South Carolina class battleship
Encyclopedia
The United States Navy
's South Carolina class consisted of two battleship
s:
and , both of which were launched in 1908. These were among the first warships built with armament organized on the "all-big gun" (dreadnought principle
) and the first American battleships of the type. However, these ships lacked the speed of the , which was not equaled until the subsequent Delaware class
. But these ships did throw an equal broadside with better protection on 3,000 tons less displacement. The South Carolina Class' introduction of superfiring
turrets was a major new development in warship design.
(The U.S. Naval Institute's official publication) as early as March 1902, by Lt. Matt H. Sigor. The resulting article was considered important enough that both Professor Alger, the U.S. Navy's leading gunnery expert, and David Taylor, the future Chief Constructor, to publish comments on the design and propose improvements. Several nations were working on designs towards the same end, the HMS Dreadnought was in fact being thought about and designed at about the same time totally independently. In fact one of the designs of the USS Mississippi featured twelve 10-inch guns from the C&R board as early as May 1902 scheme #5. In 1903 Italy's Col. Cuniberti's design became available when it was published in Jane's Fighting Ships, while another U.S. Naval officer Cmd. H. C. Poundstone submitted another all big gun design. In any case the 1903 General Board's Newport Summer Conference summation was that the Construction and Repair Bureau be asked for feasibility designs on an all-big gun design. However actual design work was not started by C&R until September 1904. In design and characteristics, South Carolina represented an evolution of the preceding , rather than a revolutionary "clean sheet" design such as .
Design characteristics common to all U.S. battleships remained in this design, including a requirement that U.S. battleships have adequate coal storage for long operational ranges. While other navies were building 18,000 ton ships, the 16,000 ton limitation imposed by Congress on earlier classes remained in force. The class had to be reduced by one deck from a preferred design,the secondary armament was limited to 3" guns and speed was limited to 18.5 knots (36.3 km/h). This class shipped water from quartering seas (i.e. the ship was wet at rough weather), and was slower than the contemporary Dreadnoughts. The subsequent Delaware class would be over 4,000 tons larger to correct these limitations.
The South Carolina class was the beginning class of 11 separate designs begun from 1906 to 1919, Some 29 battleships and 6 battle-cruisers would laid down during this period, though seven of the battleships and all six of the battle-cruisers would be cancelled. All except the Lexington Class Battle-cruisers would be relatively slow speed designs and would range in weight from 16,000 to 42,000 tons. At this time no U.S. dreadnought class battleship had yet hit the water as all were either at some stage of building or in design. Virtually the entire U.S. Navy battle line was being designed by drawing on experience from pre-dreadnought designs or from observation of foreign battleship design.
s. In this class in particular, the armored deck was 1.5" over the machinery spaces and 2" over the magazines joining to the upper end of the belt armor. The thin deck plating above the armored deck served to detonate any shell hitting the deck allowing the armored deck under to stop the shell fragments. This system would be used until the Nevada Class battleship, which introduced the all-or-nothing armor concept. The belts were closed off at the fore and stern by bulkheads as thick as the belt. Coal bunkers backed up the armor, giving additional protection. Underwater protection had been worked into the design, with additional bulkheads between the coal bunkers and scuttles between the coal bunkers to pass the coal. It was not understood at the time that torpedo blasts could spring the scuttles open and thus ruin the intent. The main armor belt was 8' wide, running 12" and tapering to 10" over the magazines and 11" tapering to 9" over the machinery spaces. The casement armor was 10" thick tapering to 8" at the bottom. The barbette armor was 10" and 8" where it was covered by another barbette. The bulkheads would be 12" to 10" at the bottom of the belt. 3" curved plate covered the steering gear.
") turrets; South Carolina was the first battleship in the world to feature superfiring turrets, and all subsequent U.S. battleships would feature these. This allows all four turrets to fire on a broadside and conserve tonnage to allow the class to be built on the same tonnage as the preceding class while having the same broadside as the Dreadnought with one less turret and avoiding turrets mounted near the sides of hull. The design also allowed the main gun magazines to be increased from 60 to 100 rounds per gun, another characteristic that would be carried forward in U.S. battleship design. While there was concern among some engineers about shock damage with the superfiring turret firing directly forward, there was not perceived as a problem for broadside fire. Testing on the old monitor
was done for fire directly over the lower turret and was shown not to be a serious problem. The superfiring turrets turned out to be highly successful in service, and all future U.S. battleships would feature them. British Royal Navy
battleships would not add this design feature until completed in 1911. The super-firing design appears to have been completed on July 26, 1905.
s due to their slow speed. Both battleships of the South Carolina-class were scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty
. They would spend most of their careers in the Caribbean and East Coast waters with the occasional trip across the Atlantic and one trip to the Pacific.
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
's South Carolina class consisted of two battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
s:
and , both of which were launched in 1908. These were among the first warships built with armament organized on the "all-big gun" (dreadnought principle
Dreadnought
The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...
) and the first American battleships of the type. However, these ships lacked the speed of the , which was not equaled until the subsequent Delaware class
Delaware class battleship
The Delaware-class battleships of the United States Navy were the second class of American dreadnoughts. They carried a battery of ten 12"/45 caliber Mark 5 guns in five turrets, an increase of two guns over the preceding . They were also larger, displacing 25% more than the South Carolinas...
. But these ships did throw an equal broadside with better protection on 3,000 tons less displacement. The South Carolina Class' introduction of superfiring
Superfire
The idea of superfire is to locate two turrets in a row, one behind the other, but with the second turret located above the one in front so that the second turret could fire over the first...
turrets was a major new development in warship design.
Design
The all-big-gun battleship had been discussed in ProceedingsProceedings (magazine)
Proceedings is a monthly magazine published by the United States Naval Institute since 1874. The 96-page publication features articles about Naval and Military matters written by active and retired military personnel plus renowned authors and scholars of their subject.-External links:* * ** by...
(The U.S. Naval Institute's official publication) as early as March 1902, by Lt. Matt H. Sigor. The resulting article was considered important enough that both Professor Alger, the U.S. Navy's leading gunnery expert, and David Taylor, the future Chief Constructor, to publish comments on the design and propose improvements. Several nations were working on designs towards the same end, the HMS Dreadnought was in fact being thought about and designed at about the same time totally independently. In fact one of the designs of the USS Mississippi featured twelve 10-inch guns from the C&R board as early as May 1902 scheme #5. In 1903 Italy's Col. Cuniberti's design became available when it was published in Jane's Fighting Ships, while another U.S. Naval officer Cmd. H. C. Poundstone submitted another all big gun design. In any case the 1903 General Board's Newport Summer Conference summation was that the Construction and Repair Bureau be asked for feasibility designs on an all-big gun design. However actual design work was not started by C&R until September 1904. In design and characteristics, South Carolina represented an evolution of the preceding , rather than a revolutionary "clean sheet" design such as .
Design characteristics common to all U.S. battleships remained in this design, including a requirement that U.S. battleships have adequate coal storage for long operational ranges. While other navies were building 18,000 ton ships, the 16,000 ton limitation imposed by Congress on earlier classes remained in force. The class had to be reduced by one deck from a preferred design,the secondary armament was limited to 3" guns and speed was limited to 18.5 knots (36.3 km/h). This class shipped water from quartering seas (i.e. the ship was wet at rough weather), and was slower than the contemporary Dreadnoughts. The subsequent Delaware class would be over 4,000 tons larger to correct these limitations.
The South Carolina class was the beginning class of 11 separate designs begun from 1906 to 1919, Some 29 battleships and 6 battle-cruisers would laid down during this period, though seven of the battleships and all six of the battle-cruisers would be cancelled. All except the Lexington Class Battle-cruisers would be relatively slow speed designs and would range in weight from 16,000 to 42,000 tons. At this time no U.S. dreadnought class battleship had yet hit the water as all were either at some stage of building or in design. Virtually the entire U.S. Navy battle line was being designed by drawing on experience from pre-dreadnought designs or from observation of foreign battleship design.
Engineering
The Centerline super-firing main armament consumed much of the internal central volume causing the engineering spaces to be squeezed and thus reducing speed to 18 knots. The inclusion of two torpedo rooms into the design only made the problem worse. It was for operational range that the South Carolina-class used less powerful but more fuel-efficient vertical triple expansion engine machinery instead of the newer and faster steam turbines in Dreadnought, a machinery arrangement which would be repeated on only four more U.S. battleshipsArmor Suite
The South Carolina-class battleship armor suite provided better protection than Dreadnought, with thicker side armor and all magazines well away from the sides. However, these ships, along with all early Dreadnoughts, had weak deck and turret roof armor, which would not be addressed until the Nevada class battleshipNevada class battleship
The Nevada class battleships were the United States Navy's first battleship design equipped with triple gun turrets , as well as introducing the so-called "all or nothing" armor scheme, in which protection of vital areas was optimized against heavy caliber guns, leaving other parts...
s. In this class in particular, the armored deck was 1.5" over the machinery spaces and 2" over the magazines joining to the upper end of the belt armor. The thin deck plating above the armored deck served to detonate any shell hitting the deck allowing the armored deck under to stop the shell fragments. This system would be used until the Nevada Class battleship, which introduced the all-or-nothing armor concept. The belts were closed off at the fore and stern by bulkheads as thick as the belt. Coal bunkers backed up the armor, giving additional protection. Underwater protection had been worked into the design, with additional bulkheads between the coal bunkers and scuttles between the coal bunkers to pass the coal. It was not understood at the time that torpedo blasts could spring the scuttles open and thus ruin the intent. The main armor belt was 8' wide, running 12" and tapering to 10" over the magazines and 11" tapering to 9" over the machinery spaces. The casement armor was 10" thick tapering to 8" at the bottom. The barbette armor was 10" and 8" where it was covered by another barbette. The bulkheads would be 12" to 10" at the bottom of the belt. 3" curved plate covered the steering gear.
Armament
The class was originally intended to be a modest modification, with single 12" guns replacing the dual 8" guns on the superstructure corners, and the poorly-performing 7" secondary removed, but the recoil proved to be too much of a problem and the 12" guns were reworked into superimposed (or "superfiringSuperfire
The idea of superfire is to locate two turrets in a row, one behind the other, but with the second turret located above the one in front so that the second turret could fire over the first...
") turrets; South Carolina was the first battleship in the world to feature superfiring turrets, and all subsequent U.S. battleships would feature these. This allows all four turrets to fire on a broadside and conserve tonnage to allow the class to be built on the same tonnage as the preceding class while having the same broadside as the Dreadnought with one less turret and avoiding turrets mounted near the sides of hull. The design also allowed the main gun magazines to be increased from 60 to 100 rounds per gun, another characteristic that would be carried forward in U.S. battleship design. While there was concern among some engineers about shock damage with the superfiring turret firing directly forward, there was not perceived as a problem for broadside fire. Testing on the old monitor
Monitor (warship)
A monitor was a class of relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s until the end of World War II, and saw their final use by the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.The monitors...
was done for fire directly over the lower turret and was shown not to be a serious problem. The superfiring turrets turned out to be highly successful in service, and all future U.S. battleships would feature them. British Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
battleships would not add this design feature until completed in 1911. The super-firing design appears to have been completed on July 26, 1905.
Fire Control
The class saw the introduction of the Hypo-scope gun sight that were rigidly mounted to the gun trunnions. They were simple and made greater use of existing light than previous types. It was this design that introduced the cage mast and central spotting to U.S. Battleships. The cage mast proving to be able to absorb hits and not collapse. BuOrd arranged a test where a cage mast was mounted on the USS San Marcos and a 12" gun fired at it 13 times without bringing down the mast. Another feature of the cage mast where that in the save of a strike the individual elements of the mast were too thin to set off an AP type shell. The idea of having a mast at all was to raise the Fire Control spotting station so that it could see farther down the horizon.Operations
During World War I, both battleships operated with pre-dreadnoughtPre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad warships of the 1870s and 1880s...
s due to their slow speed. Both battleships of the South Carolina-class were scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty
Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was an attempt to cap and limit, and "prevent 'further' costly escalation" of the naval arms race that had begun after World War I between various International powers, each of which had significant naval fleets. The treaty was...
. They would spend most of their careers in the Caribbean and East Coast waters with the occasional trip across the Atlantic and one trip to the Pacific.
- Designation: BB-26
- Laid down: 18 December 1906
- Launched: 11 July 1908
- Commissioned: 15 December 1910
- Operations:
- Victories: None
- Stricken 1924
- Fate: sold for scrap
- Designation: BB-27
- Laid down: 17 December 1906
- Launched: 26 May 1908
- Commissioned: 4 January 1910
- Operations:
- Victories: None
- Stricken 1923
- Fate: sold for scrap