The Kearsarge-class was a group of two pre-dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1890s. The two ships— and —represented a compromise between two preceding battleship designs, the low-freeboard and the high-freeboard , though their design also incorporated several improvements. Their primary advances over earlier designs consisted of new quick-firing guns and improved armor protection, but their most novel feature was their two-story gun turrets that consisted of a secondary gun turret fixed to the top of their primary turrets. The ships suffered from a number of problems, however, including a tertiary battery mounted too low in the hull and poorly-designed turrets, though the latter were attempted again with the in the early 1900s, also with negative results.
Kearsarge served as the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron after entering service, while Kentucky was initially sent to East Asia. In 1904, Kearsarge was temporarily transferred to the European Squadron, also serving as its flagship. Both vessels returned to the North Atlantic Squadron in 1905, and in 1906, Kentucky carried marines to Cuba during unrest in the country. Both ships participated in the cruise of the Great White Fleet around the world between late 1907 and early 1908, and after their return, they were modernized between 1909 and 1911, thereafter being placed in reserve. The two ships were reactivated in mid-1915 and Kearsarge was used as a training ship, while Kentucky was sent to participate in the United States occupation of Veracruz.
After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, both ships were used as training vessels for the rapidly-expanding fleet before being decommissioned in 1920. Kentucky was quickly discarded, being struck from the Naval Vessel Register in 1922 and sold for scrap the following year, but Kearsarge was converted into a crane ship. She was used in this capacity for the next twenty years, being involved in the recovery of the submarine and numerous warship construction, repair, and modernization projects. She was ultimately struck in 1955 and sold to ship breakers later that year.
Design
Following the authorization of the battleship in 1892, the United States Navy failed to order new vessels in 1893 and 1894; this was in part the result of an economic depression in 1893 that reduced naval budgets, and also the views of the new Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert, who had opposed fleets of expensive battleships earlier in the decade. Nevertheless, the Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) continued to work on new designs, and by 1893, Herbert had been convinced by Alfred Thayer Mahan's seminal work The Influence of Sea Power upon History. In his requested budget for 1893, Herbert requested Congress appropriate funds for at least one new battleship. Congress delayed until 1895, when it authorized funding for two ships that were to become the Kearsarge class by the Act of 2 March 1895.
Work on the new design began immediately, and by late March, four proposals had been prepared. All four marked a compromise between the high-freeboard Iowa and the coastal battleships of the ; they had greater freeboard than the Indianas, but lacked the raised forecastle that had rendered Iowa an excellent sea boat. Coal storage, again, represented a compromise between the two. Armor protection was increased compared to the earlier vessels, which included an improved arrangement of the armor deck so that it protected a greater volume of the hull. The main battery was to repeat the guns used in Iowa, since they fired significantly faster than the 13-inch guns the Indianas carried.
The designs varied considerably with regard to their armament. By this time, a new quick-firing gun had been developed, which significantly increased the offensive power of the tertiary battery. The designers initially considered adopting gun turrets for these weapons, but decided against it owing to the increased weight of such an arrangement, along with problems with ammunition magazines and fire control. All four designs arranged these in a central battery amidships, which forced the secondary battery of 8-inch guns to be pushed toward the ends of the ship. The four variants adopted different arrangements for these guns: "A" called for eight guns, two in centerline positions superfiring over the main battery and two wing turrets amidships. "B" discarded the forward turret and placed two wing turrets further forward and one superfiring aft; "C" retained the centerline turrets and discarded the wing mounts, and "D" opted for the reverse of "C".
C&R preferred the "A" design, since it maximized firepower, while the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) believed that none of the proposals was worth pursuing. An ensign in BuOrd, Joseph Strauss, developed a two-story turret that solved the problem; it would carry the 8-inch guns in a separate turret mounted directly atop (and fixed to) the main battery turret. Strauss accordingly proposed a fifth version, "E", that incorporated his turret. Some officers questioned whether it was advisable that the 8-inch guns could not be directed against targets other than what the 12-inch guns were engaging, but Strauss pointed out that at long range, ships were relatively small targets, and at close range, the much greater reloading time of the large guns would permit the 8-inch guns to direct the rotation of the turret while the gun crews prepared the main guns. By this time, American naval engineers had made improvements to their gun turret designs and significant weight savings were achieved. In addition, the two-story, four-gun turret adopted for the Kearsarge class was lighter than the two-gun turrets used in the Indianas of just five years earlier.
At the same time, BuOrd registered its opposition to what it viewed as a regression to 12-inch guns; while the 13-inch weapons were slower to fire, BuOrd estimated that they were 30 percent more powerful. Experiments with armor plate demonstrated that 12-inch guns could not penetrate that thickness even at the relatively close range of , while the 13-inch shells were capable of defeating the armor plate. C&R refused to accept BuOrd's objections, but further tests with a mock up of Iowas belt demonstrated that the 13-inch shells could easily defeat the armor, while the 12-inch shells were kept out. The Navy decided to adopt "E", with 13-inch guns in place of the 12-inch weapons originally proposed.
The Navy repeated the two-story turret arrangement with the s designed in the early 1900s, with much the same reasoning, namely the goal of weight reduction and the belief that the faster-firing 8-inch guns could be operated without disrupting the 12-inch guns adopted for the Virginias. A new, sloped turret design remedied the problem with the overly-large gun ports of the Kearsarge turrets, but the advent of large-caliber, quick-firing guns rendered the concept a failure, since the 12-inch guns fired nearly as quickly as the 8-inch weapons, and the latter could not be fired without severe blast effects disrupting the crew of the former.
General characteristics and machinery
The two Kearsarge-class ships were long at the waterline and long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . They displaced normally, which increased to at full load. Like the Indiana class, the Kearsarge class also had a very low freeboard, amounting to forward under normal conditions, which resulted in her guns becoming unusable in bad weather. The ships' hulls incorporated a prominent ram bow, a common feature for battleships of the period.
Steering was controlled with a single rudder; while steaming at a speed of , it took Kearsarge to complete a turn to port and to turn to starboard. As completed, both ships carried two heavy military masts that carried some of the vessels' light guns, along with spotting tops to help direct the aim of their guns. Kearsarge was manned by 38 officers and 548 enlisted men, while Kentucky carried 38 officers and 549 enlisted men. Their complement was later adjusted to 40 officers and 513 enlisted men.
The battleships had two 3-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines that each drove a single screw propeller. Steam for the engines was provided by five coal-fired Scotch marine boilers, which were ducted into a pair of funnels. The ships' engines were designed to produce a total of for a top speed of . During sea trials, the indicated horsepower and speed exceeded the design, with Kearsarges engines producing a total of for and Kentuckys propulsion system reaching for . Coal storage amounted to normally and up to at full load. At a cruising speed of , the ships could steam for .
Armament
The Kearsarge-class battleships had two double turrets, with two /35 caliber guns and two /35 caliber guns each, stacked in two levels. The guns and turret armor were designed by BuOrd, while the turret itself was designed by C&R. Since the turrets retained the vertical walls of the type used in the first generation of American battleships, the ports had to be very large to allow for sufficient elevation. Then-Lieutenant William Sims noted that the floors of the turrets could be easily seen through the ports, and claimed that as a result, a shell fired into the port could reach the magazines below, disabling the guns.
The 13-inch weapons were built-up guns of the Mark II type, mounted in Mark III turrets that were electrically trained. They were originally supplied with brown powder propellant charges that weighed nearly , later being replaced by smokeless charges. The shells had a muzzle velocity of , and at the muzzle, could penetrate up to of standard steel, and at a range of , could pierce of steel. The turrets allowed depression to −5 degrees and elevation to 15 degrees, which provided a maximum range of , though this was significantly in excess of what could be achieved with the rudimentary gunnery direction equipment at the time; BuOrd recommended that crews open fire at , and even this was optimistic. The rate of fire was one shot every 320 seconds, and the guns had to be returned to 2 degrees elevation to be reloaded.
The 8-inch guns were the Mark IV version, which had a muzzle velocity of . Also originally brown-powder guns, they, too, received updated smokeless charges in the early 1900s. The change improved the rate of fire from one shot per minute to one shot every forty seconds. Reloading was also fixed at 0 degrees. They were mounted in Mark IX turrets that were fixed atop the main battery turrets. The arrangement was adopted because the significantly higher rate of fire of the 8-inch guns was thought to reduce interference between the guns, but with the adoption of smokeless propellant and rapid fire for the main battery in the early 1900s proved this to be an incorrect assumption.
The turret guns were supported by a battery of fourteen 5 in/40 caliber guns mounted individually in casemates in the upper deck, seven on each broadside. Once the ships entered service, it was discovered that the central battery had been placed too close to the waterline, and the casemates were frequently washed out, rendering them unusable in all but calm seas. For defense against torpedo boats, they also carried twenty 6-pounder () Hotchkiss guns and eight 1-pounder () guns. These were also in individual open mounts distributed around the decks and fighting tops of the masts; eight of the 57 mm guns were placed in a broadside battery one deck above the 5-inch guns, four on either side. Four more were placed in casemates in the bow, and another four were similarly arranged toward the stern. The ships also carried a pair of M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun chambered in Lee Navy.