Some Austrian Battleships

Very fine work indeed.

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Hi again!

Something obscure: The only 'battleship' ever exported by an Austrian Yard to another nation, the Turkish central citadel ironclad Icaliye.

At 2.300 tons, Icaliye was actually corvette-sized, but considered part of the battlefleet by Ottoman standards. She had two 234mm guns (forward in the casemate) and three 178mm guns (two aft in the casemate, one in a centerline barbette amidships), all of them muzzle loaders. Armour was wrought iron, and her single-screw engine developed 1.800 ihp for 12 knots. She was rigged as a brig.
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She saw action in the 1878 war against Russia, when the Ottoman Empire was able to field 15 ironclads between 2.000 and nearly 10.000 tons. She was modernized in 1891, with 150mm Krupp guns replacing the 178mm, and adding a light battery of eight guns in four different calibers; the sailing rig was cut down. At that time, she already was no longer seaworthy and used first as a guard ship, then from 1897 as an accommodation hulk. During the Balcan war in 1912, she was briefly reactivated as a floating battery. Her engines were inoperable, and she had to be towed to her area of operation. She reverted to hulk afterwards and was scrapped some time after the First World war.
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Cheers
GD

A very interesting addition and very well drawn to your usual high standards.

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Excellent! Thanks for Your work.

Hi all!

This one would have been a very good design, had it appeared about five years earlier: The Erzherzog-Karl-class.

Considerably larger than their predecessors of the Habsburg-class, these second-class battleships struck a fine balance between armour (210mm KC), armament (4x 240/40 and 12x 190/42, plus 12x66/50) and speed (20,5 kts) on barely 10.500 tons of displacement. With their low freeboard, they were not really oceangoing, but they were good enough for the Adriatic and fair matches for the Italian Regina-Elena-class. They just needed to stay clear of any real first-class pre-dreadnoughts, of which the Italians fortunately had only two.

The first two units were completely identical; the last one - Erzherzog Ferdinand Max, named for the unfortunate Emperor of Mexico - differed in minor detail (funnel bases, cranes). All were designed with a bridge overhanging the whole CT.
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The bridge was made smaller upon or quickly after commissioning; from contemporary photographs, I could not deduce if some or all of them were already commissioned with a smaller bridge. Before the war, they were fitted with a w/t rig and rangefinders on their lateral fire-control towers; again, contemporary photographs do not show any range-finding equipment fore or aft.
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The only significant wartime modification was the addition of two 66/50 on HA mounts. They saw little action, but were used to put down a mutiny on two armoured cruisers in Cattaro in 1917; morale and discipline among their crews were apparently intact right to the end.
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Ferdinand Max was allocated to Great Britain after the war, and the other two to France. All three were scrapped by 1920.

Cheers
GD

More very nice additions.

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