Shipbucket

The exellent "Design Study II/30 - Light Battleship Riga" from DG_Alpha, reminded me that i was also working on the United Baltic Duchy.

Some may have noticed the aircraft i've posted a year ago in the "FD AU 3" topic.
So as said before:
"In this time-line the Baltic Landwehr defeated Estonian forces at the Battle of Cēsis in June 1919. Allied with the "Special Russian Corps" of General Pavel Bermont-Avalov, they then succeeded in both push the Soviets out of Latvia and invade Estonia.

Concerned about the soviet threat the Allies recognized the United Baltic Duchy to create a buffer state. In 1920 (better say 1921....) the treaty of Maisons-Laffitte imposed no limits to the Baltic Landwehr concerning its size and the type or quantity of weapons, but all engines, guns, and ammunitions must be provided either by France or England. Local manufacture except for ammunitions was forbidden. This was supposed to insure that the Baltic armed forces could not turn against the allies (and markets for French and British industry…..)."

I was waiting to create all the background story, but now i feel the need to post what i've done so far.
The Ducal navy is mostly consisting in captured russian ship.
The ships (some with significant damage) were quickly commissioned to help support the land war against estonians. They were heavily refited in the early twenty's then rebuilt in the thirty's.

The former Rurik II

Admiral ship of the navy until in 1921 the treaty of Maisons-Laffitte imposed to give it to Poland.

The former Grazhdanin (ex-Tsesarevich)



I'm not sure of this last one, maybe i will rework it a bit.(done)

The former Bayan II


The ship will be rebuilt as light cruiser in a common program with the finnish navy, who handle a former sister ship. To save money their main gun will be the former secondary turrets of the Deutschritter.

The Baltische Herzogliche Marine also used:
- Former battleship Slava: refloated an repared in 1922 renamed Schwertbrüder to replace the former ship.
- Former armored cruiser Rossia: refloated after he ran aground on the Dyvelseye Shoal on the coast of Estonia.
- Former armored cruiser Gromoboi: refloated after he ran aground near Liepāja.
that's for the big ships........................

I will also post aircraft and "land things" in the FD section.

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"You can rape history, if you give her a child"
Alexandre Dumas

JE SUIS CHARLIE

did you use the public link?

All images are not showing, so you'll need to re-post using the public folder of Dropbox.

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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"

Same here, nothing shows.
I've tried fiddling with your image links (in quotes) to see if there was something askew with the syntax, and I can't even reproduce the structure of your links...
Better check the location of your pictures, and always use Dropbox's "share" and "create link" functions.

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
My Worklist

What Lamba said. Go to the folder in question on Dropbox. Right-click on the file you want to link. Press "Share", and then "Create a link", and "Copy link". You will get a link ending with a zero. Change the zero to a "1". Hey presto, you've got yourself a working dropbox link.

There have been quite a few changes to Dropbox since the original release. A lot of people used it for 'File sharing' of copyrighted material so Dropbox had to change their program. That is where the change from the Public Folder version, to the non-Public folder versions came along.

My partner has the old version I have the new version. When I right click on a file in my Dropbox folder - these are the options I get.



taking the red ringed option copies the drop box link to your clipboard.

you can then paste the link between the img tags "<img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/u2ztktgictvut ... e.bmp?dl=0[/img>" as KHT said- note the '0' on the end of the filename - change that to a '1' - and as Magician KHT said "Hey Presto"

Oups!
That was the first time i use dropbox for this purpose (i usually use photobucket)
As i checked the preview on my computer before i submitted it , i thaught it was working......................

Thanks KHT your method seem to be the (at list a) right one.

Hope it's better now.

_________________
"You can rape history, if you give her a child"
Alexandre Dumas

JE SUIS CHARLIE

Now it works.
Guess I should have started by asking if you were using the desktop or online versions of Dropbox, but glad you could make it work either way.

The ships look good (well worth the wait ), a nice use of the originals. I can't say I'm entirely convinced by the way you have cut down (at least) one complete deck level on your first class during the refit. What do you do with the accommodation and storage that were in that area? Is the new machinery that much more compact that you can shove everything underdeck?
No comment on the 30s bow refit, it looks like the intention makes sense but I have no input on the feasibility and advisability of such a rebuild.

One last question: are these the ship names in the drawing titles, or just class/project names? Because "Teutonischen" doesn't really work as a substantive, better just call it "Teutone". "Teutonischen" would work as a class nickname, say, if the project is known as the "Teutonic cruiser" or something like that. And this assumes that "Teutonisch" is something your Duchy want to be associated with, but that's your call.
I'm not only going to start on the "Drang nach Osten" which, while technically correct, requires (and highlights) a fairly involved and unambiguous political commitment from your Duchy. You're not making any friends among your Eastern neighbors that way.

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
My Worklist

Thank's for your comments.

Concerning the ""Teutonischen":
To me (and according to the cutaway drawing i've found) machinery are under that level. As the ship is suppose to operate only in the baltic sea (if not as coastal battleship) it needs less accomodation and storage.
when i said : "maybe i will rework it a bit", i had the bow in mind. I don't know if i choose an other design (a more german vertical one) or simply keep the original.
About the name the idea was to call it "teutonic" (there was a steamship called this way), but maybe that's not working in german. But the problem is even worst: i've checked the german version of wikipedia and it seems that the knight order is referred as "teutonic" only in foreign countries. in german it's generally called "german order"................

Concerning the "Drang nach Osten" : offending the soviet union is not a problem as fighting it is almost the reason why the duchy exist, and they never had any diplomatic relation with this "Eastern neighbor".

By the way i'm still wondering the way i will "finish" the story off the duchy:
- Is it invaded by the soviet union at the same time they invaded baltic states in real life?
- The same time they invaded Finland (a close ally in my AU)?
- Or annexed by germany?

I don't know yet..............

_________________
"You can rape history, if you give her a child"
Alexandre Dumas

JE SUIS CHARLIE

OK, the 1922 refit makes sense, for a given usefulness of the ship afterwards. As I said, can't help you much with the bow. Right, calling it the "Deutscher Orden" might be a bit ambitious/bombastic. If it is a single-ship class, why not go for it, but if you have a continuity of ship names in mind, may I suggest calling it the "Deutschherren" class and naming each one for an outstanding historical member of the order?
OTOH, I noticed that the "the Teuton" naming attempt sounded a bit like the Polish Navy's use of regional peoples (see e.g. ORP Kaszub). I think this was a French tradition as well? ("Le Corse", "Le Breton", etc.)
Under that angle, you could imagine a class of ships named after local Germanic peoples: "The Teuton", "The Prussian", "The Frisian"... That's more or less what I understood from your summary. Being already at war, you don't have much to lose in bilateral relationships, might as well make the message clear.
Thing is, that phrase is also IMHO way too steeped in German nationalism and expansionism for a state (even a minor one) overtly sponsored by Great Britain in France in the 1920s. So on a wider scale, you might want to avoid excessive expressions of Germanic nationalism if you want your Duchy to keep their sponsors on its side. Guess it's a matter of balance between threat perception of the USSR and Germany.See above, IMO it depends on how anti-Soviet and anti-German everyone is in your 1930s Europe. If the timeline works out much like IRL, mutatis mutandis, the Duchy is probably going to fall to the first wave of Anschluss, and welcome it with open arms. With the USSR recovering from the civil war and waking up to a resurgent Germany, they will very early see the threat of a warlike Germanic antagonist on their border, one that could implicitly get reinforcements from the Reich at the drop of a hat. At least expect more concrete tensions in the area than IRL, possibly with Soviet intelligence stirring up dissent in the Baltic/Slavic population of the Duchy (heh) and tension rising much more quickly once WW2 starts, at worst a Winter War on two fronts. A combination of both gives you that most exquisite of clusterucks, a Spanish-like civil war on the Eastern front...
The course of the war might not be inflected much, and the outcome of Yalta will ensure that the Duchy falls into the Soviet sphere. If it survives as a satellite state and does not get Sovietized properly, it would make for a very convenient flashpoint in a WW3 scenario à la Operation Unthinkable.

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
My Worklist