Queen Elizabeth Class - Design and Damage History

[Music] today we're going to look at the queen elizabeth class and yes i know the channel has three five minute guides on the queen elizabeth class already mostly dealing with their operational history but this is really sort of going to cap it all off but kind of similar to the mini series we did on the various iowa class so we're going to look more specifically at their technical design history and then when it comes to world war ii how they held up under damage since uh how they held up under damage at jutland has been covered in the jutland video so for such a long-lived and storied class of battleships the origins of the queen elizabeth's are actually something of an unknown area of naval history admiralty design records provide a wonderful arc of designs that show the development and origin of each class of battleships up to the iron duke class which were derived from the m series of designs specifically m4 there is then a void until the r series of designs pops up and the ship's cover which is a folder of design documents attached to a given class of ship appears to start pretty much at design r3 with some references to ask.3 star and r4 which is very unusual and most such documents start out with the initial sketches that are often a letter or two further back in the alphabet at least as far as admiralty designs go now whether these earlier designs have been destroyed hidden classified or perhaps simply misfiled it wouldn't be the first time that that has occurred in the national archives well nevertheless it means that we're missing at least three designs designs n p and q o at the time apparently not being used although it would be used later on in the post-world war one environment with design03 being the immediate predecessor to the nelson class however based on various letters comments and other correspondence that we do know it is possible to reconstruct the design pathway to a certain degree now what is known is that when winston churchill took office as first lord of the admiralty in the early 1910s a design had been prepared for an improved version of the iron duke class much as the iron dukes themselves improved on the king george v which in turn improved on the orions all of them having a main battery of five twin turrets armed with 13 and a half inch guns which at the time was still considerably heavier than the 12-inch weapons that were being built into contemporary german vessels however several factors were to exert a strong influence on design choices going forward firstly intelligence from germany indicated that admiral von tirpitz was asking for the next generation of german battleships to carry larger guns than the 12-inch weapon as it would turn out the bayern class would be the next german class laid down and thus this assessment was accurate although at the precise time of the early options for the queen elizabeth class being considered exactly how large these guns would become remained an open discussion in the case elijah marina over in america the 14-inch armed new york class were under construction and in british yards the japanese congo also with 14-inch guns was taking shape this of course would require the royal navy to build larger guns themselves because of course it did secondly the british government and the royal navy were trying to come up with a way of ending the naval arms race which whilst it could be afforded was consuming a lot of money that the government would rather use elsewhere but at the same time the royal navy had to maintain command of the seas thus an idea was hatched to ramp up building many incredibly powerful battleships effectively flexing britain's true industrial output in germany's face to make it clear that they would never be able to match the royal navy the idea was that this short-term burst of expenditure would in theory relieve the budget of having to build four or more capital ships every year forever this required a bigger and better ship and thus design n the improved iron duke would have been put aside with two new designs considered p and q p was most likely the slower option it would have been a fraction faster and a little bit better protected than the iron dukes as well as replicating its five twin turret armament layout except now using the highly classified so-called 14-inch experimental weapon this was actually a 15-inch gun that was going through a crash course of development to a degree that the ships that were being designed for it when there was no guarantee it would actually work luckily as it turned out this would be the excellent 15 inch 42 caliber weapon but it was still a huge risk at the time q was a fast option building from admiral fisher's ideas for all battle cruisers all the time although he was out of office by letter he still had a fairly strong influence over churchill and he was calling for a ship of between 28 and 30 knots with improved armor over the lion class and armed with eight of the new 15-inch weapons in many ways this was kind of a proto version of what hms hood would eventually become discussions about which version was the superior one went on for so long that by the time it was necessary to ask parliament for the funds to build the vessels in the first place no design was actually presented simply a request to build four nebulously named armored ships but it appears that design p whilst immensely powerful was not fast enough for churchill or fisher's liking on the other hand design q would be massively expensive and they now entered an additional factor the royal navy at the time rated enemy vessel speeds in three bands design speed trial speed and sea going speed the first two are fairly self-explanatory what the nation in question thought they'd reach and what they actually reached whilst on trials however the last one factored in having more regular crews on board more average sea conditions as well as various modifiers for the known quality of fuel that the nation in question possessed as well as other issues that were built up from observation of the performance of various navy ships in this respect it appeared at least to the royal navy's estimation that whilst the first two brackets for the german battle cruisers were in the upper twenties of knots depending on the ship they also estimated that their prolonged sea going maximum speed at being something around 23 to 25 knots again varying on the ship largely due to the poor quality coal that germany habitually had to use as well as the fact that as coal burners the efforts of keeping a ship stoked to full power would be utterly debilitating to the crew over time indeed this is actually backed up by german documentation of the time which stated that keeping a ship like a battle cruiser moving at over 22 knots was actually incredibly difficult for any sustained period it therefore seemed that if a battleship could be designed to sustain only 25 or 26 knots as opposed to 28 to 30 knots which would be considerably easier if the ship was using oil fuel which britain could access in reasonable amounts then this would provide a battleship that could run down battle cruisers especially since to keep up top speed if you were using the oil fuel option you simply had to leave the taps open instead of working your stokers to death thus began design r it would be far too expensive to take a 10 gun ship up to this target speed but reducing the faster vessel's design speed by two to three knots would provide a cheaper but still very powerful vessel this eventually came down to three options designs r3 r3 star and r4 r3 had a maximum belt thickness of 13 inches and a 1 inch increase over the iron duke on the conning tower barbettes turrets and turret roofs the turrets were placed in two super firing pairs one four and one aft r3 star swapped most of these armor increases for a comprehensive system of torpedo bulkheads whilst r4 moved the aft super firing turret to a position more similar to hms tiger the latter option was ruled out pretty quickly as it offered worse angles of fire for the main guns and was more expensive as the ship had to be slightly longer the principles of design are three with the torpedo bulkheads were taken forward at this point the ships would have been able to reach their design speed of around about 25 to 26 knots but as the design was being modified into a detailed set of drawings a final decision was taken to go with oil firing which was somewhat good for speed and especially good for sustained speed but it was also decided to bring back most of the armor increases that had been found on design r3 and this would prove to be the bulk of the reason by means of the additional weight that the ships would never quite reach their original design speed the other major increase in weight came from that decision to go with pure oil firing since this liquid fuel would need tanks to support it and no one had built an oil-fired warship this large before so the tanks and their support structures were significantly overbuilt just to be on the safe side although the lesser volume that the oil occupied meant that there was more space available within the hull and this available space was turned into additional crew amenities so there was a little bit of a silver lining whilst the new ships carried only eight guns as opposed to the 10 of pretty much every previous british dreadnought design the broad side of the ship was greater in shell weight than the 13 and a half inch guns of the iron dukes by a considerable margin and the four fifteen inch turrets only weighed a sliver more than the five thirteen and a half inch turrets of the older ship as many ships as possible were desired and initially it looked like a massive total of 11 such vessels might arise four funded by the uk in 1912 one funded as a gift by the malay states and three from canada taking the total up to eight plus another three in the 1914 estimates along with one of the new cheaper revenge class derivatives following the order of five revenge class in the intervening year but in the end the canadian effort was defeated by a vote against it in the canadian parliament and it was then decided to build one queen elizabeth and three modified revenges as the latter were somewhat less complex and thus would be faster to build this sixth queen elizabeth was to be named agincourt but in the end the outbreak of war would lead to the cancellation of agincourt and resistance one of the revenge class which were to be built in royal dockyards and the suspension of renown and repulse which had been ordered from private yards and would attract penalties if they were outright cancelled these latter two would of course be finished later as battle cruisers it's likely that agincourt herself would have been a somewhat modified design but in the end it would be only queen elizabeth valiant war spite barham and malaya that would see service with all five laid down over 1912 and 1913 launching between late 1913 and early 1915 and commissioning into the fleet between late 1914 and early 1916. the ships finished up armed with the aforementioned eight 15-inch guns along with a secondary battery of 16 casement mounted six-inch guns albeit a number that proved to be rather unworkable in anything but a flat calm and only queen elizabeth would actually complete with all 16 with two removed and the others relocated rapidly shortly after thereafter the other ships would complete with 14 but by halfway through world war one they'd all been reduced to 12 guns apiece four submerged torpedo tubes two per side a couple of three-inch anti-aircraft guns designed primarily to take pot shots at zeppelins and a handful of saluting guns made up the balance of weapons belt armor and turret faces were a maximum of 13 inches thick and the whole thing was driven by 56 000 shaft horsepower through four screws due to the fact that they completed in a time of war normal trials were not run and so their trial speeds would never be known what speed runs they did were under war load and in this guys they could hit just about 24 knots when operating at full power albeit that the class would prove to be capable of slightly more than that on several occasions during their lifetime when the need arose as their overload power turned out to be almost 50 greater than their designed power at around 75 000 shaft horsepower the oil fired machinery gave a number of advantages over coal beyond easy sustained top speed they had greater range faster acceleration refueling was a lot easier and they produced much less funnel smoke there were a few differences between the ships queen elizabeth warspite and malaya had a cruising turbine set as well as direct drive turbines whereas valiant and barum were fitted with direct drive turbines only during the war numerous minor changes would take place additional control stations would be installed as well as new search lights as and the relocation of existing searchlights after jutland additional armor plate was installed around the magazines as was new flash protection and better flooding pipe work along with flying off platforms for fighters which were installed on the two super firing turrets b and x four of the five ships would be present at the battle of jutland with only queen elizabeth missing the fight due to being in dock at the time for maintenance with war spite and malaya heavily damaged in the engagement queen elizabeth was brought out of dock and would eventually become a fleet flagship when admiral beatty was given command of the grand fleet in the interwar years it was anticipated that the ships would need to be retained in frontline roles considerably longer than previous capital ships whilst some had stuck around for quite a while almost no royal navy capital ship since hms warrior had been a true frontline unit for much more than about a decade whereas now with the revengers likely to be the first to go the queen elizabeths were looking at a good 30 years total in service and thanks to the washington naval treaty this meant they'd have to keep up with new technological developments and over the course of the 1920s all five ships would be rebuilt ironically enough as it would turn out malaya and barham would have the most extensive work done to them in this period this would see the bridge superstructure somewhat reworked additional anti-aircraft guns fitted the rear torpedo tubes removed anti-torpedo bulges fitted and the two funnels trunked together into one larger unit with aircraft catapults also fitted to some ships however as time rolled on it became clear that more work would be needed to keep the ships current and the three oldest ships were taken in for complete modernization in the 1930s warspite went first and the lessons from each modernization were taken over for the next ship with valiant and queen elizabeth following malaya went in with war spite but due to being the most recently reworked of the previous series of efforts she would receive only an aircraft catapult and hangar along with some more anti-aircraft guns all three of the modernized ships had their main battery guns and turrets modified for increased elevation allowing them to elevate up to 30 degrees which boosted their guns range from a fraction over 23 000 yards to around 32 000 yards this was accompanied by new fire control equipment a hangar and catapult fitted for reconnaissance aircraft the old boilers and turbines completely stripped out and replaced with newer higher pressure boilers and geared turbines giving the ships 80 000 sharp horsepower overall in a smaller machinery volume more fuel was added and overall range actually went up massively thanks partly to the increased fuel but mostly thanks to the increased efficiencies of the new power plant and geared turbine set and perhaps most distinctively the old bridge superstructure was replaced entirely by the monolithic tower of the queen anne mansion style as the design was nicknamed thus replacing the old bridge work the tripod four mast and the conning tower which as it turned out virtually no british captains used anyway deck armor was also increased to help deal with bombs and potentially long-range shell fire on war spike the secondary battery was reduced and a mixture of twin 4-inch anti-aircraft guns and octuple 40 millimeter pom-poms were added but this was not considered sufficient and the next two ships would strip out the entire secondary battery replacing it with 10 twin 4.5 inch dual purpose gun turrets five to a side as well as a number of the 40 millimeter pom-poms the four and a half inch guns being chosen over the 5.25 inch guns being used in the king george v which were under construction at the time as they were more available and more four and a half inch guns could be fitted to the smaller queen elizabeth's which as it turned out probably overall was a good thing in the context of world war ii with the reduced number of boilers the above deck trunking disappeared and the modernized ships at least above the main deck would have a single massive funnel on the borum and malaya with their unmodified turrets so-called supercharges would have to be used to boost the gun's range this involved increasing the amount of explosive in each shell's charge to what was calculated to be the maximum that the gun could reliably take this would shorten barrel life but it did elevate the range to something approaching that of the three more heavily modified vessels although these vessels would still have a relatively considerable range advantage over their less modified sisters war spikes refit actually left her 500 tons lighter than when she'd gone in mostly thanks to the smaller and lighter machinery the more extensive measures on queen elizabeth and valiant increased their displacement somewhat and so warspite was left as the fastest of the class actually marginally faster than she had been on launch day whilst queen elizabeth and valiant were slightly slower the latter two would also receive radar during their refit whilst warspite having come out of the dockyard slightly earlier would have to had it have it added on later it was planned to modify barham and malaya along the same lines but the outbreak of world war ii prevented this from coming to pass during the war all five ships would be damaged to various extents by the enemy barum would be the first to be hit being torpedoed at the end of 1939 although her defenses proved mostly effective and she was able to make her way back to port under her own power albeit at somewhat reduced speed with repairs meaning that she missed the norway campaign and would instead next see action against the vichy french forces in dakar during efforts to knock out the french battleship richelieu poor visibility meant that she would only get to claim one hit on a french submarine and another hit on richarlia in exchange for a few hits by lighter shells from the french battleship secondary battery as well as coastal guns the operation concluded with bahram towing resolution which had been hit by a torpedo from a spread that barham had avoided and a resolution needed to be towed away for repairs following this bahram was assigned to the mediterranean fleet and would cover a number of convoys as well as conducting shore bombardments before taking part along with war spite and valiant in the battle of cape matapan during the evacuation of crete she was damaged by several bombs and sent to the usa for repairs rejoining the mediterranean fleet a couple of months later however in on the 25th of november 1941 in company with queen elizabeth and valiant she would be torpedoed by u331 which hit her with a tight spread of three out of four torpedoes from point-blank range with the submarine having evaded the anti-submarine destroyer escort at this time under such a heavy assault her torpedo protection would prove insufficient and she rolled over and sank within minutes with a combined boiler and magazine explosion occurring just after she hit 90 degrees malaya would serve out the war in an alternating series of convoy escort duties in the atlantic broken up with service in the mediterranean fleet where she accidentally donated a 15-inch armor-piercing shell to genoa cathedral as well as chasing after war spite during the battle of calabria back in the atlantic she managed to scare off the two scharnhorst by her presence guarding a convoy and a couple of weeks later she was hit by u106 as this torpedo ran shallow and thus hit above the bulk of the torpedo defense system it actually caused considerably more flooding than the 1939 hit on barham but was still overall controlled relatively well sending the ship into four months of repairs although again she made it to port under her own power war spike of course has its own dedicated video and so we won't cover that in too much detail here apart from a few points about battle damage warspite was hit by bombs during the evacuation of crete which did minor damage and the bomb was stopped by maine the main deck armor in the same action a valiant was hit by some small bombs and suffered mainly superficial damage the most famous hit war spite took was of course in september 1943 three fritz x bombs each weighing three thousand pounds and armed with a six hundred pound high explosive warhead two of them landed close by with their near-misses damaging the ship through with water hammer shock effect but the third smashed straight into the ship punching through the boat deck the port hangar the wardroom the galley the stoker's aft mess the kit lockers and the associated deck armor which totaled to well over six inches through the number four boiler room and finally exploding in the reserve feed water tanks in the very bottom of the ship this knocked out four out of six boiler rooms immediately with a fifth flooding shortly thereafter a number one boiler room kept going for around half an hour before saltwater got into the feed lines and it failed as well initially it was thought that the ship's keel was broken the mast might collapse and the ship might sink but war spike was of course legendarily tough and despite having almost no power basically reduced to a couple of diesel generators as well as 5 000 tons of water aboard she counter flooded got herself level and found the anti-aircraft battery still worked thus completely unpowered she merely drifted around awaiting rescue including through a potentially unmarked minefield until the next day when two u.s salvage tugs arrived to take her undertow her voyage back home is largely covered in her own video but her captain recounted the actual attack in the following manner as we were threading our way slowly through the shipping to communicate with the headquartership biscayne and to avalanche north for a further bombardment our old friends the focker wolf 190s roared in out of the sun and attacked us with bombs no hits just as they finished dead overhead we suddenly cited three new objects glider bombs i realized at once what they were they were flying horizontally in formation for a couple of seconds at about eight thousand feet and then down they came absolutely vertical at terrific speed it was clear that they were going to hit us it took two seconds there was nothing to be done and i watched carefully the first to arrive missed the starboard side of midships by a few feet a fraction of a second later one hit us just after funnel the third near missed to the starboard side i was not thrown off my feet but for a fraction of a second i had a kind of blackout like when you take a hard toss at football or off a horse i could see and think perfectly clearly all the time black smoke and then dirt from the funnels and the hell of a noise i thought the whole mast was coming down as it rocked and bent and whipped i must say that for a moment i thought we were probably sunk and was quite prepared for the ship to break in too no one lost their heads or shouted or anything on the bridge they were all first class and the anti-aircraft guns which had opened fire kept on firing that was good then there was a calm after the storm i found the ship could steer and the engines were going ahead i began to think we had not been hit at all only near misses a fire was reported in the hangar we'll put it out i said then to guns for more effect than anything if we can steam and shoot we'll carry out our final bombardment after all i set course up the channel and then reports began to come in all very calm and accurate four boiler rooms out of six flooded steam for slow speed on starboard engines only i kept going at six knots then the ship would not steer we were in the swept channel and we steered round in a circle yeah i wonder if any war spike crew had heard that before i stopped engines we were heading straight into the mines a minesweeper sent violent signals to get out of it i couldn't not for the further helm was hard over and finally the starboard engine room died out too so there we were once again going around in circles with our way carrying us and quite helpless steam joints had bust and the engine room was untenable the fifth boiler unflooded leaving only one got shifted over to the steering from the tiller flat by electric and the tug orpi a yank came roaring up and soon had me in tow and straightened out and i made up my mind to set off to malta at once speed three knots the prospect was unattractive outside were at least six submarines reported in the area i had only four destroyers with me and further air attacks were obviously on the cards the extent of the damage was unknown the ship was beginning to list and we were already two or three feet deeper in the water but off we set i called delhi as anti-aircraft protection and asked for special fighter protection from ncwnf admiral hewitt usn and for tugs another tug came up but would not stay but i told him i had orders from admiral hewitt that he will he was too now we had two tugs towing us in tandem we were making three and a half knots and then 300 miles to go casualties six killed and about 20 wounded received message from ncwnj to warspite deeply regret the casualties and damage you sustained i'm grateful for your efficient support which has aided so much the force ashore when they are relieved please send hopi and marina to me here best of luck hewitt on friday the 17th of september i said a few words to the sailors over the broadcaster a common hazard of war we'd done at what we'd set out to do and it had been hit we'd scared the hell out of the german army and braced up our own soldiers and shouldn't be surprised if we hadn't turned the scale admired their good humor and hard work we would get the old lady back to malta despite the massive hole through the ship she was nonetheless brought back into action and would be bombarding the normandy beaches during the d-day landings albeit with ex-turret non-functional but on the 13th of june 1944 she was heading to rossuth when she hit a mine on the port side between x and y turret it was determined that the mine was an acoustic type with a 1 500 pound warhead which luckily had exploded about 20 feet away from the hull this temporarily knocked out power and more definitively put port shafts out of action although she was able to make port at about 10 knots and would require about two months of repairs to get moving again valiant and queen elizabeth would only suffer major damage due to enemy action once on the 19th of december 1941 a valiant would later be dropped when a floating dry dock she was in collapsed but that wasn't strictly enemy action on the 19th both ships were in alexandria harbor when italian frogmen got past the defenses and placed 500 pound charges on the underside of both ships queen elizabeth's mine was under the boiler rooms which would result in flooding three boiler rooms as well as two dynamo rooms and two hydraulic rooms plus a number of other small compartments it also knocked out five out of the six forward four and a half inch mounts as the hull flexed and bent their bearing tracks ammunition and fuel were taken off the ship along with all spare parts and with some counter flooding done the ship was vaguely levelled although she'd settled eight foot forward with the judicious use of pumps they managed to just about keep her afloat and she was patched up for moving using two of the remaining boiler rooms although obviously sitting a little bit lower in the water as much of an appearance of normality was maintained just in case the italians came to look at their handiwork a valiance charge was placed somewhat more forward under a turret and resulted in slightly less flooding with the ship dipping by about five foot forward as a result of the port four and a half inch forward magazine flooding with partial flooding in the lower main magazine and partial flooding in a number of other nearby compartments again the ship stayed technically afloat but needed counter flooding to remain level and settled somewhat in the water both ships were carefully maintained in order to look operational and could until repairs could be organized but they certainly weren't going anywhere queen elizabeth herself would serve in the home fleet until may 1941 before transferring to the mediterranean fleet where she was mined as just described being repaired in the usa after which she rejoined the home fleet in 1943. after coming back up to full operational condition she was sent to join the eastern fleet at the end of that year and would work alongside hms illustrious victorious valiant renown and richelieu the french battleship as well as uss saratoga and all attendant escorts in a series of strikes landings and bombardments against various japanese targets eventually being relieved by hms nelson in july 1945 and becoming a reserve ship in august 1945 where she would remain until she was scrapped in may 1948. so that's a quick potted technical history of the queen elizabeth class with a little bit of a look there at the end of queen elizabeth herself which hopefully should accompany the more active service histories of the ships in the other videos now you might be wondering why i've done this at this particular time and why i focused a little bit more on queen elizabeth herself well hopefully you will have noticed especially during the last part of this video that there have been a number of shots taken of not a photo of queen elizabeth but a very very detailed model of queen elizabeth and you can see that here right now now for those of you who have been following the youtube channel in question a friend of mine who is by far and away a much much more skilled model and painter than me um has very kindly taken on a commission earlier this year in order to build the trumpeter kit of hms queen elizabeth in her 1943 guys i with the tower and the four and a half inch guns etc and i think you can agree he's done an absolutely awesome job this is what i would very quite happily call a museum quality replica and indeed to be perfectly honest i've been in museums who have had model ships of this kind of size and shape where the models are actually less impressive as you can see there there's even a walrus aircraft in the process of being recovered all of the guns move and it's actually sailing on its own little base there and even better if you really want to take a look at the underside of the hull the entire thing is removable from the base now the very eagle-eyed amongst you and very technical amongst you might notice there is one thing that's not present on the ship and that is railings around the main deck and yes they're not there but i wouldn't wish photo etched railings on my worst enemy let alone anyone i actually like and respect so quite frankly they can forget being there and to be perfectly honest even if they were there you'd basically have to be almost eyeball to hull with the ship to actually notice them because they are pretty small thin parts of the structure but regardless of that i'm absolutely thrilled to be in possession of this model and for those of you who are tuning in to the friday live stream at the time that this video goes live they'll be in a couple of days which will be the q a half of the patreon dry duck for the month of august uh you'll get to see that this ship hanging around in front of me for pretty much the entire live stream so that ought to be quite fun and one of the wonderful things about such an accurate model is that it allows a complete photo survey of the ship to be done which means that you can show off all sorts of details for which either a contemporary photo doesn't exist or if it exists it might be blurry or it might not be taken from the right angle to show you what's going on indeed it might not be possible to have been taken from a certain angle because that would involve the equivalent of something like a drone and the angle and heights just not really something that can be could have been done at the time and so this is going to prove absolutely brilliant for future shots where we might need to illustrate something about general 1930s british warship design or the queen elizabeth class in general as hopefully you will have seen in the photos earlier and so all that remains to be done on this video is to say if you're interested at all in modeling building models uh how to paint them how to make them better how to set up dioramas anything to do with that kind of side of things then head over to his channel link in the video description below it's a steam geezer and sun and there's plenty to learn there in the field of modelling i know i've certainly learned quite a few things watching it and other than that yeah go and check it out subscribe if you like it and thank you very much for listening to this video and i hope to see you again in another one soon 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 dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 322,312

Rating: 4.9495416 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Royal Navy, World War 1, World War 2, HMS, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Warspite, Barham, Malaya

Id: O9457ysae5E

Length: 36min 56sec (2216 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020