Shipbucket

Hi All, I was looking at the brilliant pictures of the Hawkins class on here and thinking about some possible What If's

The 7.5 inch were a bit of an anomaly in RN service and therefore the logistics of supporting this one class of ships must have been a pain.

So what to do with them ?

I was looking at HMS Effingham with the 6 inch taken from the C class for there AA conversions and thinking how about replacing them in turn with an AA conversion. The simplest would be ten 4-inch HA on a 1 on 1 basis like the C class HMS Coventry or perhaps 6 4.5 turrets a la HMS Scylla and Charybdis the Toothless Terrors.

Another thought was to convert the 7.5 inch armed units to 9.2 inch there were guns of the same calibre in the coastal artillery so ammo shouldn't be an issue. Plus suitable 9.2 inch guns saved from scrapped WW1 monitors could be available. In reality the Mountings were scrapped in 1938 and the guns had to be scrapped in 1943 as they didn't easily fit coastal defence mountings.

The 9.2 mounting seems to weigh 45 tons opposed to 45.975 for the 7.5 inch mount so if my figures are right weight shouldn't be the problem it'll be down to ammo stowage and internal rearrangements etc plus presumably loading the weapons by hand.

I don't see how replacing the 7.5in with 9.2in guns are going to help. One of the big failures of the 7.5in was that the shell was too big and heavy for practical hand loading at sea. Upping the weight by some 80kg isn't going to be at all helpful in that regard.

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That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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The problem of the 9.2" is exactly what gun do you refer to? There were 5 different gun type the 9.2"/51 of the coastal monitors HMS Glatton (ex-Bjöergvin), the gun was mounted in a full turret and that weighed in around 195t. The 9.2"/50 gun was mounted in twin turrets only and was limited to 15 degrees elevation (it was used in the pre-dreadnaughts Lord Nelson class for example)
There was the 9.2"/47 of the type used in the cruisers of the Cressy class and Drake class and others. This was a full turret which weighed around 100t. A version of this gun was used by the coastal artillery in an un-armoured mounting which weighed around 60t
The gun you refer to with the 45t was an old gun built in the 1880's was of limited use only and the latest use of the gun was in WW1 in coastal defense and some M class monitors. The mounting was all but useless for naval use in WW2 with a rate of fire of around 1 shell per-minute. Even the 15"/42 gun used by the battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class had a rate of fire which was double.
The best option would be: 1 convert the Hawkins class as was done to HMS Effingham (and that was what was planned in effect but for the break-out of war), or convert them into AA cruisers using the 4" gun in twin mountings (these were in ample supply), or even using the American 5"/38 guns as was done with HMS Delhi.

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"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Thanks for the considered responses. My initial though was that if the guns were avaialble what to do with them. But if the ammo was too heavy and the rate of fire too slow then they are definitely not suited to cruisers.

Plus if you have a cruiser with 9.2 in guns some bright spark is bound to send it into harms way on the strength of the gun calibre rather than the rate of fire or general utility.

The Monitor crews must have worked hard in WW1 on the other hand rate of fire isn't so crucial on a shore bombardment. If the 9.2 in had survived I wonder what the best option would have been to od with them possibly mount them on one of the Landing Craft conversions.

Of course theres also the Foresight War option of making the whole class Aircraft carriers.

Melt them down and use the steel to make new weapons

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

Take a look at my Thevai-class CAs in the "Hellenic Cruiser Force" thread in the Alternate Universe main thread. For that class I took the excellent cal. 47 9.2" from Vickers and modernized it. For me there never were any doubt about the feasibility or desirability of that weapon. In fact, I'm planning on drawing Jackie Fisher's original battle cruiser concept, the HMS Untakable, armed with precisely that gun!

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My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen

I see that some consideration was put into fitting them with 8 inch turrets but the cost and delays to new 8 inch cruisers was too much