Naval history question - reloading a triple battleship turret

[AntEater]

As a break from all that Jihad and Ahmadinejad and nukes and presidents....

...a technical naval history question!

I'm currently reading a book about the pocket battleship Deutschland (renamed Lützow) by Hans Georg Prager. In this the author claims that the pocket battleship's 28 cm (11") triple turrets were the first battleship calibre triple turrets where the center gun could be reloaded at any azimuth, while previous triple turrets had to revert to the centerline position.
That seems a bit unlogical to me, as triple turrets have been around since the first dreadnoughts (Italian Dante Aligheri, Austria Viribus Unitis and Russian Gangut)and retraining them for each salvo would have been such an inconvenience that a twin turret would've attained a higher rate of fire.
So I suppose this statement is rubbish, right? How were the mechanisms of the older US Battleships around 1930?
Apart from that, the book is quite good, I can post a summary/review when I'm done.

[Raptor1]

I do believe he was referring to the elevation, AFAIK Battleship guns were needed to be lowered in order to be loaded and then brought back up to fire

[Randomizer]

Typically big guns required a specific loading angle so that the loading tray and chain rammer were aligned with the breech however if one wanted to add cost and complexity loading at any angle was a practical design feature. It was also pretty common in capitol ships.

However, loading at all bearings should depend whether the ammunition hoists rotated with the gun-house or were fixed within the barbette. Deutschland was certainly not the first major warship fitted with revolving hoists. I agree with Raptor1, the author is referring to elevation and even then I have my doubts. Individual cradles replaced common sleeves in triple turrets during WW1 (starting in USS Pennsylvania in the USN)and the big advantage of this was the ability to load each tube individually regardless of the elevation of the other barrels.

I would be surprised if this was entirely accurate.

This might be a translation issue with the usage of the term azimuth assuming the original was in German. One can often find technical terms and concepts that have been mis-translated becuase the translator lacked the technical background to translate the author's technical jargon into English.

Good Hunting

[AntEater]

Well, it was about rotating hoists, so it was really about the azimuth of the turret, not about gun elevation. But apparently the guns could be loaded regardless of elevation either.
So this was just bogus, but apparently the Reichsmarine considered the loading mechanism a state secret and no foreign visitor was ever allowed into the turret. Before WW2, the turrets actually had to be locked when such a ship visited a foreign port!
Apparently the german navy reinvented the wheel for themselves, which is quite logical.
The germans never had build any triple turret before the 1920s light cruisers and those were manually loaded guns. They had zero experience with battleship caliber triples. And maybe those triples they were technically familiar with, the austrian Viribus Unitis class, had to revert to zero azimuth to reload the middle gun. I don't suppose the RN or the USN simply let german officers into the handling rooms of their Nelson or Nevada class ships.
This prevented Deutschland from engaging republican spanish destroyers when she was bombed off Ibiza and simultanously taken under (very inaccurate) gunfire from destroyers. The man with the keys for the previously locked A turret was among the dead and nobody could find the key. The crew, a number of whom were dead or wounded anyway, had to enter A turret via the cartridge ejection chute, which took time.
But it is really remarkable what a huge mechanism a heavy shipboard artillery turret actually is. And I certainly wouldn't want to have my battle station in the shell handling room of such a turret during a battle. Just doing hard manual labor in WW1 or trying to stay out of the way of fast moving machinery while still doing hard manual labor in WW2 while trapped like a rat 13 meters below the guns, the only exit being a narrow ladder leading to a single door above the waterline. Just a lot of noise and sweat and the only indication of how good or bad the battle goes would be getting drowned or incinerated. Normally the relay people could glean some info from the telephone network, but I suppose they didn't have such in the handling rooms.

[Sailor Steve]

:damn: I have all that info in my books, which are all in storage.:damn:

I'm pretty sure that rotating loading was solved during the pre-Dreadnought era, but elevation loading took awhile longer. I think the real key lies in two words:

the first battleship calibre triple turrets where the center gun could be reloaded at any azimuth, while previous triple turrets had to revert to the centerline position.
Triple turrets required special considerations not found in twin turrets, and it specifically mentions the centerline gun, so the article's claim may well be true.

[Randomizer]

Triple turrets required special considerations not found in twin turrets, and it specifically mentions the centerline gun, so the article's claim may well be true.

I would buy this until the advent of individual mountings. As long as all of the guns were trunnioned together and elevated together in a common sleeve then this makes sense. However, the adaption of individual gun mounts, around 1916, makes it unlikely in my opinion. The advantages gained in the ability to elevate individual tubes indepentantly is lost if the centre gun requires a specific loading angle and the others do not. This sounds like propaganda to me.

Good Hunting

[AntEater]

Not really Propaganda, as this fact was considered to secret until 1945, and the book was written 1982....
More they had no idea what the others were actually doing.
Maybe the original cuniberti style triples had to revert and Germany never had access to anything more modern than those of the Russian battleships captured in 1918.