Gunnery Department

IN WHICH we trace the evolution of naval guns and mountings from 1860 to WWI, with particular reference to battleship weapons. For forensic evidence of how warships armed with these guns performed in the heat of action, refer to Notable Battles of the Ironclad Age.

Above: Admiral Canevaro poses with his staff under the 17.7" barrels of the Italia. Launched in 1881, she was still among the biggest ironclads afloat in 1897.

The Paixhans Shell Gun (1841)

The Battleship of 1850: The Napoléon

The Coles and Ericsson Turret Systems

The First Turret Ships

Civil War Naval Guns

The Development of Breech-Loading Rifled Guns (1850s Onwards)

Barbette Mountings (1870s - 1890s)

The Vickers Mk VIII 12"/35 Mounting - for Majestic & Canopus Class Ships (1897 - 1900)

Guns and Gunhouse - The Vickers Mk IX 12"/40 Mounting (1901)

Armored Cruiser Main Guns - Vickers 9.2"/47 Mk X Single Turret Plans

How the Guns Were Made - Gun Foundry Photo Feature

How the Guns Were Worked - Rare Photos from Inside Barbette and Turret

How the Guns Were Worked - 1930s Royal Navy Video

The Computerization of Targeting (1912-1916)

The Cost of the Pre-WWI Naval Arms Race

The naval arms race had bubbled merrily along through the closing years of the 19th century, when Britain kept well ahead of its nearest rivals by spending some £5M annually, building about 40 pre-dreadnought battleships. Through the mid-Nineties, Britain's main rival was France; but with the 1898 Navy Law, Germany undertook to construct a formidable rival to the Royal Navy. By building the Dreadnought in 1906 Britain threw down the gauntlet. This far more advanced battleship, costing 20% more than the most evolved pre-dreadnoughts, was meant to persuade other nations they could never win a naval competition with Britain. But after some initial consternation, the challenge had the opposite effect: everyone wanted dreadnoughts and poorer countries like Brazil and Argentina willingly emptied their treasuries to build just one or two, while all the major powers soon fielded at least one dreadnought division. Space weaponry advocates take note!

Once ignited, the dreadnought arms race nervously ramped up and down through several cycles before burning itself out in an orgy of destruction between 1914 and 1918. Above, the foreseeable outcome made material: a 15-inch naval gun being slung aboard HMS Barham as she nears completion in 1914. This outcome was engendered in the German challenge and the British counterstroke, the Dreadnought. The Queen Elizabeth class of which the Barham was a member, and the German Baden class marked a huge technological leap over previous ships. Indeed, the 5 QEs and the 5 dead-similar "R class" ships that followed the next year, formed the core of Britain's floating might into the Second World War. These were indeed tough ships: during the Battle of Jutland, HMS Warspite lost her steering and steamed in involuntary circles, taking 29 large-calibre hits before control was restored. Though slowed to a 16-knot maximum by the gaping holes in her sides, the ship survived the battle with remarkably light casualties (14 killed and 32 wounded), made port under her own power, and emerged from the yard ready to fight again before summer's end. Less well armored warships did not all share her happy fate in that battle. The results made an open-and-shut case for fuller protection; particularly when, with the greater efficiency of oil fuel pioneered in the Queen Elizabeths, it did not result in the sacrifice of speed. Designed for 25 knots, the Queen Elizabeths were nearly as fast as battlecruisers, some 4 knots faster than the 1906 Dreadnought. But battlecruisers were also leapfrogging ahead in speed: HMS Hood of 1920 could make 32 knots.

But all the technological overkill of the Queen Elizabeths came at a stiff price. There was a great investment in fleet oilers, storage tanks, all the pumps and plumbing necessary to handle oil in bulk. Then there was the foreign entanglement: Britain had no oil, extractable by 1900-era techniques. Seeking to guarantee supply, the British government bought control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (present-day BP) and took a plunge into neocolonial control over what is today Iran -- beginning a sorry story of manipulation and mistrust, whose end remains as yet unwritten (see Note). Then there was the additional necessity of protecting the tanker lifeline to and from the Gulf.

Above all, there was the daunting expense of running the whole complex operation. During the peak years of the naval arms race, just before the First World War, Britain spent lavishly on her Royal Navy: between the advent of the Dreadnought and the 1909-10 fiscal year 3 years later, she built 11 dreadnoughts for a total cost of £20M. New battleship construction authorized in 1909-10 consumed £26.4M (8 dreadnoughts at £3.3M apiece). Although this was an exceptionally high year, spending had seldom fallen below £5M a year in any year since 1889, totaling some £80M for pre-dreadnought battleship construction between 1889 and 1908. The British taxpayer was forfeiting a lot of butter to pay for those big guns.

Between the record year 1909-10 and the 1912-13 program including the Queen Elizabeths, 8 more dreadnoughts slid down the ways at a cost of £28.4M. Naval estimates (budget requests) ballooned: from £31.25M in 1907-08 to £40.4M in 1910-11 and on to a bloated £45.1M in 1912-13. When Churchill pushed through production of the 15-inch gun and the construction of the visionary Queen Elizabeths, he was decried for grandiose and wasteful spending; but the 4 Queen Elizabeths were voted through at a cool £4M apiece, and the five "R class" battleships at a comparable cost the following year; a fifth QE class battleship was funded by the colony of Malaya. From the Liberals' accession to power -- with a pledge to cut military spending -- to the outbreak of war (1908-1914), the British taxpayer was assessed over £229 millions for new capital-ship construction, or an average of £38.2 millions per year.

Over time, the arms race had developed a will of its own; but the Liberals and their allies did make sincere and sustained efforts to curb arms spending from the time they took office. Indeed, Minister of War Richard Haldane had combined significant economies with modernizing reform in managing the British Army. Churchill was brought into the Admiralty in 1911 as a comparable "new broom" for the Royal Navy: to cut wasteful spending, to develop a naval war staff, and to coordinate naval strategy with the Army's war planners.

Guns Versus Butter: Irreconcilable Priorities

There were a number of efforts to reduce an arms race that was clearly getting out of control. German intransigence and arrogance bloodied a generation of British politicians who had tried to make overtures. An important drag on German envoys' freedom of maneuver was the Kaiser. Though he had close family ties with the British royals -- he was, after all, the grandson of Queen Victoria -- the Kaiser had had a vexed relationship with Britain. "Willie"'s urge to one-up his British cousins imparted an intimidating swagger to Germany's style and actions over 3 decades; at its worst, prefiguring Hitler at his most arrogant. To Germany's All Highest, personal control over the Navy he had built up from scratch remained a cherished prerogative. The Kaiser insisted on regarding any advice on running naval matters as a personal affront. The German government was tied to Wilhelm's intransigence, since the Reichstag had no constitutional control over the navy; it was purely governed by the Kaiser and Grand-Admiral Tiripitz. The Reichstag merely approved the funds to sustain a titanic rivalry -- a titanic Teutonic rivalry, in fact -- and government/industrial interests expertly tilted German public opinion toward hawkish expenditure. Across the sea, through 1913 Churchill remained one of the chief "economizers" in the Liberal cabinet. Along with Prime Minister Asquith and Chancellor David Lloyd George, Churchill championed cutting the military budget to pay for new social programs: the Socialists and elements of the Whig Party claimed that half the annual naval budget, applied to social programs, would cure most of Britain's social ills. (Photos by gracious permission of www.workhouses.org.uk)

At the outset of his term as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911-12, Churchill made a sincere attempt to come to terms with the Germans and build a bridge of trust to them. In 1912 Richard Haldane was despatched to Berlin to negotiate a relaxation in tensions and a restraint on the ruinous naval arms race; his was an exploratory mission. The Germans were proposing to accelerate from building from 2 dreadnoughts a year to 3 every other year: 3-2-3-2-3-2, seeking to arrive at a 35-dreadnought fleet by 1918 (including 28 battleships and 7 highly survivable battlecruisers). At first the Kaiser's envoys agreed to a cautious reduction in the "tempo" or pace of building in return for a reciprocal slowing on the British side. Unfortunately even this modest opening was torpedoed by other elements of the German Naval Law not discussed with Haldane: a huge buildup in personnel, and accelerated destroyer and U-boat construction. The apparent German bad faith made any concessions politically impossible for the British government. Instead, not to be outdone, Britain undertook to lay down 2 keels for every extra dreadnought laid down in Germany under Tirpitz' accelerated building schedule. View down the bore of a 9.4" Krupp gun on the Austro-Hungarian warship Kaiser Karl VI. Nothing daunted, Churchill continued to dangle a slowing of the arms race even as Whitehall prepared the alternative: the most monstrous budget yet, of £45 million, covering the Queen Elizabeths, oil fuel terminals, and fleet basing facilities for an expected North Sea confrontation. As the rivalry with Germany sharpened after 1909, costs continued to skyrocket. To build a ground of mutual confidence betwen the 2 countries, Churchill proposed a mutual "naval holiday" in building. In a March 18 address to the Commons, the First Lord formally renounced the "2-Power Standard", a long-time British doctrine under which Britain maintained sufficient naval power to fight the two next largest navies simultaneously, and prevail. (This formula dated, appropriately enough, to the Spencer Programme and the beginning of the battleship race in 1889.) Instead Britain would build to maintain an 8:5 ratio of superiority against Germany. The proposed building holiday would save £7M equivalent for the German people and at least £12M sterling in Britain without altering either country's relative position in the big-ship race. Churchill's proposals were ridiculed in England, but the Germans agreed to informal talks. After a cautious opening, these negotiations came to nought, largely due to a German lack of openness. A machiavellian Foreign Ministry in Berlin calculated Germany could exact a higher price by holding out longer. Chuckling in anticipation of rich takings, they wilfully held out on burying the rivalry with Britain. And so the moment was lost. Asquith, Foreign Secretary Lord Grey, and Churchill were leery of German intentions and angered by German deviousness as negotiations swiftly reached an impasse. Germany's envoys were not kept in Berlin's confidence and were not empowered to agree to anything independently. Germany remained obdurate in refusing to permit inspection of its shipyards by British naval attachés in return for reciprocal courtesy at the royal dockyards. And behind the scenes Tirpitz, obsessed with ever-greater numbers of battleships, frantically smothered the mounting flames of dialogue with the British. Spurred by alarm at each other's intentions, the arms race spurted onwards with renewed vigor. All caution was thrown to the winds, for in the absence of mutual trust, the completest possible readiness for war seemed the only prudent policy. Churchill bent to the national consensus with a will, and record budgets sailed through Parliament. The willfulness in Berlin mirrored that in London. The atmosphere of mutual mistrust thickened, lending a sense of inevitability to the drift to war. This air of hopeless paralysis in the run-up to August 1914 is described in the memoirs of virtually all the leading figures on both sides: a sense of hypnotized horror. Early dreadnought HMS Bellerophon with a gunnery target. In some ways the Royal Navy was ill-prepared for the war that came; but it was certainly well found in ships, and for this Churchill deserved a share of the credit. The results of the 1911-1914 acceleration of building were not apparent for some years; with ships withdrawn for refit and the loss of the Audacious to a mine, Britain had a razor-thin 2-dreadnought margin of superiority in operational dreadnoughts at the end of 1914 through winter 1915. Thereafter, the margin increased by leaps and bounds. The ratio remained 5:3 in favor of Britain even after the losses at the Battle of Jutland were tallied. Across the North Sea, in 1912-1914 the German fleet was well on its way to Tirpitz's goal of 2 battleships for every 3 in the British fleet. Moreover, the German ships were more robustly constructed than the British, with labyrinthine watertight subdivision and conservative armor protection. But the German Navy's mission had always been somewhat blurred, resulting in a blurred strategy. Moreover, the Kaiser's personal hand in policy turned out unexpectedly timid and jittery as applied to naval operations. By late 1916, Germany's two 15-inch gunned super-dreadnoughts were operational; but by that time, Britain had already commissioned ten 15-inch ships. It is clear who had won the arms race. It is equally certain that the British public had paid a burdensome price. Further (given the several bombardments of British ports undertaken with near impunity by Adm. Hipper's battlecruisers, and the many air raids by zeppelin during the war) it seemed questionable how much "security" the public reaped in return for that huge investment (see Note, below). It would be by the U-boat rather than the battle fleet that Germany's navy in WWI would be remembered; by the torpedo, not the big gun. Battleship guns being turned at Bethlehem Steel, Pennsylvania, in 1909. NOTE: In an unforeseen way, however, the investment in armaments and infrastructure paid off; for it was cheap oil from Iran that fueled Britain's prosperity in the Twenties and Thirties -- a prosperity achieved in spite of burdensome debt payments to the financiers who had underwritten the Empire's tremendous war effort. It would take another cycle of world war-fueled-by-cheap-Anglo-Persian-Oil before the people of Iran would demand a fair share of that prosperity -- and find their democratic revolt snuffed by the CIA-orchestrated coup d'êtat of 1953. This in turn set up the cycle of repression under the Shah and resentment of U.S. meddling, which ended so disastrously for America. The marathon hostage crisis of 1979-81 kicked off Iranian-American relations and set the tone for what has followed, with the U.S. painting Iran as a "rogue state." Both Bush and Ahmedinejad made domestic political capital playing off each other after Bush promoted Iran from Rogue State to Axis of Evil member in 2002. One looks for a cooler tone of discourse when sanity returns to the White House early in 2009. The practice of painting entire nations or peoples as 'evil' would appear to have a boomerang effect on the accuser.

British Naval Spending in Detail, 1891 - 1916 German Naval Spending in Detail, 1894 - 1917 Timeline of the Naval Arms Race - from Churchill College, Cambridge The Naval Scare of 1909 Scare Tactic: Artist's Conception of Future German Naval Might - Illustrated London News, 9/21/1912 Churchill's Speech Proposing the 1912-13 Naval Estimates to Parliament - in full Churchill's Activities Day by Day - 1912 - 1913 A Brief History of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. - 1901 - 1954 Britain's Iraq Invasion of 1915 - to Protect Iranian Oilfields Notable Naval Battles - 1862 - 1918 The Imperial German Navy - 1869 - 1919 List of World War I Dreadnoughts - Built 1906 - 1917 Outline of the Queen Elizabeth Class Super-Dreadnoughts The Washington Treaty for Naval Disarmament - 1922 Proudly featured on the reverse of a Shah-era 100-rial note, an engraving of the Abadan Oil Refinery, first opened in 1912 by the Burmah Oil/Anglo-Persian Oil consortium. By 1941 and until wrecked by Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-86), it was the world's largest petroleum facility and the chief source of the Pahlavi family's immense wealth. Their régime's influence derived from its close collaboration with powerful western interests, its identification with Iran's elite, and fear of its police tactics. Though the current régime has derived much of its power from standing in opposition to the so-called "Great Satan," it still defines Iran largely by its relationship to the West. Some would say this is being put forth by way of a diversion, turning attention away from thuggish policies and lack of social progress at home. In a little-known scandal, the U.S. set itself up for a massive loss of confidence in its own currency by selling the Shah's government a complete mint including the self-same gravure presses used to print U.S. currency, along with a 20-year supply of the special security paper used for U.S. paper money. The mint had hardly come online in Tehran when the Shah was overthrown in 1979. Once in power, the Ayatollah's government lost no time in debasing the U.S. currency while bankrolling its own campaign of subversion by flooding Europe and the Middle East with expertly forged U.S. $100 banknotes. Small wonder that the Carter and Reagan administrations kept this fiasco a closely-held secret within the United States; However, it is quite widely known in the rest of the world.