Shipbucket

Everything I've ever seen (mainly British and French practice) has been around the 25-40mm region and always internal plating.

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AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

Agreed, I can't think of many examples of such armour as a seperate mini-belt.
As Blackbuck says, British practice was internal plating. I don't any German designs had external armour either in this area.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Rosental-class destroyer leader



The Rosentals were the first attempt at an Antaran destroyer leader, built alongside the Chiaki class of destroyers. For the 80 Chiakis, 16 Winters were built alongside them with the intent of having one leader per ten Chiakis, in flotillas of eleven. The additional Winters would lead existing flotillas of older ships.

Proposals on the destroyer leader design consisted of a battery of 5-6 100mm or 127mm guns, 36-38 knots, a displacement of between 1200-1400 tonnes and additional room for a small command crew. The design selected featured 4 127mm guns, 6 530mm torpedoes in two triple launchers, a speed of 36 knots and a displacement of 1400 tonnes. However Rosentals when launched ended up as a disappointment - with minor weight issues and problems reaching her design speed. Their inability to keep up with other destroyers caused considerable issues and future destroyer leaders would be built to replace them.

Displacement - 1450 tonnes
Speed - 35 knots average
Range - 8000nm at 10 knots
Main battery - 4xI 127mm/45 (as built), 100mm/45 (30s to early 40s)
Torpedoes - 2xIII 533mm










*Marsh, not March

*Marsh, not March

Ships in class

Rosental - scrapped, 1349
Marsh - scrapped, 1349
White - torpedoed, 1343
Spencer - torpedoed, 1342
Morris - scrapped, 1349
Hobson - torpedoed, 1343
Alia - sunk in action, 1342
Martin - scrapped, 1349
Etford - torpedoed, 1344
Saihara - ran aground, 1342
Hunter - torpedoed, 1345
Davis - scrapped, 1349
Fen - torpedoed, 1344
Caulfield - sunk by aircraft, 1348
Evan - scrapped, 1349
Ayumi - scrapped, 1349

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Your work gets better and better. The Winters class looks very impressive, lovely detailing and a very realistic design.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Excellent work!

Emperor William IV class battleship



Born out of the need for modern battleships shortly before the start of the WW, the BB-29 class of two ships - as it was known during conception - would be laid down in late 1341 and completed in late 1343. Antara had a lack of new battleships to fight the Osoran Navy, as the Ericas were part of the Freyatic Fleet and not the Scyllic At the time the project was being developed, Empress Azura was already under construction. Compared to the previous class, BB-29 was smaller, cheaper and more specialized for her role. While Empress Azura was quite literally designed to do everything well at the cost of massive size and limited dockyards and high maintenance cost, BB-29 was designed primarily with battleship combat in mind, with carrier escort and other roles second. The Admiralty initially wanted a very well armed and armored battleship with titanic tonnage, but the Bureau of Naval Construction shot down the idea. Empress Azura needed her own dockyard in order to take on her size (and was still in it), and while new dockyards were under construction, they were already reserved for new fleet carriers and the second member of Azura's class.

The proposals were therefor tailored towards using existing dockyards. This meant the final design needed to be a full 15k tonnes smaller than Azura, however this did have the added benefit of significantly cutting down costs and construction time (ironically Empress Azura was constructed extremely fast for her size). In order to achieve the smaller tonnage, BB-29 was cut down to 'only' 44 000 tonnes standard. Speed was sacrificed in favor of a 14" main belt and 7" deck. BB-29 had the same main battery armament as Empress Azura but on a smaller platform.

BB-29-1 and BB-29-2 would be laid down in Colonet State Shipyards and St Katherine Naval Shipyards respectively in September 1341. During their construction they would be officially given the names Emperor William IV and Empress Coraline. Both vessels would be commissioned in December 1343 into the Scyllic Fleet.

Both ships formed part of the same battleship division throughout the World War and had active careers. Their first action was covering a carrier fleet during the later stages of the Syllic island hopping campaign that commenced in early 1344. Both vessels, along with ARS Empress Azura bombarded the island of Etoko and other major land installations in the later stages of that campaign. Empress Coraline took a torpedo hit during a night attack at Etoko, requiring a brief repair in a dockyard for a week.

Both battleships were present during the Battle of Vescadia on 4 April 1344, providing air defense for their carriers once again and unfortunately missing out of fighting IJN battleships present during the major battle. They would be present for the Matu Islands of 1346-1347 where Emperor William IV is credited with the destruction on the battleship Ainuki, and Empress Coraline with Notomi, in separate, rather horribly mismatched battles.

The Emperor William IVs would be called back and arrive just in time for the Battle of Tuscadia in 1345 where both vessels would further credited with sinking the already damaged Hitake during the battle. In the weeks following the battle, they would return to the Matu Islands for the remainder of the campaign. They would serve as carrier escort during the Battle of Zhentou and would trade salvos with Osoran vessels throughout the battle with no major hits.

Following the utter destruction of the Osoran Navy in 1346, they would be assigned as carrier escort and shore bombardment for the rest of the war, from South Osora in 1347 to mainland Osora in 1347-1349. Both ships would receive 17 battle stars as they were only separated on two occasions throughout the entire war, making them the most decorated battleships of the war, more so than the popular Empress Azura whose only claim to fame was sinking Natsuhiru in 1346. Unlike the latter, both ships were scrapped after the end of hostilities and after successful missile testing.







Blanks - https://imgur.com/a/v36rDLc

Displacement - 44 000 tonnes standard, 48 000 tonnes normal
Speed - 28 knots
Range - 10 000nm at 16 knots
Armament
Main battery - 3x3 406mm/50
Secondary battery - 10x2 127mm/45
AA battery - numerous 25mm and 38mm
Armor
Main belt - 356mm
Deck - 178mm
Forecastle and quarter deck - 38mm
Turret front plate- 457mm
Turret sides and top - 356mm
Barbettes - 430mm
Forward conning tower - 406mm
Aft conning tower - 256mm
Secondary gun-house front plate - 50mm
Secondary gun-house sides and top - 25mm
Torpedo bulkhead - 76mm, 22 m beam between bulkheads

Ships in class

Emperor William IV - scrapped, 1357
Empress Coraline - scrapped, 1359

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now that is what I call a nice-looking battleship good job my dude

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Work list: 1. various pre-1900 Zipang ships 2. Some protected cruisers and other miscellaneous projects

thx

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Very excellent drawings. Two questions:

• What are the pipe-guard-like structures in front of the centerline 5"/45 turrets? I wouldn't expect these director-controlled mounts to require such structures.
• Any thought to mounting the radar on the aft secondary director on the front face of the director, rather than above? As drawn, the aft main battery director rangefinder is blocked across many arcs once the secondary director received radar. Consider the example of CL-49.

1 - In the event that the guns needed to be manually trained, the railing would prevent the guns from accidentally depressing and smothering the AA crew with smoke when firing.
2 - You make a good point, I'll edit it.

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