How Thick Were Frigate Hulls?

The text discusses the history and design of frigates, a type of warship that played a significant role in British seapower. Typically, frigates were square-rigged with sails set at right angles to the hull, with rigging capable of reaching speeds of 14 knots. They were bolted together in pairs with just a few inches of space between each pair for air circulation. The Constitution frigate, built in 1802, has a structure over 22 feet thick and is the largest of its class.

The first classes of Royal Navy frigates were 28s, armed with 9-pounders. By the Seven Years War, these were replaced by 32-gun frigates armed with 12-pounders. The T26 frigate, 149.9m long with a beam of 20.8m, officially displacing 6,900 tonnes, is considered a very large frigate, displacing 6,900 tonnes.

Frigates were designed to be smaller, easy to maneuver, and good for assisting bigger ships during wartime. Advanced frigates were made with higher weaponry and had two versions: a short hull with a 136-meter length and a long hull with a 138-meter length. Australia, Spain, and Taiwan also built the frigate in their local languages.

During the sixteenth century, British warships typically had hulls around 2 to 3 feet thick, made of sturdy oak. The American ship was one-third bigger, with proportionally thicker sides to protect her larger crew. The thickness of the hulls depends on their combat purpose, with extreme cases ranging from 3mm for mine warfare ships to even 650mm for cruisers.

After World War II until 1975, the U.S. Navy defined a frigate as a surface warship larger than a destroyer and smaller than a cruiser. If the ship did not work as intended, it was back to the drawing board.

How thick is a destroyers hull?

The outer skin you see is only 3/8th of an inch thick, HY-80 grade steel. Aircraft carriers do have more armor and the new Gerald Ford class nas what is called “Active Armor” which apparently uses some sort of feild to disrupt plasma jets around its magazines, but the basic hull plates are still just 3/8 inch thick.

How thick was the hull of the Yamato?

Furthermore, the top hull shape was very advanced, the peculiar sideways curving effectively maximizing armor protection and structural rigidity while optimizing weight. The armor on the main turrets surpassed even that of the main belt, with turret face plating 650 mm (26 in) thick.

• Kure Naval Arsenal
• Yokosuka Naval Arsenal
• Mitsubishi Shipyard, Nagasaki

• 69,988 long tons (71,111t) (trials)
• 71,659 long tons (72,809t) (full load).

• 256m (840ft) (waterline)
• 263m (862ft 10in) (o/a)

How thick is a freighter hull?

0.5- to 0.75-inch Modern commercial ship hulls continue to be built with 14- to 19-millimeter-thick (0.5- to 0.75-inch) plate. Carbon steel is low-cost and easy to repair. These materials normally are specified American Bureau of Shipping grade A, although sometimes grades B and H are used.

How thick was the Tirpitz hull?

Tirpitz was an enormous battleship in every way. With a length of 251 metres (823 ft), Tirpitz weighed over 50,000 tons when fully loaded. The steel in the hull was 30 cm (12″) thick. Tirpitz had eight 38 cm (15″) guns, some of the biggest naval guns ever built. The vessel had a crew of more than 2,600, including 100 officers. With a speed of 30 knots, Tirpitz was twice as fast as the Hurtigruten coastal express ships, which were faster than any of the Allied warships. All in all, Tirpitz was a formidable weapon.

The Murmansk Convoys. Why would the Third Reich have wanted to send its largest warship to a remote spot like Northern Norway? The answer was the Arctic convoys, the cargo ships full of tanks, ammunition and another war materiel that had been manufactured in Britain and the USA and sent to Murmansk to strengthen the Soviet Union’s war effort. Hitler, of course, wanted to stop these convoys. The idea was also to keep the Allied naval forces occupied and prevent an Allied attack on Nazi-occupied Norway.

. Tirpitz was shot down in Kåfjord Northern Norway. A fjord just outside Tromsø, the biggest city in all of Northern Norway.

How thick is the hull of a supertanker?

Around 15mm Modern supertankers have a double hull, separated by several metres of air and structural members. Each hull is around 15mm of high-strength steel.

How thick is the hull of a Navy ship?

Between 0.75 inch and 1.5 inch generally IIRC. Some ships have areas of greater thickness in higher grade steel to double as splinter protection such as the Iowa class. In most battleships the armour will be added on the top of this shell plating with a backing layer in between which might be cement, wood or steel.

How thick was the hull of the Bismarck?

Bismarck was built in Hamburg at the Blohm and Voss shipyard. Work had begun on 1 July 1936. The Bismarck’s hull was protected by armour 12 inches (32 cm) thick, a 2-inch (5 cm) armoured deck, a 3 to 4-inch (8 to 11 cm) thick interior sloping armoured deck, 12-inch thick armour around the engines, boilers, and magazines, and 22 watertight compartments. The hull was officially launched on 14 February 1939. Hitler gave a 15-minute speech and watched Otto von Bismarck’s granddaughter, Dorothea von Loewenfeld, do the christening honours as the hull slipped into the water. Fitting out took over a year and involved a change to a modern raked or ‘Atlantic’ bow. Bismarck entered service on 24 August 1940. Her first and only captain was Ernst Lindemann (1894-1941). The ship fired its guns against enemy aircraft bombing Hamburg just before sea trials were conducted in September, the ship sailing to Gotenhafen (today’s Gdynia, Poland) in the Baltic. More sea trials came in March 1941, and with Bismarck looking good, the ship was declared combat-ready in May. The importance of the battleship to Germany’s war effort is indicated by a personal inspection by Hitler on 5 May.

The Allies were well aware of Bismarck’s progress. Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) described the ship as “the most powerful, as she is the newest, battleship in the world” (Boatner III, 328). Widely considered unsinkable, for many of the crew, the heavily-armoured Bismarck seemed about the safest place to spend the war. However, like that other famous unsinkable ship RMS Titanic, Bismarck would not survive its first voyage.

Specifications & Armaments. Bismarck measured 821 feet (250.5 m) in length with a berth of 118 feet (36 m). The width was unusual but allowed for a shallower draught, and it made the ship more stable when firing the massive guns. When loaded, Bismarck displaced 50,900 tons (much more than the 35,000 tons permitted by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement). Around 44% of the ship’s weight was armour plating. The three steam-turbine engines were fed by 12 boilers and powered three propellor shafts. The top speed was 30.8 knots. The ship had a catapult to launch its complement of four aircraft, Arado 196 floatplanes, which were used for reconnaissance sorties. A crane picked up the planes from the sea. The crew of the Bismarck numbered 2,092.

What was the thickest hull on a battleship?

By the Guinness world records, the thickest battleship armor of all time was in the HMS INFLEXIBLE built in 1881. It was a total of 42 inches, 24 inches steel, backed by teak wood to the total thickness of 42 inches.

How thick is the hull of the USS Constitution?

Her keel was laid down on 1 November 1794 at Edmund Hartt’s shipyard in Boston, Massachusetts, under the supervision of Captain Samuel Nicholson, master shipwright Colonel George Claghorn and Foreman Prince Athearn of the Martha’s Vineyard Athearns. Constitution’s hull was built 21 inches (530mm) thick and her length between perpendiculars was 175ft (53m), with a 204ft (62m) length overall and a width of 43ft 6in (13.26m). In total, 60 acres (24ha) of trees were needed for her construction. Primary materials consisted of pine and oak, including southern live oak which was cut from Gascoigne Bluff and milled near St. Simons Island, Georgia. Enslaved workers were used to harvest the oak used for the ship’s construction, and USS Constitution Museum historian Carl Herzog stated that “the forced labor of enslaved people was an expediency that Navy officials and contractors saw as fundamental to the job… enslaved people were essential to the construction of naval warships built to secure the very American freedoms they were denied.”

A peace accord was announced between the United States and Algiers in March 1796, and construction was halted in accordance with the Naval Act of 1794. After some debate and prompting by President Washington, Congress agreed to continue funding the construction of the three ships nearest to completion: United States, Constellation, and Constitution. Constitution’s launching ceremony on 20 September 1797 was attended by President John Adams and Massachusetts Governor Increase Sumner. Upon launch, she slid down the ways only 27 feet (8.2m) before stopping; her weight had caused the ways to settle into the ground, preventing further movement. An attempt two days later resulted in only 31 feet (9.4m) of additional travel before the ship again stopped. After a month of rebuilding the ways, Constitution finally slipped into Boston Harbor on 21 October 1797, with Captain James Sever breaking a bottle of Madeira wine on her bowsprit.

Constitution was rated as a 44-gun frigate, but she often carried more than 50 guns at a time. Ships of this era had no permanent battery of guns such as those of modern Navy ships. The guns and cannons were designed to be completely portable and often were exchanged between ships as situations warranted. Each commanding officer outfitted armaments to his liking, taking into consideration factors such as the overall weight of stores, complement of personnel aboard, and planned routes to be sailed. Consequently, the armaments on ships changed often during their careers, and records of the changes were not generally kept.

How thick was the Titanic’s hull?

The steel plate from the hull of the Titanic was nominally 1.875 cm thick, while the bulkhead plate had a thickness of 1.25 cm.

The Titanic began its maiden voyage to New York just before noon on April 10, 1912, from Southampton, England. Two days later at 11:40 p.m., Greenland time, it struck an iceberg that was three to six times larger than its own mass, damaging the hull so that the six forward compartments were ruptured. The flooding of these compartments was sufficient to cause the ship to sink within two hours and 40 minutes, with a loss of more than 1,500 lives. The scope of the tragedy, coupled with a detailed historical record, have fueled endless fascination with the ship and debate over the reasons as to why it did in fact sink. A frequently cited culprit is the quality of the steel used in the ship’s construction. A metallurgical analysis of hull steel recovered from the ship’s wreckage provides a clearer view of the issue.

The ships were designed to provide accommodations superior to the Cunard ships, but without greater speed. The first on-board swimming pools were installed as was a gymnasium that included an electric horse and an electric camel, a squash court, a number of rowing machines, and stationary bicycles, all supervised by a staff of professional instructors. The public rooms for the first-class passengers were large and elegantly furnished with wood paneling, stained-glass windows, comfortable lounge furniture, and expensive carpets. The decor of the first class cabins, in addition to being luxurious, differed in style from cabin to cabin. As an extra feature on the Titanic, the Café Parisienne offered superb cuisine.

The designed speed for these ships was 21-22 knots, in contrast to the faster Cunard ships. To achieve this speed, each ship had three propellers; each outboard propeller was driven by a separate four-cylinder, triple expansion, reciprocating steam engine.2 The center propeller was driven by a low-pressure steam turbine using the exhaust steam from the two reciprocating engines. The power plant was rated at 51,000 I.H.P. To provide the necessary steam for the power plant, 29 boilers were available, fired by 159 furnaces. In addition to propelling the ship, steam was used to generate electricity for various purposes, distill fresh water, refrigerate the perishable food, cook, and heat the living space. Coal was burned as fuel at a rate of 650 tons per day when the ship was underway. Stokers moved the coal from the bunkers into the furnaces by hand. The bunkers held enough coal for a ten-day voyage.

How thick is the Titanic’s hull?

Tensile Testing. The steel plate from the hull of the Titanic was nominally 1.875 cm thick, while the bulkhead plate had a thickness of 1.25 cm. Corrosion in the salt water had reduced the thickness of the hull plate so that it was not possible to machine standard tensile specimens from it.

The Titanic began its maiden voyage to New York just before noon on April 10, 1912, from Southampton, England. Two days later at 11:40 p.m., Greenland time, it struck an iceberg that was three to six times larger than its own mass, damaging the hull so that the six forward compartments were ruptured. The flooding of these compartments was sufficient to cause the ship to sink within two hours and 40 minutes, with a loss of more than 1,500 lives. The scope of the tragedy, coupled with a detailed historical record, have fueled endless fascination with the ship and debate over the reasons as to why it did in fact sink. A frequently cited culprit is the quality of the steel used in the ship’s construction. A metallurgical analysis of hull steel recovered from the ship’s wreckage provides a clearer view of the issue.

The ships were designed to provide accommodations superior to the Cunard ships, but without greater speed. The first on-board swimming pools were installed as was a gymnasium that included an electric horse and an electric camel, a squash court, a number of rowing machines, and stationary bicycles, all supervised by a staff of professional instructors. The public rooms for the first-class passengers were large and elegantly furnished with wood paneling, stained-glass windows, comfortable lounge furniture, and expensive carpets. The decor of the first class cabins, in addition to being luxurious, differed in style from cabin to cabin. As an extra feature on the Titanic, the Café Parisienne offered superb cuisine.

The designed speed for these ships was 21-22 knots, in contrast to the faster Cunard ships. To achieve this speed, each ship had three propellers; each outboard propeller was driven by a separate four-cylinder, triple expansion, reciprocating steam engine.2 The center propeller was driven by a low-pressure steam turbine using the exhaust steam from the two reciprocating engines. The power plant was rated at 51,000 I.H.P. To provide the necessary steam for the power plant, 29 boilers were available, fired by 159 furnaces. In addition to propelling the ship, steam was used to generate electricity for various purposes, distill fresh water, refrigerate the perishable food, cook, and heat the living space. Coal was burned as fuel at a rate of 650 tons per day when the ship was underway. Stokers moved the coal from the bunkers into the furnaces by hand. The bunkers held enough coal for a ten-day voyage.

How thick was battleship armor?

About 16 inches It’s also worth noting that armor isn’t of uniform thickness on battleships. The Yamato class (largest and most heavily armored battleship built by any nation) had about 16 inches of armor on the belt, or sides, 8–9 inches of deck armor, and 26 inches on the front of the main gun turrets.