Shipbucket

Good points Ace.
I realised what I thought was GW26 on the base drawing was in fact GW29, so its been relatively easy to reverse engineer to GW26 with new gas intakes and the forefunnel moved back slightly to reduce the machinery gap.
I've made the forefunnel equal thickness, the thinner one was a scaling error I think.

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it might be that the funnel of GW26 would be a completely different style even, shorter and wider to make sure there was no backpressure on the gas turbines. (the one on the county class is an good example)

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Fascinating series.

It seems that the GW25 could have been built. How about 2-3 GW25A (or preferably GW25C) instead of the Tiger Class?

Ace,
Not sure, the initial GW57 had quite tall funnels too. I think it was something that evolved with experience and testing.

odysseus1980,
There's plenty more to come yet before we can make that sort of judgement!

Today's addition is GW28, full details on p.1.

GW28 October 1954

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An excellent thread for sure.
A good AU idea is to have these with SeaCat instead of the 40mm gun mountings

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

Fascinating work!

Lovely series of drawings James.

From the conversions of 1951, it moves on to the new build designs of 1954. Any construction of these units would not complete till 1958-60. As they are escort vessels, were they to be used in conjunction with the existing fleet and light fleet carriers or for a new design of carrier to be completed 1960-64?

Ace,
Re: your point about cruiser standards for GW26, 29 and 28. I would assume so, there were still some gun-only cruisers under consideration during this time and many more gun/missile cruisers followed in the GW series. These are not destroyers and so I feel they would have the flag and command facilities as cruisers, in effect they are modern cruisers replacing guns with missiles as their primary AA defensive weapon. The 3in batteries are for self-defence really. The sided mounts in GW28 are quite an odd feature.

This leads to Krakatoa's question; GW26 and GW29 were undoubtedly meant as carrier escorts when the Admiralty referred to Fleet Escorts. Their successors (IMHO) would be the Sea Slug/ helicopter Escort Cruisers of 1960-62 and 1963-66 and ultimately the CCH and Invincible. GW28 was a convoy escort, remember in 1954 there were still many destroyer related designs such as the Fast Escort and the slower Frigates and the whole Type 14/15/16/17 numbers game to increase escorts available in wartime. It was a dead end as convoys went out of fashion, remember these just predate the H-Bomb era and the whole strategic shift that occurred 1955-57. Arguably it was that shift which made all these large GW designs obsolete.

Novice,
Good point, had these been built Sea Cat would have been fitted, probably just two mounts aft.

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Four additions this week, GW27, GW27A, GW31 and GW32. Full details on p.1.
I have also revised the GW28 drawing too.


GW27 October 1954

GW27A October 1954


GW31 November 1954


GW32 November 1954

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