Shipbucket

The funnels shoud be 1/4 taller. When the ship moves at high speed, the smoke trail is almost completely flat, which means it is still covering your FC directors.

I have noticed that the midships drops two pixels in height, why is that?

The two doors on the aft superstructure is for torpedo tubes, right? If so, why is there one outside, exposed to the elements and gunfire?

-Increased the height of the funnels
-Leveled out the height of the deck amidships
-Changed the boat arrangement
-Added some platforms for search lights
-Added secondaries
-Removed the torpedo launcher. The doors next to the torpedo launcher do indeed have torpedo launchers.
-Added some directors
-Changed the rudder and fixed a color issue with the propellers

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Ok, now we're cooking! Only a few items still to be sorted out:

1) Make the rudder sail area substantially less! Right now it's still too large, and the ship will actually react with jerking and jolting movements, especially at high speed; rendering for instance station keeping and gun laying very difficult, if not outright impossible! Again, check RL-designs! Their rudder arrangements are not done by sheer coincidence, my friend! (And, do look especially at the previously submitted Dupleix, since your ship appears to have a triple shaft arrangement. I'd recommend its arrangement with twin paddle-shaped rudders.
2) Your forward-most director, which appear to be the main FCS for the forward turrets, is too close to the secondary FC-tower. The protruding periscope arms on its side will slam into the tower. When designing these ships, it's helpful to try and think in a three-dimensional way, to envision how every single equipment will work.
3) While it looks like you've got adequate numbers of boats, I cannot understand why you've got those paired davits for the two outermost ones. That appears to be quite wasteful and complex. In fact, those boats are not meant to be slung on davits anyway! What you appear to have put on those davits are four 30' motor launches. Those are way too heavy for the davits. You can use them, but stove them on the amidships deck area! Instead use any of the 26-27' whaleboats on the boat sheet, preferably the Mks 2 or 5. (Or take any comparable one from other boat sheets and/or drawings! You can modify them accordingly too!)

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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

In regards to the davits not being able to support the 30" motor boats, it could be that these are modified davits able to support them. But either ways I replaced them

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William Class Fast Battleship

I based this design on the IJN Fuso, the similarities are pretty obvious. Oh and the hull was copied from one of Garlicdesigns battleships. It was just too well done and I suck at drawing the bottom hulls.

I usually have someone else do a SpringSharp report, but he isn't around so I can't give you one. Each turret holds two 14" guns




**1944 Refit**

I'm used to drawing battleships, so I'd really appreciate some criticism.

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With credits for the drawings - your name comes last, not first. Applies to all SB drawings.

The drawing holds some promise, but with that length it is going to be a big target. What sort of speed is the 1926 version supposed to make?

Without some statistics it is difficult to measure things like length to breadth ratios and how that will impact on the speed you expect to achieve. Which also gives some idea how much extra weight your ship might be able to absorb in the way of extra fittings before removing fittings to allow you to add more. Topweight.

The 1944 refit is not viable. Have a look at all the extra weight and fittings you have added, without removing anything to compensate. Get rid of all those casemate guns. You have added 20x5" and you are going to need a lot of the space where those casemate guns are to fit the new magazines and shell handling equipment for the 5". Also casemate guns are almost useless in anything but a flat calm. 32 casemate guns are overkill and a complete waste of weight. Weight that you need for the bigger fore and aft bridge structures and all the new electronic equipment you have fitted.. Did you fit a new armoured deck and new engines in the 44 refit? The bulges will help a bit but you still need to trade weight for weight.

Its easy to base your design on the Fuso but you do not want to end up like some of the Japanese ships with such horrible weight problems they could be lost in bad weather by turning turtle.

The drawings look nice so far, but I have to second some of Krakatoa's remarks.
On the original design, there are probably too many casemate guns already, particularly near the bow. Maybe you have made a sketch of that ship in plan view, in that case I'm curious to see how much beam there is abaft the first turret for the casemates.
But before even getting to that, there is the notion of beam and machinery to examine, and their influence on speed. Not only is your ship very long and would be unstable without a very broad beam, but there doesn't seem to be much space for the propulsion plant.

Regarding the refit version, a few points make me suspicious that you started drawing it first and then worked back to the original. Nothing bad about that as such, but you have to make sure that the evolution between both versions makes sense. You have hindsight that your historical designers wouldn't have had.
For example, take the floatplane catapult. There are historical examples of catapults in that location, but without an under-deck hangar, your planes are going to get battered very quickly. And if you add an under-deck hangar, what was there in the space it takes in the original 1926 layout? Which systems or support space do you remove to make space for it? The large empty stern suggest that there was space provisioned for the catapults from the outset, and in that case, why no catapults already? Using planes to spot for a battleship battery made as much sense in 1926 as in 1944. If you tell me that your AU navy didn't have spotting floatplanes in the 1920s but was planning on acquiring them later, I could buy that, but otherwise there is a lot of wasted space on the original design without a justification.
Similarly, you have added side cranes for your ship's boats in the upgraded version, while the original has way more boats and no visible cranes or davits. How do you launch these boats at that time? And why get rid of so many boats in wartime? That crane should have been there since the beginning, and you could probably add more boats on that location in the late version, instead of adding already obsolete casemate guns.

And this brings us to the secondary battery: not only can you remove all casemate guns, and not add any more, but you can certainly cut away or fair over the deck sections they are in and use the space for DP turreted mounts of a similar caliber. That way, the AA turrets you have added, if sufficient, could be sited one deck lower or further inboard to reduce balance problems, and you can probably improve the side armor while you're at it.
Also, I'm wondering why you added extra directors instead of, say, moving the existing ones higher on the masts. Come to think of it, why aren't they higher originally, especially without spotter airplanes? Are the new directors for redundancy?

A few other small things on the drawing itself:
- Where do the extra strakes on the bottom of the hull go? They disappear completely around the hull bend. Do they blend in seamlessly, and if so, why?
- In the 1944 version, the torpedo bulge covers the hull armor belt, so maybe the edge of the belt above the waterline should have a kink where it meets the belt? Except if the top of your belt is perfectly flat, of course.
- Speaking of which, there is no forward edge to your belt, and it could use some lighter shading in that area as well.

Still, this is only meant as constructive criticism, and the drawing does indeed show promise. Keep going!

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
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Thanks for the responses guys! I'll try to answer a few of the criticisms for now. I'm going to be writing my end-of-year school exams and I have very little time to actually draw or research anything.

Krakatoa

I'll try and make the hull a bit shorter and remove some casemates from the original design, and remove the rest for the 1944 version. The only way I could think to reduce weight was to make the armor a bit thinner than other battleships. And yes once they were modernised they received an armored deck and new engines.

citizen lambda

I didn't really realise that the floatplane needed a hanger, which was very stupid of me. I'll remove the floatplane, because even though I haven't actually mentioned it anywhere in the lore, battleships and heavy cruisers were built without catapults to save space. Instead scout craft and designated spotting planes were launched by dedicated floatplane carriers and aircraft carriers. Antara built many small aircraft carriers before WW2 for this reason. I realise I should probably write a bit more history for my ships, at least what's relevant to the drawing.

I'll also make some adjustments to the lifeboats and the crane, I drew the original drawings weeks before the refit and made adjustments which I didn't carry over to the original.

In regards to the gun directors, I was looking at the Iowa drawing, which had two directors in the front and two at the back, as well as one on each side for the 5" guns I think. The two directors on each side of my ship are to control both sets of 5" guns.

With regards to the hull, I literally copied the entire bottom hull of one of Garlicdesigns US battleships, but I'll try and correct the errors you pointed out.

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OK, that sounds internally consistent, which is the main thing. Others better versed than I with the IRL naval history of this period can debate the doctrinal decision, but that's neither here nor there.
If, as you mentioned re. Krakatoa's comment, you want to shorten the hull, you might look towards moving your superstructure aft, and a later upgrade may also add AA pieces on the fantail like on the Yamato. OK, but IMO you'd better start with removing the casemate guns and reworking the main deck, then you can re-arrange the boats and secondary battery to your liking. OK, I see what you mean. I was in no doubt on the secondary battery directors. Thing is, on the Iowa, the extra directors fore and aft are of a different type, if I'm not mistaken. The latest IJN and USN parts sheets show a lot of alternative stereo and radar fire-control assemblies, some dedicated to main battery control. Then again, I can't presume to know the detail of your AU technical timeline, so the types of directors you use is entirely up to you. Beyond looking strange, I can't confirm that this is wrong. Some US BBs in the archive do show something similar below the stabilizer strakes, though they don't look exactly the same. Maybe GD or other designers of these ships can shed light on the actual shape or purpose of these shapes.

Fingers crossed for your exams!

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
My Worklist

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