I have a book I read a while ago about a guy who Captained a 1904 County class cruiser (4x7.5" 6x6") that was being used as a training ship, after WW1, which took cruises to the Caribbean with the cadets. That has always made me wonder why those ships were used in place of the larger BC/BB types. I came to the conclusion that the County Armoured cruisers were less than 10,000 tons and could be kept as cruisers till the new Frobishers and E's are completed post-war.
They are cheaper to run, slow, week but they have good accommodation, range and are designed to go to sunny places not just north sea, nobody will care if you keep them as they are effectively death traps (as shown by WW1)
Which took me to try to find out how 'demilitarised' an ex-BB/BC would need to be to be removed from Capital Ship tonnage. I could not find anything definitive. So I went on the premise that at least half the main guns would have to go, armour would have to be reduced and the speed reduced to less than 20 knots. They would become large pre-dreadnoughts that would not scare anyone. That was the figures I used on the 2 Lion class and the original training ship conversion of Tiger.
WNT PART 2 RULES FOR SCRAPPING VESSELS OF WAR, IIb) and III (except 7)
LNT Part 1,b) and Section V of Annex II to Part II
The following is to be carried out:
(1) Removal of main armament guns, revolving parts of all barbettes and turrets; machinery for operating turrets; but three turrets with their armament may be retained in each ship;
(2) Removal of all ammunition and explosives in excess of the quantity required for target practice training for the guns remaining on board;
(3) Removal of conning tower and the side armour belt between the foremost and aftermost barbettes;
(4) Removal or mutilation of all torpedo tubes;
(5) Removal or mutilation on board of all boilers in excess of the number required for a maximum speed of eighteen knots.
It looks like you can keep A and B to save work and then just rebuild the boilers through the gap created by X ?
The Nelson and Rodney were to allow the RN parity with the US and Japanese 16" ships.
Yes but with 4 post QE BBs I don't see the need (except for prestige) so using 15' triples built would save money and being faster would be better for fleet balance. (personal I would just finish the 2 Majestic BBs at 75% and 80% I sure you could get them under 38kt at least on paper, 35+3 rebuilding allowance)
A thought about the WNT/LNT and the rest of the alphabet. Were they about numbers of ships or total tonnage. 15 ships or 500,000 tons?
They are about 15 ships (so you get a nice number for the smaller powers. 15/15/9/etc (note they all get different amounts of tonnage in Article IV of WNT to balance it out) and remember it was written by politicians not admirals (or even nerds 90 years later
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
) they did not really fully understand that the early ships are useless IMO.