Shipbucket

Great!

A really nice set of cruisers, nice work!

_________________
My worklist
Any help and source material is always welcome.

Hello again!

The next one has been posted already in a challenge last year; that was when I had the idea for this AU in the first place:

8. Deutschland: A 20.000-ton battlecruiser
Of the four dreadnoughts remaining under German control in 1919, the Rheinland was in a bad way after running aground in the Baltic in 1918. She had already been written off, but was slated for repairs in 1922 in order to get her back in service. The structural damage was however too severe, and she was written off again in 1925 after a thorough survey. According to the Treaty of Versailles, the Nassau-class ships were allowed to be replaced after 25 years or in case of loss; the German navy decided Rheinland now qualified as a loss and launched a project for a replacement. From the start, a very long-barrelled 280mm gun in a triple turret was specified as main armament. The size limit of 20.000 tons and the specified maximum caliber of 280mm would have allowed either for a slow, heavily protected ship with four turrets or a battlecruiser type with three of them. As the Germans wanted a ship capable of hurting Britain's oceanic trade, the latter option was pursued. Germany's decision to prematurely replace Rheinland was not contested by the British and French; they had other problems in 1929. Domestic resistance was more severe; the ship was violently rejected by the parliamentary left and close to being cancelled several times for monetary reasons. But the government remained stubborn and kept building. The design was the first capital ship worldwide built exclusively as a raider. The main armament was concentrated aft, with only one turret facing forward. Fire control arrangements were provided twice, with the aft set identical to the forward one, as the ship was expected to fight the majority of her engagements while on the run from superior forces. The silhouette with two tall tube masts and a single funnel placed exactly between them was carefully designed to confuse the enemy as to whether the ship was coming or going. The main armament was augmented with eight 150mm singles with a large ammunition supply, to use against merchants and small escorts. Ten 88mm twins were to provide protection against airplanes; they also were useful against smaller surface targets. Eight 500mm torpedo tubes in the first quad sets ever produced by the German Navy were mounted between the aft turrets, which themselves were spaced apart far enough to limit the effects of heavy hits there. To provide the ships with the specified range of 12.000 miles at 20 knots - a measure of strategic mobility so far unattained worldwide - a three-shaft diesel plant with 81.000 hp was installed, which gave the ship a top speed of 28 knots. Armour protection was designed to provide complete immunity from 203mm guns and give a solid immune zone against the 305mm guns of Russia's and France's battlecruisers; it was accepted that the ship could not be protected from British 381mm fire. The belt was 250mm thick and inclined by 10 degrees for the first time in German shipbuilding. Deck protection was typically thin with 60mm main deck and 30mm upper deck, a constant weakness of all German capital ship designs up to and including Bismarck. After the design was finalized, the ship was laid down in 1929, and despite financial troubles during the Great Depression, could be commissioned early in 1934 under the name Deutschland. By that time, Hitler was already in office, and aviation facilities were added within a year. The light flak outfit was doubled from eight to sixteen 37mm cannon in 1935, and eight 20mm guns were added too. When all final modifications were installed, Deutschland looked like this:



She made no appearance off Spain, but represented Germany at the coronation review at Spithead in 1937 and made quite the impression. As she had displayed quite appalling seakeeping qualities during this mission, Deutschland was taken in hand early in 1940 to receive a clipper bow which also gave some elegance to her lines. She also had the latest radar equipment installed. After very severe damage sustained in Norway, she was under repair for nearly 18 months. So severe was the damage that the yard surveyor recommended to write her off, which was vetoed by Hitler; the ship bearing the Reich's name was to be repaired no matter the cost. While she was under repair, Hitler had second thoughts and ordered her renamed Moltke, in order to prevent the loss of a ship named Deutschland. When she emerged in December 1941 with a mended keel and a funnel cap, but without her torpedoes, which had proven more dangerous to herself than to the enemy, she looked like this:



Moltke was quite active with the German fleet in Norway in 1942 and 1943, however without any success. She was mined by a British midget submarine in September 1943. The damage was crippling, and she nearly broke in half. She could only barely be kept afloat and had to return to Germany for repairs. This time, her repairs had low priority, and she was repeatedly targeted by RAF heavy bombers while being docked in Kiel early in 1944. She eventually only received emergency repairs and was restricted to a top speed of 20 knots when she left dock in May 1944; her engines were fully operational, but her rear half had become structurally unsound. Although Arctic operations were out of the question, she received a totally modernized radar suite, and the number of 20mm guns was brought to 56. In her final guise, she looked like this:



Moltke remained in the Baltic and served as a training vessel. When the Red Army reached the shores of the Baltic later that year, her heavy guns were called upon for shore artillery support; during one of these missions, she was lost. Opinions on whether she had been a lucky or a luckless ship widely differed; apart from sinking one destroyer, Moltke/Deutschland failed to achieve anything, but she repeatedly survived punishment that should by rights have sunk her, and only few of her crew became casualties.


Greetings and Happy New Year
GD

She looks great, especially with her clipper bow.

_________________
My Worklist
Sources and documentations are the most welcome.

-Koko Kyouwakoku (Republic of Koko)
-Koko's carrier-based aircrafts of WWII
-Koko Kaiun Yuso Kaisha - KoKaYu Line (Koko AU spinoff)
-Koko - Civil Aviation

Great work GD.

That's an awesome drawing you have there, are there space for other AU world in here... I "might" draw up something "small"!

BEAUTIFUL!!!

_________________

MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

These look great, I wonder we can look forward to in 2016 in this AU?

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

Looks great!

Hello everyone!

Continuing the German AU:

9. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau: Real battleships
The Deutschland had been the cause for intense political battles, and plans to build three additional ships of her type, as the Navy demanded, died with the Great Depression. The next building project was an attempt to squeeze as much of Deutschland's capabilities as possible into a 10.000-ton hull, yielding the Admiral Graf Spee, a thoroughly flared ship which sported six 280mm guns, but not enough armour to beat 203mm shells and only 26 knots speed, making her highly vulnerable against heavy cruisers. If Deutschland had not already existed, Graf Spee might have been considered quite the achievement; as she had to live up to comparison with Deutschland, she was considered little more than the world's slowest heavy cruiser. By the time she was in service in 1935, Hitler was already in power, and the Kriegsmarine abandoned all restraint. The next two capital ships - intended to replace Nassau and Westfalen - started in 1934 as 26.000-tonners repeating Deutschland's main features, but mounting a fourth 280mm triple turret forward. The displacement handsomely exceeded Germany's allowance under the Treaty of Versailles, but this was no longer a relevant consideration. Various design changes made displacement grow by 6.000 to 32.000 tons, and the ship acquired more and more features of a real fast battleship. The final design of 1935 bore no physical resemblance to Deutschland any more, but became the prototype upon which all further German large surface ships were modeled, with a tower mast forward, a big single funnel and a flush-decked hull. To achieve the desired speed of 30 knots, the diesels were swapped with turbines and high-pressure boilers of 138.000 hp, which were supposed to give nearly the same range, but in practice burned twice as much fuel as anticipated, resulting in a range of slightly less than 7.000 miles. They also were prone to malfunctions and needed very much maintenance (Scharnhorst's in particular; Gneisenau's engines were sturdier). The belt was thickened to 320mm, and internal compartmentalization was much improved, but horizontal protection remained inadequate. The main guns, whose protection was considerably stronger than Deutschland's, were augmented with 8 150mm guns in twin turrets and 12 105mm flaks; light AA was quite strong by 1935 standards with 16 37mm guns and a dozen 20mm. This was the final design when two ships were laid down in 1935:



Building was already well underway when Hitler managed to legalize the ships by signing the Anglo-German fleet treaty later in 1935. He cheated right from the start, because officially, displacement was stated as 26.000 tons, and the true figure of over 32.000 tons was not published before 1945. Even before the ships were laid down, feasibility studies were undertaken to replace the 280mm triples with 350mm twins, and in 1936 it was decided to re-arm them as soon as the bigger guns could be produced. They were provided with barbettes, hoists and magazines that could take both calibers from the beginning, and only the first ship was eventually completed with the 280mm triples in January 1939. For the second ship, the 280mm triples were not even built, and it was completed with the 350mm guns. They received the names Gneisenau (commissioned January 1939) and Scharnhorst (commissioned October 1939). At that time, Scharnhorst looked like this:



After the nearly disastrous encounter with HMS Hood and Howe in November 1939, Gneisenau was repaired during the winter and re-armed with 350mm twin turrets. The refit was completed in less than four months, a remarkable feat for the Wilhelmshaven navy yard. It was only possible because Bismarck and Tirpitz, which were originally supposed to be armed with twelve 350mm guns in four triples, were re-armed with 406mm twins during construction, leaving a surplus of already manufactured 350mm pieces. Scharnhorst also had been damaged, and during repairs was fitted with a clipper bow for improved seakeeping. After Weserübung, both ships were damaged and needed till December 1940 to become fully operational again. During the repairs, Gneisenau received a clipper bow as well. During the breakout into the Atlantic early in 1941, Gneisenau looked like this:



While Gneisenau had the very heavy damage she had sustained just after the channel dash repaired, Scharnhorst operated successfully in the Arctic. Apart from augmented radar and flak equipment, she had received a new mainmast further aft. By mid-1943, she looked like this:



Gneisenau had completed her repairs in October and was just fully worked up when Scharnhorst was lost. Gneisenau made a last appearance in the Arctic, then was involved in some intense fighting in the Baltic. During her last success in the battle of Dagö, Gneisenau, sported a very extensive radar suite a light flak armament of 24 fully automatic 37/69s and 48 20/70s, looking like this:



After Germany's surrender, Gneisenau was ceded to the Soviet Union and towed to Leningrad, but the accumulated damage was beyond economic repair, and she was scrapped from 1949 through 1953. Despite this sad fate, there could be no doubts that Gneisenau had indeed been a lucky ship. Although she was repeatedly heavily damaged, only 93 crewmembers died on her during the entire war, and she was credited with sinking two British aircraft carriers and a French and a Russian battlecruiser. She also accumulated by far the highest mileage of all large German warships, operating all across the Atlantic from the North Cape to Thiaria.

Greetings
GD