Shipbucket

Great Britain spent a lot of time and effort trying to get the size of Capital Ships reduced to a level where it would be able to build larger numbers of the smaller ships. Ideally Great Britain would have liked to see the size reduced to 25,000 tons and 12" guns. On that displacement the RN felt it could build ships with 12x12" in triple or quad turrets, with reasonable armour and speed. Allied to the battleships, especially if the Germans had still built the Deutschland class ships, the RN may have needed to use some of their valuable tonnage to build a class of battlecruisers to counter the German 'pocket battleships'.

To that end this ship below and the Sud Afrika in this drawing http://www.shipbucket.com/forums/viewto ... =15&t=5502. can be considered my attempts for battlecruisers in a 25,000 ton environment.







I will have a look shortly at a BB in a 25,000 ton level. Smurf may have some more info on these?

It's nice looking ship, but what happened to the triple mounts you described?

Also, why the incredibly wide superstructure just aft of the bridge? You're not carrying planes, so it's not a hangar, and it poses a serious restriction in the firing arcs of your secondaries.

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Would you please not eat my gun...

Sorry Mihoshik but maybe you better read it again. The Battleships had triples quads, the battlecruisers twins.

The original plans called for aircraft that were not eventually shipped. The hangar space was retained and used for extra office space and accommodation. The space was also used to add an extra four twin 4.5". The firing angle problem of the A/starboard and A/port mountings was noted and accepted.

But why not go for 3x3 12' ? all the same arguments that lead to the RN going for less bigger turrets in BBs still apply in this case ?

And why no aircraft in 39 ? for a BC designed to hunt down elusive raiders it would seam the most usefull bit of kit onboard.

And why obove board TTs on a RN capital ship ?

Apart from that I really like it and the top view is allways nice.

JSB

Ok, to mount triples would require a fatter hull which would require more horsepower to attain the same speed. The longer narrower hull is faster.

No aircraft, that's the way it ended up. Always paired with a cruiser that did carry aircraft. Using a bit of 20/20 hindsight, the ship would be very grateful to have the extra space when all the radar equipment was fitted later.

The torpedoes just fit nicely into the space that was there. No reason why they could not have them, most RN capital ships had torpedoes of one form or another, only KGV and Vanguard didn't.

Ok up to you, but a few more questions

- Is that an active stablizer ?
- if you are using hindsight not to fit aircraft then does this ship make sense with hindsight ? (IMO no but she does look nice and sleek)
- could you move the not hangar between the 4.5s so you at least have 1 set that can fire farward ?
- what RN capital ships got built post WNT apart from KVG/V ?
JSB

I do say, I like this very much. I do however concur about the lack of aircraft. At least ship them until 41 when you stand a decent chance of being able to get a good electronics fit.

Personally I'd look at moving the hangar structure aft to straddle the second funnel thus splitting the secondary battery giving you reasonable amounts of fire both fire and aft as well as the obvious broadsides.
My other queries/concerns are that those props are huge! Surely the shafts will be all sorts of skewed to clear the props from the hull and indeed each other. I must commend the early adoption of fin-stabilisers on something other than a sloop, surely there must be some maverick DNC around for such an unproven thing to be adopted

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AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

"I will have a look shortly at a BB in a 25,000 ton level. Smurf may have some more info on these?"
Oh boy, you are asking for along post!
More seriously, I'm corresponding by e-mail with Hood (to be able to attach copies of my existing photos of plans) about 'interwar capital ship' designs, but I am not aware of any with 12 x 12". The general layout for BBs and BCs was 4x2 x" with a few 3x3 designs. Most battleship designs were produced as alternatives to examine what might be done under a variety of possible restrictive treaty terms, under which a chief problem was adequate protection against earlier existing ships with larger guns than the smaller ships could carry. That meant keeping down the weight assigned to gun power.

The only other one I can think of is Vanguard, although some super cruisers with 9.2-inch guns were discussed...

Nelson and Rodney


Yes I quite agree that this ship type should have aircraft. I struggled to find a way to do it and keep a decent AA battery as well. The best solution I came up with was to follow Belfast with the forefunnel (and then everything else) separated from the bridge and pushed back far enough to mount some 4.5" forward. I'm not a fan of Belfasts look, preferred the towns which I based the ship on.

The hull is one of the Heuser Q series battlecruiser types. I know Heuhen is a very forward thinking designer, so all credit for the hull goes to him. The one thing I did do was to change a twin prop design into a four. Looking at the size of the screws they could just be a tad smaller, I should have changed them out. I probably had an Oberst moment.