
Second what servimat1 indicates, if you distrust, take a 15V transformer and place a single rectified diode and measure what you get that for this case of only measurement is the same if they are two in parallel or only one. It may be that the rectifiers are wrong, some connection involved in the whole scheme or the transformer itself, if it does not work now ... even a fuse in bad condition if it has one. Not having filtering is not continuous output and being half wave the output is 0.707 of what the traffic minus the diodes fall.
The reason is because it is a pulsating tension. In addition to being a 1/2 wave rectifier, the voltage is lower.
When putting a capacitor, it is charged to the peak voltage of the wave
The battery under charge acts as a capacitor / capacitor and allows you to measure with a "normal" multimeter, if you don't need one that measures "true rms" https://www.promax.es/esp/noticias/561/que-significa- rms-and-true-rms-we-explain-the-differences /