layout which is why it had the hexagon pattern.
Don´t know, do you have any internal drawing?

About the interest in the German BB and BC of WWI, I think that the big problem is the lack of books about them, at least in English (or in Spanish!!!).
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Karl Heidenreich
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Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Hi Gary!! Hi Marcelo!!! Two good friends in the same thread which is quite good!!! :D

Gary wrote:

............Is it just me or are German ships always more intresting than Britsih or American ones
That´s a very interesting comment, but somewhat yeah, at least in what warships is concerned. Even Campbell in his "Jutland, an analysis of the fighting" is quite certain that German ships were a lot better than the British ones. Sometimes I get real surprised when all these "views" appear trying to put the German ships as lousy and mediocre designs which is obvious they weren´t. It took just five minutes of investigation to became aware that it were the British Battlecruisers the ones the blew up at Jutland and some twenty five years later it was the Hood (... and some seven months later Repulse). So many cases to be coincidence. No German ships blowing in such a way in History. Quite hard to outperform that using a mathematical penetration calculator....
:silenced:
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iankw
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more interesting and better?

Post by iankw »

Well Gary I have to answer your question with: It's just you. Obviously interesting is a subjective thing and your idea of interesting is likely to be different to mine. It does seem quite popular to run down British and American ships recently. I guess we made the mistake of winning!!

Karl (hi again :) ), as for better. I would certainly say they performed better and they were definitely led better. Design wise they were different rather than better or worse. German designers made a definite choice of armour over firepower, British designers did the opposite. Of course the designers were assuming that British shell was going to perform adequately, which it didn't. I have no doubt that had Scheer commanded the British BCs firing German shell the outcome would have been very different, especially if the German Bcs had had Beatty to lead them.

I didn't realise the importance of Beatty until I recently read Brooks' book on fire control. The British FC equipment was quite reasonable, even with Barr and Stroud rangefinders, if given a chance. Beatty's total mishandling of his forces wiped out most of the advantage he had in FC, poor fire distribution wiped out the rest, and the poor quality British shell wiped out the advantage of larger guns/thinner armour. I am still waiting for Campbells book but, as far as I am aware, British BC belt armour was not penetrated by German shells (long range would make that less likely anyway of course). I know poor shellhandling as a cause of BC losses is unpopular atm but the BCs did take a number of hits without exploding, so something was right.

Poor design? No, just different.

regards, Ian.
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Gary
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Post by Gary »

Hi Marcelo
Don´t know, do you have any internal drawing?
The first German Dreadnoughts. The main armament layout was dictated mainly by the retention of triple expansion machinery rather than using less bulky turbines. Unlike the early British Dreadnoughts they retained a heavy anti-torpedo boat armament. The ships were not good sea-boats and bilge keels were fitted which improved the problem. For the wing turrets the magazines were above the shell rooms. Crew of 40 officers and and 968 men.

I found it on this page

http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/battleship/sms-nassau.html

Hi Karl.

Here is a site on German Imperial ships that you may or may not have seen.

http://german-navy.tripod.com/index.htm

You have to admit, its hard not to Like Derfflinger especially :wink:
God created the world in 6 days.........and on the 7th day he built the Scharnhorst
culverin
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by culverin »

SMS Nassau.

The RN, Great Britains Royal Navy, had a strict sequence for lettering all turrets or gun mountings on all their ships, from battleships, through armoured cruisers, torpedo boat destroyers and, for torpedo tubes, submarines.

As did the kaiserschlichtmarine.
But the German system bore no resemblance whatsoever to that of the RN when it came to ships with wing turrets.

The Westfalen class, to which the Nassau belonged, carried 12 - 11" in 6 twin turrets, with none superfiring, or superimposed, depending on ones preference. Both are technically correct and mean exactly the same.

No RN class had the same disposition as the 4 Westfalen class. Westfalen, Nassau, Posen, Rheinland.
So, how did the Germans identify the position of each 11" turret.

Working from the fwd forecastle turret and going through 360 degrees clockwise it was a simple case of -
A - Forecastle centreline
B - Stbd forward
C - Stbd aft
D - Aft centreline
E - Port aft
F - Port forward

So, no P, Q, X, Y. None of these letters ever being used by the Germans for turret identification.

In fact each ship had their own 'name' for their turrets, so if anyone has these, let's be having it.

Bruno for B turret is the accepted, what about all the others.
You've all had almost 6 (six) years to get your acts together. So off yer arziez.
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Byron Angel
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by Byron Angel »

Why does it seem to be such an article of faith that the RN had better fire control then the IGN in WW1? The record in no way supports such a position.

BTW, so far as I am aware ....
A = Anton
B = Bruno
C = Caesar
D = Dora

B
MikeBrough
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by MikeBrough »

An interesting graphic here http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-062.htm.

Does anyone know the 'names' of turrets E and F? Emile and Ferdinand?
delcyros
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by delcyros »

Main frame of SMS NASSAU and HMS DREADNOUGHT, respectively:

Image


note that DREADNOUGHT is not the exact contemporary of NASSAU.
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Ersatz Yorck
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by Ersatz Yorck »

Thanks Delcyros! Interesting.

German dreadnoughts are usually credited with a better TPS than British ones. Part of torpedo resistance is of course better subdivision and greater pumping capacity and more auxiliary generators which is usually superior in German ships. Looking at the TPS-system in your picture, one cannot see a clear advantage for the Nassau in the torpedo protection itself.

I guess the coal outboard of the torpedo bulkhead might contribute to better efficiency of the TPS-system of the Nassau? But if one looks at the inner .35 bulkhead the TPS system of the Dreadnought actually looks deeper.
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by Byron Angel »

Keep in mind that the 2in longitudinal splinter bulkhead showing on the Dreadnought cross-section was only in the way of the magazine spaces.

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tone
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Re: SMS Nassau

Post by tone »

Byron Angel wrote:Why does it seem to be such an article of faith that the RN had better fire control then the IGN in WW1? The record in no way supports such a position.
I think it is pretty clear that the British had a greater "frontal lobe" for fire control whereas the Germans, at the pivotal test in 1916, had the more developed lower brain stem. Hindsight makes it plain that the autonomic level of control - issues like how to use ladders and spotting rules and when to change the tempo of firing - were more important, given the unreliable nature of the observational data feeding the plotting systems (which would also prove latent in function) unique to the British effort.

The Germans proved wise to focus on the lesser aspirations they had within reach. They mastered them well. When Beatty's tactics, shells and drill proficiency were offered as opposition, this pragmatism spoke loudly.

tone
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Re: SMS Nassau - Ger vs Br gunnery

Post by Byron Angel »

tone wrote: I think it is pretty clear that the British had a greater "frontal lobe" for fire control whereas the Germans, at the pivotal test in 1916, had the more developed lower brain stem. Hindsight makes it plain that the autonomic level of control - issues like how to use ladders and spotting rules and when to change the tempo of firing - were more important, given the unreliable nature of the observational data feeding the plotting systems (which would also prove latent in function) unique to the British effort.

The Germans proved wise to focus on the lesser aspirations they had within reach. They mastered them well. When Beatty's tactics, shells and drill proficiency were offered as opposition, this pragmatism spoke loudly.
..... Hi Tone,

My impression is that Germany did a better job than Great Britain of developing a comprehensive overall approach to the issue of long range naval gunnery. Great Britain lavished extraordinary effort on development of computing devices of great sophistication and complexity to deliver predictive fire solutions, but failed to develop the instruments and data delivery systems necessary to provide data inputs of sufficient real-time accuracy to enable those remarkable computers to achieve their potential and, IMO, never really integrated their new FC technology with fleet gunnery doctrine to create a cogent fire control system tuned to real world gunnery issues. Germany, on the other hand, settled for a somewhat less sophisticated but perfectly suitable computer coupled with a highly sophisticated range-finding system with electro-mechanical data transmission and averaging that proved (as a system) to provide more accurate data, faster, over a greater extent of battle ranges and visibility conditions. Germany also appears to have developed a better gunnery doctrine - with emphasis on early straddling and rapidity of fire - for the real life action conditions that were ultimately faced at sea. This is not to say that the Germans had it all their own way - British director control technology was important and German failure to embrace centralize control of gun elevation might have cost them dearly, had they had occasion to fight in heavy weather.

I've also developed a feeling that the RN and the IGN had different views on gunnery, in the sense that the RN saw FC as a "scientific" exercise (i.e. - estimate target range, speed, inclination, deflection, and conduct careful bracketing fire to develop a straddling solution while the target cooperatively sails along) whereas the German approach seemed to be more "active" (estimate target range, speed, inclination, deflection, then get on target as fast as possible and deluge it with shells before it evades away) - completely subjective, I know ... but, as I said, it is just a feeling I have developed from my reading.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B
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