Shipbucket

I'm posting a somewhat early WIP of this one because I just realized it's out of period for immediate use, that and I had a question pertaining to aircraft on battleships.

Little bit of background on the ship, I've been looking at H. Heuser's Superior class a lot during this, and I'm trying to take hints from it without copying it. Originally it was going to be a 5 turret beast but I realized there wouldn't be much room for ammo and such with that many guns, so I dropped it to 4, figuring that was fairly common for large battleships. But then I remembered that New Britannia has recently put a large focus on airforce strength, and thought I could implement that into her flagship. I dropped the rear most turret in favor of an extended, half below deck, hanger. New Britannia also has a very high opinion of artillery on land, and enjoys the idea of large caliber bombardment from the coast. I'm not 100% if the 16" guns are too big for the time right around 1919, but I can't find proof they weren't doable. I'm also not sure how I plan on doing this yet, but I'd like the Julius to function as a base for beach landings. I want it to carry a large amount of troops and equipment to just off the coast, where the landing craft can transport it from the ship to land. The only way I can think of to do that would be to replace the launcher and hanger with landing craft storage and deployment cranes.
I've mounted the 16" main guns with twin barrel turrets (will upgrade to triple in the future), Twin 57mm BOFORs, and Twin 20mm guns for AA defense.
I'm not sure what I'm doing for engines yet, but they will be oil burning boilers with steam turbines. I'm thinking 5 propeller shafts and 2 long(wide?) funnels. The fore most possibly half encased in the fore tower.
For director placement, do I want 1 director per gun, per set of guns (fore and aft), or perhaps 2 per gun even?
I'm also only planning on building maybe 4 of these, most likely only 2, so if it's a costly build that's not too much of an issue. In game, New Britannia has a fairly sizeable income.
Here's the ship, sorry for talking so much.


Julius Class WIP1 by ~~@ Lord Malachi @~~ The Awesome Coon of Awesome, on Flickr

I'm just playing around with some shading on the bow right now, so if it looks funky that's why.

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

Nicely executed, but way, waaaay too advanced for your time period! - In fact, even as of present day I've not seen such an exaggerated bulbous bow anywhere!

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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

The catapults and secondary armament turrets also seem a bit advanced for the 1919 time frame.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

I can think of a few, but they are mostly pleasure craft like this Elvström

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

Well that's why I posted it now before continuing Lol. I checked the bulbous bow and it was supposedly invented around the 20s, but used mainly by civilian ships for a long time due to military distrust of it (Which happens with 'all' good technology). I wasn't aware it was still so rare o.0 May I ask what makes it so exaggerated? And would a less exaggerated version be more suitable, or should I really drop it entirely? I can always bring it back for a 40's overhaul.

As for the catapults and secondaries, does anyone have suggestions on what to replace them with?

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

Bulbous bows are pretty much universal on cargo ships, but except for a few cases they are nowhere as extreme as what you've drawn.
Also, hybrid warships (Which is what this is) have never really worked out all that well. Additionally, the concept of specialized amphibious vessels, let alone dedicated support ships were in its infancy at the time, so I find the idea of anyone shelling out the cash to built something like this highly suspect.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

The closest we can come to a bulbous bow on a large warship, is Yamato's Semi bulbous bow!

Is there a reason warships don't use bulbous bows? I would think with them traveling large distances across the globe they would benefit from the lower fuel consumption, and I'm not finding any drawbacks to them.

And I can drop the specialized support ship idea, no problems there, and I can drop the hybrid idea as well, and just a design a carrier as well. In which case I'll go back to 4 main gun turrets, and drop the aircraft completely until the overhaul in the 40s?

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

And, while I'll still change it due to time period, the bulbous bow on the Nimitz class is pretty similar to my own.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... us-bow.htm

And with the Yamato basically inventing it in the 40s I'll just take it upon my Nation to invent it instead during that period, though still smaller than this current version.

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

A war vessels usually have a very sharp hull and thus disappears the point with a bulb completely, because the hull is so sharp that it cut fairly easily through the water. while on a cargo boat that has a relatively rounded hull that provides a relatively high resistance in the sea need the bulb, this bulb act as a knife but also what is most important, create the second wave that zeros out the wave the hull makes.

I'll come with more on it tomorrow.