Shipbucket

Agreed on all points!!

They are very well-drawn ships, very well-detailed and excellently designed from a technical standpoint and in accordance to their mission, but the trouble is is that both the mission and the ships themselves show a terrifically severe case of muddled mission syndrome and extreme mission confusion. While their long hulls should give good hullspeed characteristics and very dry bows for a ship of that beam, it doesn't take away the fact that due to their supposed mission requirements the end result is a rather inefficient ship with not-insignificant compromises to achieve some very questionable things - in fact, I'll just say it: it makes me wonder if the Komintern naval design committee routinely serves spiked antifreeze at their meetings.

First of all, let's talk about that borderline insane mission description - to sail up and down the Pacific supporting proletariat uprisings in both fleet actions and amphibious support? These are three ships armed with eight 9.25 inch guns - in Wesworld, we'd classify that as either a frigate or battlecruiser depending on what nation you have. Even there, you'll have even the smaller, poorer nations fielding at least a fleet of equal size and strength - Peru for example has a heavily armored pocket battleship with 6 11-inch guns and two or three ships with 9 x 9.25 inch guns, all of which are manned by very skilled gunners (AVALMA can correct me on that if I'm wrong). You see what I'm getting at? In the OTL, the mission makes it sound like that these three ships could go all over the place supporting the "proletariat" in British interests such as India, and potentially against Japanese and American interests. That's three very heavy cruisers against one nation with two 23-knot 16-inch gun battleships, three 25-knot 15-inch gun battleships, a 30 knot 15-inch gun battlecruiser and a fledgling aircraft carrier fleet, one nation with over a dozen 21-knot ships of the line with guns from 14 to 16 inches, a sizable heavy cruiser fleet with 8-inch guns, two very large and fast aircraft carriers and significant destroyer support, and yet another nation who happens to specialize in killing cruisers of this type with a very sizable heavy cruiser fleet of its own, a very large carrier fleet and a good battle line that just happens to include four 14-inch gun "cruiser killer" battleships and two battleships that can steam at 28 knots - oh, and they happen to be the Yamatos.

The unique mission description also makes it sound like that these three ships may possibly be on their own, without much in the way of support. Three 9.25 inch gunships just aren't going to cut it.

Plus, for whatever insane reason, it was decided that this would be a mothership for mini-subs, e-boats and even be capable of launching a mini amphibious assault. Which means stores and accommodations for all of these. You can actually see for yourself what this has done to the ship - a large fantail , plus large facilities amidships. While in launching mode, especially in amphibious assault mode where they'd have to be close to shore, they'd also be very vulnerable to enemy cruisers, battleships, shore batteries and air attack.

So while they might be good from a propaganda standpoint, I can't say that I really do like the idea behind these ships.

Nice to have someone actually giving toughts to these designs;)

Multipurpose in all areas being it warships, aircraft or kitchen tools for that matter tends to have one common default; Altough they usually can at least in theory to do the tasks in several different fields, they pale down to dedicated single-purpose designs.

In real life several military equipmentry have had this same plague and the Soviets weren't an exeption. My pr. 22 is direct copy of the real-life soviet cruiser X project and it indeed showed some wacky idea of stuffing quite alot of tasks into single warship hull. If you want to sound nice you could say it was way ahead of it's time, like so many other soviet naval designs which never saw the daylight. As my Byzantine/Komintern/late-Novgorod AU idea is giving a light of day to those sometimes quite unorthodoxical designs, exotic outcomes emerges.

But lets focus more to these designs in their actual AU enviroments. In the Universum where Komintern exists, rest of the world lies as intact as possiple..thus no Peruvian supercruisers nor other Wesworld miracles. As the mission requirements were fusion of two different concept of warships merged into one, we must look their roles from both of those scenarios. One is to serve as a normal Heavy Cruiser just build to outperform all existing heavy cruisers. It brings the design close to the orginal battlecruiser idea but the pr.22 is still quite clearly a Heavy cruiser and is in no means at all mented to fight against enemy battleships. Thus it's speed which allows it outrun it's heavier gun opponents. As the seccond role, well it is very unorthodoxial, revolutionary you might say...Well that was quite prominent thinking in all factions of Kominterns early histroy, to break free from the conservative borgerous ways of thinking. Usually the most wildest ideas were left in the drawing board but some got trough. The seccond concept behind pr.22 was to act sort of small-scale invasion ships to support proletarian uprisings in foreing nations. It wasen't mented to sail to the mouth of Thames or into the shores of Manhanttan, but into areas were the ships weaponry could takeout all local resistance and support the inflitration units by shore bombarding. Again it was not mented to fight enemy capital ships. Back in the 30's there weren't satelites or other 21st century toys to bring information to USN or IJN in order to "send in the cavalry to stop the evil reds.." Thus there were countless of places, enviroments and scenarios were the concept could have been conducted without the intervention of huge battleship flottilas steaming to rescue the capitalist right to enslave the working man...

But like in real life, most inovative and revolutionary concepts tended to fail at the first round and in Komintern's universum, the concept behind the pr.22 was never used in full scale. When the ships were fully operational, WWII was about to break up and the need for more traditional cruiser tasks were much larger. All three of these cruisers didn't field the MTBs and Minisubs for most of their service career. Kraznyy Sumatra's experimental use as some sort of semi-proto landingship during recapturing the pasific islands was basicly the sole case when the orginal concept was operated in any sense. It gave valuable experience for latter dedicated amphibius dock ships.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Untill to WWII, battleships remained the main striking force of the Red Fleet. After the revolution and even during the somewhat hazy and unstable initial years of the new communist realm, all efforts were put to complete the Tsarigrad and Kiev, monsters among all battleships afloat. In the begining of the 20's, all pre-dreadnoughs were scrabbed and the battleship fleet was based around 2 of Rostislav class (one was sunk and other damaged beyond reasonable repair), 4 Tsesarevich class and the 2 Tsarigrad class. As the Washington Naval treaty binded other major naval powers not to pursue futher battleship build-up, Komintern felt that the imidiate resources for new construction should be issued to cruiser and destroyer development. Battleshipfleet was considered to be sufficient enough.

All of the existing 8 battleships underwent minor refits during the 20's mainly to improve the firecontrol equipmentry. However in the begining of the 30's it was obvious that either major reconstruction was neccerical or replacing the ships on one to one basis. The latter option was considered to be way too expensive and time-consuming task altought initial studies of replacement ships were made. However as all other major naval powers still showed no signs of massive new construction of battleships and instead were planning moderisizing the existing hulls, Komintern decided to follow that same path.

It was decided that all the exisiting battleships aside the two Rostislav class were to recieve rebuild which was planned to take about 2 years per hull. The Rostislav class was deemend to be too small and old to be worth of upgrading. The rebuilding was planned so that 4 of the remaing 6 ships were in operational all the time. First pair to recived the rebuild were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They had their boilers and turbines replaced with new all-oil running type. Main layout remainded the same but the seccondary casemats were deleted and 6 twin 130 mm turrets were added in the sides of the hull. Fore and aft superstructures were added height and new fire control systems were fitted as well as AA armament. A catabult and large crane was fitted amidship for floatplanes.
Seccond pair of the Tsesarevich class, V.I Lenin and L.Trotskiy recieved more dramatical rebuild. They had their machinery arragment completely redesigned with the 24 older and smaller boilers replaced with 6 newer and larger ones. This allowed replacing the two orginal funnels with one in the centre of the ship. Main armament remainded the same, but seccondaries were now 4 twin 152mm turrets and 4 twin 100mm turrets located slightly aft of the amidship to balance the weight distripution.
The last pair of the old battleships, Diktatura Proletariata and Parizhskaya Kommuna underwent the most physically changing rebuild. They were the last pair to enter the rebuilding program and alot of new features adopted from the new battleship building program as well as from the experiences in the pre-WWII skirmishes and early warstudies. The supersructure were completely rebuild as well as the machinery. Three funnels were replaced with two serving the new powerfull boilers of increased size. Large tower with the latest firecontrol equipmentry was fitted. In overall the reconstructed superstructure were made alot to resamble the new pr. 23 battleships under building. The most important new feature was the seccondaries. They were given a whole new concept of being mainly AA-oriented as it was evident in newest US and UK battleships. 8 of the new twin 122mm DP guns were fitted first time in these ships in the "outer layer". In the "middle layer" there were 8 twin 76 mm AA guns and in the "inner layer" 8 quad 37mm AA guns.

Alongside with the reconstruction program of the existing battleships, a plans for new construction were launched in the early 30's. After several studies of different concepts and approaches it was decided to build 4 relatively large battleships. Intial studies called for 9 406mm guns and displacement of 50 000 tons but the size of the ships grew to 65 000 tons after increase of the armour protection in the event of new battleships being build in Italy and Germany. Armament was 9 406mm guns, 6 twin 152mm guns, 4 twin 100mm guns and 8 quad 37mm AA guns. First pair of the pr. 23 was laid down in 1937 and 1938 and were completed just prior the German attack in 1941. Seccond pair was put on hold as it was discovered that Japan was building even bigger monsters armed with 460mm guns. The planned seccond pair was redesigned to pr. 23bis which were to have 9 457mm guns and displacement of over 70 000 tons. The outbreak of the war in it's full scale however but the plans aside and the project was abbandoned.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Damn Hot ones. I can't get my eys of it!

You mean, she had only five 305 mm guns?

There seems to be a typo/mistake. It should say: "Main guns were 305mm/45 fitted in 5 dual mounts" So there should be 10 305mm guns. I don't know why I wrote it single.

_________________
Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

One of the main steps which the new revolutionary thinking in military affairs introduced to the navy was carrier borne aviation. As early as 1925, PCNA decided to convert old passanger ship Sredizemnoye More into training and trialling carrier. It featured flushdeck arragment and carried 20 aircrafts maxium. It served it's whole carrieer from 1928 into 1938 to train and evaluate carrier aviation concepts and doctrines. It sunk in a tragic accidence after been hit by a aircraft approaching the ship in a attempt to land on top of it. It caught fire and sunk soon after.

At the same time as Sredizemnoye More was being converted, plans were already made for front-line carrier force. It was decided that the large battlecruisers Afinygrad and Solum to be converted as a carriers in similar fashion as done in abroad. Conversion started in 1928 and 1929 and the ships renamed to Krasnoye Zvezda and Krasnoye Znamya were commissioned in 1931 and 1932. They featured large two-storey hangar admidship with landing deck streching over it in bow and stern. The upper hangar also featured auxiliary flying-of deck in the bow. These ships had heavy gun armament of 8 single 203mm guns (tough later replaced with more AA guns) so they could fight against ships up to cruiser class without using the airgroup. 48-50 aicrafts were carried. They made up the bulk of Kominterns carrier force trough out the 30's and seccond world war. Bombers of both ships took part of the sinking of Conte Di Cavour in 1940.

Altough the early success, carrier fleet didn't establishe itself as the main force of the fleet untill it prooved it's value in WWII. Thus the naval buildup in the 30's didn't consider carriers to be top priority and this reflected heavily on the first purpose-build carriers of the fleet. The "old guard" in PCNA wanted more results and experience of carrier operations before they allowed more carriers into the naval building program. Eventually two light carriers were included in the 1935 plan and project 71 emerged. It followed Japanese practise to divert the exhaust gases into the sides of the ships by side-mounted funnels. Airgroup was 10 bombers and 20 fighters. Two ships, Krasnoye Vympel and Znamya Sosialitsima was completed in 1937 and 1938. Armament was solely AA orieted with 8 single 100mm and 4 quad 37mm guns.

As japanese carrier force started to expand in the 30's and after some succesfull wargames showing the potential of mass carrier strikes (demostrated in major naval exercise in 1937 when simulated carrier attack took the main battleline completely suprised) the carrier arm begun to gain more positive support in PCNA. Decision to build a strong specialised carrier fleet which would consists large fleet carriers with dedicated fast escorts (effectively continuos for the pr.69 class) operating as a carrier task force seperately from the battleline. The concept was put in effect as "light section" including all 4 existing carriers, 2 of the large pr.22 cruisers and varying number of MK cruisers. This force was given quite bold front line role and it was in no way held back as was the battleship fleet druing the war. The light section was often sended as the front and main fighting unit against the enemy.

The new construction to form the seccond section was project 72. It different alot from the earlier Komitern carriers with introducing the british-type "amoured box" concept for the hangar. This was tought to be neccerical for the more agressive role of the new carrier arm. This however reduced the airgroup to similar size as in the alot smaller pr.71. Armament was also heavy, 8 twin 122mm dual-purpose guns as well as 8 twin 76mm and 20 single 45mm AA guns. 4 units were planned and laid down between 1939-41 to which the first two, Baku and Tbilisi were given priority in construction in the gloom of new world war. They were completed in only a two year both commisioned late 1941 despite the heavy toll of the operation Barbarosa to the whole nation. Seccond pair, Volgograd and Nikolaev remained unfinished untill work continued in 1943 when Odessa pocket is released. Both ships were again given high priority (at this point, carriers were promoted to the main striking unit of the whole fleet) to complete and they were in commission in november and december 1944.

After early success with the carriers in the battle of Alexandria and Japanese triumphs in pacific, it was evident that carriers were the new kings in ocean. To complete the 4 pr. 72, a huge project 716 design was put in reality. It started as more of a concept of just how big carrier can be, but the needs for more and more aircrafts to the oceans put it into the frontline of all designs and work for the monster was started in 1940. It was named after Vice-Admiral Kostromitinov who was the pioneer of Komiterns carrier fleet and who died along the Sredizemnoye More in 1937. The carrier had overall lenght of 300 meters and was fitted with 106 aircrafts. Armament was 8 twin 122mm DP mounts, 10 twin 76mm AA mounts, 8 quad 37mm mounts as well as 6 single 45mm guns. Altough it was laid down in 1940, work of it was not resumed untill 1943 and it was not given as high priority as the pr.72's. It was completed only after the war in 1946.

The need of more carriers grew as long as the war went onwards. During the hectic times on 1941-43 several studies were made ranging from fastly build auxiliarry carriers to conversion of nearly every other warship of over 200m lenght. Most serious proposals were converting the pr. 22's into a carriers but their role in carrier escort and later in retaking pasific ilands were too important. Instead the third hull of pr. 69 heavy cruisers which was unfinnished at the time of Barbarosa was decided to complete as a fleet carrier. The conversion begun in 1943 and was finnished just prior the end of the war, leaving the ship however unready for actual combat operations. It featured two-storey hangar with only flightdeck lightly amoured (unlike with the pr.72 with whole hangar being amoured from sides as well) and carried 76 aircrafts. It was armed with 8 twin 122mm DP guns and 16 new stabilised dual 45mm AA mounts.

[no aircrafts were included to the drawings due the concept of the sheet and old propellor-powered aircrafts groundmode being too difficoult to drawn in shipbucket scale with proper results]

Now I'm done! I will start working on the cold-war/modern era but before that, I need to come up with 65 years of history first.

_________________
Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Damm hot babies up there Golly!
Really nice made, and thought out. But im not glad you told me about these projects way ahead, i waited so long, it hurted me!

Can't wait for the rest!

Mitch

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Fryssian AU with Lt.Maverick 114
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9802&p=193331#p193331

Embarked on: HNLMS Karel Doorman A833
To do list:
-Zeven Provincien class cruiser
-Joint support ship all sides
-F124 Sachsen class frigate
-F125 Baden-Württemberg class frigate
-Clemencau class aircraft carrier
-Zeven provincien class frigate
-Poolster class AOR
-Amsterdam class AOR
-Minas Gerais aircraft carrier

Nice work! Do you have some information of this midget submarine of Project 22 cruiser? It is Soviet or Byzantine? Could I use it to my scenario?