Shipbucket

The HMS Matchless (aka the HMS NewbLOLShip), a small battlecruiser built in the early 1920's for the Royal Navy, refit and some rebuilding and modernization in the early 1930's. Basically a somewhat better armed and armored Heavy Cruiser. Built at the insistence of a parsimonious Parliament in response to the navy’s request for large fast heavily armed and expensive battlecruisers.

Length: 550' (167.64 m)
Beam: 66' (20.1 m)
Displacement: 11,288 full load
Propulsion: 2 Keystone boilers, 2 shafts
Speed: 26 knots planned, 22.4 knots actual
Armor: Turret face: 4"
Belt: 3"
Deck: 2.5"
Armament: ... 6 x 12" (3 x 2)
................ 14 x 4" DP(7 x 2)
................ 16 x 2pdr (4 x 4)

Starting point

[EDIT]
and finalized version

[/EDIT]

Things I am sure of:
1.) It is grey

Things I am unsure of:
1.) Length .... too short?
2.) Too much weaponry in too small a space?
3.) Correct gun directors?
4.) Correct placement of gun directors?
5.) Not enough small guns?
6.) Placement and number of portholes?
7.) A speed of 27 knots... too fast? Too slow?
8.) Secondary armament too large? 4.7" or 5" better?
9.) Several other unimaginable problems I am certain I didn't even think of.

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

1) Hmmm... Aren't the superstrucrure were too heavy?

2) Yes, it's too short. For dreadnought it wasn't very important, but for battlecruiser...

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Serve the Nation! Be striped!

Thats actually one of the design goals, a battlecruiser thats not a battlecruiser, more of a heavy cruiser with larger main guns and a little better armor, foisted upon the navy by a parliament which doesn't know a hosepipe from a halyard. But I don't want to do it in a completely unbelievable way.

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

version 2, minor tweaks

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

Well, the whole raison d'etre of a new Battlecruiser post WWI is fatally flawed; beacuse by the 20's it was acknowledged that the Battlecruiser concept was (in warship design) an evolutionary culdesac, at least in the RN. I won't rehash the endless discussions that have already gone on about Battlecruisers; but, that said, by all means forge ahead; but my advice would be to switch to a smaller 'Fast Battleship' concept for export; aimed at Latin America, Greece/Turkey, Northern Europe, Thailand etc.

Or, if you are determined, drop the Battlecruiser altogether and aim for an 'Armoured Cruiser'

Re the drawing, you'll need to show the armour belt, to justify the concept, so if you could show the full hull that would help there. You seem to have an awful lot of scuttles grouped together, and I wouldn't reccommend that for protection reasons. Also, the aft casement; I'm not sure it would work directly under the twin 6-in, but its hard to say without a plan view. That said, we've seen far worse so good luck

Matchless eh. That's certainly one way of describing her.
Anyway, judging from the 40mm bofors the ship is from after 1936 at the earliest so:
[*]Dump the six incher and the casemates like they were plague carriers. The Dreadnaught paradigm came into power thirty years ago and even Parliament isn't going to change that, and casemates just plain never really worked as well as advertised.
[*]Remove all the 40mm guns (we'll put them back on later, but for now we'll need some space to work with)
[*]Remove all the comically huge portholes.
That should bring us here.


Next we'll ad an armoured belt. It should cover the area between the foremost and sternmost main guns.


Now it's time to ad secondaries. I've added seven twin 4in DP guns.
For light AA I've gone for four quad 2 pounders. I may have to ad pedestals under them to get them to fit, but I'll leave that up to you.


All those guns are no good without directors, so I've added four HACS units.
I would have liked to ad more, but the ships layout wont allow it. As it is I had to lengthen it a bit and drop the aft main director down a bit to accommodate them.


There's still a lot to do, but I'll leave that up to you.

You should realize that it's not going to be a fast ship. In order to accommodate all the ironmongery you'll need a very full and beamy hull, and at the same time you have a fairly cramped machinery space. I'd be surprised if it'll do more than 24 kts if that.

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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.

Good start. I do appreciate the drawings and assist. Thanks!

Yeah, I know the ship as a whole will be slow, cumbersome, cramped and pretty unpopular with crews and commanders. What I am going for is a class of ships foisted upon the navy by politicians who want "cheap" instead of "big and expensive but usefull". I figure they will have (probably) shortish careers, and then spent mostly on out of the way colonial stations.

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

A bit of backstory to help understand my reasoning. 1t is 1915. The War with the Prussian States is ongoing, but the Navy looked to add 8 ships in 2 classes of larger, more capable, warships. With that in mind, they authorize 2 classes of capital ships, The Emperor Class of four battleships in 1915 (USS Virgina - Maximum Battleship Design Tillman IV-2) and the Midguard Class of four battlecruisers in 1916 (USS Lexington Class). Design on both had already been underway, and construction began on the first Emperor in 1917 and the first Midguard in 1918. Unfotunately for these ships, the war ended in 1917 but construction continued, but at a less frenzied pace.
The elections of 1920 proved disastrous for the military and naval community, however, when the ruling Whigs were swept from power by the Labour party who had campaigned on a peace platform. They looked to be cancelling several new and expensive warships to use that money on their own projects.
Enter into the picture one Quincy Belmont, a naval tactician and loyal Labourite. He had long advocated large fleets of smaller and lighter armed capital ships to overwhealm an enemy with instead of a few big and heavily armed ships. He had the ear of several prominent members of Parliament, and was able to convince them of the correctness of his theory, mostly by pointing out the cost savings.
In 1921 Parliament cancelled 3 of the 4 Emperors, permitting only the class leader to be finished because it was the furthest along, and cancelled all 4 of the Midguards, 2 of which were saved from the breakers only because they were converted to aircraft carriers. In their place, they authorized, over Admiralty objections, 12 of the Matchless class to be built. The first, HMS Matchless, was laid down in early 1922 as Belmont already had designs drawn up. The remaining 11 were planned for 2 in 1923, 2 in 1924, 3 in 1925, and 4 in 1926.
The Admiralty fought hard against these ships, understanding the limited capabilities of them, and when the Whigs returned to power after a 'no confidence' vote in 1923, the last 7 were cancelled, and in their place a class of 4 battleships, the Iron Duke class, was authorized instead (HMS Rodney class). These were able to be more quickly built as they used turrets, armour and machinery left from the cancelled Emperors and Midguards.

Does that help with why I am looking to add this smaller, less capable class to my historical inventory? (Also, there is no "South America" or any other of the known continents in this world. It is a completely different world from earth.)

That was just kind of a "shot in the dark" for me. I didn't put much actual thought behind it, sadly. I was more going for this "[insert facepalm], Did Parliament really authorized this piece of crap?" thing.

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

I would say that northern Europe is not a good customer for this kind of ship.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

I can't say that I agree. All the European powers with the means to operate battleships also had the facilities to build them and their own ideas as to what made a good battleship. The ones who couldn't built them themselves didn't have the means to operate them either. The only quasi exception I can think of is the Netherlands.

_________________
“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.