I've been cruising the ship lists for Queen's Own, IRCWCC, and Treaty for Pre-Dreadnaughts and noticed the lists are rather sparse and missing some pretty interesting and historic ships (Russian Borodino and Tsarvarich, US Brooklyn & Oregon, French Messena, and so many other battleships and cruisers (and torpedo boat destroyers). The Treaty list I was looking at has about 36 Pre-Dreadnaughts but that's a relatively short and at 144/th scale (which works great for WWII size boats) most pre-dreadnaughts would come under 3ft and forget about destroyers or monitors at that scale. 1/96th scale would be a sweet spot for Pre-Dreadnaughts with most ships coming in between 3.5-5.5 ft Anyone have a favorite Pre-dreadnaught?
Mine would probably be the Brandenburg class, I think the only pre-dreadnought with three main turrets.
The Brandenburg is pretty unique! Really hard to fine a good photograph with all 3 turrets clearly visible too.
There's a place on my shelf for the Borodino class. It's just about the most Russian thing ever. Those graceful French lines, utterly wrecked by questionable Russian engineering, makes for a particularly strange craft, even for predreadnoughts. Unfortunately it is just outside the time period for Fast Gun
Not really getting how the Brandenburg traversed. is there a cut in one of the superstructure components that allowed it to move across the deck to get from the port to starboard firing arcs?
The middle turret had shorter barrels to allow it to traverse from side to side, clearing the superstructure.
cool. surprised she didn't make as big of a splash with that extra turret when she was built fifteen years before Dreadnought. a 50% increase in volley weight over a 4 gun platform, one would assume, would have led to a continuation of such practices. But I guess the Kaiserliche Marine had a reason. perhaps the same trouble with steam lines running around the barbettes as with the five turret capital ships?
The shorter guns on the center turret had different ballistics than the other four. They haven't figured out yet how to build a ship with more than 2 turrets without making it so much larger so the idea was dropped as deemed impractical, as the three turrets in the Brandenburgs had to do each their own ranging as explained above. Also look it up a youtube channel called Drachinifel he does very good 5 minute guides to many ships, he covered the story of these three as well.
I think I could probably model the Borodino - it's a complex hull - almost like they mashed together several different hulls and didn't really mate them with any particular method. will have to tinker with this for awhile...
I made a nice model of the Borodino's hull in DelftShip, I just couldn't figure out how to transfer that into Fusion 360 so I could actually turn it into useful parts. Every attempt I made failed for various reasons.
Thought I’d share a link - finally got that USS Maine in the water (and filled with water bottles but still not Down to the proper water line): View: https://youtu.be/7Fq1uWIHWbI
I've always admired the brutal ungainliness of the HMS Colossus (1882): Funny thing is, when the next Colossus was built (the 1910 dreadnought), it sported a similar superstructure:
Hey Xanthar, I uploaded my Borodino files to the Resources section of the website. Can you see if you're able to get working in Fusion360?
Fun discussion! my favorite would be the Virginia Class with their doofy double turrets. 12” on the bottom, 8” on the top and neither worked right. Cool idea though! If I ever build another allied ship, that might be it.
