Shipbucket

Beautiful work Hood

Good luck on these great, iconic designs matey and I VERY much look forward to seeing more soon I hope

Well done

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My artwork is posted here: https://www.deviantart.com/adenandy/gallery/all

Thanks for the praises guys, I hope I make this AU life up to the expectations!

I've replaced the Type 19 drawings (removing my embarrassing red line, tip never tinker with a drawing just before upload!), I've added some torpedoes to the Type 19 upgrade. As a bonus extra, the Type 82 post now includes an upgraded ship too. Hopefully it deals with Erik_T's comment about radar, I think that for the late 1960s there is probably little alternative.

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

looking nice!
speaking of radar, I was just thinking about adding the SPS-01/broomstick radar. would that not be an perfect fit on your T82?

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

interesting

Fantastic work. Great to see the AU RN going again!
(bit sad that there's no longer an "old team" of OGFL here to do it as "complete" AU)

Thanks eswube, I do miss the old gang and their creativity.

RN Spruance



Over the years I've seen many people discussing what a British Spruance might look like. I've wanted to try one for some time, and Ace's Dutch versions got me thinking. The result is probably maxed out, I was pondering a British Tico-style version with planar arrays but that seemed too far fetched. The 909 and 910 are off centreline etc. to maximise arcs but its a poor compromise but four Type 909 are impossible to fit. With hindsight I would probably go back to the baseline design with two 5in and the lower quarterdeck and forego the Sea Wolf. An idea to fit Blowpipe or Starstreak/Seastreak CIWS remains on the drawing board as did an attempt to fit Phalanx.

In this scenario, rather than developing a home-grown design to replace the Counties the Government decides it will be cheaper and easier to build a version of the US ship. Of course as we all know once the DNC get their hands on it tons of work have to be done, bringing the design to RN safety and building standards, different messing arrangements, new equipment etc. so in the end the cost ends up being much higher than planned. All the eight ships are built at a thoroughly modernised and re-equipped yard on the Clyde using the standard American-developed module system. Several modules would be supplied from the States too.

Changes: Flush deck design, new bridge and masts but otherwise most of the external structure unchanged.
Machinery: new engine rooms with four 20,000shp RR Marine Spey
Armament:
2x GWS-32 Sea Dart launchers (64 missiles), fire-control by two Type 909 directors
2 8-cell GWS-25 Sea Wolf VLS launchers, fire-control by two Type 911 directors
4x launcher/canisters for Woomba ASMs
1x 5in L/54, wanting something bigger than the 3inL/70 for NGS the Admiralty buys the US gun and ammo off the shelf, fire-control by Type 909
2x 20mm GAM-BO1
2x twin 12.75in A/S torpedo tubes
2x Westland Lynx HAS.Mk.1
Electronics: 3-D NSR Mod.2 radar, 3-D Type 968 radar, 2x Type 1006, Type 2016 bow sonar, UAA-1 Abbey Hill ESM, 2x Type 975 guidance jammers, 2x Millpost jammers, SCOT plus other sitcom systems, Mk.43 and Corvus chaff and flare launchers, would have a ADAWS control system and other British electrical equipment alongside some US kit.

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

very nice! but I have a few small comments.....
- are you certain you want to use an multi-bladed propeller and not the one I drew for the spruance as she had in real life?
- similarly, I personally like the helideck and refueling points a lot more (and they are somewhat more accurate as well) on my redraw of the spruances in the project dx thread
- you have the bumbs on the hull to protect the praerie masker system but not the system itself?
- you have some decoy launchers just next to the front funnel which I think are duplicate with the decoy launcher near amidship
- next to the front funnel you have a small platform and 2 electronic cables (antenna's or something) which belong to the SLQ-32 and were not placed there before those were installed on the spruances. so, I suppose you don't need that
- note that the spruance as build did not have the liferafts in those positions but on top of the superstructure (british practise may be different and have them there, just a note though)
- I think you run into issues with your air intakes and especially with your turbine replacement ducts (which use the same channel). the spruances had boxes with air intakes around on top of the superstructure, in front of the forward funnel and aft of the aft funnel. the channels ran straight down into the engine room, and doubled as hatches to take out the turbines IIRC. you removed these so I am not certain if your turbines can be removed or if they can even take intake air. I think you have placed the foremast amidships and the aft director opposite the funnel, so the solution is quite easy, put those boxes back
- note that your infrared signature will be higher then the regular spruance due to the fact that you don't have the exhaust cooling in the funnel (that is where the 4 small intakes are for)
- the spruance does not require a propeller guard. the references often have it, the old drawing has it, but the real ship has not.
- I kind of miss a place for signal flags.
- the speys have if I see it correctly, the same power as the US turbines. would it be interesting to go for a 3 turbine setup (as originally proposed for the spruance, and chosen by me for the dutch version)
- note that the spruance had space for an mod 0 (24 missiles) forward and an mod 1 (44 missiles) aft. while the tico has 2* mod 1 and the spruance could take 64 cell Mk 41, it would require some work to do so. as you don't want the Mk 71 gun on board, this is the smallest issue of all

and a few questions, just curious......
- how does the weight of the sea dart compare with the Mk 26?
- is this sea dart launcher a special version, storing the missiles not inline (like the RL launchers) but also in rows next to each other, to fit Mk 26 space?
- why the box launchers aft and not on the superstructure as IRL?

anyways, still very nice! it looks quite good already, just trying to make it better my dutch spruances have quite a few of the above problems as well, (partially because I was lazy and partially because engineering choices)

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

Cool stuff James, which I find very interesting.
A small nitpick (and I'm embarrassed to mention it), is that yesterday I couldn't see the "Red Line", and so I didn't know what it is all about, but now I can see it in all of its "glory" on the post dealing with the Type 19 frigate.

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Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Another very nice thread, Hood

Thanks for those comments Ace.
Only now do I realise that the Spruance drawing in my files I used is an old one, rather than one of your newer drawings.
Doing this drawing confirmed to me how crap the Spruance would be for any RN use. There is just not the topside space necessary for the fire-control equipment, the USN got round that by having those massive masts and to be honest the baseline Spruance was very lightly armed anyway. I feel it would require a whole new superstructure and the Sea Dart magazines are probably just the tip of the internal changes required. All in all I'd park this as an idea that seemed good at the time but unworkable. It reinforces my opinion that buying foreign doesn't necessarily translate into sense unless your purchasing the entire ship, armament, systems and engines as the complete package. Fine for smaller navies but impossible for the RN with its own supply chain and home industries.

Meanwhile, my thoughts for a proper Type 43 (probably, confusingly, a T42 in this AU as there is no T42, or perhaps T83 instead) are crystallising into something much more workable and awesome than the Spruance-based musings.

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