Shipbucket

I'm working on a design for Tequilapoli, an Anti-Aircraft Light Cruiser (CLAA). The basic inspiration was the US Atlanta class and it's descendant, the Juneau class.

I like the basic idea of the ships, vessels armed with a main-battery of dual purpose 5" guns and a sizable secondary battery of AA guns.

Some of the criticisms I've read of the Atlanta/Oakland/Juneau type include a lack of directors, excessive loading, perticularly being top-heavy, and ineffectiveness as surface combatants.

Originally, the Atlantas had 16 5"/38 cal. guns in 8 twin mounts (six centerline mounts and two wing mounts), so I'm starting from that point. However, I've lengthened the hull from 541 feet OA to 590 feet OA, and moved the two wing mounts to the centerline. I'm also fitting at least 5 directors for the main battery.

For the secondary battery, I've decided to go with 48 x 40mm/56 cal bofors AA guns (12 quad mounts, 6 per side) and I am considering adding an additional quad mount on the forecastle, bringing the total to 52, as well as fitting the ship with an as-yet unspecified number of light AA (20mm or 1.1")

Although the base class had issues with ASuW, these ships would be designed to operate with Tequilapolian or Allied Carrier Task Groups or Surface Action Groups, so in surface actions they wouldn't necessarily be the primary fighting force. During an AAW engagement, the ships would probably be the point vessels for AA screen, with it's large AA/DP battery.

Am I totally off the wall with this, or am I steaming in a good direction? And any suggestions?

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Well you might consider this the ultimate CLAA:



12 (yes, count 'em, 12!) semi-automatic 6-inch, 57-caliber rifles with a RoF of 20 RPM (or 1 round per three seconds, or 1 round per second per turret), 12 full-automatic 3-inch 70-caliber rifles and four Hazemeyer-equivalent L60 Bofors emplacements. Notice the lack of anything smaller because by this time such weapons would be virtually useless. Also capable of 30+ knot flank/cruise speed and with enough directors (including radar directors) to engage both air and surface targets very effectively.

Of course it's also slightly smaller in tonnage and volume to an Alaska and quite expensive. In my AU they're actually replacing battleships instead of cruisers.

It represents an extreme example of a CLAA but it gives you an example of where you could ultimately end up if you wanted to push it. You might also want to PM TimothyC since he gave me a lot of input into the design of this thing.

Anyway, to more address what you're looking for immediately:
That does appear to be true, just looking at this drawing (and assuming it's accurate) it definitely doesn't have enough directors to adequately handle all those turrets, especially regarding surface fire:



So that's something you'd want to keep in mind. You'd probably need two more directors on top of that, ideally placed along the beams.
Hence semi-automatic rifles, such as on my design - and one of the reasons why they eventually came out with Worchester. 5/38 was about as big as you can get before hand-loading becomes too much of a pain to keep up effective firing. Having to keep up a constant high-rate of fire starts to make even that a pain, though.
They removed two beam turrets starting on the Oaklands on the slips and to every ship of this type eventually. I believe the torpedo tubes also eventually went. These ships had a lot of firepower - too much, it turns out.
See all of the above. Like I said, these ships actually had a lot of firepower and would pretty much effortlessly chew up destroyers for breakfast and would theoretically punch quite a bit above their weight just from the on-paper raw firepower stats alone. However, all that stuff I just talked about limited that on-paper effectiveness.

So if you want to avoid all that, keep all that stuff in mind. You probably want to limit yourself to six turrets - or have a very large hull (like what I did). You're going to have to have beam directors, and I don't mean just for your smaller-sized weapons too (though have plenty of those too). The loading problem is solved with technology, so if we're talking early WWII-period, you're out of luck.
Lengthening the hull is going to improve your hull speed (and increase the moment forces on your hull too - bad idea, BTW) but will do nothing to improve actual seaworthiness. You need a beamier hull. Four centerline turrets per half of the ship seems insane - but it's been done in real life before, with heavier batteries, so what do I know. You might want to ask a more knowledgeable person about the number of directors needed.

I did start to draw (never finished) an ultimate CLAAN at one point. It's amazing what you can do when you've got a nuclear reactor:

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Thats good so far, you should keep posting more updates on how its going.

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Coming soon....
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After reading and rereading the posts, I realised I did a piss poor job of describing the Cruiser...Here's the technical data I have now (lost springsharp when my computer went belly up, haven't loaded it onto the wifey's laptop yet.)

Launched: 1942-43(5 ships)

Length: 590 feet

Beam: 66 feet, 6 inches

Draft: 25 feet

Average Freeboard: 26.5 feet

Armament:

Main Battery- 16 x 5"/38 Cal DP guns in 8 centerline twin mounts

Secondary Battery: 48 x 40mm AA guns in quad mounts

Speed: 32.5 knots

Now, an idea I had whilst delivering pizzas tonight was this: Rather than fitting 8 twin mounts along the centerline, perhaps fitting either 5 triple mounts with 5"/38s or an indigenous 5"/40 cal type...OR upgunning to 6" Dual Purpose guns. I'm presuming, also after a discussion with my father that autoloaders would not be realistic in the early 1940's (That discussion came about for a design of TNS Victoria, Tequilapoli's lone "modern" battleship during WWII, which I wanted to fit autoloading 105mm twin mounts to, but that's off topic.)

Using a 590 foot long, 66.5 foot wide hull, and with 5 main battery mounts instead of 8, might provide a more stable hull with the same (or close to it) punch.

Another option here, I suppose, would be for Tequilapoli to license-build either Brooklyn, St. Louis, or Cleveland class cruisers from the US Navy.

The main reason I like having the 6-8 twin mounts is a better weapons' spread. Having that many mounts does pose the problem of adequate direction, although as klagldsf pointed out I could mount them on the beams, a thought I hadn't considered since I figured having each mount on the centerline meant each director had to likewise be on the centerline.

At 66.5 feet, the ship is fairly wide for a light cruiser, considering that the larger Brooklyn, St. Louis, and Cleveland classes (all between 605-610 feet OA iirc) had max beams of around 61 feet. I'm assuming (and please correct if I'm wrong, I promise not to get mad) that a wider beam will better it's seakeeping capabilities. I'm also planning on limiting the height above the deck of the gunmounts to one level to reduce topwieght.

if this made no sense, I apologize...it's the painkillers making me ramble (Go figure I injured myself again!)

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Not really, I got what you were getting at. Just wanted to show off Haha, now I know what you do for a living
Certainly doable. Just remember you're going to have a beam-y ship. That's why my ship's so damn long.
Probably doable without auto-loading, but even a slight increase in caliber-length is going to increase shell weight quite a bit. And even 5/38 got heavy after a while, as I pointed out.
Definitely out of the question without auto-loading.
Ok but they can't engage aircraft with their main guns. They can theoretically - the Japanese had AA-shells for their battleship-caliber weapons - but the USN never once even pretended that the CL's can engage aircraft with their main armament. That's why they came out with the Atlanta CLAA's in the first place.
No. Many ships mounted additional primary directors on the beams. It's a pretty logical place since these ships tended to be "beamy" anyway.

One thing though - radar directors (like the big "drumhead" types I have or the similar types I was clearly inspired by the British use) can direct many, many gun weapons at once. They're very nice to have on a CLAA - but that's beyond the time frame you're looking at

The same technology that really made a CLAA practical (automation, radar direction, etc) also made it obsolete, because a lot of that same technology now meant you can guide a rocket-propelled warhead into an aircraft (like RIM-2 Terrier).
Yeah, but you'd need a hull at least as large as a Cleveland now if you want decent hull speed (and you probably do, otherwise I can't think of a point to a CLAA). Once again, see my ship. As I keep stressing, there's a reason why it's so damn big.

As a bit of a trivial aside, I was originally going to have six twin turrets on centerline but TimothyC talked me out of it. I might still do it as a Namaqua "what-if" though.

Only thing that hits me would be that I don't think Bofors ever made a 40mm/56 gun... the ones I know of were either 60 or 70 calibers. The americans might have changed that however.
Also, klagldsf, how the bleeding zogg do you manage to make a semi-automatic 6" gun fire 20 rpm? The Bofors 152mm/53 M.42 pulled of 15 rpm in AA fire, dwarfing the american 12rpm /47 Mk.16, also an automatic gun.

That's because the Swedes measure the full length of the gun while the Americans only count the barrel.

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Ah, ok.

I got the 56 cal designation from Wikipedia.

I'm going to post a couple versions in the Tequilapoli thread within the next 24 hours or so...And I downloaded Springsharp so I'll be running the numbers through it.

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World's Best Okayest Author and Artist