|
The ''Warrior''-class cruiser was a class of four armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. After commissioning, all four sister ships were assigned to the Channel and Home Fleets until 1913 when was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet. After the start of World War I in August 1914, ''Warrior'' participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser and light cruiser and her three sisters were assigned to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet. ''Warrior'' joined the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet in late 1914. Neither squadron participated in any of the naval battles in the North Sea in 1915. was destroyed by a magazine explosion in late 1915 and only two of the ships participated in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. was not engaged during the battle, but ''Warrior'' was heavily damaged and sank the following morning. was assigned to blockade duty after the battle and sank a German commerce raider in early 1917. Both of the surviving sisters became convoy escorts in 1917 before returning home in 1918. ''Cochrane'' supported the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in mid-1918. She ran aground in the River Mersey in late 1918 and broke in two. ''Achilles'' became a training ship in late 1918 and was sold for scrap in 1921. ==Design and description== The four armoured cruisers of the 1903–1904 Naval Programme were originally intended to be repeats of the preceding ''Duke of Edinburgh'' class, but complaints from the fleet that the low placement of the secondary armament of earlier ships of this type meant that the guns could not be fought in anything other than a dead calm sea caused the issue to be reviewed by the Board of Admiralty in late 1903 and early 1904. Based on the ''Duke of Edinburgh''s, the ''Warrior''s were expected to be lighter, which allowed weight to be used for changing the secondary armament. Officers from the fleet suggested changing the armament to four guns in single-gun turrets raised to the upper deck. As the ships had only just begun construction, the change would cost a total of £250,000 for all four ships and the Admiralty approved the change on 30 March 1904.〔Friedman 2012, pp. 260–62〕 The ''Warrior''-class ships were designed to displace , but they proved to be lighter as built, even after the change in armament, displacing at normal load and (fully loaded).〔 The ships had an overall length of and a length between perpendiculars of . They had a beam of and a deep draught of forward and aft.〔Friedman 2012, p. 336〕 The ships' complement was 770 officers and enlisted men.〔 They were much steadier gun platforms than their predecessors with a metacentric height of 〔McBride, p. 379〕 So much so that ''Achilles'' and ''Natal'' were the best-shooting ships in the fleet in 1907 and 1909 respectively. Very good sea boats, according to naval historian Oscar Parkes, "they gained the reputation of being the best cruisers we (the British) ever built."〔Parkes, pp. 445–47〕 The cruisers were powered by two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, which produced a total of and gave a maximum speed of . The engines were powered by steam from 19 Yarrow boilers and six cylindrical boilers that had a working pressure of .〔McBride, p. 391〕 The ships carried a maximum of of coal〔Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 72〕 and an additional of fuel oil that was sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate. At full capacity, they could steam for at a speed of .〔Parkes, p. 445〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Warrior-class cruiser」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|