Shipbucket

Hello, this is Sumeragi. In this thread I shall be working on a side project from my alternate history writing. The topic is a Chinese superbattleship.


Background
Among other things, China does not go through the Warlord Era and is relatively more united than Chiang's regime. Under this secured government I would suspect that China would be able to moderately industrialize and clean up internal messes. Once Song comes to power and establishes a "fascist" regime, we have a Stalinist mass mobilization similar to the Five-Year Plans. After running a few numbers, I estimate that China would be able to achieve a GDP almost reaching that of the US in 1936, thus being the second most economically powerful country in the world.

China should have both a massive army and navy when it starts the Sino-Korean War in 1936. Within this navy, I plan on China constructing a class of superbattleships, both as a nationalist symbol of strength (in other words, dick-waving) and as the core of the Grand Fleet which will bring Korea and Japan to its knees. The general specifications I have in mind are the following:


Displacement: Undecided (thinking minimum 90,000 tons, but we can go higher)
Main armament: 450 mm modèle 1920
Protection: Immune against 16" shells at any range, uncertain about immunity to 45 cm shells.


As noted above, China has a lot of support from France and Italy, both of which provided technical support in exchange for Chinese silver. The superbattleships should have quite a bit of French/Italian influence, and if there is anything I can read up on their capital ship designing philosophies, I would appreciate any support.



In the meantime I'll be working on SpringSharp to see what kind of monster I can make. Hoping to see a fine result.

Howdy Sumeragi,

Using French and Italian influences is a good move, only problem is that the biggest ships either country looked at was in the 45-50,000 ton range, with the Alsace and UP-41 designs. The French design armed with either 9x16 or 12x15 (David Latuch has done a very good job on these in the Never Were Threads), or the Italian UP-41 which was a 9x16 design (in the Italian Never Were section of the main site archive).

Translating those ships to a 90,000 ton class ship is going to take quite a stretch of the original designs.

Generally speaking - completely impossible. Too many internal disputes, and too weak economy. No real infrastructure, not many educated workers. And how could China possibly this scale industrialisation, if it couldn't even protect the national sovereignity?

_________________
Serve the Nation! Be striped!

And the Japan, the USA and the Britain would just sit and wait, when some China turn their "threaty" battleships into outdated scrapmetal?

_________________
Serve the Nation! Be striped!

The main problem is a lack of a chinese industrial revolution.
Even thought the Southern Song Dynasty had blast furnace steel production this was all lost after the conquest by Kublai Khan.
After the revolt of the Eunuchs and retiring of the Zheng He fleet, China turned inward and industrial progress stagnated.
You need to rewrite Chinese history to restart or not lose the advances of the Song.
Most importantly an efficient transport system to move the iron ore to the coal reserves. River transport was too disrupted by seasonal variations.
A severe El Nino would grind the whole empire to a halt.
A 19thC railway system needs to be built before battleships are possible.
Oh and introduce coffee plantations instead of the british opium wars!
Social evolutionists regard coffee as the driver for the industrial revolution.

If you still have treaty's in your AU then any 50-60kt ships should beat any 35-40kt ship 1 on 1 so I don't think you need to go to 90,000gt (do you even have any ports that can take 90,000t ships, not sure how deep your rivers estuary's are ?)

Getting China to be richer than the European powers by 36 is very (ASB IMO) hard with a POD in the 1900s, and even if you do you need so much more to feed/etc you larger population that the actual surplus to spend on a fleet might not be very big. (and you will spend on a land army first IMO v USSR/Korea/etc.)

And go with tea its much better than coffee

JSB

Completely agree. Its is not impossible to make China stronger, but to make it AS strong as even Italy... would be very difficult.

_________________
Serve the Nation! Be striped!

Internal disputes that would not happen with most of the OTL disputers killed or brought under control during the Great Eurasian War 1915~1919, the spurt of industrialization and infrastructure building to supply the troops during the same war (so similar to OTL Japan, only without the profits since those are poured into fighting and manufacturing), the higher level of education stemming from the mobilization of war. In other words, the massive changes of the 1910s would place China at the 1930s level of economy, without the political disunity that plagued Chiang's regime at the time. After that, smooth economic growth is enough to push the country towards GDP parity with the US.

Meh, "richer" only in the national sense, not the individual level.

Nailed the location: Zhanjiang, which has some 13 meter deep accommodations. Plus, it's very well sheltered by Hainan and Guangdong, and combined with French support from Indochina and restricted traveling, it's a perfect place to hide large projects.

That's the main issue I see. Even with the 450 mm gun I mentioned above, the French were looking at 40,000 ton battleships (sketchy, but that's the most we have), so going for twice the tonnage is quite outrageous. Only if we're going for Maximum Battleship level of insanity (specifically Tillman IV-2) would this work out, and I have never seen any French designs or concepts nearing this.

Oh well, I'll see what could be done. We could have Hiraga Yuzuru accepting Chinese students in the early 1920s when relations were still warm (before the 1926 coup changed things), perhaps we might be able to use Number 13-class as the basis.

Simply speaking, it's impossible in given time. The USSR during the idustrialisation was a lightyear forward of China; despite all this, the USSR never was really able to compete with USA economy.

The China in 1910th is a half-colonial, half-devastated country, with almost no real industry, with no national motivation and in the iron hands of Great Powers. After the Boxer Rebellion, foreign powers generally were able to do in China what they really want to do. Chinese economy and politic was corrupted or under foreign control.

Simply speaking, you want something similar of Meiji Restoration/Revolution in Japan, but on much larger scale in a much worst-shape country and in much less time. The Japan started its restoration in 1868-1870, and have a lot of advantages, that China lack; the well-educated and patriotic national elite, generally not corrupted, the nationalistic ideas, that could forge the nation together, ect., ect. Despite that, it took more than 50 years for Japan to become a Great Power!
Impossible. How could you do the industrialisation in the country, where are not a lot of educated workforce, competent bureaucracy or infrastructure?

_________________
Serve the Nation! Be striped!

In other words, you're already ignoring the basic premise leading to the 1936 situation of the alternate history. I wouldn't go into just how wrong you are about the romanticizing of Meiji Japan, so if you wish to comment on the premise do so after familiarizing yourself with the premise writing.

Besides that, have anything to say about the actual designing process?