Shipbucket

A long and complicated pregnancy

By the late eighteen-eighties the obsolescence of the ottoman fleet was made obvious by the greek order of three small ironclads. In 1890, as the comissionning of the hellenic ship was getting closer, the Ottoman government authorized a large construction program that included two battleships.
French and germans were competing hard for this bid, but rather than use the usual bribe they made a win-win agrement: French would build the ships and germans would deliver the weapons.
The ships were entended to be close sisters of the 12,500-metric-ton (12,300-long-ton; 13,800-short-ton) Hoche, with four 283mm/32 SK L/35 guns in single barbette, eight 149mm/32 SK L/35 in single casemates, sixteen 37mm/42 SK L/45 guns in the superstructure, and five 356mm torpedo tubes in above water mounts.


This project never resulted in a firm order. Instead the "Sublime Port" choose to order a single locally-built battle-ship in a revised reduced design. Although the french felt frustrated by this decision, it was significantly compensated in placing french advisers inside the imperial shipyard, thus favoring the french industry for future orders; and contracts for the modernisation of the yard granted to french companys.
The new french director of Naval Construction Paul-Bertrand Pansin , the wannabe "Turkish Bertin", proposed a ship with the main weapons on the central line in a twin mount layout , one fore an one aft. This was complying with what was becoming standard in the major navies around the world (except french), but the mounts where shielded barbettes and not turrets as on other capital ships being layed down at that time. The germans sourced guns were kept but the 149mm were reduced to six, and the torpedo tube raised to six. Moreover four 88mm/27 SK L/30 guns were added.


The overall design remained the same when the ship was finally laid down in late 1892. But in the meantime, the ottomans asked for turrets monts for the main guns. At this time french yard were quite specialised in single mount turrets, so the germans guns provider offerred to use the same turrets as on the Brandenburg being build in Settin . The 37mm guns were reduced to eight and the 88mm raised to the same number.
Work on the ship starded to lower quite as soon as it started.: Money alowed to the 1890 program was progressively beeing hijacked by corrupted officials (an ottoman national sports).


Three years latters the slipway was almost deserted when admiral Hasan Rami Pasha proposed his 1895 reconstruction program. Funds were finally alowed after the catastrofic performance of the fleet during the 1897 Greco-Ottoman war. In the meantime Pansin Pasha had reworked the design intergrating french sourced parts and a heavy influence from the new Charlemagne class. The bow was changed, turrets wells were widened to recieve new ones, and a totally new superstructure designed. But once again work slowly dropped until it totaly stopped.


Tension with Cretan Republic started to raise about the Rhodian issue in early 1903. The guns stockpilled for the ship were installed in shore batteries to reenforce island defences and new ones were ordered from germany with assorted twin turrets. Work restarted at full strenght, and didn't alted until the ship was finally commissioned. Unfortunatly this didn't occured until 1906 (Ottoman "full strenght"....).
The superstructure of the ship had to be shorttened to make space for the new turrets identical to the Deutschland class battleships with twin 283mm/37 SK L/40 and the 149mm guns were now new 149mm/40 SK L/40, the prow torpedo tube was supressed.


In 1904 a sister ship, "Abdülmecid I", was layed down. The design slowly evolved in a quite different ship with a even more compact superstructure to increase fire arc. Armor and secondarie armement were reenforced with four extra 149mm/40 SK L/40 (six in single turrets) and two extra 88mm/27 SK L/30. The front torpedo tube was back but they all moved under waterline. To sustain the added wheight and increase underwater protection primitives bulges were added.When commissioned in 1908 the overall apparence of the ship looked modernised (although totally obsolete at this time) and drastically more germanic. This was probably due to the retirement of Pansin in the last years of the construction (1906).


The two almost sister ships participated in all the following Ottoman wars, against italians, Balkan states and finally in First World War. Althought poorly manned durings those conflicts,as the rest of the fleet, the second ship was considered more effective and a reconstruction of the Abdül Kadir in this guise was concidered. But nothing was achived until it was sunk by British submarine E11 in sea of Marmara in august 1915.


A word about the sources and design:

As often in never built projects (especially in the case of ottomans ones) sources (if found) are contradictory about how the ship was supposed to look like.
In this thread i've tried to create a timeline that include almost all the differents hypothesis.
I've isolated 4 differents initial layout (therefore not concidering the 1904 revised armement):

- The "turbaned Hoche": "In 1890, the Ottoman government authorized a large construction program that included two battleships based on the 12,500-metric-ton (12,300-long-ton; 13,800-short-ton) French Hoche" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_b ... %BCl_Kadir).
As there's no accurat informations about this design we can suppose it would have the same weapons as the french ship, but i choosed to use the german guns that were discribed for the latters versions.
I've used the yet exellent garlicdesign Hoche (i suspect that he will "reboot" it as soon as i will publish this thread) with french style single barbettes from the same source.

- The intermediate design: "Its main armament was based on four cannons 280 mm, installed in pairs in two twin barbettes, arranged according to the longitudinal axis of the hull, one fore and the other aft." translated from italian (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Kadir).
This italian source is probably mistaking between turret and barbette, but i've found it interesting.
In this case i used the Brennus hull (shortened) with homemade twin barbettes, Neptune superstructure, and Marceau funnel.

-The definitive design: the generally admitted design with two twin 283mm SK35 turrets fore and aft. This gaved 4 differents stages of design.
The previous ship recieved Brennus structure (one bridge lowered), Charlemagne funnels, and "Brandenburg" style twin turrets (with 283mm SK35). Then the Charlemagne structure and turrets (with 283mm SK35) were subtituated. The "Braunschweig" style turrets came with the 283mmSK40. Finally the improved twin recieved a german style structure derived from the Orhan Gazi.
I used the drawing from "flottes de combats" just as a guideline as it didn't comply exactly with the data (4X75mm gun instead of 8X88mm, 10X57mm gun instead of 8X37mm), there is even contradiction betwin elevation and plan view (main guns 340mm on the elevation for exemple).

-The Hamidiye twin: i've didn't take in account the navypedia assertion that it would be similar to this obsolete battleship (http://www.navypedia.org/ships/turkey/t ... _kadir.htm).

As it turns out to be an habit to me, almost all the parts i didn't design by myself are sourced from Garlic Design.

_________________
"You can rape history, if you give her a child"
Alexandre Dumas

JE SUIS CHARLIE

Nice to see Ottoman AU ships of that era. However, there is a small typo in third paragraph of the text, it is "1892" instead of "1992". Overall, background history is very well written.

So well written, and so well drawn, that my first impression was that it was in a wrong place: AU instead Never built !! Very well done, Waritem!

Interesting work.

Excellent work.
I think you've done an good job of interpreting the textual source material into a series of plausible interpretations of how the different versions might have looked.

One slight nitpick in the text, for some reason whenever you say "eight" you have "height".

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Hi Waritem!

Very interesting metamorphosis, and quite plausible; these beasties might have been game-changers in the Balkan Wars (and thus, in world history in general, because any re-route of history on the Balkan in this critical time would certainly derail the whole Great War timeline).

My only nitpick is the location of Abdul Mecid's Masts; I would only place them so close to the funnels if I had to because of restricted deck space, but that ship has ample space both fore and (especially) aft to relocate the masts away from the exhausts.

Hope to see more of your Cretan AU in the future.

Greetings
GD

Fantastic entry, more of these please!!

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Thank you all for your comments.
I'm wondering if the 1897 version could be uploaded in the "never-built" section...............
I'm not sure of the impact of an increased Ottoman navy on the outcome of both the balkan wars and first world war. First,to me the main problem of the Sultan's naval forces wer not it's weakness but the poor command, trainning and condition. Second this wars were fighted mainly on land. Naval operations had only influence on the way turkish could more or less quikly reinforced their troops (althought this had a significant impact).
But don't wory, i'm planning to conterbalance this stronger navy with significant alterations for the surrounding fleets and of course with the existance of Cretan Republic.
In deed your observation didn't remained unoticed as it made me think of a navy i didn't concidered before......................(see my next post)
I've to admit your totally right: Even if i want to keep an increased fire arc (inspired by Cretan ship and the last russian pre-dread), mouving the aft mast in the middle of the rear 88mm would not compromise this.
Now spaces betwin funnels and masts are almost the same as on german conterparts.


Thank you all for your comments.
I'm wondering if the 1897 version could be uploaded in the "never-built" section...............

_________________
"You can rape history, if you give her a child"
Alexandre Dumas

JE SUIS CHARLIE