97% of teenagers would cry if they saw Justin Bieber on top of a tower about to jump. If your the 3% who is sitting there with popcorn screaming "DO A BACKFLIP", copy and paste this as your signature.
Yep, empty hulls. I've usually put decks into conning towers/superstructure, especially where a door leads in from outside. But I haven't done anything more than that.
Interior plans are a lot more difficult to come by than exterior photos and line drawings, and would take longer to build. Plus, the outside is the fun bit!
New update - the Warrior class armoured cruiser. This was a very quick build, because they were almost identical to the Duke of Edinburgh class. The only major change was the secondary armament. In the Duke of Edinburghs it was mounted in embrasures in the hull which were inoperable in rough seas. The Warriors had their secondary armament changed to four 7.5" guns in single turrets at main deck level amidships.
With that, I've finished the Royal Navy armoured cruisers that were at the battle. Though having said that, I might potentially want to tweak my Minotaur class to better match with my newer ships, since it's one of the first ship classes that I built - something like a year before I even thought of doing this project.
Warrior was part of the 1st Cruiser Squadron. Along with HMS Defence, she closed in on the stricken German cruiser SMS Wiesbaden, but was then spotted and fired upon by several German battleships at short range. Defence blew up and Warrior was heavily damaged, suffering from widespread fires and flooding. She was saved when the battleships switched their fire to the battleship HMS Warspite, which was suffering from a damaged rudder and was slowly circling within range of the German ships. Despite the damage to Warrior, her engines worked and she was able to retreat. She was taken in tow by the seaplane tender HMS Engadine, but later the flooding progressed too far for her to make it back to port. The crew was taken off and Warrior sank.
Cochrane was part of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, and was not engaged during the battle. After Jutland she spent time in the West Indies as well as being part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. She ran aground in the Mersey estuary just days after the Armistice was signed in November 1918, eventually breaking in two.
Two new builds, the Faulknor class flotilla leaders and the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine.
The Faulknor class were originally designed for Chile as a class of large destroyers named the Almirante Lynch class. Two were delivered to Chile before the war, but the last four were bought by the Royal Navy at the outset of hostilities. Their armament arrangement was interesting and unusual – two guns side by side on the forecastle, with one either side of the superstructure for four on the forecastle in all, and two side by side aft.
Of the four RN ships HMS Botha did not sail for Jutland, but the other three all took part. Faulknor survived the battle, but the other two sisters had a tougher time. Tipperary was sunk during the night fighting by secondary gunfire from SMS Westfalen, which also fired on Broke. Broke was also fired on by other German ships including SMS Rostock and was seriously damaged. The helmsman was killed at the wheel, and as he died his body turned the wheel and rammed the ship into the destroyer Sparrowhawk. Both crews at this point thought their own ship was the one about to sink and orders were given for Broke’s crew to evacuate to Sparrowhawk and vice-versa. Eventually the ships separated and Broke was able to steam away – with about 30 of Sparrowhawk’s crew on board. She managed to limp back to port.
After the war, the three remaining ships were returned to Chile.
HMS Engadine was one of the forerunners of the aircraft carrier. Seaplane carriers were starting to appear in the 1910s. They were typically fairly small ships with an obvious hangar built on the back, with cranes to deploy and recover seaplanes. They would carry a handful of seaplanes and lift them onto the water. The plane would take off from the water, scout the enemy position and then try to land on the sea close to the carrier, which would then crane it back on board.
Engadine was a cross-channel packet ship that was acquired by the Royal Navy and converted into a seaplane carrier at the outbreak of the war. At first her hangars were very much temporary, but by Jutland she’d had a more permanent hangar constructed. At Jutland she carried two Short Type 184 and two Sopwith Baby floatplanes and was attached to the Battlecruiser Fleet. Engadine was actually positioned at the front of the fleet because she needed clear, calm water to launch her planes from, rather than water churned by the wakes of the fleet. It also meant that by the time the planes had launched she could fall in with the main body of the fleet rather than being left behind. One of the Short Type 184s performed the first ever reconnaissance of an enemy fleet in action by a heavier than air plane.
Later, Engadine came to the aid of the crippled cruiser HMS Warrior, attempting to take her under tow. When it was clear that Warrior would sink, Engadine took on her crew. During the transfer, one of Warrior’s guns hit Engadine’s hull and punctured it, though the damage was soon patched. Since Engadine was such a small ship, the sudden influx of people had to be quickly distributed around the ship to prevent their weight causing her to capsize.
After the war she returned to civilian service and actually ended up in the Philippines in the 1930s, flying a US flag under the name SS Corregidor. In December 1941 shortly after Pearl Harbor, Corregidor attempted to leave Manila with over 1000 people on board, trying to flee the advancing Japanese. She accidentally sailed into the minefield in Manila Bay and was sunk with huge loss of life.
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With those builds, I've reached a new landmark: 200/249 ships! As I count it, I've got 11 distinct builds left to do, though a couple of those have subclasses that will probably require some alteration. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to glow...
Next up is the German Helgoland class battleship. I'm quite fond of them, they've got a fairly striking and unusual look. A hexagonal turret layout like the Nassau class, and three narrow, closely spaced funnels. Quite distinctive.
I've just finished the Helgoland class battleships. They had a really distinctive look, and I think quite pretty. Hexagonal turret layout and three close-spaced narrow funnels.
They served in the middle of the line at Jutland, so they weren't the most heavily engaged of the German battleships. Helgoland took a 15" shell which tore a hole in the hull and Oldenburg took a hit on a searchlight above the bridge, the shrapnel killing several officers and wounding the captain. She sailed out of control for a few moments, threatening to ram friendly ships, before the captain managed to get to the wheel. In return they sank a couple of destroyers. Thüringen took the lead in destroying the armoured cruiser Black Prince, which I built a couple of weeks ago. She illuminated the cruiser with searchlights and poured heavy fire into her at short range.
The destruction of Black Prince is partly why I decided to name my screenshot after Thüringen, but also because of her role in the Wilhelmshaven and Kiel mutinies in 1918. When Germany was trying to negotiate the armistice, the naval command planned a last ditch attack on the Royal Navy, which has been called a “Death Ride”, intending to improve Germany’s bargaining position by inflicting as much damage as possible. The sailors of the fleet mutinied, and the plan was called off. Thüringen was notable for being the first ship where sailors openly mutinied, and Helgoland was one of the next.
Another update, and quite a different one this time. I've spent far too long on Minecraft today, working on the final map where I'm going to place all of these ships. I've got a fair number of them docked already, and I've built the memorial building and garden that are going to be the centrepiece of the map.
There's a forest of stone columns rising from the water, with arches between them supporting a big stone platform. There's a wall around the outside that the player can walk around, and in the middle there's a large memorial building topped off with a dome. I've gone very much with classical/baroque inspiration for the architecture.
Surrounding the central building is a large garden, planted with 8645 poppies; one for every man who was killed in the battle. And yes, I have counted - with rather a lot of assistance from World Edit!
Screenshots -
That last one shows the edge of the Grand Fleet - the King George V class battleships of the 2nd Battle Squadron, 1st Division. There's a wooden jetty heading off in each direction. One of the fleets is docked at each compass point - the RN Grand Fleet to the north, the RN Battlecruiser Fleet to the west. the KM Scouting Force to the South and the KM High Seas Fleet to the east. The closest I could get to the directions they came from when they sailed to the battle. I've still got several to place and a fair few ships to build, but I'm definitely getting towards the end of the project. Can I do it in time for the 99th anniversary of the battle? I hope so, but I'm honestly not sure. A few more days like this and I'll probably manage it!
New update time, some German light forces. The Graudenz class cruiser SMS Regensburg served as a torpedo boat leader in the Scouting Force. She had quite an active battle with this role, right from the beginning during the Run to the South, to the fighting in the night and helping the ships that had recovered Lützow's crew the following morning. More detail in the first post.
I've also finished off the German torpedo boats with two classes of Großes Torpedoboot. There was just one of the 1906 variant present at the battle - V189 - but eighteen of the 1911 variant. I picked V4 for my screenshot because she was the only one lost, losing her bows to a mysterious explosion during the night. Since there was no visible enemy activity nearby, it was assumed she had struck a mine or been torpedoed by a submarine.
I don't know why, but something about the Regensburg just really makes me happy
On a side note, I was wondering where you based the ships off of. Is there a database that has the plans of the ships present during Jutland or are you just searching for each class individually?
I don't know why, but something about the Regensburg just really makes me happy
On a side note, I was wondering where you based the ships off of. Is there a database that has the plans of the ships present during Jutland or are you just searching for each class individually?
She's quite a cute little cruiser!
I'm generally looking each class up separately. I've got my full lists of all the ships I need to do, and I mostly get their major statistics from wikipedia - dimensions, armament etc. Then I search around for line drawings and photos to help me with the build. I especially like good line drawings with side-on and top-down elevations, because I can rescale them to 1 pixel per metre and get a handy builidng guide. I could probably do more research and make them a little more accurately, but then the project would take even longer than it already is. I've enjoyed it, but I don't want to be working on it indefinitely. I can see the end approaching, and I'm looking forward to having a finished map.
I'm really pressing hard at the moment. For one thing, with all the test cricket and snooker on at the moment, I can't really concentrate on my writing projects. So I'm building ships instead, to the soothing sounds of Nasser Hussain and Dennis Taylor...
On that note, more battleships! The Royal Navy's HMS Neptune and the Colossus class (HMS Colossus and HMS Hercules), which were a slight modification of the Neptune design - more heavily armoured and a changed mast layout to save some topweight. The three are not far from being one class and were the first RN battleships to deviate from the HMS Dreadnought layout, staggering the wing turrets to allow them to fire cross-deck, and the first RN battleships to use superfiring turrets, in this case only to the stern. The armament layout suffered a lot from the concussive blast of the guns. When the wing turrets fired cross-deck, they ripped up decking with the blast, and if the superfiring aft turret fired over the top of the lower one, the blast would enter the lower turret through the sighting hoods and injure the lower turret crew. They were the last 12" gunned RN dreadnoughts, and were followed by the Orion class, the first of the 13.5" gunned "super-dreadnoughts".
Some interesting facts about them, Dudley Pound was captain of Colossus at Jutland. He later rose through the ranks and was First Sea Lord during the early years of WWII. He's just one example of officers who later held high rank in WWII who were present in more junior roles. Erich Raeder was chief of staff to Vice Admiral Hipper on board Lützow, and later went on to become Großadmiral in the Nazi Kriegsmarine. John Tovey was a Lieutenant Commander captaining the destroyer HMS Onslow, and later became an important admiral in WWII. Those are probably the most notable.
HMS Hercules is an interesting ship, sister ship to HMS Colossus. She gained a reputation as a ship for troublemakers, and many of the most problematic sailors would be assigned to her. She had a boxing ring installed, and breaches of discipline would be settled there, especially ones which had involved arguments or fights.
In addition to building those, I've been doing a bit of rework on some of my older ships. I realised once I'd got them all lined up nicely in my map that a lot of my earlier builds had pretty poor bow shapes - they were too fat at the waterline. So I've been revisiting those and reshaping the hull around the bow to make them a bit sleeker through the water. So far I've remodelled the bows on the Orions, KGVs, Iron Dukes, Erin, Canada and the Revenges. I think I'd declared that I was done with refitting Iron Duke after refit number 4, but there's number 5!
227/249 ships now. Closing in on the end. The Royal Navy's C class light cruisers up next.
In addition to building those, I've been doing a bit of rework on some of my older ships. I realised once I'd got them all lined up nicely in my map that a lot of my earlier builds had pretty poor bow shapes - they were too fat at the waterline. So I've been revisiting those and reshaping the hull around the bow to make them a bit sleeker through the water. So far I've remodelled the bows on the Orions, KGVs, Iron Dukes, Erin, Canada and the Revenges. I think I'd declared that I was done with refitting Iron Duke after refit number 4, but there's number 5!
227/249 ships now. Closing in on the end. The Royal Navy's C class light cruisers up next.
Can't wait to see the finished project! And of course, the Queen Elizabeths
I've done a render and some vintage photo style editing today - here's the 6th Division, 1st Battle Squadron, Grand Fleet. HMS Marlborough in the lead, followed by HMS Revenge, HMS Hercules and HMS Agincourt.
I've also got some more builds. The Royal Navy's C class light cruisers and Talisman class destroyers. The C class were the newest light cruisers in the RN at the time, though only the first three subclasses had been completed by the middle of 1916. They were spread across the fleet; several of them formed the 4th Light Cruiser squadron of the Grand Fleet, while others served with the Battlecruiser Fleet and a couple acted as Destroyer Flotilla flagships. All of the ships survived the battle, with two of them taking notable damage.
The most notable of them has to be HMS Caroline, because she's the only ship that fought at Jutland that survives to the present day. That was more down to luck than intent; after WWI she was soon moored in Belfast Harbour as a training and accomodation ship for the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. She was briefly used as the Navy's headquarters in Belfast in WWII before being returned to the Voluneteer Reserve. They continued to use her until she was decommissioned in 2011 and is currently being preserved and restored to her WWI condition.
The Talisman class was a small group of destroyers built for the Ottomans and taken over by the Royal Navy at the outbreak of war. They were a fairly large design that influenced the later V and W class destroyers built in the late war. Two were at Jutland, of which HMS Turbulent was sunk during the night action.
Looking great. Though I must ask this that your placing in vintage photo seemed a bit odd for me. I don't think that going in clear line is strategic on battle point of view. Though I did not serve in the navy, so not any sort of expert either.
Just smallish details ^^ Looks great, cant wait to see more.
I've placed them closer together than they ought to be, but the line of battle was actually the main battle strategy at the time.
When the fleets were maneuvering before the battle they would be arranged in several parallel columns. Usually each Division or Squadron would form a column and the other Divisions/Squadrons would be alongside them. This formation allowed signals to be passed relatively quickly from one ship to the next and allowed turns to be carried out fairly quickly. (Generally a Division was made up of four battleships and a Squadron was two Divisions).
The lighter scouting forces were tasked with relaying important information back to the fleet about the location and heading of the enemy. The commander-in-chief could then decide on how best to deploy for battle. The line of battle tactics were much the same as they were in the age of sail (only at much longer ranges) - both fleets would arrange themselves in one long line and sail parallel to each other, shooting at their counterpart in the enemy line. The line came back into fashion around the start of the 20th century because the best angle for a ship to fire most of its guns was on the broadside, and it meant that with the careful formations they weren't in danger of hitting friendly ships.
When Jutland started and Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet engaged Hipper's Scouting Force, both sides formed lines of battle about 14,000 yards apart and heading in the same direction. The lead ships (Lion and Lützow) engaged each other, the second ships (Princess Royal and Derfflinger) engaged each other and so on down the line.
When the High Seas Fleet was unknowingly led to Admiral Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, the Grand Fleet managed to pull off another favoured tactic from the age of sail - "Crossing the T". The High Seas Fleet were sailing directly at the British line, which meant that the British ships could all fire on the broadside at the approaching Germans, and the German ships were taken by surprise and could only fire back with their forward guns. The leading German ships were starting to take a lot of hits before Scheer pulled off a very effective emergency manouevre - the "Gefechtskehrtwendung" (Battle About Turn), where every ship in the German line turned 180 degrees at the same time, reversing the direction of the line and allowing them to sail away. The High Seas Fleet had practiced the about turn just in case, and it definitely proved a good idea!
And another new build, the last of the light cruisers - the German Pillau class. Two ships, Pillau and Elbing, they were originally ordered by the Russians from Germany but were taken over by the Germans when the war started while they were still under construction.
They were both a part of the II Scouting Group at Jutland, along with the Wiesbaden class ships. Elbing was the first German cruiser to engage the enemy. She fired at long range at the British cruisers Galatea and Phaeton where she scored the first hit of the battle; a long range hit on Galatea that failed to explode. Shortly afterwards the two ships drove off a seaplane from the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine, the first case of heavier-than-air aircraft scouting a naval force.
The cruisers engaged the British cruiser Chester and scored several hits before being driven off by the Invincible class ships of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron. Pillau took a 12” shell that exploded below her chart house and briefly knocked out the ship’s coal-fired boilers, but she was able to steam on her oil-fired boilers. Elbing suffered engine trouble of her own due to leaks in her boiler condensers, forcing her to fall back towards the IV Scouting Group. While there, she engaged the British cruiser Castor, which was soon hit seven times and set on fire. The fight was soon joined by the British 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron, which landed a hit on Elbing destroying her wireless transmitting station.
After midnight, Elbing was steaming alongside the Nassau class battleships when the British destroyers launched a torpedo attack. Elbing turned to avoid the torpedoes, and tried to sail in between the battleships Nassau and Posen. Posen’s crew wasn’t aware of Elbing’s turn until it was too late and the battleship accidentally rammed the cruiser. Elbing took on water which knocked out her engines and electrical power, leaving her immobile. Most of the crew were taken off by torpedo boats and those that remained rigged an improvised sail to try to reach home, but were forced to scuttle the ship when more British destroyers were spotted in the area.
Pillau slowly made her way back to port as a guide and escort to the crippled battlecruiser Seydlitz, which was struggling to make it home. She survived the war, and was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1920, renamed Bari. She served in the Italian navy into WWII, before being sunk in 1943 by American bombers.
I'm now down to the four builds that I saved till last:
Germany's battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz, the culmination of the first generation of German battlecruisers and a development of the Moltke design, which took enough damage that she only barely managed to limp back to port.
The König-class battleships, which were the newest and most powerful battleships in the Hochseeflotte and took the lead of the German column. Since they were in the lead, they took the most damage of any of the German battleships.
The Queen Elizabeth class battleships, which were quite probably the most powerful battleships in the world at the time and the first that could properly be called "fast battleships". They formed the Royal Navy's 5th Battle Squadron and were attached to Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet.
The British battlecruiser HMS Tiger, which I've saved for last purely because I think she's a beautiful ship and a really good ship to end on. A development of the Lion class design, incorporating some of the best features of the Kongō class which had been designed for Japan by a British shipyard. Like the other battlecruisers, she was in the thick of the action.
When Jutland started and Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet engaged Hipper's Scouting Force, both sides formed lines of battle about 14,000 yards apart and heading in the same direction. The lead ships (Lion and Lützow) engaged each other, the second ships (Princess Royal and Derfflinger) engaged each other and so on down the line.
Well that sounds stupid. Is there a reason why the two lines didn't focus fire? It seems that using that strategy every ship would be proportionately damaged but none being destroyed quickly.
Do you have plans to build more ships after you finish?
I think I'll almost certainly take a break from minecraft for a while at least. But even after all of these, I still quite fancy building more. I'm tempted to do some more pre-dreadnoughts, ships that were commissioned into these two navies between 1916-1918, or ships from other nations.
Well that sounds stupid. Is there a reason why the two lines didn't focus fire? It seems that using that strategy every ship would be proportionately damaged but none being destroyed quickly.
After thinking about it for a while, here's what I've come up with
- If you keep every enemy ship under fire it can disrupt their gunnery. If they're not being shot at, they can take their time and be more comfortable in their own gunnery.
- If only one or two ships are shooting at a particular enemy, it's easier for them to observe their own shell splashes and adjust their gunnery trajectories accordingly. If lots of ships were shooting at the same target it would be harder to be accurate because you don't know which shell splashes are yours.
- Generally ships only sank quickly if they got hit by a lucky shot that set off an explosion. If everybody was shooting at the same target and none of them got one of those lucky shots, they would be shooting at that one ship for quite a long time. Yes, it would probably have most of its armament knocked out and start to progressively flood through waterline hits and leaks, but it would take a long time to go down. Extra hits would cause little extra useful damage, but if those hits were on the other ships in the enemy fleet they would cause useful damage like knocking turrets out of action. Meanwhile the rest of the enemy fleet would go unengaged for a long time and would be free to fire back without fear.
It's worth noting that two British battlecruisers exploded early on in the battle in the 'Run to the South', and the flagship had a very close call. Their crews were (foolishly) ignoring good safety procedures in an attempt to increase their rate of fire. They stacked ammunition in the corridors and left safety hatches open, allowing any fires in the turrets to flash over to the magazines. It was this error that lead to the explosions. But if all the German ships had been shooting at one British ship, the most they could have done is destroy that one ship.
- Ships that were taking hits would sometimes be harder to shoot at if they could be obscured by smoke and fumes from their damage.
- Not all ships would be in a good position to accurately shoot at the same enemy.
Not that I'm saying they only ever shot at their opposite number in the enemy line - quite often the ships would switch their fire from one enemy to another based on which ships they could easily target, ships being obscured by smoke and even confusion about which ship they were supposed to be shooting at. There were times when one ship was being shot at by most of the enemy fleet - like when HMS Warspite's steering gear got stuck and she was forced to steam in circles while most of the German fleet shot at her.
There were times when one ship was being shot at by most of the enemy fleet - like when HMS Warspite's steering gear got stuck and she was forced to steam in circles while most of the German fleet shot at her.
Luckily the Warspite was a Queen Elizabeth or else she would've shared the same fate as the battlecruisers
Do your ships have interiors, or are they just shells?
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Empty hulls IIRC
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Yep, empty hulls. I've usually put decks into conning towers/superstructure, especially where a door leads in from outside. But I haven't done anything more than that.
Interior plans are a lot more difficult to come by than exterior photos and line drawings, and would take longer to build. Plus, the outside is the fun bit!
New update - the Warrior class armoured cruiser. This was a very quick build, because they were almost identical to the Duke of Edinburgh class. The only major change was the secondary armament. In the Duke of Edinburghs it was mounted in embrasures in the hull which were inoperable in rough seas. The Warriors had their secondary armament changed to four 7.5" guns in single turrets at main deck level amidships.
With that, I've finished the Royal Navy armoured cruisers that were at the battle. Though having said that, I might potentially want to tweak my Minotaur class to better match with my newer ships, since it's one of the first ship classes that I built - something like a year before I even thought of doing this project.
Warrior was part of the 1st Cruiser Squadron. Along with HMS Defence, she closed in on the stricken German cruiser SMS Wiesbaden, but was then spotted and fired upon by several German battleships at short range. Defence blew up and Warrior was heavily damaged, suffering from widespread fires and flooding. She was saved when the battleships switched their fire to the battleship HMS Warspite, which was suffering from a damaged rudder and was slowly circling within range of the German ships. Despite the damage to Warrior, her engines worked and she was able to retreat. She was taken in tow by the seaplane tender HMS Engadine, but later the flooding progressed too far for her to make it back to port. The crew was taken off and Warrior sank.
Cochrane was part of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, and was not engaged during the battle. After Jutland she spent time in the West Indies as well as being part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. She ran aground in the Mersey estuary just days after the Armistice was signed in November 1918, eventually breaking in two.
Two new builds, the Faulknor class flotilla leaders and the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine.
The Faulknor class were originally designed for Chile as a class of large destroyers named the Almirante Lynch class. Two were delivered to Chile before the war, but the last four were bought by the Royal Navy at the outset of hostilities. Their armament arrangement was interesting and unusual – two guns side by side on the forecastle, with one either side of the superstructure for four on the forecastle in all, and two side by side aft.
Of the four RN ships HMS Botha did not sail for Jutland, but the other three all took part. Faulknor survived the battle, but the other two sisters had a tougher time. Tipperary was sunk during the night fighting by secondary gunfire from SMS Westfalen, which also fired on Broke. Broke was also fired on by other German ships including SMS Rostock and was seriously damaged. The helmsman was killed at the wheel, and as he died his body turned the wheel and rammed the ship into the destroyer Sparrowhawk. Both crews at this point thought their own ship was the one about to sink and orders were given for Broke’s crew to evacuate to Sparrowhawk and vice-versa. Eventually the ships separated and Broke was able to steam away – with about 30 of Sparrowhawk’s crew on board. She managed to limp back to port.
After the war, the three remaining ships were returned to Chile.
HMS Engadine was one of the forerunners of the aircraft carrier. Seaplane carriers were starting to appear in the 1910s. They were typically fairly small ships with an obvious hangar built on the back, with cranes to deploy and recover seaplanes. They would carry a handful of seaplanes and lift them onto the water. The plane would take off from the water, scout the enemy position and then try to land on the sea close to the carrier, which would then crane it back on board.
Engadine was a cross-channel packet ship that was acquired by the Royal Navy and converted into a seaplane carrier at the outbreak of the war. At first her hangars were very much temporary, but by Jutland she’d had a more permanent hangar constructed. At Jutland she carried two Short Type 184 and two Sopwith Baby floatplanes and was attached to the Battlecruiser Fleet. Engadine was actually positioned at the front of the fleet because she needed clear, calm water to launch her planes from, rather than water churned by the wakes of the fleet. It also meant that by the time the planes had launched she could fall in with the main body of the fleet rather than being left behind. One of the Short Type 184s performed the first ever reconnaissance of an enemy fleet in action by a heavier than air plane.
Later, Engadine came to the aid of the crippled cruiser HMS Warrior, attempting to take her under tow. When it was clear that Warrior would sink, Engadine took on her crew. During the transfer, one of Warrior’s guns hit Engadine’s hull and punctured it, though the damage was soon patched. Since Engadine was such a small ship, the sudden influx of people had to be quickly distributed around the ship to prevent their weight causing her to capsize.
After the war she returned to civilian service and actually ended up in the Philippines in the 1930s, flying a US flag under the name SS Corregidor. In December 1941 shortly after Pearl Harbor, Corregidor attempted to leave Manila with over 1000 people on board, trying to flee the advancing Japanese. She accidentally sailed into the minefield in Manila Bay and was sunk with huge loss of life.
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With those builds, I've reached a new landmark: 200/249 ships! As I count it, I've got 11 distinct builds left to do, though a couple of those have subclasses that will probably require some alteration. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to glow...
Next up is the German Helgoland class battleship. I'm quite fond of them, they've got a fairly striking and unusual look. A hexagonal turret layout like the Nassau class, and three narrow, closely spaced funnels. Quite distinctive.
I've just finished the Helgoland class battleships. They had a really distinctive look, and I think quite pretty. Hexagonal turret layout and three close-spaced narrow funnels.
They served in the middle of the line at Jutland, so they weren't the most heavily engaged of the German battleships. Helgoland took a 15" shell which tore a hole in the hull and Oldenburg took a hit on a searchlight above the bridge, the shrapnel killing several officers and wounding the captain. She sailed out of control for a few moments, threatening to ram friendly ships, before the captain managed to get to the wheel. In return they sank a couple of destroyers. Thüringen took the lead in destroying the armoured cruiser Black Prince, which I built a couple of weeks ago. She illuminated the cruiser with searchlights and poured heavy fire into her at short range.
The destruction of Black Prince is partly why I decided to name my screenshot after Thüringen, but also because of her role in the Wilhelmshaven and Kiel mutinies in 1918. When Germany was trying to negotiate the armistice, the naval command planned a last ditch attack on the Royal Navy, which has been called a “Death Ride”, intending to improve Germany’s bargaining position by inflicting as much damage as possible. The sailors of the fleet mutinied, and the plan was called off. Thüringen was notable for being the first ship where sailors openly mutinied, and Helgoland was one of the next.
Another update, and quite a different one this time. I've spent far too long on Minecraft today, working on the final map where I'm going to place all of these ships. I've got a fair number of them docked already, and I've built the memorial building and garden that are going to be the centrepiece of the map.
There's a forest of stone columns rising from the water, with arches between them supporting a big stone platform. There's a wall around the outside that the player can walk around, and in the middle there's a large memorial building topped off with a dome. I've gone very much with classical/baroque inspiration for the architecture.
Surrounding the central building is a large garden, planted with 8645 poppies; one for every man who was killed in the battle. And yes, I have counted - with rather a lot of assistance from World Edit!
Screenshots -
That last one shows the edge of the Grand Fleet - the King George V class battleships of the 2nd Battle Squadron, 1st Division. There's a wooden jetty heading off in each direction. One of the fleets is docked at each compass point - the RN Grand Fleet to the north, the RN Battlecruiser Fleet to the west. the KM Scouting Force to the South and the KM High Seas Fleet to the east. The closest I could get to the directions they came from when they sailed to the battle. I've still got several to place and a fair few ships to build, but I'm definitely getting towards the end of the project. Can I do it in time for the 99th anniversary of the battle? I hope so, but I'm honestly not sure. A few more days like this and I'll probably manage it!
New update time, some German light forces. The Graudenz class cruiser SMS Regensburg served as a torpedo boat leader in the Scouting Force. She had quite an active battle with this role, right from the beginning during the Run to the South, to the fighting in the night and helping the ships that had recovered Lützow's crew the following morning. More detail in the first post.
I've also finished off the German torpedo boats with two classes of Großes Torpedoboot. There was just one of the 1906 variant present at the battle - V189 - but eighteen of the 1911 variant. I picked V4 for my screenshot because she was the only one lost, losing her bows to a mysterious explosion during the night. Since there was no visible enemy activity nearby, it was assumed she had struck a mine or been torpedoed by a submarine.
I don't know why, but something about the Regensburg just really makes me happy
On a side note, I was wondering where you based the ships off of. Is there a database that has the plans of the ships present during Jutland or are you just searching for each class individually?
She's quite a cute little cruiser!
I'm generally looking each class up separately. I've got my full lists of all the ships I need to do, and I mostly get their major statistics from wikipedia - dimensions, armament etc. Then I search around for line drawings and photos to help me with the build. I especially like good line drawings with side-on and top-down elevations, because I can rescale them to 1 pixel per metre and get a handy builidng guide. I could probably do more research and make them a little more accurately, but then the project would take even longer than it already is. I've enjoyed it, but I don't want to be working on it indefinitely. I can see the end approaching, and I'm looking forward to having a finished map.
I'm really pressing hard at the moment. For one thing, with all the test cricket and snooker on at the moment, I can't really concentrate on my writing projects. So I'm building ships instead, to the soothing sounds of Nasser Hussain and Dennis Taylor...
On that note, more battleships! The Royal Navy's HMS Neptune and the Colossus class (HMS Colossus and HMS Hercules), which were a slight modification of the Neptune design - more heavily armoured and a changed mast layout to save some topweight. The three are not far from being one class and were the first RN battleships to deviate from the HMS Dreadnought layout, staggering the wing turrets to allow them to fire cross-deck, and the first RN battleships to use superfiring turrets, in this case only to the stern. The armament layout suffered a lot from the concussive blast of the guns. When the wing turrets fired cross-deck, they ripped up decking with the blast, and if the superfiring aft turret fired over the top of the lower one, the blast would enter the lower turret through the sighting hoods and injure the lower turret crew. They were the last 12" gunned RN dreadnoughts, and were followed by the Orion class, the first of the 13.5" gunned "super-dreadnoughts".
Some interesting facts about them, Dudley Pound was captain of Colossus at Jutland. He later rose through the ranks and was First Sea Lord during the early years of WWII. He's just one example of officers who later held high rank in WWII who were present in more junior roles. Erich Raeder was chief of staff to Vice Admiral Hipper on board Lützow, and later went on to become Großadmiral in the Nazi Kriegsmarine. John Tovey was a Lieutenant Commander captaining the destroyer HMS Onslow, and later became an important admiral in WWII. Those are probably the most notable.
HMS Hercules is an interesting ship, sister ship to HMS Colossus. She gained a reputation as a ship for troublemakers, and many of the most problematic sailors would be assigned to her. She had a boxing ring installed, and breaches of discipline would be settled there, especially ones which had involved arguments or fights.
In addition to building those, I've been doing a bit of rework on some of my older ships. I realised once I'd got them all lined up nicely in my map that a lot of my earlier builds had pretty poor bow shapes - they were too fat at the waterline. So I've been revisiting those and reshaping the hull around the bow to make them a bit sleeker through the water. So far I've remodelled the bows on the Orions, KGVs, Iron Dukes, Erin, Canada and the Revenges. I think I'd declared that I was done with refitting Iron Duke after refit number 4, but there's number 5!
227/249 ships now. Closing in on the end. The Royal Navy's C class light cruisers up next.
Wow, that's a lot of boats. Kudos to you for working on this massive project. You sir, deserve a cake.
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
Can't wait to see the finished project! And of course, the Queen Elizabeths
I've done a render and some vintage photo style editing today - here's the 6th Division, 1st Battle Squadron, Grand Fleet. HMS Marlborough in the lead, followed by HMS Revenge, HMS Hercules and HMS Agincourt.
I've also got some more builds. The Royal Navy's C class light cruisers and Talisman class destroyers. The C class were the newest light cruisers in the RN at the time, though only the first three subclasses had been completed by the middle of 1916. They were spread across the fleet; several of them formed the 4th Light Cruiser squadron of the Grand Fleet, while others served with the Battlecruiser Fleet and a couple acted as Destroyer Flotilla flagships. All of the ships survived the battle, with two of them taking notable damage.
The most notable of them has to be HMS Caroline, because she's the only ship that fought at Jutland that survives to the present day. That was more down to luck than intent; after WWI she was soon moored in Belfast Harbour as a training and accomodation ship for the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. She was briefly used as the Navy's headquarters in Belfast in WWII before being returned to the Voluneteer Reserve. They continued to use her until she was decommissioned in 2011 and is currently being preserved and restored to her WWI condition.
The Talisman class was a small group of destroyers built for the Ottomans and taken over by the Royal Navy at the outbreak of war. They were a fairly large design that influenced the later V and W class destroyers built in the late war. Two were at Jutland, of which HMS Turbulent was sunk during the night action.
I've placed them closer together than they ought to be, but the line of battle was actually the main battle strategy at the time.
When the fleets were maneuvering before the battle they would be arranged in several parallel columns. Usually each Division or Squadron would form a column and the other Divisions/Squadrons would be alongside them. This formation allowed signals to be passed relatively quickly from one ship to the next and allowed turns to be carried out fairly quickly. (Generally a Division was made up of four battleships and a Squadron was two Divisions).
The lighter scouting forces were tasked with relaying important information back to the fleet about the location and heading of the enemy. The commander-in-chief could then decide on how best to deploy for battle. The line of battle tactics were much the same as they were in the age of sail (only at much longer ranges) - both fleets would arrange themselves in one long line and sail parallel to each other, shooting at their counterpart in the enemy line. The line came back into fashion around the start of the 20th century because the best angle for a ship to fire most of its guns was on the broadside, and it meant that with the careful formations they weren't in danger of hitting friendly ships.
When Jutland started and Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet engaged Hipper's Scouting Force, both sides formed lines of battle about 14,000 yards apart and heading in the same direction. The lead ships (Lion and Lützow) engaged each other, the second ships (Princess Royal and Derfflinger) engaged each other and so on down the line.
When the High Seas Fleet was unknowingly led to Admiral Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, the Grand Fleet managed to pull off another favoured tactic from the age of sail - "Crossing the T". The High Seas Fleet were sailing directly at the British line, which meant that the British ships could all fire on the broadside at the approaching Germans, and the German ships were taken by surprise and could only fire back with their forward guns. The leading German ships were starting to take a lot of hits before Scheer pulled off a very effective emergency manouevre - the "Gefechtskehrtwendung" (Battle About Turn), where every ship in the German line turned 180 degrees at the same time, reversing the direction of the line and allowing them to sail away. The High Seas Fleet had practiced the about turn just in case, and it definitely proved a good idea!
AWESOME!!!
And another new build, the last of the light cruisers - the German Pillau class. Two ships, Pillau and Elbing, they were originally ordered by the Russians from Germany but were taken over by the Germans when the war started while they were still under construction.
They were both a part of the II Scouting Group at Jutland, along with the Wiesbaden class ships. Elbing was the first German cruiser to engage the enemy. She fired at long range at the British cruisers Galatea and Phaeton where she scored the first hit of the battle; a long range hit on Galatea that failed to explode. Shortly afterwards the two ships drove off a seaplane from the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine, the first case of heavier-than-air aircraft scouting a naval force.
The cruisers engaged the British cruiser Chester and scored several hits before being driven off by the Invincible class ships of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron. Pillau took a 12” shell that exploded below her chart house and briefly knocked out the ship’s coal-fired boilers, but she was able to steam on her oil-fired boilers. Elbing suffered engine trouble of her own due to leaks in her boiler condensers, forcing her to fall back towards the IV Scouting Group. While there, she engaged the British cruiser Castor, which was soon hit seven times and set on fire. The fight was soon joined by the British 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron, which landed a hit on Elbing destroying her wireless transmitting station.
After midnight, Elbing was steaming alongside the Nassau class battleships when the British destroyers launched a torpedo attack. Elbing turned to avoid the torpedoes, and tried to sail in between the battleships Nassau and Posen. Posen’s crew wasn’t aware of Elbing’s turn until it was too late and the battleship accidentally rammed the cruiser. Elbing took on water which knocked out her engines and electrical power, leaving her immobile. Most of the crew were taken off by torpedo boats and those that remained rigged an improvised sail to try to reach home, but were forced to scuttle the ship when more British destroyers were spotted in the area.
Pillau slowly made her way back to port as a guide and escort to the crippled battlecruiser Seydlitz, which was struggling to make it home. She survived the war, and was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1920, renamed Bari. She served in the Italian navy into WWII, before being sunk in 1943 by American bombers.
I'm now down to the four builds that I saved till last:
Germany's battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz, the culmination of the first generation of German battlecruisers and a development of the Moltke design, which took enough damage that she only barely managed to limp back to port.
The König-class battleships, which were the newest and most powerful battleships in the Hochseeflotte and took the lead of the German column. Since they were in the lead, they took the most damage of any of the German battleships.
The Queen Elizabeth class battleships, which were quite probably the most powerful battleships in the world at the time and the first that could properly be called "fast battleships". They formed the Royal Navy's 5th Battle Squadron and were attached to Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet.
The British battlecruiser HMS Tiger, which I've saved for last purely because I think she's a beautiful ship and a really good ship to end on. A development of the Lion class design, incorporating some of the best features of the Kongō class which had been designed for Japan by a British shipyard. Like the other battlecruisers, she was in the thick of the action.
Excellent progress!
Do you have plans to build more ships after you finish?
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Well that sounds stupid. Is there a reason why the two lines didn't focus fire? It seems that using that strategy every ship would be proportionately damaged but none being destroyed quickly.
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Thanks folks!
I think I'll almost certainly take a break from minecraft for a while at least. But even after all of these, I still quite fancy building more. I'm tempted to do some more pre-dreadnoughts, ships that were commissioned into these two navies between 1916-1918, or ships from other nations.
After thinking about it for a while, here's what I've come up with
- If you keep every enemy ship under fire it can disrupt their gunnery. If they're not being shot at, they can take their time and be more comfortable in their own gunnery.
- If only one or two ships are shooting at a particular enemy, it's easier for them to observe their own shell splashes and adjust their gunnery trajectories accordingly. If lots of ships were shooting at the same target it would be harder to be accurate because you don't know which shell splashes are yours.
- Generally ships only sank quickly if they got hit by a lucky shot that set off an explosion. If everybody was shooting at the same target and none of them got one of those lucky shots, they would be shooting at that one ship for quite a long time. Yes, it would probably have most of its armament knocked out and start to progressively flood through waterline hits and leaks, but it would take a long time to go down. Extra hits would cause little extra useful damage, but if those hits were on the other ships in the enemy fleet they would cause useful damage like knocking turrets out of action. Meanwhile the rest of the enemy fleet would go unengaged for a long time and would be free to fire back without fear.
It's worth noting that two British battlecruisers exploded early on in the battle in the 'Run to the South', and the flagship had a very close call. Their crews were (foolishly) ignoring good safety procedures in an attempt to increase their rate of fire. They stacked ammunition in the corridors and left safety hatches open, allowing any fires in the turrets to flash over to the magazines. It was this error that lead to the explosions. But if all the German ships had been shooting at one British ship, the most they could have done is destroy that one ship.
- Ships that were taking hits would sometimes be harder to shoot at if they could be obscured by smoke and fumes from their damage.
- Not all ships would be in a good position to accurately shoot at the same enemy.
Not that I'm saying they only ever shot at their opposite number in the enemy line - quite often the ships would switch their fire from one enemy to another based on which ships they could easily target, ships being obscured by smoke and even confusion about which ship they were supposed to be shooting at. There were times when one ship was being shot at by most of the enemy fleet - like when HMS Warspite's steering gear got stuck and she was forced to steam in circles while most of the German fleet shot at her.
Luckily the Warspite was a Queen Elizabeth or else she would've shared the same fate as the battlecruisers