Shipbucket

Allow me some comments here. I have the linked book and in defense of it Mr Perkins did his drawings real time, meaning he had a pen/pencil and a paper to sketch the ships as he saw them passing. Certainly GD's drawings are top notch and I would love to see them in print (many of the drawings here) however there is a catch: SB scale is waaay to small and pixellated for high quality printing . You need to be at least 3-4 times this scale to come out decently. I only know this from hobby printing. The Kirov class drawings by ALVMA which are non SB scale is the size where the drawings appear nicely in printing....

My planned Jütland poster is only working as I'll reduce the size of the drawings sufficiently that even the SB scale starts to work but that already leads to a severe loss of detail.

My 'competition' comment was a bit tongue in cheek.
My real reason for posting was the sentence in the blurb:
"His main concentration was on features differentiating ships of the same class and, wherever possible, precisely dating alterations to their appearance, all portrayed in exquisite multi-coloured annotated line drawings."
The NMM Plans and Photographs section (not at Greenwich, but at Woolwich Arsenal, is a truly amazing collection.

Hello everyone!

First, thanks to everyone.

@Bezo: If you want me to go megalomaniac and be confined to an asylum, so I don't have to work and can draw all day, just go on like that...

@smurf: Thanks for the link, hadn't known that one. But if I bought a book for 40+ euros every time I needed some details of a single ship class, i'd have to file for bankruptcy soon...

@mortarigus: Thanks for checking. Unfortunately, some of the info is contrary to Conway, Breyer AND Wikipedia (nobody else mentions 76mm HA guns, much less three of them, or the removal of the 102mm from the aft superstructure). Don't know how old that book is (Conway and Breyer ARE old, maybe your source is better - who knows).

So I went from available evidence of which I was reasonable sure for the Jutland fit. I found a picture with HMS Tiger's fits in each year of the Great War, which indicates the masts of British capital ships were shortened in 1915 already. The torpedo nets were gone too by that time, according to a photograph of HMS Lion taken immediately after the battle of Jutland. Two 102mm HA guns were mounted on the quarterdeck in 1915 or 1916, so probably before Jutland too. The searchlight arrangement however seemed to have been unchanged, also according to pictures of Lion and Queen Mary, and the 102mm in the hull abreast the forward turrets were also still there (on this all sources agree). This gives the following appearances for the three survivors of the class on June 1st, 1916:

HMS King George V


HMS Centurion


HMS Ajax


Greetings
GD

Still looking great!
I can't comment on historical accuracy in the least, but the drawings are still marvelous in their detail. Keep it up!

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GD: I will. Your incarceration is our gain!

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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

Well done GD!
I must admit that the suppression of the aft 4 inch guns did not make a lot of sense, especially in view of the fact that a 4 inch secondary armament was already viewed as inadequete against the new larger German destroyers. The DCN actually wanted 6 inch secondaries, but was voted down due to cost and weight issues. Please keep up this excellent thread.

Very nice work.

I too have read that the aft 4in casemates were removed early in the war (1915?) in Ian Sturtons 'Battleships of the World' which is more or less a collection of the Conway 1906-22 and 1922-45 battleship entries repackaged in one volume.
I cannot confirm or deny this at the moment (I haven't got Conway 1906-22 to confirm what the KGV entry actually says), it seems unlikely unless there were serious problems with blast from Q, X & Y turrets?
The 3in would be the 12pdr on a HA mount, seems logical as many ships had them but again I haven't the textual sources to check.

I'd say if anyone has access to Burt or even Friedman's latest British Battleships book then they may have more solid info.

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These are great! Thank you.

Hello again

@Hood, Mortarigus: Conway's mentions removal of the 102mm guns forward, abreast turrets A and B; no source talks of a reduction of the total number below 12. The removal of the forward guns dovetails with photographic evidence. Maybe someone just mixed up fore and aft. The AA guns are 102mm according to Breyer and Conway both, and its only two, both dead aft. In the end, you have to stick with something, and that looks the most plausible.

Next: 1918 fits

Greetings
GD

Well done and Amen to that! Do we get the 1918 versions?