Shipbucket

An interesting design, which seems a little bare aft of the second funnel. She also look somewhat slender (not deep enough) and so a little fragile.

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Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Added new design to drawing in first post with new bridge and funnels.

It is hard work to make a plausible design from a simple outline sketch let alone trying to guess what a design might have come up with. It could be Lillicrap never drew anything for the appearance of these ships. Krakatoa should be congratulated on attempting this, but I agree its more personal design than real never-were at this stage.

Smurf is probably correct about the influence of cruiser design, though its possible it more closely resembled battleship practice (see below). I agree with Nigel though that the superstructure is most unlikely to be a Dorsetshire/ Surrey layout due to the need for a main director and probably HACS forward. I feel a tower would be used, something between Nelson and Exeter style, HACS and Main Director Tower and open bridge, possible 3-4 decks high.

The armament layout seems very odd. Re-reading smurf's description I think he's forgotten a couple of commas. I think it should read: 3x2 12in or 10in, 6x2 6in, 6x1 4.7in. Therefore I don't think there is five 6in turret option but rather just the six turret option. This would indicate to me a layout much less like a cruiser and perhaps more akin to a Nelson style battery with one raised 6in turret. This could be a fairly compact arrangement midships (perhaps magazines between the two machinery units?). I would ditch the torpedoes as they are not mentioned. I think the aircraft arrangements are ok.

So, I think its a good first attempt but it needs refining I think to 'feel right'.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Added 1932 design to first post, this is an enlarged Amphion.

I quite agree Hood, which is why I am open to making changes to the drawings where they make sense. I have changed the 6" back to a general layout.



As to the ships not being true never-were's, I have no problem with Golly moving them to the PD section, or leave them here and I will not add them to my post for uploading to the main archive.

Another interesting drawing.

I'm convinced these would be flush-deck designs rather than having a forecastle break (for strength and space reasons), though cutting the quarterdeck aft would be a good weight-saving dodge as later applied to the Counties. The barbette for Y turret would seem to indicate that too, though your designs are both plausible aft. A flush deck forward gives better arcs for the 6in too.
I would guess that only one main director would be fitted to save weight, perhaps a HA/LA director aft for the 6in and a couple of HACS too?

Perhaps when I've done the post-nelson battleship designs from 1929-30 and played around with them I might have stronger gut feelings (at the moment these look good but its not hitting my "BINGO that's perfect" feeling). I just think the Arethusa/ Leander style might be barking up the wrong tree, a super-Surrey or a mini Nelson with traditional turret layout might be closer. At the moment my ramblings are as crazy and speculative as anyone else's!

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

With the Minotaur, as you say, it probably does not need a second main director aft. I will try a re-arrangement of the directors. Main director forward with HACS behind it, and the secondary director aft, replace the HACS aft with the mark one eyeball improver (binoculars

I have not seen any of the Post Nelson to 1934 BB/BC designs so I cant envision what there bridge structures could look like. I could use the mini Nelson bridge I cut down for the 25,000 ton Bellerophon and see what that looks like on the Warrior and if it looks ok, would they have changed it for the later design?

Added HMS Warrior version 3, with mini Nelson tower bridge (post 1).

Made changes to HMS Minotaur as noted above.

If mini-Nelson tower works ok. I will try a version on Minotaur to see how that looks like.

Yes, version 3 is looking much closer to what I imagined.

_________________
Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Added HMS Minotaur Version 2 to post 1, and above.

Tower bridge, rearranged directors, moved 4" and 6". Deleted torpedoes.




From the comments made these two seem to be the nearest to an expected design using the parameters given.

Lovely ships and, in my mind, a much better direction for Battlecruiser evolution, getting out of the battleship gun race gives you a lot more reasonable designs where the value makes a lot more sense. Building 20 000 ton ships to defeat 10 000 ton cruisers just seems a lot more reasonable then 27 000 - 45 000 ton ships to do the same. Also with them being smaller and thus more numerous I think they'd make for excellent capital-class escorts for carriers, capable of keeping at bay anything that might keep pace with a carrier until the Iowas come up as well as being large and capable platforms for a heck of a lot of AA.