lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Oct 11, 2021 16:09:27 GMT
Greek Versus Ottoman, Naval battle of 1897
So in 1897 the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897, also called the Thirty Days' War was fought between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Its immediate cause involved the status of the Ottoman province of Crete, whose Greek-majority population had long desired union with Greece. Despite the Ottoman victory on the field, an autonomous Cretan State under Ottoman suzerainty was established the following year (as a result of the intervention of the Great Powers after the war), with Prince George of Greece and Denmark as its first High Commissioner. In 1897 the Greek navy consisted of three Hydra class small ironclads (Hydra, Spetsai, and Psara), one unprotected cruiser ( Navarchos Miaoulis), and several older small ironclads and gunboats. The Greek ships conducted bombardments of Turkish fortifications and escorted troop transports, however there was no major naval battle during the war. The Ottoman fleet had seven battleships and ironclads at least as large as the Greek battleships, and although most of these were obsolete designs the Osmanieh class had been rebuilt and modernized. The Turkish navy also had several smaller ironclads, two unprotected cruisers and a number of smaller ships including torpedo craft. However, the Ottoman fleet had not been maintained, perhaps due to the Sultan’s fear of a strong navy becoming a power base for plots against the government, and in 1897 when called into action most of the ships were in poor condition and could not contest control of the sea beyond the Dardanelles. The only naval confrontation between the Greek and Ottoman navies was when the Greek unprotected cruiser Miaoulis chased off the Ottoman dispatch boat Fuad (transcribed as 'Fonat' in one source) from an attempt to reinforce Crete. The Fuad was a large paddle wheel ship but slightly slower and less well armed than the Greek cruiser. So what if the two navies meet of the cost of Create in the Naval battle of Crete, who would win and how would the fleet look like. 
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Oct 20, 2021 23:26:14 GMT
Lordroel, I'd have to give it to the Greeks if the two battle lines met.
As far as I can tell, the Greek Hydra class BB was far better than the Turkish Osmaniye class.
First off the Pasha was very wary of his naval officers and did everything he could to ensure they would not become a force to overthrow him. That meant the ships were kept in poor condition and the quantity and quality of training was inadequate to employ the BBs effectively against a much better trained but numerically inferior Greek Battle line.
OK let's lookk at the ships Greek Hydra class Turkish Osmaniye class
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Oct 21, 2021 0:06:58 GMT
Lordroel, I'd have to give it to the Greeks if the two battle lines met.
As far as I can tell, the Greek Hydra class BB was far better than the Turkish Osmaniye class.
First off the Pasha was very wary of his naval officers and did everything he could to ensure they would not become a force to overthrow him. That meant the ships were kept in poor condition and the quantity and quality of training was inadequate to employ the BBs effectively against a much better trained but numerically inferior Greek Battle line.
OK let's look at the ships Greek Hydra class Turkish Osmaniye classas refitted in 1894
Displacement 4,885 short tons 7,100 short tons
Length 334 feet 8 inches 299 ft 10 in (loa)
Beam 51 ft 10 in 55 ft 5 in
Draft 18 ft 25 ft 11 in
Installed power 4×fire-tube boilers6,700 horsepower 6 scotch marine boilers
Propulsion 2 × triple-expansion steam engines 2 vertical triple-expansion engines
2 × screw propellers
Speed 17 knots 10.9 knots
Crew 400 360
Armament 3 × 10.8-inch guns 2 Krupp breech-loading 9.4 in K L/35 guns
8 5.9 in L/25 Krupp guns and
6 4.1 in) L/25 Krupp guns
5 × 5.9-inch L36 guns two 4-barreled 1 in Nordenfelt guns
4 × 3.4-inch L22 guns 4 1.9 in quick-firing (QF) Hotchkiss guns
4 × 3-pdr guns
4 × 1-pdr guns
6 × 1-pdr revolver cannons
3 × 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor Belt: 4 to 12 in 5.5 in
Barbettes: 14 in 5 in
Deck: 1.9 in
mix of Creusot and compound steel. wrought iron armor
Hydra has better guns, better armor and superior speed. Bad day for the Turks.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Oct 21, 2021 3:42:04 GMT
Lordroel, I'd have to give it to the Greeks if the two battle lines met.
As far as I can tell, the Greek Hydra class BB was far better than the Turkish Osmaniye class.
First off the Pasha was very wary of his naval officers and did everything he could to ensure they would not become a force to overthrow him. That meant the ships were kept in poor condition and the quantity and quality of training was inadequate to employ the BBs effectively against a much better trained but numerically inferior Greek Battle line.
OK let's look at the ships Greek Hydra class Turkish Osmaniye classas refitted in 1894
Displacement 4,885 short tons 7,100 short tons
Length 334 feet 8 inches 299 ft 10 in (loa)
Beam 51 ft 10 in 55 ft 5 in
Draft 18 ft 25 ft 11 in
Installed power 4×fire-tube boilers6,700 horsepower 6 scotch marine boilers
Propulsion 2 × triple-expansion steam engines 2 vertical triple-expansion engines
2 × screw propellers
Speed 17 knots 10.9 knots
Crew 400 360
Armament 3 × 10.8-inch guns 2 Krupp breech-loading 9.4 in K L/35 guns
8 5.9 in L/25 Krupp guns and
6 4.1 in) L/25 Krupp guns
5 × 5.9-inch L36 guns two 4-barreled 1 in Nordenfelt guns
4 × 3.4-inch L22 guns 4 1.9 in quick-firing (QF) Hotchkiss guns
4 × 3-pdr guns
4 × 1-pdr guns
6 × 1-pdr revolver cannons
3 × 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor Belt: 4 to 12 in 5.5 in
Barbettes: 14 in 5 in
Deck: 1.9 in
mix of Creusot and compound steel. wrought iron armor
Hydra has better guns, better armor and superior speed. Bad day for the Turks. So the Greek navy, with its 3 Hydra class small ironclads would win against the Ottoman 7 battleships and ironclads. |
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575
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Post by 575 on Oct 22, 2021 16:03:03 GMT
I found thisdetailling the Greek and Ottoman Navies of 1912 but with history to back it up and mentioning those ships. Probably the Greeks need to be happy the Ottomans weren't trained and bound in harbour as the Ottoman ships main artillery was the Krupp 24cm K l/35 which had a rate of fire of 3 shots a minute with a range of 13,000m/14,210yds. The Greek Hydras sported French Canet guns of pre 1887 vintage which I haven't been able to dig up though data must be out there, but I found data of the railway guns of identical caliber - former Navy guns 274mm 87/93 - used during WWI. Rate of fire one shot every 4 minutes range 24 miles. The downside of the Greek ships being that the 2 forward guns were placed in a casemate firing mainly forward with the single rear gun being in a turret. Still as oscssw point to the Ottoman ships were poorly armoured and slow compared to the Greek ones. Probably the Greeks would use their superior speed and armour to run circles around the Ottomans should these leave port lobbing a few shells every four minutes into them comfortably out of range of the quickfiring Krupp guns. |
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Oct 22, 2021 16:05:20 GMT
I found thisdetailling the Greek and Ottoman Navies of 1912 but with history to back it up and mentioning those ships. Nice and interesting find 575. |
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dalecoz
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Post by dalecoz on Oct 23, 2021 17:02:34 GMT
Interesting bit of potential history.I wonder what lessons, if any, the Great Power navies would have taken from that battle. Earlier dreadnaught equivalents? Anything that would have influenced the course of the Russo-Japanese War?
Slightly more speculative: could a decisive Ottoman naval defeat push the Balkan states and the Italians into an earlier scramble to partially partition the Ottoman Empire, moving the Turkish Italian war and the equivalent of the first Balkan War forward ten to twelve years?
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Oct 24, 2021 16:29:53 GMT
Interesting bit of potential history.I wonder what lessons, if any, the Great Power navies would have taken from that battle. Earlier dreadnaught equivalents? Anything that would have influenced the course of the Russo-Japanese War? Slightly more speculative: could a decisive Ottoman naval defeat push the Balkan states and the Italians into an earlier scramble to partially partition the Ottoman Empire, moving the Turkish Italian war and the equivalent of the first Balkan War forward ten to twelve years?
Probably not Italy as its just been defeated by Ethiopia the year before so is probably in no position to do so politically or militarily. However an earlier 1st Balkan war could occur, especially if it triggered a couple of years down the line when the major powers are distracted by the Boxer crisis and a bit later Britain by the Boers. Which might distract from a coalition of great powers stepping in to moderate things. Of course with Britain being the major power distracted and anyway still in 'splendid isolation' at the time a sudden collapse of the Ottomans which would be favoured by Russia and probably of concern to Austria and possibly Germany could trigger a somewhat earlier Great War! Mind you a lot would depend on the politics of the assorted powers at the time as getting an alliance of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria and possibly others could be difficult.
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Oct 31, 2021 15:41:56 GMT
Interesting bit of potential history.I wonder what lessons, if any, the Great Power navies would have taken from that battle. Earlier dreadnaught equivalents? Anything that would have influenced the course of the Russo-Japanese War? Slightly more speculative: could a decisive Ottoman naval defeat push the Balkan states and the Italians into an earlier scramble to partially partition the Ottoman Empire, moving the Turkish Italian war and the equivalent of the first Balkan War forward ten to twelve years? I don't know enough to comment on your 2nd Para but I do know something about the Dreadnought BB and the Russo-Japanese war navies.
First off regarding an earlier introduction of the Dreadnought. One of the key technologies that allowed Fisher to produce the revolution in BBs was the steam turbine engine. Until the steam turbine (along with the cruising turbine) was perfected for major power plants a true "Dreadnought"BB was not practicable. In order to really get the best of the All big gun armament and thus longer combat ranges you also need higher speed, faster cruising and less vibration. Even in 1906 that was asking a lot of the existing steam turbines. Fortunately for Fisher, Parsons pretty much hand built and fine tuned the STs for Dreadnought. Reciprocating engines could not reliably deliver any of those. Just running a reciprocating engine at max capacity for a few hours would literally tear it apart.
As for the IJN vs the Russian Navy in the Western Pacific. No contest. The IJN had good ships, better trained crews, professional officers instead of aristocratic hacks and "home field advantage". Russian enlisted men were disaffected and on the verge of mutiny, especially after the humiliating failures of their Pacific squadron. The only thing the Russians did not lack was physical courage.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? 
Trafalgar of the East: Why the Russian Navy Failed in the Russo-Japanese War
What really worries me is the similarities between the Imperial Russian Navy Officer Corps' " risk-averse, over-bureaucratization and what I see in the USN today. IMO, this is particularly disastrous when mixed with social engineering for the war fighting efficiency of the fleet.
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Post by raharris1973 on Jan 3, 2022 18:43:31 GMT
Slightly more speculative: could a decisive Ottoman naval defeat push the Balkan states and the Italians into an earlier scramble to partially partition the Ottoman Empire, moving the Turkish Italian war and the equivalent of the first Balkan War forward ten to twelve years? However an earlier 1st Balkan war could occur, especially if it triggered a couple of years down the line when the major powers are distracted by the Boxer crisis and a bit later Britain by the Boers. Which might distract from a coalition of great powers stepping in to moderate things. Of course with Britain being the major power distracted and anyway still in 'splendid isolation' at the time a sudden collapse of the Ottomans which would be favoured by Russia and probably of concern to Austria and possibly Germany could trigger a somewhat earlier Great War! Mind you a lot would depend on the politics of the assorted powers at the time as getting an alliance of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria and possibly others could be difficult. & stevepI certainly agree with stevep that a visible Greek naval victory has the potential inspire other Balkan states to join in an early Balkan war, but the Italians would be unlikely to participate. Although a quadruple attack of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, in addition to Greece, on land puts more pressure on the Ottomans, the Balkan allies are not at all guaranteed to win given that they were kicking the Greeks butts handily and rolling them back on land. We actually cannot assume or take for granted that the Russians would favor a sudden collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1897. The idea that the Russian empire would always favor a collapse of the Ottoman empire (and the corollary that the British empire would always oppose the collapse of the Ottomans) is a bit of an overgeneralization. In the Armenian crisis that peaked in 1895-96 for example, British Conservative PM Lord Salisbury was most in favor of intervention to liberate the Armenians and overthrow the Sultan, and the Tsar and other leaders on the continent wanted no part of that. About simultaneously with the OTL Greco-Turkish war, in May 1897, the Austrians and Russians negotiated the Goluchowski-Muraviev agreements to put Balkan issues "on ice", preserving the territorial status quo, and, if that became impossible, pledging to make further agreements to manage change. So, a widened Balkan War could be contained and prevented from turning into an early Great War by great power cooperation in the region. Factors in favor were Austrian suspicion of Italy and Russia's greater interest at the moment in the Far East. But stevep is correct to say that things could go sideways, the powers could fail to agree, and an earlier Balkan war could instead lead to a somewhat earlier Great War! If the tide turns against the Ottomans on land in a hypothetical early Balkan war, ironically at this point, Vienna will be the biggest cheerleader for *Serbia* which was an economic and political client state of Austria at the time, under the agreeable Obrenovich dynasty (that only changed after the Serbian coup of 1903). In that situation, Vienna would see maximal expansion of Serbia towards Macedonia, the Aegean, and Adriatic as the best method by proxy of expanding her own influence in the Balkans, rather than having disputed lands fall into the hands of a perceived Russian client (Bulgaria), or British client (Greece). |
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