Battleship propulsion

Turbines, diesels, turbo-electric drive. What do you think is the best overall battleship (or any ship) propulsion method?

 

Turbines give you lots of power. Diesels give you lots of range. TE gives you rapid reversal of power, exceptional subdivision, and lots of weight. Which of these is best suited to the mission you have in mind?

 

Doesn't TE give you smaller fuel consumption at all speeds except flank speed (comparing to direct drive or geared turbines)?

 

I don't know. Maybe Friedman discusses it in his US Battleship book.

 

This is an interesting article about TE

http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-038.htm

 

What's subdivision?

 

Subdivision refers to the number of separate compartments. If a hull has one large compartment--your basic canoe, for example--a single hole can flood the entire space. If you have lots and lots of compartments in the hull, a single hole may be able to flood only a very small portion of the hull. Of course, a single hole can involve more than one compartment--hm, Titanic comes to mind. And if the hole involves only one compartment, that's no guarantee the water won't leak into other compartments; "progressive flooding" killed a whole lot of ships.

 

Indeed. Subdivision, like anything else, has to be properly designed and implemented to be effective. In the case of TITANIC, the fact that her watertight doors only went up as far as E Deck proved fatal. Had they been installed in all of the liner's decks, she might have survived, or at least stayed afloat long enough for the CARPATHIA to reach her and rescue the passengers before she went down.

 

I hope they did that with the Britannic. If not, it's a good thing Brittanic sank with much less loss of life than Titanic. So turbo-electric drive gives a ship lots of hull compartments.

 

They took the bulkheads all the way up to the top on Brittanica, did help here much though. When she was mined/torpedoed all there portholes were open, as the ship listed, the water simply went round the bulkheads.

 

How can water go around the bulkheads?

 

If bulkheads are only installed on the lower decks of the ship, then the water can travel through the upper decks, and thus get in from the top.

 

But the Britannic had bulkheads on all decks!

 

True, but she had all of her portholes open; the crew was airing the ship out in preparation for receiving another load of wounded. Also, it seems that not all of her watertight doors closed after the explosion, for some reason.

 

Okay. Does anyone have an estimate it what would have happened if the Titanic was wearing battleship armor when hit the iceberg?

(kinda' off topic, but I'm curious)

 

In general, battleships do not carry armor to counter damage below the waterline. If the damage is below the belt, armor is basically irrelevant. The difference would be in the upper boundary that a protective deck imposes on flooding.

 

What if armour was carried below the waterline?

 

Then the chances of survival would have been increased, possibly to the point of the Titannic totally smashing the iceberg, and leading to the year 1997 NOT including the movie Titanic, to the benefit of mankind.

 

I think the consensus is that Titantics problem was that the rivetted seams failed, not that there was a gash in the skin. With the seams opened, the thickness of the metal becomes irrelevant.

 

A ship smashing off a part of an iceberg. Now that's payback for the Titanic.