Shipbucket

I'll leave the original description up until I can copy/paste/and save it.

This is the redesigned HMMS Honiara, a monster battleship for my strictly private AU.

These are the specifications I can give at the moment.

Length: 368 meters

Armament: 21x 18 in guns mounted in triple turrets. 20x 10 in (or 15) secondary guns mounted in dual turrets. 18 50 in flak guns.

Propulsion: 2 Toshiba Industries 14 cylinder twin-drive engines (I'll explain what twin drive means later) driving 6 3-blade screws.

Max Speed: 47 knots (Cruising Speed 43 knots).

My previous design required a lot of kitbashing, however; this design only required kitbashing for the AA guns. Everything else I drew myself.

Ignore everything written below this text.










Relax mates, I am busy redesigning this boat as we speak.


This is what I've been up to all afternoon, designing a boat for a private AU that I do not wish to share with anyone. I was going to chat some of the SB Boys over Skype, but due to yesterday's nasty electrical storm, and the fact Skype has been eating my internet data cap, I haven't been able to join the chat. Now, I had to borrow some of the more complicated elements from ALVAMA and BB1987, such as the AA guns, one half of the secondary battery, the exhausts and the exterior detailing, but other than that, the hull, the other half of the secondary battery, the main guns, and the main tower I drew myself. It's not completely done yet, I need to add the name of the vessel to the bow, add the deck railings, and finish some unfinished details.

A few details I can give on specs are that this vessel is 400 meters long, it's main battery consists of 36 20 IN guns in six sextuple turrets, and is armed with several 16 and 14 IN guns as its secondary batteries. It is powered by 8 massive Toshiba Industries Twin Drive Engines, although exact no. of cylinders and top speed is highly classified.

uhm....... I am not certain what makes less sense, your drawing or your text. unless build from unobtainium, this ship is going to be impossible to build (and that is in the case it would actually make sense to have this kind of armament)

what is with all the classified? We are not going to steal your design and build it or something like that? xD

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

It's for a fantasy world AU, that is why it's private. For my real AU, I would save myself the trouble and just build a Tillman Style Battleship. As for the Classifications; It's owners are very strict about how much of its naval tech is known to the rest of the world. Now quoting your question on what it's made from, its built from a highly classified armour. What this armour consists of, I'm not allowed to reveal.

..... The people here are not part of your AU, so if you hold secrets from us for just that reason you are just being silly, in my opinion.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

[*]

I suppose so. And TBH, 400 meters is a bit too extreme, but I want something enormous.

I think a redesigned H44 should do.

One thing I would suggest, if you're going down this route, is not to have a split secondary battery. Historically, they've been used in situations where a suitable DP gun isn't available or because the specified secondary battery is too cumbersome to use in an AA role - while both 16" and 14" fit the "too cumbersome" part that's kind of the point - putting in a split secondary battery when it is of this size wouldn't seem to get you anything.

Oh, another point ... Sextuple turrets would likely have a very slow rate of fire and be extremely wasteful of space - you've got to have enough room for guns 1 and 6 to drop the breech in order for the barrel to lift, but because the guns are in a line there's masses of space wasted in the centre of the turret if you do that.

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NSWE: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5695

IMHO, Yamato's 18" guns were near the practical limit of a gun that might reasonably be handled and worked at a tactically-useful rate, and near the practical limit of what could be armored against. Maybe 20", sure, okay. But 2x20", 3x18", you've got a turret that literally masses as much as a period destroyer. Much bigger than that, you start worrying about ships maneuvering around you faster than you can lay your guns.

The question that needs to be asked is, how many guns make sense to emplace on a single battleship (or cruiser, for that matter) before it makes more sense to either upscale the guns, or built two smaller battleships? The world over, the answer seems to be around a dozen. AFAIK Agincourt had more main battery guns than any other dreadnaught, at 14. There were many with a dozen, many with eight and nine. There were some light cruisers with 15x6". I can't think of any gun-first ships that emplaced many more than that, not in the modern turret era.

So I say that more than 15 or so guns is too many, and I say that anything bigger than about 20" is simply too big. So the question must be asked: what can this 36x20" battleship do better than a squadron of three 12x20" battleships?

You ALWAYS face the threat of the so-called "golden-BB" that can incapacitate a single unit (a torpedo into the screws, say). Splitting capacity is a good thing even if you want all of your units in the same place at the same time, and assuredly a single gigantic hull cannot chase down threats in two different directions.

From a drawing standpoint, it's not too shabby. I think you'd find a top-down cartoon, however, would illustrate the parts of the design that really wouldn't work no matter how hard you tried.

I like the idea of a super - super dreadnought, but your ship is waaay too
topheavy for that hull, and the wider your beam (to accommodate the big
turrets and provide stability) the slower your ship will be.

I'm currently redesigning the vessel: It will sort of resemble the Fuso, will be fitted with 18 in guns, Twin exhausts, and 10 (or) 14 in secondary guns. Also, I've reduced the length from 400 meters to 368 meters.