Tegetthoff-class Turret Issues - How Bad Were They, Really?
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- Опубліковано 23 сер 2024
- Source: navweaps.com/in...
In the process of researching for Austro-Hungarian Navy videos, I decided to take a look at the Tegetthoff. More specifically, at their turret issues. The idea that they would suffocate their own gun crews in thirty minutes always...rang a bit hollow, personally.
So, imagine my surprise when I found an article on NavWeaps that covered this exact topic! A new-ish article, too. It goes in depth on the topic and presents primary sources, as well.
I, thus, decided to make this video to cover it and hopefully rehabilitate these ships a little. They're still terrible by most metrics, but they probably weren't killing their own gunners.
Triple turrets on the centerline was an advanced design.
History has a way of exaggerating both the good and bad about ships. Great video!!!
I've got such a soft spot for these dreadnoughts and the navy in which they served.
In my experience, the Habsburg Empire is the sort of state that people have become accustomed to assuming the worst about irrespective of reality. Stereotypes about backwardness, inefficiency, impotence, and more all dominate the imagery of the state in the popular imagination then and now, so the fact it was a Great Power and influential in a myriad of ways seems all but forgotten. The idea Habsburgers could get something mostly right just doesn't register correctly it seems.
The Tegethoffs are a prime example. The fact is they were perfectly typical of their time, with notable flaws and problems typical of a first attempt at dreadnought design, but being Habsburger ships, they seem to be denied the "good for a first attempt" handwave that every other nation got.
The fact that oil lamps were going out suggests that the ventilation could be bad for the men inside the turret. The air we breath is supposed to be minimally 19.5% oxygen. Fire needs air of at least 16.5% oxygen to burn. So if there isn't enough oxygen for a flame, I don't think there is enough for men. Especially when they are doing physical labor like manhandling big shells and propellent around the turret. That would get extremely exhausting with low oxygen.
That classic experiment to show the insidious effects of hypoxia where USAF pilots in a pressure chamber asked to just write their own names on a sheet of paper while they lower the pressure shows you can't tell the pressure is getting low because you start getting euphoria and thinking you're doing really well. They lowered the pressure then returned it to normal and got them to look at what they'd been writing and it was all over the place, yet none of them could tell until they looked at the page.
I reason the gun crews would be incapacitated by hypoxia if low oxygen was the cause of the flames going out in the lamps.
Perhaps the lamps were getting low oxygen *at their location* but I'm pretty sure the reports are malicious BS because you can't actually operate physiologically speaking in such an environment as evidenced by that USAF pilot hypoxia test.
Thank You for this interesting story! There is a very beautiful model of this ship in Vienna (Wien) in the „Militärhistorischen Museum Arsenal“. Every detail is identical. Greetings from Linz Austria 🇦🇹 Europe!
Yet another well presented video backed up by research.
Keep it up, my friend.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
10:38 that’s not fair yes they weren’t the most powerful ships but They didn’t need to be
Just because 1 got sunk by a torpedo boat doesn’t mean they are bad that’s like saying the King George 5 class was bad because HMS Audacious hit a mine
And one has not to forget that szent istvan had quite a few problems that here sisters did not have.
She was built by a hungarian yard that had no experience building ships of her sice and had shoddy quality control.
They also changed the design in a few significant ways.
She only had two shafts compared to the four of her sisters.
Also, there was quite a bit of weight added up high, like extra platforms and searchlights that made her top-heavy. This problem was unique to her.
On trials, she was found to list so much when full ruder was applied that the navy restricted her to just 15° of ruder because of the risk of her capsizing.
She was the only ship of her class that had this restriction.
What people also forget is that she was finished and commissioned only after the war with italy had started and never had a proper shaked down cruise.
Her crew was green and had almost no experience running the ship.
She was never run at full speed, and her mashinery was not broken in.
Also, when she finally left Harbor for hir first and final mission, there was a misunderstanding, and the torpedo barrier was closed, and the ships had to wait for some hours before finally being able to leave.
Szent istvan than had trouble maintaining high speed because her not broken in mashinery ran hot.
When the problems with her mashinery were finaly under control, they tried to reach a seave anchorage before the daylight houres.
Her inexperienced stockers and the presure of maintaining relatively high speeds made her run very smoky.
Because of all the delays, she was caught by dawn out at sea in a place she was not supposed to be at that particular time.
The large amount of smoke could be seen from a great distance, and that attracted the italian torpedoboats that would have otherwise missed her entirely.
After being hit, the crew lacked the experience needed to deal with the situation. With a mor experienced crew, she might have been saved or at least run aground on the island, less than 10 miles away, to avoid sinking.
This one ship had everything going against her.
When it comes to viribus unitis, she was sunk in an attack just like the one that made Hms Queen Elizabeth settled on the bottom of Alexandria harbor. QE was heavily modernized at that point, and her torpedo protection was much better than that of any ship in 1918. She still sank.
On top of that, the italian torpedo rider attack happened the night after the ship was handed over to the new state that later became Yugoslavia. All officers had left, and the crew spent the night celebrating and trinking.
There were no efforts made to save the ship.
No other ship would have survived under these circumstances.
@@tobiasfreitag2182 how can something be sunk and only completed after the war at the same time ?
@avus-kw2f213 I guess you must have misread something.
I reread my post to make sure that I did not mess up but can't find what you are referring to.
Szent istvan was comisdioned in 1915, after the war with italy started and sunk turing the summer of 1918.
Viribus unitis was cimissioned in 1912 and sunk right around armistice 1918.
QE was in service turing bouthbworld wars, modernized in the interwar period and sunk turing a raid on Alexandria Harbor by italian torpedo riders, just like viribus unitis, but the water was shallow so her decks remained above the surface, witch allowed her to be raised, repaired and she then served for the rest of ww2.
I hope that clears I up for you
Thanks for another great video!
I like these ships. But they were top heavy and I am sure it could be fixed in time.
Only by adding weight...
Only the sms szent istvan was top heavy. The others did just fine. The was the only one built in a hugarian yard that had no expirenc bulfing ships of that sice and changed the design quit significantly. For example she only had two shafts while the other three had four. She was also restricted to 15° Ruder because of her top weight heeling her over so much at full Ruder while the others where not
Thank you . I did not know this..@@tobiasfreitag2182
Oh yeah thecszent istvan also had some extra platforms and search lights high up that the other ships did not have the contributed to her being much more top-heavy than here sisters.
Think if the crew were at the point of death. They would have done something. Because that is not a good situation to be in while in mid battle.
Opening a door would have been dangerous but better than suffocating
Szent Ishtvan had lot more issues cause of hers shipjard inexpirience with building large ships. Greetings.
Frankly these ships were not bad not great ones .
Were these ships the first to have a triple gun layout?
*Wiggles hand*
It depends. The Italians were first to design and build a triple turret, with Dante. But the Austrians were *slightly* faster to build SMS Viribus Unitis.
So, depends on if you’re looking at design/laid down or completion as your metric.
One thing I read someplace was that the turrets only had 2 hoists, instead of 3 (1 per gun) was this true ? If so the 3rd gun seems almost useless.
This information is incorrect.
According to reproductions of the original bluprints and the book "die Thegetthoff-Klasse" from friedrich prasky, there were three main ammunition hoists and two reserve hoists.
Maiking 5! Total. Per turret.
There is also a large-scale model (some 5 meters long) build turing ww1 by the original yard that build viribus units, that can now be visited in the heeresgeschichtliches museum in Vienna, that clearly shows the hoists.
I wonder where all the bs concerning austro hungarian ships comes from as there is plenty of original information available.
I guess that the main problem is that most English speaking researchers rely on British wartime propaganda instead of doing some real research
👍🏻🏴