Italian Quintuple 381mm Gun Mounts Battleship Design in 1915

[donnyjie]

Perhaps some of you still remember the article in stefsep's blog, where he mentioned a weird Italian battleship design:

Ferretti’s 10/381 in quintuples battleship design

Unfortunately there is not so much known about this design. The original drawing comes from”Warships of the first line of battle” in the “Transactions of the International Enginee…

stefsap.wordpress.com

I just found out the original paper, published in 1916, and maybe written in 1915: (pp.196-223)

Transactions of the International engineering congress, 1915 .. : International Engineering Congress : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

12 v. in 13. 23 cm

archive.org

The author, Col. E. Ferretti (A misspelling of "Edgardo Ferrati"?) gave a detailed description of his "Ideal Battleship", after the summary and prospect of the navies at that time.

It's interesting at the end of the article that when Admiral Kondo (probably Motoki Kondo) questioned the munition supplying issue of the quint-mount, Ferretti simply answered "I think no serious difficulty is to be expected".

Specification:
Displacement: 32000t
Armament: 2xV 381 mm/45, 4xIII 190 mm/50, 28xI 102 mm (18x HA + 10x LA), 8x 533 mm TT
Armor: Belt - 300 mm-150 mm inclined (Resist 400 mm shells), Deck - Unknown, Underwater protections.
Propulsion: 4x Turbines (10x coal/oil boilers + 10x oil only boilers), 26-28 kt

 

[Archibald]

Would have made one heck of a glorious broadside...

 

[Phoenix_jz]

The author, Col. E. Ferretti (A misspelling of "Edgardo Ferrati"?) gave a detailed description of his "Ideal Battleship", after the summary and prospect of the navies at that time.

I don't believe they would be the same person.

The 1915 article discussing the quintuple turret is by a Colonel E. Ferretti, but by 1915 Edgardo Ferrati had already for two years been Lt. Gen. of the Naval Corps of Engineering (Genio Navale) and head of MARICOMINAV.

That is a full three ranks higher than a Colonel in the Genio Navale (the equivalents in regular navy ranks would be Captain vs Vice Admiral).

I've not found much on the history of Col. Ferretti, which makes it hard to say what became of him, but, for the reasons I just gave I'm pretty sure it's just coincidence that their initials are both E.F. and that they were both in the Genio Navale.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Perhaps some of you still remember the article in stefsep's blog, where he mentioned a weird Italian battleship design:

Ferretti’s 10/381 in quintuples battleship design

Unfortunately there is not so much known about this design. The original drawing comes from”Warships of the first line of battle” in the “Transactions of the International Enginee…

stefsap.wordpress.com

I just found out the original paper, published in 1916, and maybe written in 1915: (pp.196-223)

Transactions of the International engineering congress, 1915 .. : International Engineering Congress : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

12 v. in 13. 23 cm

archive.org

The author, Col. E. Ferretti (A misspelling of "Edgardo Ferrati"?) gave a detailed description of his "Ideal Battleship", after the summary and prospect of the navies at that time.

It's interesting at the end of the article that when Admiral Kondo (probably Motoki Kondo) questioned the munition supplying issue of the quint-mount, Ferretti simply answered "I think no serious difficulty is to be expected".
[...]

View attachment 705306

Stacking a two gun setup on top of a three-gun setup, and not expecting any serious difficulties feeding the guns?!?

What's he smoking, and is it still available?

 

[Tzoli]

It would be the same as triple mount like the Kirovs and Northamptons where the guns are very close to each other (on the same cradle). Now imagine a 5 gun setup of the same layout just move the 2nd and 4th barrels to an elevated position. The ammo hoists of these two guns would be located between the the 3 others.

 

[donnyjie]

I don't believe they would be the same person.

The 1915 article discussing the quintuple turret is by a Colonel E. Ferretti, but by 1915 Edgardo Ferrati had already for two years been Lt. Gen. of the Naval Corps of Engineering (Genio Navale) and head of MARICOMINAV.

That is a full three ranks higher than a Colonel in the Genio Navale (the equivalents in regular navy ranks would be Captain vs Vice Admiral).

I've not found much on the history of Col. Ferretti, which makes it hard to say what became of him, but, for the reasons I just gave I'm pretty sure it's just coincidence that their initials are both E.F. and that they were both in the Genio Navale.

General Ferrati’s 1915 battleship designs “F” and “F'”

General (naval engineers) Ferrati, based at La Spezia arsenal, was the designer of the first fast battleship class, the four RN Caracciolo. At the USMM (Italian Navy Historic Office) are stored a…

stefsap.wordpress.com

It's weird that the sketch style and the details of the machinery and munition cabin profiles resemble Ferrati's drawings so much! But the rank difference is the key point as you said...

 

[Phoenix_jz]

General Ferrati’s 1915 battleship designs “F” and “F'”

General (naval engineers) Ferrati, based at La Spezia arsenal, was the designer of the first fast battleship class, the four RN Caracciolo. At the USMM (Italian Navy Historic Office) are stored a…

stefsap.wordpress.com

It's weird that the sketch style and the details of the machinery and munition cabin profiles resemble Ferrati's drawings so much! But the rank difference is the key point as you said...

I think that's more reflective of the practices of the period, at least within the Genio Navale, for such skteches.

Personally, I actually find the design to be quite different to most of Ferrati's prior work in the 'A' through 'G' 15" series.

Quite notably, Ferrati strongly preferred to dispose his machinery spaces in such a way that two of the turbine groups were at the rear of the citadel, and two either more amidships or closer to the front of the citadel. Ex, on the early designs in that series, the outboard turbine groups are positioned at the rear of the machinery spaces, while the turbine groups for the inboard shafts are positioned much further forwards - amidships in fact - and ensuring a large degree of separation in the event of a torpedo hit.

In the later quadruple ship series, Design D uses the same arrangement, while Design D bis adopts a more checkerboard pattern (port outboard and starboard inboard positioned forward, port inboard, starboard outboard, positioned aft), and Design D' is a 'reversed' version of the prior checkerboard. The 'F' and 'G' series all use variations of this checkerboard scheme.

It is also worth noting that all of Ferrati's designs have the torpedo tubes positioned fore and aft of the 'citadel' of the ship, beyond the most heavily armored zones.

In contrast, Ferretti's design opts to place the torpedo tubes between the magazines for the main battery turrets and the machinery spaces. He also arranges the turbine groups of his ship in the a single line across at the aft end of the citadel - directly ahead of the torpedo flats, even(!) - in order to trunk all the boiler uptakes into a single funnel.

These are fairly radical differences from what had previously been a consistent and logical progression of arrangements in his earlier triples to twins to quads design series of 15" ships, so for me they feel more like something that further separates the two figures than binds them together.

 

[Torsionbar]

I think that's more reflective of the practices of the period, at least within the Genio Navale, for such skteches.

Personally, I actually find the design to be quite different to most of Ferrati's prior work in the 'A' through 'G' 15" series.

Quite notably, Ferrati strongly preferred to dispose his machinery spaces in such a way that two of the turbine groups were at the rear of the citadel, and two either more amidships or closer to the front of the citadel. Ex, on the early designs in that series, the outboard turbine groups are positioned at the rear of the machinery spaces, while the turbine groups for the inboard shafts are positioned much further forwards - amidships in fact - and ensuring a large degree of separation in the event of a torpedo hit.

In the later quadruple ship series, Design D uses the same arrangement, while Design D bis adopts a more checkerboard pattern (port outboard and starboard inboard positioned forward, port inboard, starboard outboard, positioned aft), and Design D' is a 'reversed' version of the prior checkerboard. The 'F' and 'G' series all use variations of this checkerboard scheme.

It is also worth noting that all of Ferrati's designs have the torpedo tubes positioned fore and aft of the 'citadel' of the ship, beyond the most heavily armored zones.

In contrast, Ferretti's design opts to place the torpedo tubes between the magazines for the main battery turrets and the machinery spaces. He also arranges the turbine groups of his ship in the a single line across at the aft end of the citadel - directly ahead of the torpedo flats, even(!) - in order to trunk all the boiler uptakes into a single funnel.

These are fairly radical differences from what had previously been a consistent and logical progression of arrangements in his earlier triples to twins to quads design series of 15" ships, so for me they feel more like something that further separates the two figures than binds them together.

The arrangement will evolve, but the designer's drawing habits will not change much

 

[Scott Kenny]

It would be the same as triple mount like the Kirovs and Northamptons where the guns are very close to each other (on the same cradle). Now imagine a 5 gun setup of the same layout just move the 2nd and 4th barrels to an elevated position. The ammo hoists of these two guns would be located between the the 3 others.

Yes, I get that. I'm wondering how the ammo hoists stay out of the recoil paths of the lower guns.

 

[Tzoli]

Yes, I get that. I'm wondering how the ammo hoists stay out of the recoil paths of the lower guns.

This drawing might help, a Vickers patent of an elevated quad turret presumably for 10" guns from 1900/1901:

Vickers Quad Turret Design.pdf

drive.google.com

I've made a drawing using the 12"/45 Mark X cannons and scaled the original drawings accordingly and draw the turret itself.
Here it is (Left one is the standard Dreadnought type twin turret)

The turret shape reminiscent of the 10" ones used on the Swiftsure rather the 12" used on King Edward VII or Dreadnought.
Also I used a barbette diameter of roughly 9,25meters for the twin turret and with this scale the elevated quad's barbette diameter became roughly 11,75m!

Now if I use the same method for the 10"/45 Mark VI turret the new quad one resembles it closely though it became shorter:

For the twin turret I use the barbette diameter of roughly 7,75meters and thus the quad one's became 8,15meters!

 

[Scott Kenny]

This drawing might help, a Vickers patent of an elevated quad turret presumably for 10" guns from 1900/1901:

Vickers Quad Turret Design.pdf

drive.google.com

That did help somewhat, the problem is that design has a single hoist stack in the center of all 4 guns.

A 5 gun turret makes a single hoist like that impossible, the middle gun is in the way.

Maybe it's running 5 individual hoists, lower guns outboard and upper guns working between the lower guns?

 

[Tzoli]

Indeed that would be the case or 3 hoists, 2 running to the elevated guns