Shipbucket

Nice battleships with a great backstory!

Thank you Elf177 for your comments.

Colorado Class Cruisers.

The advent of the Dreadnought Battleships not only revolutionised the Battleship types but also all of the support ships that had been previously built. At 17-19 knots the pre-Dreadnoughts had only required cruisers to make 22-24 knots to give them enough of a speed margin to escort and act as scouts to the large fleet units. The last cruiser class for the Incan Navy had been the very large armoured cruisers of the Belem class. At 24 knots those ships were now only 2 knots faster than the new Collasuyu class dreadnoughts. Not enough of a margin to be useful, also having triple expansion engines the Belem's were unable to maintain the constant speed of the new turbine powered ships. What was needed was a new type of scout / anti-torpedoboat destroyer. To give enough of a margin of speed over the dreadnoughts, a speed of 28 knots was specified. Armour would have to be reduced to a two inch belt and one inch deck. Enough to give cover for the 4"-5" guns that they might face from destroyer type ships (and even some older light cruisers). To counter these ships the Colorado's were armed with eight 6" single guns, with one fore and aft and three down each side. A pair of 18" torpedoes (on each side), a single 100mm gun (later replaced with an AA gun) and three 3 pounder close in weapons.



The finished design showed a handsome three funnelled ship. At 4,700 tons displacement, they measured 436 feet long by 51 feet wide. 38,000shp through four screws gave a speed of 28 knots, with a range of 7,000 miles at 10 knots. The first four ships were laid down in 1907, with a repeat classes of four ordered in 1908 and a further two ships in 1909, for an eventual ten ships of the class.

Aconcagua Class Battlecruisers.

The debate over what should follow the Collasuyu Class battleships raged far and wide and ended up with the Emperor having the final say. To keep the costs and building times down, as many parts and design of the Collasuyu class were passed through to the new Aconcagua class ships. The basic design was lengthened and the breadth reduced to improve the hull form. The bow was also altered to improve speed. More than twice the horsepower of the Collasuyu was required to make the design speed of 27 knots. To make these changes happen required a change of layout of the main armament, the 'Q' turret being remounted to a superfiring 'B' position. The space provided by the removal of 'Q' turret was filled with the extra propulsion systems.



The other way to assist the Aconcagua to achieve its speed recommendation was to lighten the ship. This entailed the removal of the 6" battery and the area being plated over, the space provided being used for extra coal stowage. The major change was the armoured belt being reduced from 13" to 10", and the deck armour being reduced from 3.5" to 2".

The final result was a 21,000 ton ship, 572 feet long, 82 feet wide, 60,000shp through 4 shafts for 27 knots. The armament was 8 x 12" (4x2), 12 x 100mm (12x1), 13 x 3pd (13x1).

Beautiful BC's. And again a good backstory to explain why they are what they are...

Merry Xmas to one and all.

Imperial Ship Condor (CV-1940)

During the 1930's when other navies were upgrading their facilities, the Empire had little reserves for the Navy to upgrade its infrastructure, most of the Imperial War Budget had been spent on the Army and creating the Army and Navy Air forces. The largest building docks available could handle ships no more than 790 feet in length. This length was fine for the Treaty battleships and the Yupanqui class showed what could be done. However the aircraft carrier was a different beast. The CV required as much hull volume as possible for their main task of housing, feeding, launching and recovering aircraft. The Incan designers wanted to build the biggest aircraft carrier they could but were limited by the docks available. With the Yupanqui class under construction only two slightly smaller docks were available until the new 1100 foot docks that were to be constructed were completed. The Imperial designers were nothing if not innovative. By collapsing the wall between two of the smaller docks a catamaran hull could be built. The cat-a-carrier was born.

There are so many things for and against this design. I am sure everybody will want to make a comment telling me why it will either work or not work. I have done this as a semi-serious bit of work and my apologies to Bombhead who's nice drawing I have butchered.



You will note from the bottom drawing that I have shown the anchor points of the catamaran 'join' between the hulls.

Hi K,

Looks good, though as I understand the dynamics of a catamaran your waterline would have to move up from the original drawing (I'm having a pants-on-head moment and can't locate the original to tell if you've already done that, my closest guess was the 1940 Illustrious from the main site) - a CV is at least not going to have the same sorts of barbette placement issues a BB catamaran would have. If it's good enough for Admiral Furashita...

Ad

Edit, random thought: with that much beam, you could even have cats out the side (and re-christen her Galactica)

Edit, again: With regards to the small boats, if you've got that centreline well, would it not make sense to run gantry cranes off the underside for boat recovery? That way you can keep your boats in davits along the inner side of the hull and load out the outer hull sides with AA...

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That is one weird dock

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Well...thats a big,not very mobile and high value target.I wonder the number of escorts this ship may have.

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Thanks for your comments guys.

Ad,
There is about 20-24 feet between sea level and the bottom of the lower join level. Carrying on with the boats, that space between the hulls is going to have compressed water flow through the gap which I figured would rip the boats out, So I did not place any there.

Thiel,
I had to figure out some way of creating a 770 foot catamaran, that was the best I could come up with.

Biancini1995,
Yes it is a large target and would need lots of surface ship help. The internal aircraft accommodation is about 100-120, being 45-50 in each hull and 20-30 in the join area. On top of that I figure another 20-30 could be 'deck parked' in the spaces before and aft of the bridge structure. So I figure the maximum number of aircraft could be as much as 160. That gives it a fairly good self defence force of its own.

Notes:
I thought the biggest problem would be 'flex' in the join area causing cracking in either the upper or lower joint. I have tried to avoid that and make the hull more rigid by the two 'wing' joins from the lower hull between each ship. I also wondered if those wing joins would act in keeping the hull fore and aft movement steadier like the stabilisers on liners. The bridge 'pyramid' structure overlaps the two outer hulls so that it also acts as a strength point. I could of course be completely off my nut as this was put together in the silly season after all.

The advantages of the layout are obvious in that one side is for landing on and the other side for launching. The large upper bridge with lots of windows gives all round vision (much like an airport control tower). The overall displacement runs out to 52,000 tons so it is a pretty decent sized bit of kit. The propulsion system is 100,000shp x 2 for a speed of 30 knots. 12 x 130mm, 32 x 40mm, 44 x 20mm make up the armament. The Incans bought their naval aircraft from the Atlanteans so I did not have to dream up a new set.

Well its a crazy idea, but not the first such concept I've seen (Admiral Furahsita being one early example). It's crazy but it looks good!

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