As a consequence navy intern discussions started on the guns caliber, which ended with the decision to give preference to the 13.78in (35 cm) guns. The Naval Technical Committee submitted its first ideas about 22,000t, 23,400t, and 24,500t battleships in December 1911. They submitted plans of 13.5in (34.5 cm) cal 45 guns in triple and superimposed twin turrets on April 18, 1911. made a first effort to get the planning for the next generation of super dreadnoughts started.
(Austro-Hungarian Naval Historian, Vienna, Austria)įunds for the construction of the four dreadnoughts of the Tegetthoff-class had hardly been approved when the Skodawerke A.G. Improved Tegetthoff class - by Erwin Sieche By the end of 1917 all four vessels had been cancelled. Four guns were delivered to the army in 1916-18 for use on the Italian front and the remainder were seized by the French as war loot. The guns for Schiff VIII had been ordered from Skoda's factory at Polsen before the outbreak of the war, but no further orders were placed. It weighed 74 tonnes and fired a 635-kg (1400 lb) shell about 31 500 m (34 450 yards). The 350-mm (13.8-in) L/45 was designed by Skoda, and had a muzzle velocity of 820 m/sec (2690 ft/sec).
Another noteworthy feature was the provision of lattice towers amidships to carry searchlight platforms, and the 150mm (5.9-in) guns were carried higher than before. Several sketch designs were produced, and the final appearance of the ships cannot be known with certainty, but they all had raised forecastles for better seaworthiness. The KuK Marine followed the German custom of withholding the names of new ships until the launching day, and referred to them merely as replacements for old ships, hence Ersatz (replacement). The ships would have been ordered from Stabilimento Tecnico, Trieste, Italy, and the navy yard at Pola, but contracts were never allocated. The Ersatz Monarch was to have been the Schiff VIII and the Ersatz Wien the Schiff IX, while Ersatz Budapest and Ersatz Habsburg would have become Schiff X and Schiff XI. The arrangement was unusual, with two triple turrets superimposed over two twins, enabling the metacentric height to be kept high, to avoid excessive heeling if damaged. A new 350mm (13.8-in)/45-cal gun was adopted to increase the weight of the broadside, but to maintain a balance between protection, stability and firepower, only ten guns were provided. A horizontal armor deck was carried inwards from the bottom edge of the belt, as far as the last of the three vertical bulkheads.
The underwater protection was a radical departure from previous Austro-Hungarian practice, and resembled the French system first introduced in the Henri IV and used in later French and Russian designs.
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