Shipbucket

Since I seem to be into bashing up Deutschland class armoured ships, I thought to try something slightly different.

The French Navy was allowed by treaty to build at least two 35,000 ton battleships. They would be within their rights to arm those ships with 16" guns. So they did.

The news out of Germany that the Reichsmarine was building new ships armed with anything from 11"-15" guns sent tremors through the French Navy high command. Looking at the ships in the FAN that could take on these new ships, came down to the three Lorraine type battleships. If they could catch these new German ships. What was needed was a new fast battleship built to the limits of the Washington Treaty. The FAN surmised that the most they might be facing was a ship armed with four 15" with a speed of 25 knots. To counter that the new ships should be armed with eight 16" guns, a 13" armoured belt with 6" of deck armour, and a speed of 28 knots. The FAN designers found that this was unattainable on 35,000 tons, so they ignored the limits with official connivance and the ships were designed at 37,500 tons standard displacement. The original thought was to arm the ships with two quadruple turrets in a Nelson type arrangement, but the complexity and sheer size required was just too much. The Model 1928 16" in twin turrets was chosen instead. Secondary armament was to be the twin 130mm 1932 model dual purpose weapon system then under development. Smaller AA weapons of 37mm and 25mm were to be fitted. Aircraft facilities for three aircraft were to be fitted and as a concession to excess weight, no hangar was fitted. A canvas screen arrangement could be erected off the aft superstructure for maintenance purposes.



The final design gave the following statistics:
Displacement: 38,000 tons standard, 43,700 tons full load.
Dimensions: 748 x 108 x 30 feet
Machinery: 4 shaft geared turbines, 140,000shp
Speed: 28 knots
Endurance: 12,500 nm @ 15 knots
Armour: 13" belt, 6" deck, 14/10/8" turrets
Armament:
8 x 16" (4x2)
16 x 5.1" (8x2)
16 x 37mm (8x2)
36 x 25mm (18x2)
Aircraft: 3
Crew: 1745

added the German reply Gneisenau drawing so that the two ships can be compared side by side.

Looks impressive!
(and actually I like that arrangement of the main artillery more than the real-life one)

Thanks for the comment Eswube.

Building these two ships does throw a bit of a spanner in the works. In real life, it runs Deutschland -> Dunkerque -> Scharnhorst -> Richelieu -> Bismarck. Short circuiting that timeline, what can the Germans build as a reply to my Dunkerque under the Anglo-German Treaty of 1935?

Your thoughts and comments would be appreciated.

The treaty's are now dead

The RN/USN will not be willing to think about 14"/35,000t for 2LNT so lion's and Iowa's it is.....

KM/RM are limited by what they can build more than treaty's but the Scharnhorst and 2nd batch of Italian rebuild would look much less good.

That's a very nice looking ship, I like the symmetry and it looks quite like the French heavy cruisers of the period.

I wouldn't worry about the German response, a couple of Bismarcks would still be decent enough ships and the H Klasse behind them would still emerge.
I think perhaps leaping to 16in might be a big step, eight 15in would work just as well, perhaps trading some displacement and beam to increase speed? And then perhaps a couple of 16in armed versions to counter the Bismarcks?

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Thanks for the comments guys.

I did think about 15", but with the threads that David has done, there is the 16" armed Normandie concept and the 16" armed 17,500 ton BC concept. So I figured 16" guns were very much in the minds of the French Admiralty and designers. None of those early to late 20's designs are armed with 15".

With the German designs, I have always found the German turrets to be incredibly large for the guns they contain. Could a German twin 15" actually be fitted with 16", make the B&T with 8x16"? I will have to compare sizes, mines bigger than yours....

A few further thoughts on the two ships.

The French ship at 37,500 tons is as good as the German ship at 43,000 tons. The main reason the German ship(s) are bigger than their contemporaries is the use of mixed secondary/tertiary batteries compared to the dual purpose batteries. Where the French ship has to find space for 8 DP mountings, the Germans have to make space for 14 mountings. Right there requires a lot more space and therefore larger ship. Replace the mixed batteries on the German ships with DP guns and the size could be considerably reduced.

(Copied to other thread)

I can totally see something similar happening in my alternate universe with Richelieu, since the treaty dies in August 1936.