Destroyers - Concept and Development (1860-1914)

[Music] [Music] so destroyer concept and development this will be as with a number of special videos that we've done recently the first of a two-parter the second part will probably take a couple of months to do this video is just going to deal with how destroyers came about and their initial deployment and their development throughout Walt Warren World War Two in there after we'll have to wait for another day because otherwise we'll be here for a very very long time so the origin of the destroyer goes back a very long way much further in fact than the dreadnought battleship the armored Cruiser or even the protected Cruiser it dates all the way back originally to the 1860s with the invention of the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo this of course presented ships with something of a problem because up until now unless you wanted to ram something or well some of the occasional submarine attempts with fixed charges stuck on the end of long poles otherwise if you wanted to kill a ship you had to go and shoot at it and if you wanted to shoot at it you had to be above the water and they could see you coming torpedoes not so much the delivery system could be shot at but a torpedo packed a very large punch into a very small relatively speaking device and people realized very quickly that you could stick a few of these ship killers on some a very very small craft indeed and all of a sudden a ship that weighed well not even really a ship of a vessel shall we say that weighed perhaps thirty or forty tons could send a battleship that weighed over ten thousand tons to the bottom of the ocean this was not good for most navies and most especially not for the Royal Navy whose power tended to pressed on a massive fleet of battleships to give you some idea of the scale difference the very first seagoing vessel designed to launch torpedo was HMS lightning in 1876 with a grand total displacement over 33 tons and bear in mind that we're talking about there the seagoing type of vessel there were quite a number of even smaller harbour launches and coastal defense craft that weighed even less than that that had been built in the preceding years this whole torpedo boat concept was taken up quite heavily by the French under the so called Jeanette Kohl and this was in school of naval thought as we've discussed previously in one of our videos on the Russia Japanese war and this was an idea that you could defeat a larger Navy like oh I don't know that massive annoying white ensign flying lot over on the other side of the channel without building a massive fleet of expensive battleships which incidentally you may not be able to afford by simply running around with these small torpedo boats and putting all the army ships on the bottom that way throwing a bit of commerce raiding with cruisers which are again cheaper and lighter than battleships and in theory on paper you have a war winning combination it didn't quite work out that well to be honest but they weren't know that at the time so torpedo boats they began to spread because well with every other Navy significantly smaller than the Royal Navy it seemed like a cheap and easy way to defend yourself or possibly get the wrong idea to go away needless to say 33-ton boats well there was my counter to seaworthy but you aren't going to get very far with them and so the torpedo boat began to evolve in size as pretty much every naval class of ship ever does as well as size there was also commensurate increase in speed because capital ships of the time carried a number of boats and launches including small picket boats and the early torpedo boats were over size and speed such that quite literally pushing a small party of armed men on one of battleships small picket boats could provide a viable defense against them so once torpedo boats had gotten to a larger size say fifty two hundred hundred and fifty tons they began to get just a little bit too big for improvised picket boat defenses and they also began to get a lot faster because it's much easier to design a long narrow ship if you are not going to have to haul it back onboard a battleship and carry it around with you as the ships expanded in size and speed they also expanded in range and all of a sudden the torpedo boat threat had gone from just being around the enemy's coastline to being further out to sea and with the further development of so called mother ships and no I'm not joking they literally designed an entire ship most of them were converted out of merchant ships as effectively a floating torpedo boat carrier and the idea being that this much larger more seaworthy vessel would take half a dozen to a dozen torpedo boats over to the location of an enemy fleet and pop them down in the water a bit like launching giant deadly lifeboats at which point they would run up to the enemy fleet torpedo it run back be hauled on board and presumably everyone would sail back over the horizon laughing already there was the beginnings of a bit of a class split as torpedo boats that who are capable of being transported and launched in this manner were necessarily perhaps a little bit smaller than the 100 250 ton seagoing fleet torpedo boats that were already arising and therefore the designation of first class and second class torpedo boat was given by the Royal Navy and a number of other navies as well of course the rise of one potential naval super weapon quickly baguettes a counter and so-called torpedo boat catchers came about fairly quickly initially these were just large torpedo boats - some of the largest of the class at the time that were fitted with a few guns examples being HMS Swift and the Japanese torpedo boat kotake both of which found themselves armed with four small guns 47 millimeter guns in the Royal Navy's case and 37 millimeter quick firing guns in the Japanese case both ships were also are still armed with torpedo tubes because hey why not but at least they now had some firepower to deal with incoming enemy torpedo boats there were also attempts aboard battleships to defend themselves from torpedo boats without relying on external sources this consisted primarily of the development of the tertiary battery of quick-firing guns that would become so famous on pre dreadnoughts but also in the early 1870s and early 1880s there was some thought given to simply extending the armored belt of a ship build well below the waterline in an attempt to absorb the torpedos impact by sheer physical resistance there was however a little bit of an alternative a bit of a side note if you will didn't really go anywhere but you can see the logic of it at the time this was the torpedo gunboat and this will be distinct from the later torpedo boat destroyer which will come unto in a minute the torpedo gunboat was significantly larger than contemporary torpedo boats and they were designed to be the smallest possible fleet going vessel that anybody could think of as torpedo boats even though they had expanded to seagoing designs could not keep up with the main battle fleet over very long distances at a time when torpedo boats as we've said were averaging about 100 to 150 tons at the most torpedo gunboats would start out at 550 tons and rapidly escalate over the course of just seven years to over a thousand tons the design of the first of these torpedo gunboats HMS rattlesnake was largely derived from the experimental torpedo Cruiser HMS Scout although it was about a third of the displacement the rattlesnake was also considerably narrower proportionally and had a shallower draft than its larger ancestor with its hull being one of the first to undergo thorough testing prior to build at the Hassler testing tank under the purview of Sir William Froude to deal with the potential of small guns on torpedo boats as were beginning to spread the rattlesnake had a three quarter inch protective deck not much but enough to keep out 37 and forty seven millimeter rounds however she was only capable of just over 19 knots which meant that she would be slower than her targets restricting her to a very defensive role relying on the fact that she would be able to turn inside the Ark of a torpedo boat in order to stay on target with all that said she was still armed with four torpedo tubes because hey Tristan case and her gun armament was restricted to a single five-inch weapon although she was initially reported on very favorably after her launch in the late 1880s doubts began to creep in and by 1888 it was recommended that future torpedo gunboat should have a stronger hull more free board and ideally a turtle deck there was some question as to whether or not they could even use the forward 5-inch gun in a heavy sea but replacing it with a 4.7 inch quick-firing gun would add on that another 8 and a half tonnes and whilst this isn't too much weight all told in the world of warships on a ship with a displacement of just over 550 tons it was a considerable portion of overall displacement and so this wasn't done instead the design was revised in accordance with these reports and HMS sharpshooter was the result at 735 tons and 13 of them built the class was considerably larger than the four strong rattlesnake class still about the same speed the ship had an extra torpedo tube for a total of five and 24.7 inch guns but most crucially unlike the rattlesnake these were quick firing weapons they had been intended to reach 21 knots but in an unfortunate effort to cost cut their boilers instead of being marine designed had basically been repurposed from railway locomotives and therefore do not reach anything like the anticipated power at levels they were succeeded by the broadly similar if slightly heavier alarm class of 11 ships and finally in 1892 by the halcyon class which at 1070 tons was almost twice the displacement of the rattlesnake the ship's class consisted of five vessels and these were armed again with two quick firings 4.7 inch guns five torpedo tubes but we're now capable of only 18 knots they did however have considerably more range and more freeboard which meant that in something more than a mill on sea they were actually able to use their weapons and although two 4.7 inch guns might not sound like a lot bear in mind you are still talking about torpedo boats of less than 150 tons for which a single 4.7 inch it could be completely deadly one often unappreciated advantage that they did have against torpedo boats in the high seas however was the fact that with their relatively good free board the halcyon x' could actually sustain a higher top speed in heavy seas than the low-profile torpedo boats could regardless of their on paper top speed which made them somewhat adequate for their intended purpose as long as the sea wasn't particularly calm or they weren't in sheltered shallow waters such as a harbor at the same time as the halcyon were being launched their intended prey was beginning to approach the displacement of the rattlesnakes and another line of development was beginning to overtake them this would be the torpedo boat destroyer although ironically the only successful torpedo attack of the 19th century would be carried out by a torpedo gunboat the design that would eventually eclipse the torpedo gunboat was being brought into service as early as 1892 at a time when the halcyon were just completing build and acceptance trials although the torpedo gunboat would go on to have interesting secondary careers as minesweepers and close in blockade ships by the early 1890s it was becoming fairly obvious that the ships were too big too expensive and too slow to form an adequate defense against the latest torpedo boats as we mentioned earlier the Swift had been armed with a few light guns and showed some promise but really even this ship was too small to actually stop another torpedo boat cold the controller who was in charge of Royal Navy designs and whose name will be relatively familiar to us as a certain at Jackie Fisher saw the solution and went and talked to yarrow and thornycroft who at the time were the two leading developers of boilers and small attack craft he called for the torpedo boat destroyer the initial torpedo boat destroyer was 275 to 280 tons in displacement had a speed of 26 knots an armament of 112 pounder and three 6-pounder guns and of course three 18-inch torpedo tubes because as we've said before whilst you're mixing up with the torpedo boats you might as well take the opportunity to have a few potshots at the enemy after six boats were built the speed was increased to 27 knots the bow torpedo tube was omitted and instead two extra 6-pounder guns were added an obsession with speed began to take hold and along with the fact that they were relatively small and therefore quick and easy to produce vast numbers of them began to hit the water in total a hundred and eleven such craft would be built over the next few years starting with the six original 26 knot ships followed by 36 27 not ships 66 30 not ships and three special 33 not ships although these ships generally failed to achieve the this maximum speed in anything like realistic circumstances these early torpedo boat destroyers however were something of an over commitment their machinery was very unreliable their seakeeping was appalling and their hulls were often barely strong enough it was not unknown for a torpedo boat destroyer racing around quite happily to actually break itself in half by simply smashing into the waves a little bit too hard a number of these losses happened apparently suddenly during activities which the ship had been undertaking for several months if not years prior this was due to what was at the time the relatively little-known field of a metal fatigue where the ship's slamming into the waves at high speeds repeatedly had gradually stressed the hull and allowed micro-cracks to propagate until one day they were just enough of them that the next big impact would just snap the ship an example of these limitations can be read from the fact that in 1901 a naval committee asked officers to describe the differences in the behavior of a destroyer in a fairly heavy head sea at speeds of seventeen fifteen ten and eight knots respectively now you might immediately take away from that these speeds are a lot lot lower than they're ostensibly twenty five-plus not speeds and that was because well in a fairly heavy head sea which was defined as waves of about six to seven feet which a battleship wouldn't have any problem with most destroyer captains would not take their ships above seventeen not and very few had even gone that quickly in fact the testimony said that as a typical comment against a heavy sea a torpedo boat destroyer steaming at seventeen or fifteen knots would tear all her packing out sweep everything off the upper deck carry away the platform and bridge rails probably sweep somebody off the bridge and the ship would race jump kick labor eventually lose her steam and after a short time be a massive defects at ten knots she would be wet and at eight knots are fairly comfortable so Tokyo destroyers a little bit of a way to go at this point nevertheless the fact that they were bigger and more seaworthy than torpedo boats meant that tobita boat destroyers were beginning to displace torpedo outs in most major navies one notable exception being the Imperial German Navy which kept the two lines separate as torpedo boat destroyers in general were still carrying torpedoes themselves so well if you had something that could destroy enemy torpedo boats and deliver torpedo bat attack itself why would you continue building the smaller more vulnerable torpedo boats that could only do one of those things commander Roger Keyes who would later become famous for his exploits in the First World War was often known to steer his ship from the aft steering position on the grounds that the entire bridge would quite often be underwater if you tried to take the ship to any significant speed so he rather decided he'd beat nice and dry on the back however 1900 aund there were a number of major advances waiting in the wings first of these was the fitting of bilge keels two destroyers which significantly reduced their rate of roll and made them far more stable of course the inevitable size increases were still going on and the DBU of the turbine er had pointed the way forward for small fast ships with the advent of the naval turbine engine before we move on to talk about the modern torpedo boat destroyer which would then become the modern destroyer it should bear mention that the Spanish ship destructor which rather than surprisingly actually means destroyer literally was also designed in the early 1890s as a torpedo boat destroyer and is often credited as being the first ship of its type although a number of small design features in this ship do sometimes relegate it to being a kind of offshoot as compared to torpedo boat destroyers as developed in the British and other navies naval historians are somewhat divided on this subject but it's definitely worth a mention so that people can go and have a look and make up their own minds on that particular aspect increased size brought increased freeboard and of course better sea keeping along with another major change that was the change of fuel from coal to oil all these developments combined to see destroyers of the early 1900's reaching speeds well in excess of 30 knots with some even hitching as high as 36 knots and then finally reaching their status as full fleet going vessels albeit still of sea with a reduced range compared to battleships the bowels of the ships also began to change most torpedo boat destroyers reflecting their torpedo boat origins had a low Turtleback front which didn't really help with sea keeping however a number of designs in the 1900s began to demonstrate a raised focus all instead from this point and these developments through to the start of the First World War destroyers will not undergo any other major technological revolutions and aside from Imperial Germany as we've said which continue with the construction of torpedo boats torpedo boat destroyers which were now very rapidly losing at the first part their designation and becoming simply destroyers in the absence of well torpedo boats began to just generally undergo an expansion to the point that by the start of the First World War the typical fleet destroyer would be capable of 29 to 33 knots give or take would generally weigh between 900 and 1100 and with between 2 and 4 guns of approximately 4 inches or hundred two hundred and five millimeters occasionally a few smaller quick-firing guns will present but not very often and a typical armament of two twin torpedo launchers was found on a great many ships this would tip if I the destroyer going into the first world war where it would undergo yet and get another major revolution the only major test for torpedo boat destroyers during their ascendency before the first world war was during the russo-japanese war 1904 to 1905 which we've mentioned in other videos in this particular circumstance they weren't especially successful during the attack on port arthur they did manage to damage a number of Russian battleships however torpedo nets at this point were actually still effective and a number of enemy torpedoes were found hung up in the nets later on torpedoes got larger faster and some were even equipped with net cutters on the on the warhead which rendered these defenses some obsolete by the time you got to world war 1 itself this would however also be the end of the destroyer in its simple torpedo attack and gunboat role as the destroyer would then go on to take on many other roles for which it would quite often be used in future conflicts almost the exclusion of its original purpose and so with that we will draw this part one of torpedo boat destroyer design and concept to a close the next section whenever that goes up will cover the use of destroyers in world war one and the interwar period and then we'll take a look at world war ii and the post-war period as a part three hope you all enjoyed this thank you very much for listening and I'll see you in the next video that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for drydock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 206,131

Rating: 4.9482279 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, destroyer, torpedo boat, torpedo boat destroyer, torpedo gunboat, HMS Lightning, Destructor, HMS Viper, HMS Vulcan, HMS RAttlesnake

Id: RiVmLk6JzNg

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DoktorKaputt]

Torpedoboat destroyers have become the very thing they swore to destroy.

[u/kweniston]

Tropodbodes.

[u/Vaiken_Vox]

Werent Destroyers developed so that CVs had something to shit all over?