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Frederic Logghe
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Bellerophon class
The Bellerophon class consisted of three battleships built in 1906 and 1907 for the Royal Navy. The three ships of the Bellerophon class (and the subsequent three of the St Vincent class ) were near-repeats of HMS Dreadnought. The Bellerophon class was extremely visually similar to the previous Dreadnought class battleships, with the exception of a second tripod mast. In fact the lead ship , HMS Bellerophon, was laid down on the same day of HMS Dreadnought's final completion, which was also built at Portsmouth Dockyard.

The Bellerophon's continued the universal trend of greater displacement and cost. They did address some of the flaws of Dreadnought. Changes to the hull gave a more complete internal protection and allowed the larger ships to make the same speed with the same powerplant. While Dreadnought had bulkheads that protected only the magazines, the Bellerophon had complete bulkheads running longitudinally through the ship. The 12-pounder guns that had been added to Dreadnought for protection from torpedo boats were recognised as being insufficient and their secondary armament was made up of 4-inch guns. The foremast which on Dreadnought was behind the fore funnel so that it could be used for the boat crane was sited ahead of the funnel moving the lookouts stationed on the observation platform out of the smoke plume. A mainmast added ahead of the aft funnel was still affected by the plume of the fore funnel and was not considered a success. These changes did require some compromises in the design resulting in thinner armor, reducing the belt armor from 11 to 10 inches, and a reduced coal bunkerage, which limited the steaming endurance. (Source: Wikipedia)
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Colossus class
The Colossus class of two battleships of the British Royal Navy were among the first dreadnoughts following the original Dreadnought. Originally intended to be part of the Neptune class, the two ships had thicker armour and other differences from Neptune, and so Neptune is traditionally left as its own class. They were the last 12-inch gunned dreadnought battleships for the Royal Navy, and were followed by the first "super-dreadnoughts", the Orion class battleships.

In designing this class, their Lordships of the Admiralty finally took note of the vulnerability of British capital ships in view of the general move to 12-inch guns by the German navy. Thus the main belt reverted to the 11-inch thickness of the Dreadnought, with the unfortunate corollary of necessitating a reduction in internal protection to compensate. The design was also influenced by the American Delaware class battleship's ability to mount a ten-gun broadside. To save 50 tons of topweight, the mainmast was suppressed. Besides the weight, the mainmast was considered to be of limited value. Meanwhile Dreadnoughts flaw in that the foremast was just behind the fore funnel was inexplicably repeated. In the Colossus class, this situation was aggravated by the far larger power of the installation served by the funnel.

Machinery was for the first time divided into three compartments instead of two. This was thought to provide resistance to flooding to balance the loss of screening bulkheads. Machinery was otherwise identical to that fitted previously, except apparently the new internal arrangements allowed the center engine room to operate independently during cruising conditions to conserve fuel.

Main armament remained the same as the Neptune class battleships, except the stagger of the wing turrets was reduced to conserve deck space. This enabled the forward superstructure to be lengthened and the distribution of the secondary armament to be improved.
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Neptune class
The Neptune class battleships were dreadnoughts of the British Royal Navy. There were originally going to be three ships in the class, but the second and third were given thicker armour and differed in other ways, and are usually characterized as Colossus-class vessels.

The Neptune class was the first attempt by the Royal Navy to get a full ten-gun broadside from its dreadnoughts. This innovation was required to match competing foreign designs, such as the Brazilian Minas Geraes and the American Delaware class battleships. In previous classes, of the ten guns mounted only 8 could face either broadside. In the Neptunes, the wing turrets were staggered so that each could fire cross-deck past the other.

The staggered wing-turret arrangement had several ramifications, including a profligate consumption of deck length. This forced the designers to move the mid-ship "X" turret and place it next to the aft turret and superfire over it, thus economizing in deck space. The X turret was allowed to fire on the broadside only, since the blast of the upper guns concussed the men in the lower Y turret when firing astern. The superfiring disposition was placed aft because this made for a better sea boat than putting the huge weight of a pair of turrets towards the bow. Despite the new gun layout, the Neptunes still required an extra 10 feet of length and 1 foot of beam, resulting in a further increase of 650 tons over previous classes.

The main innovation in armour was the fitting of strakes protecting the funnel uptakes. Previously these were very vulnerable to damage that would have resulted in the lower decks being smoked out. Otherwise, the increasingly inadequate 10-inch main belt was retained, and this and the other strakes were repositioned in detail.

The power plant provided an additional 500 hp over previous classes to offset the greater displacement. The troublesome cruising turbines of previous classes were finally suppressed. Secondary armament was slightly reduced.
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St. Vincent class
The St. Vincent class battleships consisted of three ships of the Royal Navy laid down in 1908, and completed between May 1909 and April 1910.

Visually, they were very difficult to distinguish from the Bellerophons. The major innovation in this class was the 50 calibre main armament, increased from the 45 calibre fitted to previous classes.

The selection of a gun five feet longer than before necessitated a hull ten feet longer between X and Y turret to maintain clearance between the guns and the superstructure. The longer hull required an extra beam of 18 inches to maintain the correct hull form ratios. This produced a general scaling-up of 650 tons over the preceding class.

Armor distribution was slightly changed. The inadequate 10-inch thickness for the main belt was retained, but lengthened slightly. Maximum main deck armor thickness was slightly increased, but in compensation middle deck thickness had to be reduced.

The power plant was also increased over the previous class, resulting in a design speed 1/4 knot faster than before. But in practice, the difference was marginal.

In service, the 50 calibre Mark XI was not considered a success. In exchange for a very slightly superior penetrating performance, it suffered from excessive barrel droop and bore erosion. Secondary armament was also increased from 16 to 20 four-inch guns.

These ships were the last British ships with symmetrically placed wing turrets. The following Neptune class had a staggered wing turret arrangement in an attempt to get a 10-gun broadside. (Source: Wikipedia)
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Dreadnought



The sixth HMS Dreadnought of the British Royal Navy was the first battleship to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a secondary battery of smaller guns. She was also the first large warship to be powered by steam turbines, making her the fastest warship of her size. So advanced was Dreadnought that her name became a generic term for modern battleships, whilst the ships she made obsolete were known as "pre-dreadnoughts".

So convinced was Fisher that construction of the design would be ordered, that he started stockpiling steel for use on the ship before a construction slip was even available. This proved a fortunate decision, as during the stockpiling phase a new hull shape was identified that would decrease drag, and therefore increase speed. Fisher, happy with the original 21 knot (39 km/h) speed, used up the additional performance by further increasing the weight of armor. The final design mounted 11 inches (279 mm) of armor on the sides and turrets, about 3 inches (76 mm) more than designs from only a year earlier. Construction finally started in October 1905, and she was launched by King Edward VII on 10 February 1906, after only four months on the ways. Dreadnought went to sea on October 3, 1906, only a year and a day after construction started. The process had been sped up by using turrets originally designed for the Lord Nelson-class battleships which preceded her. The speed of Dreadnought's construction was almost as alarming to foreign navies as her technical capabilities.

Dreadnought was commissioned for trials in December 1906, and in January 1907 she sailed for the Mediterranean Sea and then to Port of Spain, Trinidad. Her engines and guns were given a thorough workout by Captain Sir Reginald Bacon. His report stated, "No member of the Committee on Designs dared to hope that all the innovations introduced would have turned out as successfully as had been the case." The Royal Navy's next six battleships were built along essentially the same lines, although Dreadnought was to be a class of one. Returning to Portsmouth, Dreadnought became flagship of the Home Fleet between 1907 and 1912. As such she spent most of her time in home waters, with occasional cruises to Spain and the Mediterranean.

Her building, trials and early service were closely watched by the world's naval authorities. Her design so thoroughly eclipsed earlier types that subsequent battleships of all nations were generically known as "dreadnoughts" and previous ones disparaged as "pre-dreadnoughts". Her time of outright superiority was short, however. Dreadnought had originally been built to show other navies the futility of attempting to go toe-to-toe with the Royal Navy, but as in the past (see HMS Warrior for instance), the Navy underestimated the German fleet's desire to maintain parity. Her construction sparked off another naval arms race, and soon all major fleets were adding Dreadnought-like ships.

Dreadnought was quickly followed by six more almost identical ships, commencing with the Bellerophons, in which several design flaws were fixed.

From 1907-1912 Dreadnought served as flagship of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet, as famous in its days as the Concorde supersonic airliner sixty years later. In 1910 it attracted the attention of notorious hoaxer Horace de Vere Cole, who persuaded the Royal Navy to arrange for a party of Abyssinian royals to be given a tour of a ship. In reality, the "Abyssinian royals" were some of Cole's friends in blackface and disguise, including a young Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury Group friends; it became known as the Dreadnought hoax. Cole had picked Dreadnought because she was the most prominent and visible symbol of Britain's naval might; but even by 1910 she was obsolete.

As ever-faster designs were put into service, Dreadnought found herself increasingly outpaced, whilst her unusual turret arrangement had already been abandoned in favour of in-line turrets. Her lack of relative speed made her vulnerable to smaller craft again, and since the design ignored these as a factor, she was generally under armored for torpedo attacks. Smaller 12-pounder (76 mm) guns were added on top of the main turrets to fend off torpedo boats, and a system for anti-torpedo netting was added along the sides for protection while in port. These changes were not enough to convince the Admiralty she would be safe in the line of battle, with newer torpedo boats and submarines shadowing the battle fleets. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 she was flagship of the Fourth Battle Squadron in the North Sea, based at Scapa Flow.

Ironically for a vessel designed to engage enemy battleships, her only significant action was the ramming and sinking of German submarine U-29 on 18 March 1915 — Dreadnought thus became the only battleship to ever sink a submarine. Withdrawn from the fleet because her low speed made it impossible to keep station, from May 1916 Dreadnought was flagship of the 3rd Battle Squadron, based at Sheerness on the Thames, part of a force intended to counter the threat of shore bombardment by prowling German battlecruisers. Dreadnought was undergoing a refit during the Battle of Jutland, and thus missed the Royal Navy's most significant fleet engagement of the war. She returned to the Grand Fleet from March to August 1918. By now in bad condition from constant patrols in the North Sea, she was put in reserve at Rosyth after the war. Dreadnought was paid off on 31 March 1920. She was sold to T. Ward & Company in 1922 and broken up at Inverness, Scotland, in 1923.

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