Talk:Nassau-class battleship

Design aspects

Some information from Ireland, Bernard, Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century, p. 30, ISBN 0004709977, which may make the article more comprehensive:

• length-to-breadth ration was 5.45, "comparatively stubby" (even for a battleship);
• wing turrets and trunks were very close to side, necessitating extra width; they were vulnerable and made it difficult to provide longitudinal anti-torpedo bulkheads;
• main armament squeezed into machinery spaces, but had benefit of dividing those spaces into three, increasing survivability;
• given the overall weight of the main and secondary armament (14% of total displacement), turrets had to be sited as low as possible for stability purposes; secondary armament, lower down in casemates at main deck level, were of doubtful use in a seaway;
• Nassau could fire six guns forward, six aft, and eight in broadside, the same as the (theoretical) figures for contemporary rival Dreadnought, but Nassaus required two more rifles to do so;
• armour belt was 12" only in limited area in centre.

And here is some interesting information on the roll characteristics, from Lyon, Hugh, The Encyclopedia of the World's Warships, pp. 100–01, ISBN 051722478X:

• the wide beam and heavy wing turrets gave them a large metacentric height. This ordinarily would have made them stable gun platforms, but their roll period proved to coincide with that of the average North Sea swell. The bilge keels were added to mitigate this.

Kablammo (talk) 16:17, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

NOTE - this is wrong - a large metacentric height leads to a large righting force when a ship rolls, hence more violent rolling. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.74.130.171 (talk) 09:54, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Don't splice your comment into someone else's, please. And no, you're wrong - cruise ships have large metacentric heights for the sole purpose of reducing roll to make them more comfortable to passengers. Parsecboy (talk) 12:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

metacentric height

I have doubts on this phrase

The heavy wing turrets caused the ships to have a large metacentric height, which should have made them very stable gun platforms, but their roll period proved to coincide with that of the average North Sea swell.

Stable gun platform should mean long roll period. If not so, all the following is wrong -- tell me that I am wrong on this and ignore the following.

The roll period is given by T=const*k/sqr(g*h), where k is the gyration radius (the square root of a kind of inertia momentum with respect to the axis, i.e. a measure of how much the masses are away from it) and h the metacentric height. The larger h, the smaller T. This is the opposite of the pendulum, but many people thinks incorrectly that the ship behaves as a pendulum. The long roll period should follow from the fact that the side turrets increase k. Suppongoche (talk) 19:32, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

N.B. I feel that the article metacentric height should be supplemented by an abstract stating only (but clearly) what is useful for a non-engineer.