French Pre-Dreadnoughts - When Hotels go to War

Well, today is the first special video of the month and that means it's a theme chosen by patrons on Patreon. I really must have done something to irritate them this time because the topic chosen is the history of the development of the free French battleships, whatever I did. I promise I will try to make it up to you, but it doesn't matter that you have asked and therefore you will receive, so the French Navy in the latter part of the 19th century was quite an interesting and diverse group, to say the least. -Started the ironclad warship revolution with LaGuardia in a number of pretty interesting directions

when

it came to ironclad warship design, including attempting to make a sail-style line-era ship except with iron in the shape of this rather wonderful ship and it is a stutter.

So ferrino and magenta were moved, like all the others, to the iron armor of the central battery and from there to the open ship Barbet, which was a precursor of the pre-dreadnought, as can be seen in these photos, there was a trend towards the cantilever-shaped warship design. It began to influence French armored warship construction quite early in its gestation and this would be strongly expressed during much of the pre-dreadnought era. Additionally, the idea of ​​the turnhouse design was to allow the ship to be more seaworthy by narrowing the hull considerably. the higher you went you would in theory reduce the amount of top weight and therefore could build the boat with a much higher free board than you could achieve in a more conventional slab or flared design cited, this in turn It meant you could mount the cannons. higher and of course being mounted much higher they kept clear of the sea in states with considerably higher seas, this was all very well and the cantilever warships proved very adept at navigating narrow passages such as canals and locks, however, had a rather unfortunate side. effect, which was that their margin of stability

when

the ships began to flood due to combat damage was minimal or non-existent, as would be demonstrated in combat later, but that's a story for another time.

Cedeño briefly, what is the design of the mobile home, let's analyze. the beginning of the French pre-

dreadnoughts

the last French ships to be built before the first French pre-dreadnought were, at least in terms of capital ships, the Marceau claw which, logically, consisted of the Mahr, so the magenta and the Neptune, however, this class was started in 1880 and after this, due to a change in French thinking temporarily for the user Nicole, which was, as discussed in other videos, the thinking school that held that submarines, torpedo boats, and other light warships such as cruisers could bring in an enemy;

It's good news. Through commerce attacks and blitzkriegs, the French Navy did not actually begin building any more capital ships for about 10 years and the Charles Martel class was canceled in the mid-1880s as a result of the new Maple administration with its new ideas, however, at first. By the 1890s, Jena coal was beginning to weaken its hold on French naval thought, and of course there was another rather large elephant in the room: the Naval Defense Act of 1889 passed in the British Parliament, as seen until now. period, British battleships of various types had been built one at a time or two at a time, and strange designs abounded;

However, this particular Defense Act rather pulled the rug out from under that small operating paradigm by requiring a large number of battleships to be ordered over the next five years. years, eight first class battleships and second class battleships designed primarily for operations in the Pacific, where they were designed to hunt armored cruisers, now a whole massive class of battleships, this was something the French needed to respond to and they needed to respond quickly . the canceled charles martel class was revised and one of the ships the brenes named after a macabre chieftain who would have the distinction of being the last person to sack Rome for a few hundred years and also the creator of those immortal words of AI victus or Woe to the Conquered would be redesigned in response to the Royal Navy's new class of ship, which would become the Royal Sovereign class using some of the materials left over from the first version of the ship and on the same slipway the new Brennus began the construction of this ship.

She would be armed with a wide variety of weaponry with a main battery of thirteen point four inch or 340 millimeter guns; however, there were only three of these in a twin turret forward and a single turret aft, a secondary battery of 164 millimeters or 6.4 inch guns. arranged in a variety of box mates and individual turrets on two different levels on each side of the ship, it then had a tertiary battery of 465 millimeter or 2.6 inch guns, a quantum battery of fourteen forty-seven millimeter or 1 guns, 9-inch, a Quintin air battery of eight 37-millimeter guns and four 18-inch torpedo tubes, just for good measure, the rambhau was removed.

She was fitted with steel armor instead of iron and new Belleville boilers were also introduced, giving the ship a speed of 18 knots with an indicated total power of thirteen. 1900 running on two axles and a shallow 18-inch-thick main armor belt with 18-inch armor on the main turrets, as well as one of the other problems in the motorhome design: it meant there was relatively little space in the helmet for such things. as accommodation, so the ship was completed with a massive superstructure, this, as well as various inefficiencies in the shipyard, meant that the ship was, shall we say, a little overweight when it went out for trials, this is taken into account in the tests, so it doesn't have a full offset.

However, the draft was already more than a foot deeper than it should have been, which combined with a relatively shallow belt meant that the vast majority of the ship's armor protection was now underwater, this only made things worse. once the ship was fully supplied and loaded. for war and would eventually require a rebuild to prevent her from gaining so much instability that she would possibly capsize randomly; However, a rather unstable and quickly redesigned semi-pre-dreadnought wasn't exactly the world's best answer to a navy that was producing a whole fleet of completely new battleships, so the French needed a much bigger and better answer than just poor old Brennus, so they were now faced with the very real possibility that the Royal Sovereignty Clause could allow the Royal Navy to dominate the Mediterranean and completely Unopposed, the French responded with a rather broad and ambitious law, the novel of the 1890 statute that called for a squadron of 24 first-class battleships, a coastal defense Li of 17 coastal defense battleships, and serums proving that this voyage Col had not completely lost its control 220 torpedo boats, as well as an overseas fleet of 34 cruisers, what if the Royal Navy programme, with the exception of the HMS cowl which was a throwback to the old school of turret design, would produce battleships of the same class and therefore with a capacity generally uniform, than the French program? called for an initial tranche of four battleships to be established from the start, these were never going to be the same with invitations to tender with 4 separate contracts for 4 separate ships promised to four different winners the key parameters were arm displacement and belt thickness of armor and the plating on the main turrets, but otherwise everything else was up to the designers, they could decide what the overall dimensions of those hulls would be, what the full shape would be like, what it would look like in silhouette, where the secondary guns would be. medium were going to be how much power and where the machinery would be replaced, what type of protection system they were going to use.

Tim, keep in mind this is right after the Italians looked at a completely disassembled battleship, so yeah. It was, let's say, a pretty interesting design competition and this competition would actually end with five boats instead of four. It just gives you an idea of ​​how different these five ships would end up being. One of them would have a secondary battery in twin turrets while all the others had the secondary battery and three individual ships had two engines driving two propeller shafts while the other two had three engines driving three propeller shafts the load for the displacement varied between eleven thousand eight hundred and twelve thousand two hundred tons the length varied according to up to ten meters and horsepower of up to two thousand in total, even the French would call this small batch of ships that traced the ashanti or sample fleet or fleet of mosaic, these ships would consist of the Charles Martel, which was reusing the name of the Other ship that had been canceled in the mid-1880s, Mussina's Carnot, the Bouvet and the Jelly Berry, I think possibly as they progressed In the designs, great concern was expressed as the displacement seemed to go up and up and up and with problems encountered.

Brenna was so aware that permission was given to consider replacing the 340-millimeter gun with a new 305-millimeter gun. At the time, the French had quite a variety of calibers when it came to their main battery guns and liked it better the 274 millimeter or 10.8 inch, the new 305 millimeter gun under development was supposed to be able to penetrate approximately the same amount of armor as the two seven four millimeter gun, but with twice the range, the weight of the 305 millimeter gun would obviously be considerably smaller than that of a 340 and so approval was given to change the main armament from the 340 to the 305 now, if you thought Brenna sees that the main armament was eclectic, Charles Martel takes the cake, the biscuit and probably also the container, its main armament consisted of two individual 305-millimeter cannons, two. single 274-millimeter guns in a secondary battery a tertiary battery of eight 138-millimeter guns again in individual mounts several varieties of casemis and turrets a quantum battery of 865-millimeter guns all single a Quintin airy battery of twelve forty-seven-millimeter guns again all singles and a battery of six Denari with 837 millimeter guns again, all singles plus four torpedo tube launchers because of course the speed was 17 to 18 knots and the main armor was 12 to 18 inches thick with a slightly expanded 13,500 horsepower engine that drove two axles.

Compared to Brennus, while this strange and eclectic main armament may seem a bit ineffective, and in fact gave a broadside weight that was almost a ton less than that of the royal sovereigns, it had one advantage: the lighter cannons of 305 and 274 millimeters. It had a theoretical rate of fire about twice that of the Royal Sovereigns' 13.5-inch guns, which meant that you could theoretically hit an enemy with more shells, even if those shells were perhaps somewhat less effective. . Now you could be thinking or wait a minute. 18 inches of armor which is pretty substantial protection, especially for an early pre-dreadnought and yes I hope you are right, however there are two factors to consider, one is the fact that this is not, in fact, the Krupp steel you would use.

What you would expect to find on a WWI or WWII dreadnought or even a later pre-dreadnought is in fact a lek rousseau variant of Harvey nickel steel, so its overall resistive power is somewhat less than what we normally think of in terms of battleship armament and secondly, as mentioned with the Brennus, French armor belt design tended to be very superficial. Exactly how these early French pre-

dreadnoughts

were protected is best explained by the diagram shown above at this time, but effectively, the main bat belt protection for the ship's hull was completely separate from the protection of the main battery much higher up in the ship with a relatively thin upper belt and an armored deck that was designed primarily to deflect and break up incoming shells striking above into the magazine and coal magazine. levels with the main belt being a very narrow strip which was designed simply to protect the ship's waterline with the coal bunkers behind providing additional protection, whilst Bironas had a sort of motor home, Charles Martel went all out in part to give the The secondary and tertiary batteries fire better arcs considering their variety of turrets mounted on all sides.

Carnot was the next ship in lineand, as you can see, it looked completely different in terms of superstructure, although the main armament was more or less the same. It has slightly better armor protection with thicker and slightly higher secondary armor protection and armor covers in several places on the ship, which led to the ship being slightly slower at just over 17 knots, having a power plant slightly larger than the large number of openings in the hull. Also known as scuttles, they generated quite a bit of criticism, although it seemed like a throwback to the era of sail, as one could easily imagine many cannons protruding from their ship, as I'm sure you can probably imagine.

I think it will now be necessary for Barry to go completely the other way around with a relatively minimal superstructure; However, the ship was physically shorter and wider than the other two half-sisters we have seen so far and she was one of the ships that came in with twin mounts. For the tertiary armament, unlike the individual ones present on the other ships, it also appeared to steal its funnels from a factory rather than the somewhat slimmer units found on the Karno and Charles Martel and as a result, once again looked completely different. and now we move from From the least pronounceable to the most visually offensive, the Messina, which seemed to take the basic hull of a Ram torpedo and put a hotel block on top, resulting in one of the gentlest and most most terrible look of all time.

We will also change the arms a bit, as the 65 millimeter guns present on the previous three ships were swapped for 100 millimeter or three point nine inch guns that were intended to complement the 138 millimeter or 5.5 inch tertiary battery, which would result in a lot of confusing splashing, to be completely honest, in a real fight, however, it would introduce three-axis propulsion that would remain a fairly constant feature of the pre-dreadnought trenches. forward, but like the Burness she would be massively overweight and was otherwise generally considered something of a failure in these five ship categories and finally we have the least officially offensive of the five ships, the Bouvet, who still had the motorhome but significantly fewer sinkings per year. much smaller superstructure but also in a much more urbanized Sterne area.

She also mounted a slightly experimental version of the 305-millimeter cannon, which meant that her firepower characteristics were subtly different from those of the other four, as with Mussina she replaced the 100-millimeter cannons with 65-millimeter ones. millimeters. guns on the first three ships in the late 19th century, the French Navy was actually near the forefront of fire control technology, so several rangefinders and fire control systems of surprising complexity could be found aboard the five ships in different degrees, as you can see. However, in the images above, this was a bit complicated by the fact that each turret had its own fire control system, so on most of these ships that meant a total of sixteen separate control sections. of fire only for the turrets and then the light anti-torpedo boat.

The armament was further divided into five general sections that corresponded roughly to sections of the ship, such as for most platforms, the mainmast deck, the shelter deck of a amidships bridge, and the forwards of the superstructure of stern, allowing Russo's ability to produce nickel steel armor also meant that at the time. You got to Bouvet, the armor protection was reduced from 450 millimeters to 400 millimeters on the basis that this provided exactly the same physical protection due to advances in steel manufacturing and obviously saved a significant amount of weight for displacement, too. It was much heavier. electrified than the other ships in this loose collection with a number of electrical generators and a large amount of electrical equipment installed along with other changes such as other variants of armor thickness in places such as the ship's bar stakes, this meant that Bouvet It underwent a large number of modifications while still under construction, partly to try to save weight as a result of other modifications being made and partly because several new ideas were being tested.

As a result, she would obtain a relatively marginal level of stability and buoyancy that would be evident. Later on, at their loss during the First World War, unfortunately this cavalcade of quite interesting and very varied ships did not help much in French naval affairs, for when, thanks to all the delays and infighting, all these ships were commissioned and in service, they did not. Not only did they have to worry about the royal sovereigns, they also had to worry about the nine strong and majestic crystals that are generally considered the origin of the classic pre-dreadnought battleship, so the Royal Navy was now running around with seven royal sovereigns and nine Majesties.

In addition to the royal sovereign variant HMS Hood, the French had five rather heterogeneous ships armed with between five and six different types of guns, four of which could be expected to fire on a battlefield without, despite their relatively advanced fire control, detecting the difference in shell spatter between secondary tertiary and quaternary main batteries was going to be quite an interesting challenge, to say the least. Louis Emile Berta, who was assigned the task of being director of shipbuilding in the late 1890s, would describe all of these ships as chiavari Bal or prone to capsizing, which is not exactly an enthusiastic recommendation, however, for However, in the period when they were new to the shipyard , were very compact, with very limited capacity as a result of this and really looked more like some sort of floating fortress or hotel block armed with numerous different types of weapons rather than the Royal Sufferings and Majestics which actually managed to look like a sea-going battleship and if that sounds harsh, that is the French Navy's own assessment of them.

As the 1890s progressed, the French Navy attempted to solve some of these problems by aiming for a much more homogeneous class of pre-dreadnought battleships, unfortunately thanks to various political shenanigans, were told that they would have to come up with a new generation of improved battleships, but with a smaller displacement, to achieve this they initially considered bringing the two 305 millimeter guns in a twin turret in the bow and two, two, seven and four four-millimeter guns in a twin turret aft, but fortunately wiser heads prevailed and the ships would be armed with four 305-millimeter or 12-inch guns in two twin turrets, one forward and one aft , which made them look considerably more conventional, however they would still have a very bulbous and protruding bow that sloped back quite significantly and would of course retain the rotating house found on earlier French pre-dreadnoughts, of which we have already talked about.

The rest of the weaponry, you will be happy. Knowing this was not as complex as on the Charles Martel with a secondary battery of 10 individual 138 millimeter or 5.5 inch guns, then eight individual 100 millimeter guns similar to Bouvet and Messina and these formed the tertiary battery followed by an air battery of Kuantan with 20 individual forty-seven millimeter guns and that was it, apart from, of course, four torpedo tubes, the three ships of the class would be the Charlemagne San Louie and the Galois, which would mount a pair of heavy twin turrets as high on the ship as the freeboard of the motorhome design would allow would give the ship significant stability problems.

If the approach found on the Charles Martel were followed elsewhere, the remainder of the ship's armament would be shifted to collapsible mounts or ricochet in open cover depending on the caliber of the weapon, oh, that's not it. Let's just say the slightly crazier French designers didn't try to act, they did and a number of design proposals for this class were rejected, which included mounting the secondary battery and turrets while moving the main battery to open bar stakes again. For some strange reason, all three ships would incorporate many of the advancements found in Messina, but as these were designed from the beginning, they were actually included in a much more sensible way, which meant that the ships were at somewhat lower risk of ending up. dramatically overweight and in a completely random manner, however, despite being a much more closely related class, there were still significant differences, as his son Louie had a completely different turret maker with a completely different turret design in compared to Charlemagne and Galois, which complicated maintenance problems, belt armor was once again.

Made by the French versions of Harvey nickel steel, but it was still a homogeneous steel armor, it was not hardened and therefore retained its thickness of 400 millimeters or 18 inches. The speed for the class would be about 17 knots, but again, in wonderfully French fashion, there were differences between When it came to propulsion, the propeller diameter was 4 meters on the Charlemagne, four point three meters on the Galois and four point three meters on the side propellers and 4.1 meters on the center propeller at St. Louie, which of course meant slightly different propulsion characteristics for each. of the ships, the Charlemagne was a significant advance over the Charles Martel, especially obviously the loss and the Bouvet and proved to be quite stable artillery ships, however, they were quite terrible at sea, maintaining this is not necessarily a floor of the design, it is simply because the French were trying to cram as much or more as they had at Bouvet into a smaller ship with an increase in displacement, most of these problems would probably have been solved and the ships would have been much more successful in service, however, represented a significant increase in French combat power over the Bouvet partly due to various technological advances, but also because despite their differences they were much closer together in terms of relative capability than either or two of the Charles Martel, which meant there was a hope that he could operate them as a single unified squadron.

Next, technically speaking, would come the Andriy the Fourth, a pre-dreadnought battleship of just under 9,000 tons, although I say battleship in quotes because it doesn't really match the rest of the French design lineage and is only armed with a couple of two hundred and seventy-four millimeter guns as the main armament, which makes it less armed than some armored cruisers and even the German pre-coastal defense battleships are significantly above it, so I think it is better to leave that ship. aside and see it as its own separate unit at some point in the future, having recognized its mistake in limiting the manye class of shell to eleven thousand tons or thereabouts, the next ship to be ordered, the battleship Ienna would be allowed Having a displacement increase of up to twelve thousand tons is normal and designed, but this came with a number of stipulations and passenger speed would return to 18 knots.

Range would be significantly increased to allow for better operational capabilities and armor would be increased on all. In certain types of areas, such as armor which had started as a trend in Messina and Bouvet, it was not considered particularly desirable given the small problem that enemy weapons did not care much about design limitations. It was also proposed to upgrade the secondary battery from 138 millimeters to 164 millimeters, but this would have come at the expense of removing one of the main guns, which would have given a Brennus style to advance one after range, meaning that, as far as As far as firepower is concerned, designer Monsieur Thibault has, fortunately, come up with a pretty good solution, which would use a higher grade of armored steel to again allow for similar protection but with less thickness, thus preserving weight, and would reduce the 138 millimeter battery to 2 guns and upgrade the remaining secondary battery to 164 millimeter guns, which in turn, allow it to retain the two twin 305 millimeter or 12 inch turrets for the main armament, since the armament The INR's total would consist of four three hundred and five twin guns in two twin turrets and eight single 164 millimeter or 6.5 inch guns. eight individual 100-millimeter guns, 16 individual 100-millimeter guns47 millimeters and, of course, the four obligatory torpedo tubes.

The main guns were also a modified version with a much larger breech allowing the use of a considerably more powerful gun charge giving the 305 millimeter guns. armor penetration capabilities and extended range compared to previous ships, although the size and volume of the superstructure was increasing again after valiant attempts to reduce it, the ship was also protected by Harvey nickel steel which was now case-hardened and hardened, which meant that the total thickness of the armor could be considerably reduced to 320 millimeters at its thickest point or twelve point six inches, which obviously saved a considerable amount of weight, in addition to Thorvald EA's decision to simply use a highest grade of steel first overall.

INR could be considered a great success, especially compared to its predecessors, it was relatively fast, quite maneuverable, it was a fairly good weapons platform and the only real criticism was that the fire control systems found it difficult to maintain a solution above 16 and a little. knots, but that wasn't exactly a huge mark against a ship considering the many and varied problems with previous designs, there were still problems with having multiple types of weapons in terms of having a primary, secondary and tertiary battery that would attempt to attack at long range . -The range and guns were perhaps too close together when it came to secondary and tertiary weapons, it also helped that the conning tower was quite small and narrow even though this was where the friendships were supposed to be ordered from , but on the other hand the bridge was very well designed and received quite favorably in peacetime operations and in cruising operations by the various command crews who served aboard her, so, on the whole, despite Of some flaws that every ship has, Ino was a very good example of French pre-battleship design, then came their Foreign or Suffern, which was supposed to be a modified version of Ienna;

However, as the various demands of the French shipbuilding board arose, she would eventually end up being an almost entirely new design. One of the most notable visual differences was the fact that the secondary. The battery of one hundred and sixty-four millimeter guns was now divided into a return to much older design criteria with individual turrets and folding mounts arranged along the sides, as its dimensions were larger than those of Ienna, who in turn It had once been larger than Manya's projectile. it was to be built to the necessary extent before it could begin. The belt armor was also thinned from 20 millimeters to 300 millimeters or 11.8 inches, however, it covered more area at this thickness than the tapered belt of the iena, the previous ship's pronounced caravan.

The designs were also gradually disappearing at this time, although still visibly present on French warships, it posed something that reduced the risk to stability during combat conditions compared to something like the Shell Mania class, while Safran represented an improvement in combat capability over Ienna in By the French Navy's own assessment, they saw a return to the same sort of principles that had governed the Florida shanty right at the beginning of their pre-dreadnought efforts since, unlike the shell Manya's now ended up with two additional ships of considerably different design. They are also looking across the pond or across the canal.

I must tell the British that during the same period from 1893 to 1901 the Royal Navy had received 29 first-class battleships. all with a uniform armament of four 12-inch guns and twelve 6-inch guns on the secondaries in five different classes during the same period; However, the French Navy's incremental and scattered efforts had only produced six ships of which only three were in the Therefore, they attempted to get things back on track with the same design with the par 3 class. This total of six ships She would be the largest class of French battleships ordered since the Flandreau class of battleships in the early iron and steam age.

These ships would represent a major step forward in French battleship design, partly due to the fact that they were designed as a single class that was supposed to be built according to a single set of plans, but also because they were definitely larger and therefore Therefore, they would be more capable than all previous French battleships. Having been built on a very tight budget, with these ships displacing just under 15,000 tons, they would be considered equal to any number of other parent classes being produced in the early 1900s and this was mainly due to two factors: firstly , Germany's naval laws were beginning to bring the German fleet to the scale it would reach in World War I with the High Seas Fleet thanks to Admiral von Tirpitz, which greatly worried the French and must also be said due to the Emil's efforts.

Berta, who, as we mentioned above, eventually managed to be appointed director of shipbuilding and finally managed to subdue the French naval boards and convince them that no, you couldn't build smaller ships and rely on LR to defeat a numerically small opponent superior, much larger, you actually had to build ships on par with those that your enemies or potential enemies we should say were building so we have the Patrese after a lot of chewing and tossing on the design front what would these be? boats. completed with a top speed of 80 knots, courtesy of 17,500 horsepower, an 11-inch thick main belt or 288 to 280 millimeters again of Harvey nickel case-hardened steel that was face-hardened and the belt was beginning to rise towards a most recognizable belt, armored and cellular cover. backup system as seen on many other Prairie battleships, unlike the earlier somewhat eccentric narrow-belted and extreme French designs of earlier vessels, the main armament was now also beginning to approach something more rational with four or three hundred and five millimeter guns in twin turrets and the tertiary battery of one hundred millimeter guns was removed entirely in favor of a much larger secondary battery of 164 millimeter guns with a total of 18 guns mounted in six twin and six single cases with twenty-four forty anti-torpedo guns. and seven millimeters, although these were very Definitely not intended to engage enemy capital ships and a reduction of torpedo tubes from four to two.

One of the early design proposals was to have twin turrets equipped with 194-millimeter guns or a total of 12 backed by ten unarmored 100-millimeter rapid-fire guns. but this was rejected in favor of the uniform 164 millimeter battery. The six ships, of course, were to be patrie or a public democracy. Training motorized turret and lifting mechanisms without putting on a kind of flash show for everyone in the vicinity; However, despite this promising start to uniform construction, changes would inevitably begin to arrive, one of them being the decree that the entire hull be 47 millimeters. The guns had to be replaced with 65 millimeter guns, with 16 of 47 in favor of 13 of 65 because it was considered that the torpedo boats were becoming too large and the forty-seven millimeters would not be as capable of stopping them as they had originally done. .

It was considered and then of course the British put into production their last class of pre-dreadnought battleships, the King Edward VII, and although these ships still had 12-inch main guns and a secondary battery of 6-inch guns, this battery actually now it was more. Generally considered a tertiary battery, as the ship also included 9.2-inch or 234-millimeter guns in turrets along with the six-inch guns that formed a somewhat heavier broadside than everyone had anticipated, the French , who, of course, had decided on 164-millimeter turrets and frames. The basis that they didn't need anything bigger was now somewhat bewildered with the first two ships, it was too late to do anything, but with the last four starting democratically, it was possible to make some changes before the ship was finalized as a As a result, the 194-millimeter gun was taken into account again and the one hundred and sixty-four window-mounted guns were replaced by four one-hundred and ninety-four-millimeter window-mounted guns, while the twin 164-millimeter turrets were replaced by individual 194-millimeter turrets, resulting in a total secondary. battery of 10 194-millimeter guns in the six individual turrets and four window mounts, as this overall led to a slight reduction in the ship's displacement, weight was put on thicker armor on the windows and turrets , which is reflected in the highest status of the 194-millimeter gun.

These changes delayed the ship's construction by 12 months, which meant that although the ships were generally considered very good, although short-range pre-dreadnoughts in terms of artillery, steam navigation and maintenance at sea, the Republic was completed around the same time as HMS Dreadnought and the last of The Ships Verité completed almost two years after that, putting them in obsolete status at the time of release, unfortunately, which I say is a huge shame Due to the fact that they were actually quite capable and had finally broken the French trend of designing a rather tattered and fragmented fleet, the only real drawback to the design was again the passage of time, as by the time they were completed the battle range had increased at least, according to the French estimate, to between six and eight thousand meters, while the first two ships with 164 millimeter armament had been designed for a combat range of two to three thousand meters and the democratic subclass for a range of combat from three to four thousand meters, which would leave them at a certain disadvantage if they were to engage in a modern firefight, lastly in pre-French terms.

Battleships would be Danton's sixth strong class. The Dantons had originally been considered as part of the fleet renewal program drawn up in 1900 in the face of Germany's initial naval expansion, but their construction did not begin to be discussed until May 1905 and into the following year. year that the battleship was in service, this however did not deter the French, who decided that they were going to go ahead with this pre-dreadnought design, regardless of the fact that the prepared design was supposed to be an improved version of the democratic subclass of the patroclus and would therefore retain the 305-millimeter or 12-inch guns in two twin turrets, one forward and one aft; however, the main battle of the ten-gun secondary battery was upgraded to the 234-millimeter gun.

This was an increase even above the Democratized class, as it was considered that the greater firepower would be needed, especially given that the Lord Nelson class, the last British pre-dreadnought, was increasing the number of guns from 9 .2 inch present on their ships and the 240 millimeter was a nine-pointed four-inch gun that was obviously happily a little larger than The British would be distributed in six twin turrets for a total of 12 guns with a tertiary battery of 16 75-millimeter single guns along with 10 47-millimeter single guns in an airy Kuantan battery and two torpedo launchers. Some initial consideration was given. to replace the six twin 240 millimeter turrets with six single 305 millimeter turrets, which would then give them a large gun design, although not as efficient as the HMS Dreadnought SMS Nassau or the USS South Carolina, but this was rejected with the argument that it would take too long.

To build a new 305 millimeter single turret design, the ships would also introduce steam turbines to the French capital's fleet of ships with a maximum speed of 19 knots using four shafts, indicating a departure from the previous new construction of three axles of the previous ships of the French capital, the main armament. She would also use a new 305 millimeter cannon that was improved over the one that had been used on the road trees and the bow was changed from a ram to a straight shank. Both changes occurred during construction in typical French fashion, which did not help with the length of construction debates in various French political circles about exactly what kind of armament the ships should have, what kind of propulsion they should have and everything. sort of other factors that politicians probably shouldn't get involved in turned upAs a result, the boats were just beginning. construction in 1907 and 1908, which meant that the French only started pre-dreadnoughts until two years after the battleship HMS had hit the water as a result of the new power plant, the ships would also have five funnels and again these funnels would largely be two different shapes and sizes and not at all uniform, which was a throwback to the original French design, the final drawings sent to the shipyards, while many of them were mid-construction, featured no less than 500 separate modifications to the original plans that would consent to start work on the ships, this meant that all the builders had to dismantle and rebuild significant sections of what they had already done, which would mean that the ships were 40% above their original budget estimate and took considerably The armor construction time was reduced to compensate for the significant increases in armament and a maximum thickness of 250 millimeters or 9.8 inches was achieved.

These ships would be launched in 1909 and 1910 and would begin to enter service in the National Navy in 1911, completing the era. of French pre-dreadnought construction in the overall assessment, the Dentons were actually a surprisingly successful ship. Their relatively heavy secondary batteries meant that at near to medium ranges they were designed so that they could probably go toe-to-toe with the early battleships. Battleships used the higher rate of fire of their secondary batteries to compensate for their lack of main armament; However, in the Dreadnought and indeed most other navies, they preferred combat ranks at the time they entered service, they would be at a significant disadvantage as this was beyond. the effective range of her secondary battery, the ships in question are Danton of course, Condorcet Diderot Mirabeau Virgnia and Voltaire in general, then with this brief look at French pre-dreadnought design, although several of the early French pressed zeros were terribly complicated, terribly heterogeneous.

Compared to her supposed sisters and half-sisters, and to be honest, in some cases it's horrible to look at, the French Navy actually recognized its flaws quite quickly and tried to band together to produce unique classes of ships, i.e. 'no and sifrin were basically a small retrograde step in that sense, but while many of those early designs had their flaws and problems when you got to the /three class and the danton class

french

free battleship design had to some extent caught up its pace and produced a series of very solid and powerful pre-dreadnought designs limited largely by political interference and a continued underestimation of the combat fields in which the ships would actually fight within the French navy;

However, as I said, the Patria classes and Danton in particular were very good ships. for what they were designed for and given that they spent a significant portion of their time engaging the Austro-Hungarian Navy, I suspect that in any type of major engagement they would have proven to be quite effective and solid fighting units, the only major problem. with almost all French professional battleships was that between a somewhat questionable underwater protection scheme and their caravan design to varying degrees, they had a fairly low margin of stability when it came to underwater flooding and this would be seen with a number of vessels, including Dant On Shed. and Bouvet, opposite ends of the spectrum, both of which would sink very quickly when hit by torpedoes or mines, and thus concludes a brief look at French pre-dreadnought design.

I hope you found it interesting and I'll see you again in another video. That's all for this video, thanks for watching. If you have a comment or suggestion for reviewing a boat, let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to comment on the pinned post for questions about dry docking.