Design
The fourth and final Naval Law, passed in 1912, governed the building program of the German navy during World War I. The Navy Office decided the Navy should construct one battleship and one battlecruiser every year between 1913 and 1917, with an additional unit of both types in 1913 and 1916. By February 1915, the German High Command had realized that the war would not be won with a lightning campaign as in 1870. Therefore, the Navy department decided to replace the six armored and seven light cruisers that had been sunk by that point in the war. Kaiser Wilhelm II requested the new ships be armed with 38 cm (15 inch) guns; Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander in chief of the High Seas Fleet, preferred the 30.5 cm gun of the preceding Derfflinger class ships. As a compromise, the new battlecruisers were to be armed with eight 35 cm (13.8 inch) guns.
The design staff was generally in agreement with the standard practice of using coal-fired boilers for two-thirds of the power plant, with the remainder being oil-fired boilers. Coal-fired boilers were preferred because the coal, stored in the sides of the ship, provided additional protection, particularly for the battlecruisers. There was a problem with any enlargement of the new ships over the preceding designs. The Imperial dry docks were only deep enough for ships with a draft of 9 m (30 ft). This meant that an increase in displacement would necessitate a longer and wider hull. This was compounded by restrictions on width imposed by the locks of the canal in Wilhelmshaven.
Read more about this topic: Mackensen Class Battlecruiser
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)