this channel is part of the history hit network stick around to find out more with 80 warships france's navy is one of the most powerful in the world ships are engaged in all theaters of military operation the sea is clearly the center of the world so whoever wants to dominate the land must dominate the sea as both firing platform and ship these vessels contain an extraordinary concentration of technologies warship is one of the most complex systems that humankind is capable of designing and operating from the galleys of the 17th century to the armor-plated ships of the second world war we'll travel through four centuries of history to discover the technologies which today's warships have inherited a lot of research was required to obtain a ship capable of functioning well at sea whilst fulfilling its military role as an artillery platform we'll explain why the cannon profoundly changed ships architecture and transformed the art of war a 380 millimeter gun is capable of firing a one-ton missile at 900 kilometers per hour every one and a half to two minutes you'll discover the combat technique of the first warship the galley the strength of the galley lay in its impact and how they built genuine walls of wood to protect against cannonballs you'll understand why warships were slow to adopt the steam engine in the 19th century you immediately think steam that's it no no perfecting it took a very long time it was complicated and the reasons why torpedoes and aircraft brought an end to a century of domination by the steel monsters welcome to 400 years of history and technology welcome to warships [Music] off the coast of africa in the indian ocean warships with futuristic silhouettes are cruising [Music] among them is the most valuable element of the french navy the giant the aircraft carrier charles de gaulle the ship launches the rafale into action the latest generation of combat aircraft it's a 40 000 ton ship which carries around 30 aircraft made up of the rafale the hawkeye which is the early morning aircraft and then helicopters to carry out logistics transport and to protect the aircraft in their takeoff and landing phases and aircraft carrier transports aircraft which carry out missions of reconnaissance no-fly zone enforcement interception bombing anti-ship warfare everything an aircraft is capable of it is the largest ship in the french navy the 261 metres long and 64 metres wide the charles de gaulle is the only surface ship with a nuclear propulsion system which needs refueling just every seven years the 12 000 square meter flight deck equivalent to two football pitches is home to around 30 rafale aircraft and one hawkeye and its two steam catapults can launch its aircraft in just 15 minutes i don't think there's anything more sophisticated than a warship it's the largest object manufactured constructed made by humans that exists in the world it's a tool that's very expensive to design and construct it requires a huge amount of know-how in every aspect it's the most accomplished tool from the technical and technological points of view you could compare it today to the conquest of space thanks to the aircraft carrier france can deploy its military power and defend its strategic interests anywhere in the world no target is out of reach the warship is a part of france that can go anywhere in the world it's capable of cruising in the ocean on the planet every continent history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from uncovering ancient neolithic cultures to the dawn of the space race history hit has hundreds of exclusive documentaries with unrivaled access to the world's best historian we're committed to bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a 14-day free trial and timeline fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code timeline at checkout when you have an aircraft carrier you position it close to the coast and with your aircraft you can go a lot further so you have a much greater ability to strike in land the jewel of the french navy is always accompanied by its escort [Music] a minimum of six ships which make up the task force [Music] an aircraft carrier is never alone at sea it's surrounded by a whole armada which will allow it to escape from submarines or airborne threats if there happened to be any to protect the aircraft carrier one anti-air frigate two multi-purpose frigates specialized in anti-submarine combat one replenishment oilership and one nuclear attack submarine which will be the fighter and protector of the task force danger can come from anywhere because contemporary naval warfare is in three dimensions surface air and underwater and no ship can defend itself against these three dimensions while ships joined battle today at a distance of over one thousand kilometers four centuries ago they confronted each other in deadly close combat battles one ship was perfectly designed for that type of fighting the galley [Music] in the 17th century france had 40 galleys in a corps commanded by a general of the galleys the corps was made up of three types of ship the ordinary galley the ultimate battleship the patron galley for the commanders of the corps and the royal galley for the use of the king queen and royal princes [Music] the ship originated in the mediterranean in the year 600 bc and was designed for close combat the gully was a combat weapon the idea was to surprise the enemy ships to sail around them to surround them if they were isolated ships and then to ram them the strength of the galilee in its impact because you had to smash into the enemy galley at right angles smashing into the opposing ship meant ramming it at full speed so the galley was shaped to glide over the waves the slender hull eight times longer than it was wide offered exceptional hydrodynamic performance its low height in the water gave the oars maximum lever effect finally this ship weighing just 250 tons had two means of propulsion galleys had one or two masts with triangular sails and as soon as there was a bit of wind they put the sails up but the main characteristic of the galley was the oars the human propulsion [Music] an ordinary galley had 51 ores 26 on one side and 25 on the other each all was 12 meters long and weighed up to 130 kilograms with five rowers per ore 255 men were required to crew the ship [Music] they would stand up and use all their body weight and they would hold their all in which there were wooden structures called palomon which they'd grip with their hands and then they'd push the or all the way forward and pull it back towards them and that's how they made the galley advance a good rower was a man with big thighs rather than big arms because basically it's the strength in the legs the thighs which make the ship move faster and the arms just go with the oar at full speed the galley could reach 6 knots or 11 kilometers per hour fast enough to seriously damage the opposing ship on impact while the slender hull allowed it to go fast its low height in the water meant it couldn't sail outside the mediterranean galleys stayed close to shore they weren't sea going ships in winter they stayed in port if it was windy they couldn't sail so galleys weren't used often the reason the galley fell from favor wasn't its poor nautical qualities but it's limited firepower the problem with the galley was that you needed space for the oars and for the artillery so the galley's artillery was packed into the bow when two fleets of galleys confronted each other they did so facing each other because of their cannons the idea was to weaken the enemy before close combat it was fairly tokenistic because once you fire a cannon you have to reload it and it was very difficult to reload a cannon on a galley from 1680 galleys were no longer used in the front line as they didn't have enough cannons the ship was abandoned after raining over the mediterranean for two millennia the firepower of today's warships is impressive like that of the multipurpose frigate that protects the aircraft carrier the frame is without doubt the best surface combat ship today in the frigate class it's able to handle all the current threats with its extremely powerful on the sides two 12.7 millimeter guns ensure close protection at the stern two twenty millimeter remote controlled guns allow automatic firing with target locking by day and by night more imposing on the bow is a 75 millimeter gun with a range of 30 kilometers it can destroy land sea or airborne targets against aircraft there are 16 astar missiles which can reach 3500 kilometers per hour finally the frigate has 16 naval cruise missiles to strike targets over a thousand kilometers away ships armament is the result of a long technical evolution the first cannons also called mouths of fire appeared in the 14th century made from strips of wrought iron assembled by hand it wasn't rare for them to explode on firing so for a long time people were reluctant to load these weapons onto ships in the 15th century cannon manufacturing methods improved made from a new bronze alloy they became safer and more precise they were installed in large numbers on sailing ships with high freeboard or height above the water unlike galleys they had no wars and so had space for artillery weapons along their sides so began a new era that of sailing ships and their powerful artillery which were to dominate the seas for the next three centuries and change the art of war the history of these warships began in the late middle ages it started in the late 15th century and early 16th century with the appearance of the galleon which was very archaic it was quite a big rounded bulging ship with castles fore and aft the wide decks could take a large number of artillery weapons however their weight raised the ship's center of gravity and destabilized it the solution was found in the late 15th century with a simple but revolutionary idea the invention of the gun gunport was a rectangle of wood which the shipwrights cut into the hull when the gunport was closed you couldn't distinguish it from the rest of the hull then in battle you raised this sort of shutter you pushed the barrel into the hole loaded the cannonball and fired the introduction of the gunport was fundamental if the cannons had stayed on the decks it would have been impossible to increase their weight because of the ship's stability if you put heavy weights high up obviously the ship will have a tendency to list or even to sink placing the cannons below decks lowered the center of gravity and therefore you could increase the weight and also the caliber of the cannons the caliber of the artillery progressed rapidly in 1638 the largest cannon was a 12-pounder it fired a cannonball weighing six kilos seven years later the 18-pounder cannon appeared and in 1682 the most powerful piece of artillery was made with a caliber of 36 pounds this 3 meter long colossus fired a cannonball weighing 18 kilos over 300 meters the cannon alone weighed three and a half tons with all the equipment it was closer to six or seven tons so it was huge and that was why 15 men were needed to service each 36 pounder cannons of the same caliber were installed in batteries the lightest were positioned on the upper deck and the heaviest on the lower deck each battery was made up of two broadsides one on either side at the end of the 17th century the larger ships had up to three batteries giving them the impressive number of 100 cannons as these ships were more stable than galleys the cannons were more effective they could fire further and with more precision they could fire further because they were higher in the water so that's ballistics and they could have more precision because as the platform was more stable they could be aimed more accurately combat at sea was changing they weren't trying to board each other's ships anymore they weren't trying to get close to each other on the contrary they not available from 1664 boarding with its risky outcome gave place to the tactic known as line of battle you had about 40 or 50 ships divided into three groups the vanguard the battle corps and the rear guard which had to fight the enemy in the same way and the two squadrons sailed past each other then turned around and did the same in the other direction so you had battles lasting 10 or even 12 hours you weren't seeking to systematically destroy the others you wanted them to retreat showing that you were the strongest you occupied that area and you were sovereign in that particular place this war of intimidation involved the most powerfully armed ships the ships of the line in the vanguard with the ships with three decks and more than 80 cannons in the middle the ships with 50 to 68 cannons and in the rear those with fewer than 50 cannons in the line of battle you obviously tried to have the ships following each other with the same nautical performance and approximately the same firepower so you didn't create a weakness in the line you need to try to imagine a sort of great fortification in which you systematically placed cannons of the same power for the larger ships of the line cannons and cannonballs combined exceeded 300 tons that significant weight meant that the design of the ships had to be revised if you place a lot of artillery in the hull what do you have to do you have to make the hull longer or else you won't have enough space for the cannons and you won't have enough space to operate the cannons so you make it longer but as you lengthen the ship you also need to make it wider because if you make it too long it will become fragile and will have poor nautical qualities so you have to increase its width if you do that you also have to increase the size of the masts so you need to find larger timber with a greater diameter the french navy like its foreign competitors wanted to construct the best warship today warships go through a long development phase armament speed and maneuverability are considered in response to the needs of modern warfare we have very powerful software which allows us to design the ship in three dimensions and very quickly to be able to integrate all the equipment and systems on board the ship system steel hull propulsion system electrical and computing networks are built in at the shipyards these ships are meticulously assembled using gigantic cranes 104 meters tall equivalent to a 35-story building and gantry cranes capable of lifting 300 tons or 15 trucks at the same time in the 17th century warships were constructed by hand it all started with the keel the backbone of the ship course three constructing a warship was extremely complicated you had to create a hull starting with a keel onto which you join wooden frames like the ribs connected to one sternum these ribs or frames gave the hulled shape it was much less slender than that of the galley because the builders were looking less for the best movement through the water than the efficient distribution of the artillery's significant weight in order to erect an impenetrable barrier the distance between each frame was smaller than the width of a cannonball so onto this wooden structure they nailed the planking on the outside so very long planks of wood which were placed along the hull from the keel to the upper deck inside there was more strengthening an inner skin if you like called the ceiling so it was reinforced by planks of wood on the inside frames planking and sealing formed a hull which could be up to a meter thick that's why it was called the wall [Music] this wall was pierced for the gunports they were arranged at an equal distance 2.4 meters apart and so as not to weaken the hull they were arranged in a checkerboard pattern the position of the gunports was of crucial importance as shown by the tragic fate of the vasa [Music] disaster struck during the swedish ship's maiden voyage on the 10th of august 1628. the boat was very unstable the gun ports were too low down and the water very rapidly flooded into the hull making it sink very quickly that day the thousand sailors on board lost their lives in the port of stockholm the sinking of the vassa highlighted the importance of the height of battery this is the distance between the water line and the bottom of the lower battery gun port there must be a certain distance or else the ship will take on water through the gun ports and will end up sinking so this height of battery can't be too small but it can't be too big either or the stability of the ship will be affected it will lack stability it won't have a good attitude in the water after a year in the shipyard the hull was finished and launched the final stage could begin the fitting out of the ship this wasn't about positioning the artillery but rather installing the masts sails and rigging the masts reached 30 meters high the equivalent of a 10-storey building to help with their installation the shipbuilders used a sort of crane called a masting machine they had what was called a masting machine which was about 70 meters tall it was made up of big masts tied together with ropes which were made to lift very heavy loads and to install the lower sections of the masts in the ships in the vertical position then they added the upper sections of the mass which were ringed with iron and then they could add all the sails the surface area of the sails determined the ship's speed a decisive element during battles at sea as ships became bigger and heavier as they carried more artillery they needed more efficient sails because the sails of the engine so they increased the surface area to make the ship go faster you could divide the sails into two groups rectangular or trapezium trapezium-shaped sails were mainly used for propulsion for speed and the smaller triangular or square sails were used more for maneuvering the ship in full sail these heavily armed ships could reach 9 knots or 17 kilometers per hour that was 30 percent faster than gallons it took about a hundred craftsmen a year and a half to build these lords of the sea each ship was unique because the master shipbuilders guarded their trade secrets jealously extraordinary thing about these wooden ships was that the builders handed down their technical expertise through six or seven generations the designers of the ships stuck to the tried and tested methods it's like recipes in cooking once you have the right balance you don't change it there's the know-how the knack all of that whilst the recipes most often produced efficient ships they sometimes made ships that were incapable of putting to see given their cost the navy couldn't afford a failure like the vasa the know the number of people it took between the mastership builders the shipbuilders shipwrights the cannon manufacturers the foundry workers the sail makers everything you need on a ship from planking to hemp cannons and armaments it was quite extraordinary a ship cost one million pounds in the late 18th century which was equivalent to 300 kilograms of gold for the time this extraordinary cost forced france to draw up construction standards that would guarantee the excellence of ships arsenals like toulon brest rochefort or l'oreal played an essential role they developed new technical solutions and trained the best shipbuilders using extremely detailed models [Music] these big models usually one to ten scale were almost the kind of simulator you stood around them you were there to learn you were there also to see the effect of the wind on the sails they were instructing the master shipbuilders so they were a real 3d training school in 1765 france founded the school of maritime engineering it trained the future engineers who would replace the old shipbuilders these men of science used the new mathematics and insisted on drawings it was the birth of modern naval architecture [Music] in the 18th century times had changed certain inefficient ships had been abandoned for good and the 74-gun ship of the line had been perfected it was the battleship par excellence its name was the tenere it was the first warship built according to a naval architectural plan the plan was the work of two men john charles de bordeaux and jacques noel sane the mathematician the scholar and sane was the highly skilled and competent engineer who made his career following the training route at the time as a shipbuilding engineer together they optimized the 74 gunship of the line conceived 40 years earlier they found the best compromise between firepower and nautical qualities see often it was the result of a lot of research to obtain a ship that was capable of functioning as well as possible at sea while fulfilling its military role as an artillery platform the ship's dimensions were impressive 57 meters long 15 meters wide its tallest mast was 85 meters high when you imagine a ship moored at a key level with a person with its banks of sales it was pretty impressive if you place the gun ship of the line with all its sails unfelt in front of the arc de triomphe the arch would be completely hidden completely invisible it weighed 2 950 tons this giant was powered by more than 40 sails with a total surface area of 2600 square meters or six basketball courts this powerful propulsion allowed it to reach the unheard of speed of 11 knots or 20 kilometers per hour the ship also had exceptional maneuverability a crucial advantage in battle these nautical qualities were desirable because in battle changing tack was a very complex operation attacking took half an hour of maneuvers assuming that the enemy wasn't firing at you from all directions so the desire for maneuverability was essential in terms of war the ship could change tack in just 15 minutes that was half the time of its opponents this prowess was made possible by the addition of one element on the mizzen sail located at the stern of the ship the boom gradually this sail was perfected the bottom of the sail was attached to a piece of wood called a boom which kept the sail more rigid and that was great because it meant you could trim the sail very accurately and adjust it by a few degrees more or less fast and maneuverable the ship was powerfully armed its 74 guns were arranged in two batteries in the lower battery there were 28 36 pounder guns in the upper battery 30 18 pounders and on the upper deck 16 8 pounders in the hold it carried 4 400 cannonballs and 22 tons of gunpowder enough to last six months this ship was a formidable artillery platform sanayan borders ship of the line was the centerpiece of the french navy the ship was built according to blueprints which standardized the model that meant they could develop construction according to pre-established standardized models with a ship that would be identical in one century around a hundred ships were produced in the shipyards this success inspired foreign navies which sought to copy them [Music] in the 18th century industrial espionage was rife there were british engineers who tried to come to toulon to spy and also to rush for this espionage also happened when an enemy ship was captured so technical knowledge and know-how circulated widely these 74 gunships of the line and their variations the 80 gun and 118 gun showed their power by exhibiting their artillery today the stakes are very different 21st century warships seek to be stealthy the object of stealth isn't to make the ship invisible that's impossible it's to make it less visible so that its radar imprint on an enemy's screen looks like a small ship or another ship rather than a threatening high tonnage warship on enemy radar screens the battleship appears no bigger than a fishing boat this achievement is made possible by the shape of the hull which is able to attenuate radar the waves means of detecting a ship at sea is radar the radar emits electromagnetic waves which will touch the metal sides of the frigate and this wave goes back to the radar and the enemy radar gets an indication of direction and distance the frigate has superstructures on the incline to avoid reflecting the wave and also completely flat sides because any cavity represents a sort of cage that amplifies the radar signal and re-emits it with more power so you can be detected from much further away so really thanks to its shape a frame today that weighs 6000 tons is seen as a boat of a few hundred tons that's hardly visible on an enemy radar stealth is a key advantage when ships confront each other without seeing each other it allows you to strike the adversary before being spotted but when the battle is a deadly head to head the advantage will be with the one that has the greatest firepower in the early 19th century the distance separating two enemy ships during a battle was less than 500 meters at that distance the only thing that counted was the number of cannons at trafalgar there were more than 5 000 cannons facing each other to reach those numbers you had to wait till the first world war you didn't have that many cannons and they were big ones 36 pounders whereas on land napoleon in the same period at australis probably had 146 cannons and they were only 20 pounders it was another world warfare was changing it was no longer a matter of intimidating your enemy but annihilating him destruction the desire to annihilate one's enemy started to appear in the middle of the 18th century there were battles that demonstrated how they were trying to sink enemy ships or even really to kill men tourism on the other hand the english were much more dangerous because they fired to kill so they aimed at the level of the ship's rail the english cannonballs splintered about one meter of wood so the poor french sailors were hit full in the chest or the eyes by these splinters and the french losses were much greater than the english losses in 1779 the english perfected a new artillery weapon which they introduced on their ships a year later it was called the carinae the carinade was a short cannon placed on deck offering very accurate firing over a short range it was very destructive the caronade could easily pierce an enemy's hull but also fire across the decks the caronade loaded with shrapnel fired at the enemy decks at less than 300 meters the results were devastating the french soon copied it and installed this deadly weapon on their own ships whether they were carrying aids or cannons a lengthy process was required before these artillery weapons could be fired first you had to clean the inside of the barrel to remove any powder from the previous firing then the powder charge was inserted next the cannonball wedged between two wads of old ropes was compacted in the barrel the gun was moved close to the gunport using a system of ropes and pulleys fifteen men were needed to manipulate this heavy 3.5 ton gun once in position the gun commander would discharge the powder and light the match cord i used the example of a formula one car coming into the pits to change its tyres they have to be as quick as possible loading a cannon was no different you had a team around a cannon and they had to react very fast and be perfectly coordinated and that coordination only came with practice the english were capable of firing a 38 pounder gun in eight minutes the less well trained french took two or three times longer [Music] once the cannons were ready the ship's side had to be positioned towards the enemy the commander's task was to maneuver his ship or even his fleet if he was an admiral into a favorable position to fire the first shot and even to be able to fire a second as quickly as possible in the knowledge that the ships were moving when you have about 30 cannons firing more or less at the same time first of all it's very noisy and then there's a lot of smoke you can't see the cannon next door the smoke is overwhelming you have to try to imagine it there were about 300 men in a space already saturated with gunpowder you can't imagine what it was like but it would burn your throat there was the heat of course the fear the noise of battle and explosions because opposite you the enemy was also firing and when he hit his target of the enemy gun ports the wood exploded which sent splinters and particles whirling about the batteries striking the men the wounds show this quite clearly in addition to the dead there were dozens of wounded men so that the crew wouldn't panic at the sight of so much blood the decks of some ships were painted red the english ships had trained a crews used to very strict discipline and if i can put it this way they were replaceable they had three times more naval reserves than the french did i think the difference in the late 18th century wasn't so much in technology but with more sailors but also more ships england had the most powerful navy in the world france wanted to make things more equal and in order to do that invested in technological advances the idea was to equal the quantity and financial resources of great britain by technological breakthroughs france systematically used technological innovation to compensate for financial economic and industrial inferiority in comparison to great britain so angry joseph paxon an army general graduate of the ecco polytechnique and french artillery specialist developed a new weapon the shell gun both shorter and heavier this gun fired explosive shells the explosive shell firstly traveled faster so it was able to smash through the wooden walls and it exploded inside the battery it proved its formidable effectiveness in 1838 in the war between france and mexico love using these shells france destroyed the fortress of san juan de ula so every navy then understood the threat to wooden navy ships while the pixon gun was quickly adopted by navies the same wasn't true of the other major invention that would transform warships steam power there was resistance to change there was a natural skepticism towards new technological breakthroughs and you could see that with the arrival of steam changes in mentalities ways of thinking don't happen at the same rate as technological changes there can be relatively quick technological changes but then people have to the adapt steam engine was installed in a boat in 1807. with 18 horsepower it operated two enormous paddle wheels cell advancing invention of steam power was applied at sea by an american giving more power and he made the first steamboats with a range that made them useful for trade for war in 1838 an english liner powered by both sail and steam made the crossing from liverpool to new york in a record time 15 days instead of the 40 days needed by other sailing ships in spite of this exploit the great naval powers were slow to adopt steam you immediately think steam that's it no no perfecting it took a very long time it was complicated first of all you needed different types of people on board you needed mechanics you needed people who worked in forges people in the iron trade the steam engine was a complicated and delicate mechanism which raised questions over vulnerability and fuel stocks for the military system the major obstacle was the protection of the ship because the external wheels providing their propulsion were extremely vulnerable to enemy artillery but there was another problem in the holds they needed enormous stores of coal so they not only needed space in the holds for that which was to the detriment of the cannons but they also needed external infrastructure places to pick up coal around the world another revolutionary invention solved the problem of vulnerability the propeller located below the water line it was protected from enemy fire it quickly appealed to naval commanders [Music] every warship is now driven by propeller it allows them to travel at remarkable speeds the problem is that they generate considerable noise which can be picked up by enemy submarines using their sonar they have antennae which try to detect the presence of mechanical objects such as boats among the sounds of the sea civilian boats can be detected from far away because their priority isn't to avoid detection by submarines on the other hand on the fram frigate the hull has been specially designed to limit the noise of water flowing off the hull the stabilizers have been removed and a much quieter method of stabilizing the ship is used the engines obviously have to run and the pumps cause vibration all that sound is insulated from the hull in order to reduce the noise emitted by the ship engineers have also worked on the shape of the propeller its hydrodynamic qualities make this ship even quieter it was a french engineer stanislas dupreed alone who designed the first warship in the world to be driven by steam and propeller the napoleon five years after its launch it demonstrated its 500 horsepower in the crimean war when the russian navy faced the french and english navies people understood the usefulness of steam power when the napoleon gave a toe to the flagship the vidpari which wasn't a traditional three-masted ship so only driven by sail because there wasn't much wind and the currents were against it and the british were stuck at the entry to the dardanelles because they didn't have a sufficiently powerful steamship this exploit removed to the french navy's reticence with regard to steam power in 1855 a committee met and said a warship that isn't steam-powered isn't a warship so a page was turned it didn't mean that all sailing ships were got rid of but it did mean that people from then on considered that steam was essential to the operation of a warship in 1855 a new type of ship was introduced continuing its experimentation france constructed an iron clad platform armed with 50 pounder pigs on guns it was called the floating battery it was called the floating battery as they couldn't call it a frigate or a corvette or anything else because these were ships with no nautical qualities at all it was a sort of fortress on water it was a big iron-clad shoebox which fired guns and that was it it had no form it wasn't a ship of the line it wasn't a ship let's be honest about it during the crimean war three floating batteries were towed to face the fortress of kimber on the 17th of october 1855 they reduced the fortress to ashes in four hours for their part the floating battery sustained little damage in spite of being hit by a hundred twenty shells this success confirmed the intuitions of the engineer stanislaus dupreed alone was a brilliant young naval engineer he was sent to england several times to observe british technological progress he was struck by the achievements of the british steel industry and in 1845 he proposed the idea of an entirely ironclad this new type of ship was launched on the 8th of march 1859 it was the first ironclad in the world its name was gloa it was a ship that was extraordinarily technologically advanced such that for about 20 years france was ahead of england in naval architecture which was rarely the case marked a break with the past because it was a combination of three types of innovation which were one artillery with exploding shells two propeller driven propulsion and three armor plating brought to an end three centuries of domination by sailing ships and the age of the ironclad started these steel warlords would rule the seas until the start of the second world war [Music] the glow was an imposing warship almost 78 meters long and 17 meters wide but it was above all a very heavy ship due to its armor plating 5630 tons plates of wrought iron 11 centimeters thick were fixed to its wooden hull they went all the way round the ship at the level of the water line these plates added 844 tons of extra weight dupreed alone was forced to reduce the weight if he wanted to retain its nautical qualities needed to save weight so the forecastle and the aft castle disappeared and you had a continuous deck with all the guns in battery under an armor-plated deck normally it would have had two decks but with the weight of the armor plating he had to remove one battery and that was why it was called an iron-clad frigate although fewer than on earlier ships the guns were much more powerful the glow was armed with 36 shell guns which were now able to be aimed through almost 180 degrees using a system of rails in addition to its sails the ship had a steam engine which produced more than 2 500 horsepower with a powerful engine and reduced weight the ironclad could reach the impressive speed of 13 knots or 25 kilometers per hour this first ironclad in the world was a successful blend of the floating battery and the ship at the line today the challenge still remains to find the ideal balance between armor plating and nautical qualities armor plating is big it's heavy as they used to do in the past the latest generation of frigates have lightweight armor plating but they're still incredibly strong ships due to their innovative technical design [Music] the frigate is separated in two it's as if you have two frigates one at the front and one at the back and between these two sections of the ship there's a double dividing wall which isolates the front from the back if a missile strikes the front for example you'll find exactly the same systems at the back and the ship will be able to continue fighting to a certain extent the incredible resistance of today's ships is a legacy from the 19th century in the late 19th century ironclads became the capital ships of navies the capital ship is the ship around which the whole fleet is organized the whole fleet exists to showcase this ship because the idea we have of naval warfare is that the war will be played out at sea in a decisive battle and from that confrontation a victor will emerge and the victor will control the sea in order to win the decisive battle the warring navy is engaged in a technological race between armor plating and guns between shield and sword guns were getting bigger and bigger you'd have absolutely massive guns which could fire two or three times in 15 minutes and in parallel the protection was increasing steel replaced wrought iron and the plates became five times thicker the armor plating went up to one third of the total weight of the ship the problem was that these iron clads were much slower and less maneuverable one of the solutions was not to armor plate the whole length of the ship but only the vital parts to reduce the number of plates to two or sometimes four which were installed around a sort of fortified castle that would be in the center and you'd have a sort of block house or a dungeon in the industrial style on deck the artillery weapons were first of all protected behind an armor-plated wall then later integrated into a rotating turret that technology affected by the english in 1869 revolutionized warships [Music] the invention of the gun turret was a revolution in ship construction which would completely change the appearance of the platform from 1879 onwards guns were up on deck and the gunports disappeared the form of french warships was getting closer to that of modern ships all the ingredients were there for the arrival of a new type of ship but this time the revolution didn't come from france but from england when in 1905 they built the dreadnought meaning fearing nothing when the dreadnought came into service all the iron clans that existed before were named pre-dreadnought in order to show that there was a significant break between the ships that existed in this dreadnought and the really revolutionary thing about this ship was the fact that it was driven by turbines and went fast it was well protected and possessed a uniform main battery of heavy caliber guns [Music] the english had understood before anyone else that this was the age of big guns with a range of 22 kilometers the advantage was that they could engage the enemy from as far away as possible with maximum firepower [Music] the aim was to combat a deadly threat the torpedo torpedoes in the beginning were really almost homemade trial and error they put an explosive charge on the end of a spa on a small motorboat and then they sailed towards a big ship to make it explode this rudimentary weapon was quickly improved in 1864 the english engineer robert whitehead attached a motor to long tubes carrying an explosive warhead undetectable the torpedo moved along level with the water and exploded below the armor plating of the iron clad this threat would be realized strengthened upgraded in the 1870s with the introduction of the torpedo boat the torpedo boat was potentially a deadly enemy of the iron clad it was a small boat with two sometimes four torpedo tubes very fast very low in the water with a small hull and it would approach iron clad ships very fast launch its torpedoes and disappear only problem at the time was that no one knew how to guide the torpedoes so they had to be launched in the right direction the torpedo boat had to line itself up for a certain time so that its torpedo would go in the right direction and stay in that direction the short range of the first torpedoes meant that torpedo boats had to get close to the target they were therefore exposed to the dreadnought's guns by 1910 fully automatic gun turrets significantly increased firing rates the shell was placed in a small hoist with the power to charge transported to the top of the turret and inserted into the gun barrel this operation could be carried out in less than one minute these turrets were installed on french ironclads from 1911 onwards another important but invisible change took place concerning propulsion [Music] the question of propulsion remains central with one major development first of all the change from coal to oil during the first world war at the instigation of the royal navy firstly it offered the possibility of manufacturing more efficient engines including diesel engines and it also allowed faster refueling refueling with coal was a dreadful chore which was simplified by the change to oil the ironclad was constantly improving in order to keep its supremacy up until the start of the second world war it was a sort of race to build the biggest ships ships became heavier and heavier more and more imposing so obviously for their propulsion they needed boilers that were capable of giving sufficient power to drive the boat at speed in 1939 france fitted out its most imposing warship an ironclad 264 meters long weighing 37 000 tons the richelieus the ship was armed with the biggest guns ever built by france millimeters diameter you have to imagine that a 380 millimeter gun is capable of firing a missile weighing about one ton at 900 kilometers per hour muzzle velocity every one and a half to two minutes the ships fighting each other were getting further and further apart between the very beginning of the 20th century and the second world war the range of naval artillery increased six-fold pretty much so that allowed ships to fight each other from much further away but the second world war sounded the death knell for these colossal ships with their undersized air defenses they were incapable of withstanding airborne firepower at pearl harbor the american fleet was decimated by japanese aeroplanes launched from aircraft carriers a few hours earlier with the use of aircraft later the question of range becomes less relevant actually the factor that will increase the capacity or the length of the ships will be the range of the aircraft so you'll be fighting each other at distances much greater than ships were able to up till now at the end of the war the ironclads were dethroned by the aircraft carrier which became the capital ship but what about the warships of the future there's a real challenge to plan and design a ship for the next 50 years it takes time to implement any idea but especially for a weapon system to be able to operate within a collection of weapon systems so the navy is for the long term as both firing platform and ship the warship is one of the most complex technological tools ever designed the galley the 74 gun ship of the line and the ironclad have marked the history of france the aircraft carrier scholes de gaulle and frigates are their worthy successors in the past fighting was face to face whereas today thanks to missiles and combat aircraft it's possible to destroy targets thousands of kilometers away this incredible evolution isn't about to stop already engineers and officers are planning the warships of tomorrow [Music]
2022-08-29