Let's meet the New York-class dreadnoughts!

[Mermaid_Witch]

 

The New York class battleships were the fifth and final class of dreadnought type ships commissioned by the US Navy.  While being the first US ship class to mount 14" main guns, they were also the last class of US ships to mount an amidships turret.  The class was designed to counter a rise in main gun caliber in the designs of foreign nations, as the British Royal Navy had recently moved from a 12" gun to a 13.5" inch gun in their designs.  As the pinnacle of US dreadnought design and the last US ship to use the old style armoring scheme, I believe there's a very good chance that the New Yorks will be in the game.  So, allow me to introduce them to you.

 

Design History

 

The New Yorks were designed in 1910, a period of transition for the US Navy.  The launching of the HMS Dreadnought 4 years before had revolutionized the design of capital ships while simultaneously making all previous capital ship designs obsolete.  With colonial holdings in both the Caribbean and the Pacific, the United States could not afford to be left behind by this new paradigm in warship design.  While the US had been working on their own dreadnought style ships, the South Carolina class, the first ship of the class was not launched until 1908, a full two years after HMS Dreadnought.  Not wishing to be left behind by Great Britain, the United States Navy instituted a crash building program to build up a fleet of dreadnoughts.  The first of these ships were the South Carolinas, which were designed in 1906 and commissioned in 1910.  the South Carolinas were followed by the Delaware class, which were designed in 1906 and commissioned in 1910.  Following the Delawares was the Florida class, designed in 1908-1909 and commissioned in 1911.  Following the Floridas was the Wyoming class, designed in 1909 and commissioned in 1912.  The Wyomings were followed by the New Yorks (finally!), designed in 1910 and commissioned in 1914.

 

As you can see, at the time the New York class was designed the US Navy had plenty of experience in building dreadnoughts, but no experience in operating them.  With the first class not even commissioned by the time the New York class left the drawing board, the US Navy had no idea if there were any fatal flaws in their designs.

 

 

Design

 

The New York class measured 573 feet long and 95.5 feet wide when designed, which easily enabled it to use the Panama Canal.  The main guns were arranged in standard superfiring turret pairs on the ship ends, with a single turret mounted amidships between the funnel and the rear superfiring pair.  The main battery was supplemented by a series of 5" anti-destroyer guns.  The New York class started with 21 of these guns, but by the end of World War II they mounted a mere six of the anti-destroyer guns.  The armor scheme was normal for its time period, with 12" thick armor on the main belt that tapered down to 10" on the ends of the ship.  The US Navy had finally started to use steam turbines in the Wyoming class, but due to a dispute with the turbine manufacturers, the New York class was fitted with Triple Expansion Reciprocating Engines.

 

 

Main Battery

 

The main battery consisted of ten 14" 45 caliber rifles.  These guns could be elevated to a maximum angle of 15 degrees and fired 1400 pound Armor Piercing rounds out to a range of 23,000 yards (13 miles) at a muzzle velocity of 2600 feet per second.  Propellant for the shells was provided by 4 silk bags filled with smokeless powder, each bag weighing 105 pounds.  The rate of fire of these guns is quoted as 1.75 rounds per minute, making the time needed to reload the gun roughly 35 seconds.

 

 

Secondary Battery

 

The secondary battery was a collection of 5" 51 caliber guns.  These were designed to attack destroyers and other smaller ships.  The New York class started life with 21 of these guns, 10 per side and one in a "stinger" position on the aft end.  However, by the end of their lives the number had been reduced to a mere 3 per side, for a total of 6.  They fired a 55 pound shell out to a distance of 16000 yards (9 miles) with a muzzle velocity of 3,150 feet per second.  I was unable to find data on the rate of fire for these guns, but I would imagine it being around 5 to 6 rounds per minute.

 

 

Propulsion

 

The New York class was initially powered by a total of 14 coal-fired boilers that fed high pressure steam to a pair of Triple Expansion Steam Engines for a total 28,100 horsepower.  This was enough to drive the ship to a speed of 21 knots.  Coal fired boilers were very fuel hungry, and the ship had enough space to carry 1900 tons of coal. However, all that coal was only enough to give the ship a 7,000 nautical mile range at 10 knots. The coal was bunkered on either side of the ship, directly underneath the armored belt.  When the ship was converted to oil firing in the late 1920's, this coal bunkerage was turned into crew quarters to berth the rising number of ship's crew.  When converted to oil firing, the 14 coal fired boilers were replaced with just 6 oil fired boilers that did the same amount of work.  The ship carried 2800 tons of oil, which gave it a range of over 12,000 nautical miles.

 

One major flaw with the propulsion system was that the amidships turret was mounted between the boilers and the steam engines.  This meant that the high pressure steam had to be fed through pipes around the amidships turret's magazine to get to the engines.  As one might expect, the pipes bled heat into the magazine.  This caused the amidships magazine to be significantly hotter than the magazines on the ship ends, and as a result the propellant carried there detonated differently than the propellant kept cooler in the other magazines.  All this added up to the amidships turret having different ballistic properties than the rest of the turrets, which complicated fire control.

 

 

Armor

 

The New York class was the last of the US dreadnoughts and the last US battleship type to mount an old style armoring scheme.  This scheme dated from the predreadnought era and assigned armor thickness to various areas on the ship based upon how important that area was.  Subsequent US designs introduced the "All or Nothing" scheme.  In this scheme the ship was broken up into two areas, "vital" and "not vital."  Vital portions received the full thickness of the armor, while non-vital portions received just enough armor to protect against splinter and blast damage.

Anyways, the main belt that protected the New York class' waterline was 12" at its thickest point, and tapered to 10" at the extremities.  the lower casemates that contained the 5" anti-destroyer guns were armored with 11" of steel while the upper casemates only received 6.5 inches.  The deck was 2" thick, the conning tower and the barbettes both mounted 12" of armor, and turret faces had a full 14" of armor protecting them.  That's one of the turret faces right up there with a hand on it.

Remember when I said the coal bunkers were right beneath the main belt?  There's a reason for that.  Loose coal is a fantastic absorber of energy.  If an enemy shell pierced the armor, the round would explode in the coal bunker.  All the explosive energy would be spent pulverizing the chunks of coal into dust, leaving very little energy to damage the structure of the ship.  In this way, the coal bunkers acted like an added layer of armor, protecting the ship from the explosive force of any rounds that penetrated.

In the late 1920s, the New Yorks underwent a major refit.  In recognition of the increased danger from airplanes, over 3.5 inches was added to the deck above the magazines, boilers, and engine rooms to better protect these vital areas.  In addition, 1.75 inches was added to the area around the steering gear and on the turret tops.  At this time a pair of large anti-torpedo bulges were added to the ship as well.  An anti-torpedo bulge is, if you'll pardon the comparison, a lot like a blister.  It consists of a large, watertight exterior plating that is separated from the actual hull of the ship by several feet of empty space.  Since torpedoes explode on contact, they will explode when they hit the skin of the bulge.  The empty space inside the bulge helps to dissipate the force of the blast before it can damage the hull of the ship.  The addition of the anti-torpedo bulges brought the width of the New York class up to 106 feet, making them too fat to travel through the Panama Canal.  Also, the added width gave the hull extra drag, dropping the maximum speed of the class down to a mere 19.7 knots.

While the anti-torpedo bulges were never used for their intended purpose, they did provide a vital service to the ship on at least on occasion.  During the time period directly after Operation Overlord, the New York class battleship USS Texas was tasked with providing fire support to the troops on the ground.  on the 15th of June, she was tasked with providing fire support for a group of soldiers.  However, the soldiers had passed beyond the 23,000 yard range of the Texas' guns.  In a moment of ingenuity, the captain had the starboard torpedo blister flooded.  This gave the ship a 2 degree list which gave the guns 17 degrees of elevation, 2 more than was normally possible.  This gave the shells just enough extra range to hit the targets.

 

 

Damage Control

 

What you see there is the tools of damage control aboard a warship.  Wood.  Lots of wood cut in all sorts of sizes and shapes.  If your ship ends up with a hole that's letting in water, it's the job of damage control to jam pieces of wood into the holes until the flooding is minimized.

 

 

Well, I hope you found this introduction to the New York class battleship informative.  Questions, comments, and corrections are always welcome.  Hopefully I'll see you on the high seas soon enough.

[JeeWeeJ]

Wow, nice photo's! And thats one pretty ship! I didnt know that she still had triple-expansion engines though. Any reason why the US didnt go for steam turbine engines which most other dreadnoughts used??

Anyway, good post! +1!

[Mermaid_Witch]

JeeWeeJ, on 19 August 2012 - 07:31 PM, said:

Wow, nice photo's! And thats one pretty ship! I didnt know that she still had triple-expansion engines though. Any reason why the US didnt go for steam turbine engines which most other dreadnoughts used??
Anyway, good post! +1!

At the time Steam turbines were still a pretty new thing.  The US Navy didn't want to build an entire class of ships on a technology that might turn out to be a dud.  Also, at the time turbines were real fuel hogs, and even back in 1906 the US Navy thought Japan might be a possible adversary, so they wanted an engine that was fuel efficient enough to get across the Pacific.  That being said, the preceding Wyoming class was built with steam turbines, so I'm guessing there was some sort of dustup between the US Navy and the turbine manufacturer that led to reciprocating engines being used for the New Yorks.  It is interesting to note that in the follow on Nevada class the Navy hedged their bets.  The Nevada was built with turbines, while the Oklahoma was build with reciprocating engines.  So, short of buying a giant book on the subject, I'm not sure what happened between the turbine powered Wyomings and the piston powered New Yorks.

[Ariecho]

Nice work.  I like it when it's not a copy-paste out of wikipedia!

[xthetenth]

Mini_Bolo, on 19 August 2012 - 07:40 PM, said:

short of buying a giant book on the subject.

If you can, get your hands on that book. Find a library or something, it's excellent. Friedman's work is top notch. Unfortunately I don't have a copy, I got one from a library, but a lot of why the US didn't immediately go for turbines is they wanted to compare a turbine ship and a triple expansion one operationally, because the performance needed to be worth it not just on paper but in the sea if they were going to take such a significant cut in range. The US' main maritime rivals were Japan and the UK, and there's an ocean between the US and the two. In addition the US has a very long coastline, so range can be important even operating close to the US. It was a serious tradeoff for the US rather than an obvious improvement until reduction gears and oil fuel came into play.

[Mermaid_Witch]

Just letting you guys know, I added a paragraph into the "Armor" section.  For those of you who don't want to read the entire thing again, I'll reproduce it here.

 

"Remember when I said the coal bunkers were right beneath the main belt?  There's a reason for that.  Loose coal is a fantastic absorber of energy.  If an enemy shell pierced the armor, the round would explode in the coal bunker.  All the explosive energy would be spent pulverizing the chunks of coal into dust, leaving very little energy to damage the structure of the ship.  In this way, the coal bunkers acted like an added layer of armor, protecting the ship from the explosive force of any rounds that penetrated."

[Appollosnos]

Sweet nice info.i knew about the class but had thought there was another dreadnought class after it

[BlackAngelCom]

These ships have an incredible amount of firepower for their physical size. I expect people to like playing them against higher tiers.

[Tanz]

USS TEXAS!! :biggrin:

[Mermaid_Witch]

Tanz, on 20 August 2012 - 02:20 AM, said:

USS TEXAS!! :biggrin:

Yep.  It's amazing how easy it is to find good pictures for an article when you've toured the ship personally during a vacation.

[xthetenth]

Appollosnos, on 19 August 2012 - 10:20 PM, said:

Sweet nice info.i knew about the class but had thought there was another dreadnought class after it

Nahh, the Nevadas were the first Standards and all Standards were super-dreadnoughts, being post-Jutland designs made before Jutland because the US was awesome and didn't believe in chronology. In fact, the New York class was technically super-dreadnoughts if I remember right so the Wyomings were the last vanilla dreadnaughts.

[Mermaid_Witch]

xthetenth, on 20 August 2012 - 05:05 AM, said:

Nahh, the Nevadas were the first Standards and all Standards were super-dreadnoughts, being post-Jutland designs made before Jutland because the US was awesome and didn't believe in chronology. In fact, the New York class was technically super-dreadnoughts if I remember right so the Wyomings were the last vanilla dreadnaughts.

Correct.  Super-dreadnoughts were the general term of the day for a dreadnought type with a gun caliber larger than 12 inches.  That being said, the Nevadas weren't super dreadnoughts.  They were something different, something better.  They had gone beyond the dreadnoughts to become the first modern battleships.

[Gigaton]

JeeWeeJ, on 19 August 2012 - 07:31 PM, said:

Any reason why the US didnt go for steam turbine engines which most other dreadnoughts used??

As Bolo said, early (direct drive) steam turbines had poor fuel efficiency. Not that the piston steam engines didn't have their problems either, so USN eventually went for the third choice.

This article touches the subject of USN engine experimentation around WW1: http://www.navweaps....ch/tech-038.htm

[xthetenth]

Mini_Bolo, on 20 August 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

Correct.  Super-dreadnoughts were the general term of the day for a dreadnought type with a gun caliber larger than 12 inches.  That being said, the Nevadas weren't super dreadnoughts.  They were something different, something better.  They had gone beyond the dreadnoughts to become the first modern battleships.

Yeah, I'd say the stages of battleship were dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts, post-Jutland ships, treaty battleships and one more for the WWII unrestricted ones. The Standards were definitely post-Jutland.

[grimzod]

JeeWeeJ, on 19 August 2012 - 07:31 PM, said:

Wow, nice photo's! And thats one pretty ship! I didnt know that she still had triple-expansion engines though. Any reason why the US didnt go for steam turbine engines which most other dreadnoughts used??
Anyway, good post! +1!

That is Battleship Texas and the pylon in the distance is the San Jacinto Memorial.  The ship is moored in the San Jacinto Battleground Memorial.  I have a bout a hundred pics of her from our trip this summer.  She is in need of some serious TLC all over.

[grimzod]

deleted

[Goldeneye54]

Awesome read +1 for sure!

[Argent108]

Nice pictures...I've visited a few battleships, but haven't made it to the U.S.S. Texas yet.

[flyingtaco]

the dividing line between dreadnaught and superdreadnaught is the washington naval treaty. everything built after is super. the treaty froze construction of larger capital ships and placed a ten year naval holiday in place during which time no new battleships  could be built, with the exception of a few non-US ships that were allowed let Japan and Britain reach the tonnage caps put in place by the treaty.  when Japan left the treaty system, byulding resumed and resulted in the creation of the superdreadnaughts.  the big differences were the tonnage and speed, as well as guns.this is  the raised Oklahoma compared to Wisconsin  dreadnaught vs superdreadnaught

[ReiAyanami]

Are you sure? It is generally accepted that super dreadnoughts started with the adoption of 13.5 inch guns and other improvements that led to Orion class as the first super dreadnoughts.

http://en.wikipedia....lass_battleship

[flyingtaco]

should have been more clear. the division I'm using is more of a modern concept. at the time, yesmsny of the earlier classes were called superdreadnaught because of their relationship in size and power to the original dreadnaught, but really you only see measured imrovements before the washington treaty. you might see a few more knots or a larger caliber gun but it was a slow progression. After washington battleships never looked the same. the newer classes were much faster, larger, and better armored. But this could only be seen in hindsight. so really both are correct. you could say anything with better specs than dreadnaught was a superdreadnaught but when compared withe post washington ships, they pale in comparison, so modern writers tend to draw the line there, though neither is absolutely definitive.

[xthetenth]

The battleships made after the treaty are generally either called treaty battleships or fast battleships, not superdreadnaughts. I've never seen superdreadnaught used as a term for anything after the treaty.

[flyingtaco]

its out there  according to some of the stuff I found on the net  12 inch gun or higher rule was used to divide super from revular dreadnaught, but several modern authors have used the terms pre-dreadnaught,  dreadnaught, and super-dreadnaught to define developmental eras for the battleship. depending on what critetia you use, any given ship may fit into one or more of the smaller catagories such as post Jutland, treaty, and fast battleships, though the idea of a US treaty battleship is intresting since we had to scrap our excess BB tonnage and were not allowed to build any during the treaty period. the Nelsons were treaty battleships  but they were also super dreadnaughts. its a matter of how you examine them really. i had nl idea about the 12 inch gun rule of thumb though.

[xthetenth]

So it's just coincidence that the North Carolina and South Dakotas were built to 35,000 tons exactly?

[Mermaid_Witch]

xthetenth, on 16 September 2012 - 12:58 AM, said:

So it's just coincidence that the North Carolina and South Dakotas were built to 35,000 tons exactly?

The Washington Treaty limited battleship sizes to 35,000 tons standard displacement and 16" main guns.