Shipbucket

Thank you Nigel for your clarifying the point. I had a feeling these were based on French gun turrets, actually I was thinking along the lines of the gun houses on the Mogador class leaders.

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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"

Hestia class cruisers (1942+ upgrade)


By 1942 the surviving units had gone through several refits to bring them up to date with the later cruisers. Radar and the 40mm turrets were added while the aircraft handling facilities were deleted. It was decided that further costs should not be spent on ships that would not see much past the end of the war.

A small digression. While it would be nice to be able to build and man lots and lots of ships, that is not very realistic. A country the size of Atlantis has only a certain amount of personnel for manning the warships. With WW2, Atlantis needs to retire some of the oldest ships to provide the major core of a new crew for the more modern, war completed ships. The amount of crew to man one battleship is enough to crew ten of the new DDE's. At the 1942-43 stage of the war, the U-boat war was in the balance. Ten more DDE's would be more useful than one battleship.



The 20x40mm made a big difference to the AA value of the ships.

Weapon Class Light Fleet Carriers

Laid down in 1940, the four ships of the class completed, one in 1943, two in 1944, one in 1945. They were the first Atlantean carriers to operate the new generation of jet bombers and fighters.

Triton Class Cruisers

Last of the pre-war cruisers the pair of Triton class cruisers were Atlantis' reply to the large multi-gunned US, Japanese, and UK cruisers.




AWS Triton (1939) Career/Fate

AWS Endymion (1939) Career/Fate

Hesperus Class Cruisers


The Hesperus class was ordered to replace losses to Atlantis' cruiser force during WW1. They were to be fast ships with 80,000shp for 34 knots. This would make them able to work with destroyers when those ships required a 'ship of force'. Last Atlantean cruisers to mount the 5.5" gun, for the Hesperus' the guns were mounted in twin light armoured turrets. In practice the armour was capable of keeping out 20-30mm cannon shells, anything bigger went straight through. The four ships of the class were completed between 1925 and 1927. With war looming over Europe, the Atlantean Admiralty decided that all four could be converted to anti-aircraft ships. Only two had been converted by wars start, the other two went through their wars with the original armament.




AWS Hesperus (1925) Fate/Career

AWS Phaeton (1925) Fate/Career

AWS Eosphorus (1926) Fate/Career

AWS Stilbon (1927) Fate/Career

Really nice cruisers, but I think that losing the aircraft arrangement as early as 1939, is a bit too early. Maybe in 1942 or there about, I think.

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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"

Thanks for your comments.

Novice: The two original layouts, Eosphorus and Stilbon, left at wars start still have the aircraft handling facilities and as you say would not lose those till 1942. The 1939 drawing is of the AA conversions which I did not think would keep the aircraft facilities, those facilities and a set of torpedoes would be exchanged for extra AA weaponry.

The AA conversions replace the LA 5.5" twins with the 5" DP twin turret, while the 4 x 90mm AA guns are replaced with two single 5" DP guns. The 25.4mm AA cannons are replaced with the 40mm predictors for the 24x40mm (4x4 4x2) which mainly take the place of the aircraft handling equipment.

(Those twin turrets used for the 5.5" are the ones off the Mogador/Volta)

I like the looks of the Hesperus class very much.
I think if your doing an AA conversion then dropping the aircraft makes sense. Certainly the RN never tried to carry aircraft aboard AA cruisers.

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Interwar RN Capital Ships
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You've some very nice designs here Krakatoa. Well done matey

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My thinking as well, it looked like the original turrets had been replaced with new DP turrets so removing the aviation facilities for more light AA makes a lot of sense...