Shipbucket

The beefed up Scharnhost looks good, certainly would have been a potent match for anything in European waters at that time, probably just as effective as a KGV but with less armour that the British ship.

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Hi Jackie,

I thought this too, but there's a couple of things that I think disqualify it (I've used a version of the LM40 navalised version on a bunch of my AU stuff, so noticed that too) - as you've noted, the weight is excessive, as befits a gun originally designed for land use. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it shows it's heritage as an AA gun in the round and the range - max range on the LM40 is about 2,000 metres shorter than the 127 L/45 C/41 that forms the basis for Krakatoa's DP guns. I imagine that the L/50 version has an even bigger range advantage - this is significant, I think, as I understand that the KM's requirement for a 149.1mm secondary battery came from a desire to out-range Royal Navy destroyers, themselves mounting 5" guns - that being the case, trading away 2km range would seem to make the choice unfeasible.

It's also worth noting that the L/45 (and descendants, presumably) uses a bigger round - 28kg vs 26kg - the KM40 was, I think, designed for higher-velocity shells, more useful for long-range shots again bombers (reducing the lead you'd have to calculate), rather than blasting through armour - granted, destroyers aren't going to have any armour, but AP performance at maximum range with a lighter shell has got to be worse than the heavier shell, that's before we even get to the heavier shell's trajectory - the slower, heavier shell is going to be much harder on a cruiser's horizontal protection than even an equivalent-weight shell on a flatter, faster path.

Regards,
Adam

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Thanks for all the comments guys.

@DG_Alpha, praise from you is praise indeed. The Scheer/Spee will have a different configuration to the Deutschland.

@Jackie Treehorn, the 128/61 L40 is a different type of gun as specified by apdsmith. My largest calibre gun is only 50 calibre, equivalent to what other navies of the time were using.

@Hood, my Scharnhorst goes to 13" armour and 6" deck (3.5 and 2.5). It still does not match the KGV with its 14"/7", but Scharnhorst still has the 4/5 knot speed advantage. Fight or flight is still Scharnhorsts options.

@apdsmith, thanks for the info on the 5" guns. Makes my life a bit easier

Hi K,

No worries, I do have a query, though - perhaps not the LM40 itself (unless you're going to include a substantial diet in it's "navalisation", which I've never seen much in the way of details for) but would a low-weight, high velocity shell make sense for a Hipper equivalent - with those 203mm (and, more importantly, the accuracy and fire rate of those guns) it's less likely to need the 128mm to swat away the small fry - you probably could justify a KM40-alike on that ship, something strictly speaking more focused on AA but capable of performing in the anti-surface role at need. I've got the KM40 drawing floating around somewhere if you do need it, I think it got Majhosted back in the day...

Ad

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The second and third ships of the Deutschland class, (Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee) differed from the Deutschland in having the ten single 5" replaced with six twins. The Scheer shown here in its 1940 guise with funnel capped and Atlantic bow fitted.

Looking good, Krakatoa!

Yet another query, though, I'm afraid - by 1940 ,wouldn't the KM be switching over to somewhat bigger rangefinders? Four metres (as on the SL-6) appears to be the KM standard for the 105mm C/33 guns, I can't imagine that they'd have been happy with a shorter-base, less accurate rangefinder on a longer-ranged gun?

Regards,
Adam

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These look a lot like some of my conversions for my Imperial German AU. Great stuff. The armored turrets for capital ships are a nice touch.

One addition to the later conversions could be radar added to the AA FCS. Garlicdesign has some modifications in his drawings.

Thanks for the comments.

@apdsmith, I did think about removing the 3m rangefinders and replacing them with the 4m 'domes' of SL-6/8, but I know that there was a shortage of those fittings during 1939-40. If you look at Maomatic's thread on the Bismarck/Tirpitz, a lot of the main optics units do not get fitted till very late in the building timeline. So any ships that already had a set of rangefinders aboard would keep them until a new set could be produced for them, the battleships would get first call on production.

@seeker36340, I have copies of those drawings from GD with the updated Radar packages, but as yet, none of my drawings have got past 1940. I am concentrating on the early ships first as those are the ones that will require the dual purpose upgrades first. I may do future drawings of the same ships I have done so far with 1943/44 upgrades of 20/37/40mm AA, Radar and other fittings. But that is a fair time away in the future.

Nice!

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SMS/KM Seydlitz.

In real life the Seydlitz ends up on the bottom of Scapa Flow. But what if Seydlitz had survived to carry on into WW2.

I have always thought the echelon type layout guns to be a bit of a failure. Causing more trouble than they were worth. With the Graf Spee completed, the oldest capital ship, Seydlitz, could then be taken in hand for modernisation. Being almost twice the size of the Deutschland type, much more work could be put into the Seydlitz to turn the ship into a long ranged Battle Raider. So I remove the echelon turrets and old machinery and fit into the space provided a complete new set of diesel engines, trunked to two funnels. With the new bow for better seakeeping and more engine power the Seydlitz was able to make 28 knots. While the main armament is reduced to six 11", a heavy secondary armament of sixteen 5" replaced all of the older 5.9" and 3.4" guns. 37mm and 20mm guns grew like mushrooms and ended up sprouting every where there was space. It was felt the six 11" would be enough to take care of any treaty cruiser type or smaller. Anything bigger would hopefully be slower and be able to be outrun. The four Japanese BC's, three UK BC's, and eventually the pair of French BC's would be the ones that Seydlitz would hope not to meet.

Seydlitz as it was during WW1.




Seydlitz after conversion 1935-37.