Re: [Paddlewise] QCC and length...

At 05:20 PM 7/27/99 -0700, M. Wagenbach wrote:
>Wes wrote:
>All the negative rake on the turn of the last century battleships was
>because the bows were actually rams. The designers in those days weren't
>all that confident about gunfire against armor, and designed the potential
>for a ramming battle into the ships.
>
>Me:
>Do you know if this was ever tested???  It's hard to imagine riveted 
>construction holding tight after being used to ram.  Hope they included some
>monster pumps in the design!
>

There was a battle in the Adriatic Sea in about 1878 -- the name escapes me
at the moment -- in which Austria was involved, and I'm not too sure about
the opponents. Anyway, it was the only battle of the metal warship era in
which ramming was the basic tactic. I can't think off the top of my head of
any case in which turn of the century era capital ships were involved in a
ramming situation, although there are several instances of destroyer
ramming submarine as late as WWII.

The thing is that the late 1800s were a time of great change in naval
capital ship design. There were a lot of ideas out there, a lot of new
technology that navies were not necessarily on top of, and a lot of ideas
that had to be proven or disproven. By the turn of the century, ramming was
pretty well a dropped idea, but it took a while for the appearance to
disappear from warship design.

-- Wes

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