Shipbucket

Whilst there is no limitations to how much weight the cruisers can weigh, congress would still pass on limitations, similar to the WWI ere battleships. I had to lower the speed so as to get the hull strength to 1.0. The original displacement that SS came up with was 14505 tons standard. With that displacement, I could add so much more, at the severe cost of reducing the ship from good seakeeping to a very bad one. Even though she is not purpose built as a scout, she would still be able to put out as much lead as any heavy cruiser, if not more, and take almost the same ammount of beating. It was the same conclusion the British made. That's why the British heavy cruiser line stopped at the Counties.

Any scouting done at the time would be done with the sea planes, not by the ship it self. Besides, if you need a cruiser to scout, I have a wip of an early 20s scout cruiser, in addition to the Omaha class.

Edit: I have increased speed from 30 to 33 kts, which makes her .5 kts faster than any of the real life cruisers, with the exception of the Omaha class. Standard displacement has gone up to 12100 tons and seakeeping is only avarage.

Yes I agree you might get 10,000t ships limited by congress.

I was just thinking that they would need to be faster and would have to accept being more 'tinclad' as a result, not that that would matter as much in a world with plenty of fast ships with 8"-16"+ guns that will cut any light CL apart very fast anyway so standing and fighting would be far less important.

I think therefore you would likely have a speed of at least 35Kn (Omaha class+) and TTs to deal with bigger foes at the cost of the protection level ?

Cant say these are the best looking ships I have ever seen, but they are functional. Myself I would reduce the fore and aft bridge structures down one level and the funnels too. That would also lower the overall weight a few hundred tons plus streamline the look of the ship.

For speed-v-everything else in Springsharp, remember that at 606 long you only need 58-59 foot of breadth to take the triples. That will give you a higher natural speed length to start from.

1939/40 - replace the LA 5" twins with the DP 5"/38. Those guns are available at that stage and AA was becoming a serious issue with how the aircraft were working against the Allied forces in Europe. The Somers/Porter DD's had their LA replaced during the war, but a big cruiser would be much higher up the list for replacements.

By cutting the armor thickness and length, and reducing the tonnage to 11700 I will have compensated for a 35 kt speed. Seakeeping is conequently horrible.

Krakatoa, the Phoenix has the same width as the Brooklyn class, and should not be any narrower than that. I cannot lower the aft superstructure, that is where the hangar is, and it needs to bee that tall. As for the DP guns, they will be added in the refits in 1943.

I am working on a sub-class of the Phoenix; the Wichita, which has a remodelled bridge structure to lower it, and to make space for single 5 inch guns. She also gets all new 6 inch guns that are of a longer caliber, not to mention new turrets.

Isn't it a pain to have to apply those paint schemes again after having to edit the ship?

_________________

It is. It can take a few hours to do so.

Oh wow... I actually tried to do it in GIMP and managed to do two paint schemes in less the 20 minutes, thanks to the ability of the program being able to replace certain pixels with another.

_________________

I use Pain.net, and have to manually select areas I want to recolor.

would she not have more modern floatplanes by 1942?

She could have had the Seagulls, but not all ships recieved the most modern planes, they were usually given to more high priority ships, heavy cruisers and battleships.