[WIP] Wolves of the Kaiser:1914-1918 Mod

[iambecomelife]

More details added...

[iambecomelife]

Additional details, plus a skin. Propellers, shafts, the secondary armament, and anti-torpedo cranes have not been added.

[Sailor Steve]

I'd be lion if I said that wasn't pretty.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I'd be lion if I said that wasn't pretty.

Thanks! The convenient thing is, if you just add a sternwalk & a round forward funnel this model can serve as "HMS Queen Mary" - "Lion" & "Princess Royal's" unfortunate half sister.

It's a little ironic that "Queen Mary" had the best armor of the three, but she was the only one to suffer a magazine explosion. Poor Mary!

[CCIP]

Fantastic BCs!

I can't help but imagine that chill up my spine that I'll get when out on patrol in the North Sea, looking out my periscope, and seeing Beatty's beasts charging out of the mist. Brr!

It's great to see the level of detail of course. Seems like you got most of the BCs covered by now except the Tiger?

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Fantastic BCs!

I can't help but imagine that chill up my spine that I'll get when out on patrol in the North Sea, looking out my periscope, and seeing Beatty's beasts charging out of the mist. Brr!

It's great to see the level of detail of course. Seems like you got most of the BCs covered by now except the Tiger?

I still need to do "Indefatigable" and her sisters.

Hope to knock out a few more of the modern capital ships - then some of the older pre-dreadnoughts like "Triumph" and "Majestic".

[Hitman]

You could also ask the guys who did the models showcased at Tony Lovell's web for permission to use them: http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/

Seeadler and Manel Ortega from these forums did some of them

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Hitman

You could also ask the guys who did the models showcased at Tony Lovell's web for permission to use them: http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/

Seeadler and Manel Ortega from these forums did some of them

Thanks for the link, although I will probably just keep using them as references. Their model of the "Dreadnought" is the best I've ever seen.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Continued nice work here

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

It's a little ironic that "Queen Mary" had the best armor of the three, but she was the only one to suffer a magazine explosion. Poor Mary!

I forgot about it when I first read this, but better late than never. When compiling my WW1 tabletop game one of my prime sources was John Campbell's Jutland: An Analysis Of The Fighting. He ignores the usual Beatty-Jellicoe debates and pretty much all of the command decisions on both sides, sticking strictly to the battle itself. He gives a detailed account of the fleet movements in small sections, then describes who fired at whom, and ends with a description of where each shell hit each ship and what damage was done.

He starts with a pretty good account of Dogger Bank, and the fact that the British officers noticed that the Germans were firing faster than they were. They attributed this to the anti-flash doors covering the magazine hoists. The solution was to manually lock the doors open. All three battlecruisers which exploded at Jutland were observed to take turret hits moments before the blasts that destroyed them.

[keltos01]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

He starts with a pretty good account of Dogger Bank, and the fact that the British officers noticed that the Germans were firing faster than they were.

They attributed this to the anti-flash doors covering the magazine hoists. The solution was to manually lock the doors open. All three battlecruisers which exploded at Jutland were observed to take turret hits moments before the blasts that destroyed them.

how utterly stupid !

keltos

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by keltos01

how utterly stupid !

In hindsight, yes. I'm sure at the time they were more concerned with getting the maximum rate of fire. After Jutland they reversed the practice, and every capital ship was fitted with extra armor on the turret tops and over the magazines. The former may have helped, but the latter did nothing to fix the problem, assuming that fires in the turrets did indeed find the path down the internal tunnel to the magazines.

On the other hand the Germans didn't have flash doors at all until Dogger Bank. SMS Seydlitz was hit by fire from HMS Lion which knocked out both rear turrets. An immediate explosion was prevented by the fact that, unlike the British who kept their cordite powder in bags, the Germans used metal casings even for their largest shells. A fire might still have spread to the magazines if not for the quick action of Obermaschinist Wilhelm Heidkamp, who opened the valves to flood the magazines, suffering severe injuries from the red-hot valves. The Kriegsmarine destroyer Z21 was named for him. By the time of Jutland all German heavy ships had anti-flash doors on the magazine hoists.

Information from German Destroyers of World War Two, by A.J. Whitley.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by keltos01

how utterly stupid !

keltos

Yes; that never made much sense to me. The British should have been aware of the problem b/c the Armored Cruiser "HMS Kent" very nearly exploded at the Falklands Battle in 1914 due to a flash-fire in the magazines. Unfortunately, in all the excitement over sinking "Scharnhorst" & "Gneisenau", little attention was paid. This had disastrous consequences at Jutland 1.5 years later.

Also interesting is that British explosives were dangerously unstable compared to other countries and were not stored in metal cylinders, as was the practice in France & Germany. The Brits used silk bags as containers - these tended to rip and leak powder all throughout the turrets & magazines.

At Gallipoli one of the French battleships was hit in the magazines but only suffered a fire-not a huge blast, as a British ship probably would have. The propellant defect remained unfixed during WWII, and probably sank the "HMS Hood" in 1941.

[Chrisi078]

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Chrisi078

Thank you very much! I'd never seen that clip; that is some priceless footage. I'd never seen any movies with WWI-era battlecruisers before. It will make a good menu movie for the game.