"French battleship Tourville of 1879" Topic

"In the 1870s, the French developed, in accordance with the then popular doctrine of "one knockout blow", a cannon with a rather monstrous caliber of 420 mm, available in two versions: with a barrel length of 19 or 22 calibers. These guns were used in the small (7,500 tons displacement) Terrible-class battleships, which were intended to operate in the Baltic. I, on the other hand, came up with the idea of ​​building a "full-scale" battleship equipped with 4 such guns using them. The ship, following the example of similar foreign units (Inflexible, Duilio), has diagonally arranged turrets, which theoretically allows the entire artillery to be fired in every direction. Due to the upper part of the hull and the highly probable damage to the unit's equipment from the blast in the case of shooting in directions close to the axis of symmetry, this remains only a theory, but at the time such an arrangement was considered advantageous, so in order to stay in the spirit of the era, I will not break away from it;) I also tried to preserve the characteristic elements of French naval architecture, such as the side embankment, combat masts or the characteristic shape of the bow. I think that compared to other products of French shipbuilding in the second half of the 19th century, the ship is not as strange as it might seem at first glance ;)…"
UT

More here

link

Armand

Looks similar in layout, if not style, to some of the early Italian pre-dreadnoughts.

(smile)

Armand

Interesting! Were it me, I'd have slab-sided the barbettes as in Redoubtable and I think it is a bit early for sponsoned casemates but otherwise pretty cool idea. Maybe carry a torpedo boat as well?

Why not…?

Armand