Position of main armament
The effectiveness of the guns depended in part on the layout of the turrets. Dreadnought, and the British ships which immediately followed her, carried five turrets: one forward and two aft on the centerline of the ship, and two in the ‘wings’ next to the superstructure. This allowed three turrets to fire ahead and four on the broadside. The Nassau and Helgoland classes of German dreadnoughts adopted a ‘hexagonal’ layout, with one turret each fore and aft and four wing turrets; this meant more guns were mounted in total, but the same number could fire ahead or broadside as with Dreadnought.[41]
Dreadnought designs experimented with different layouts. The British Neptune class staggered the wing turrets, so all ten guns could fire on the broadside, a feature also used by the German Kaiser class. This, however, risked blast damage to parts of the ship over which the guns fired, and put great stress on the ship’s frame.[42]
If all turrets were on the centerline of the vessel, then the stresses on the ship’s frame were relatively low. This layout also meant that the entire main battery could fire on the broadside, though fewer could fire end-on. It also meant the hull would be longer, which posed some challenges for the designers; a longer ship needed to devote more weight to armor to get equivalent protection, and the magazines which served each turret interfered with the distribution of boilers and engines.[43] For these reasons, HMS Agincourt, which carried a record fourteen 12-inch guns in seven centerline turrets, was not considered a success.[44]
A superfiring layout was eventually adopted as standard. This involved raising one or two turrets so they could fire over a turret immediately forward or astern of them. The U.S. Navy adopted this feature with their first dreadnoughts in 1906, but others were slower to do so. As with other layouts there were drawbacks. Initially, there were concerns about the impact of the blast of the raised guns on the lower turret. Raised turrets also raised the center of gravity of the ship, and might reduce the stability of the ship. Nevertheless, this layout made the best of the firepower available from a fixed number of guns, and was eventually adopted generally.[42] The U.S. Navy used superfiring on the South Carolina class, and the layout was adopted in the Royal Navy with the Orion class of 1910. By World War II, superfiring was entirely standard.
Initially, all dreadnoughts had two guns to a turret. However, one solution to the problem of turret layout was to put three or even four guns in each turret. Fewer turrets meant the ship could be shorter, or could devote more space to machinery. On the other hand, it meant that in the event of an enemy shell destroying one turret, a higher proportion of the main armament would be out of action. The risk of the blast waves from each gun barrel interfering with others in the same turret also reduced the rate of fire from the guns somewhat. The first nation to adopt the triple turret was Italy, in the Dante Alighieri, soon followed by Russia with the Gangut class,[45] the Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff class, and the U.S. Nevada class. British Royal Navy battleships did not adopt triple turrets until after the First World War, with the Nelson class. Several later designs used quadruple turrets, including the British King George V class and French Richelieu class.
