Shipbucket

Only to pleased to be able to spark off ideas. It's good fun to kick around what might have been done.

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

Just an interesting proposal for the fate of the three other majestic hulls, what of the admiralty decided to complete these hulls with 16in guns in place of the nelsons? Just an idea, perhaps either place twin 16in guns in place of the 15in and increase armour and speed, or modify the ship to possibly take 12 16in guns, which even at the end of WW2 would be a fearsome battery, at the cost of speed. Other than that I must say the majestic is a very attractive ship and certainly packs a punch

Just had another idea, what if with two of the ships being converted to carriers (or being given 16in a la nelson) when the RN was designing the vanguard they built her incorporating the lesson from WW2 as well as using possible left over triple turrets (perhaps the turrets were made, but never used due to the change in caliber/conversion)

Krakatoa, if you want to insist using a QE-like underwater hull, why do you use this extremely erronenous one, instead of using the one on my refreshened QE:s? The aft float plane is too shallow, and the steps upwards too extreme. It just looks too weird...

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My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen

Yeah, I really hate elements like that of that old QE I drew many moons ago...

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

Ok, I have changed the underwater hulls.

That's much better!

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

Thanks Dimitri97,

The idea to use the excess Majestic hulls in place of the Nelsons is a good one. The only reason that that might not happen is that the Majestic at normal displacement is 40,000 tons. That would be too large for the WNT to let go. The new ships were to be built to the new 35,000 ton limit.

Re: the triples for Vanguard. Cancelling/converting the last 3 Majestics could give you a mazimum of 12 triple 15" turrets available for future use. One of the armaments discussed for the KGV class was three triple 15". Being able to build 4 x KGV with 9x15" for no cost and time taken would be a major plus.

One last thing before I move onto my next project, when building up the Majestic, I was surprised how similar the dimensions were to the later KGV class ships, though the KGV would have had one turret less. When I did the WW2 update of Majestic the KGV superstructure slotted into position with almost no need for changes. So I have put the KGV and Majestic on one page so that the differences can be seen.



When I drew up the Majestic it looked well balanced with a decent length of forecastle before 'A' turret. When compared to KGV it is so short too almost look comical. Even the quarterdeck area looks very short in comparison. But in reality that is just the building philosophies of the times. The KGV has thicker armour concentrated over a shorter distance. Much heavier deck armour, even after Majestics refit, I would not have fitted more than 4.5"-5.5" deck armour, where KGV had 6"-7".

The rebuild looks good, I'd say a 12x 15in armed battleship would have been a formidable beast in WW2, not much in European waters could match that kind of firepower.

My only concern is that you couldn't get the funnels that widely separated unless you were totally reconstructing the engine spaces and boiler rooms with new kit to get a unit layout. Not impossible, but very expensive.

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

Given what I've said, would something like Hood work? In terms of showing the armor, or the end belts?

It's that row of scuttles underneath the casemates that strikes me as very wrong they weren't on Hood, and I don't believe they were on the 1915 designs either - for a battleship, especially, RN thinking was to the upper belt all the way into 1916 and I believe later. I don't think it should be present - that upper belt armor should stretch between at least the ends of the casemate, which would also protect the uptakes somewhat - and in the modernized versions, it would also not be present, due to the armor over the handling rooms as in QE

(The carrier conversion has the same-ish issue, but here, would the casemates really be kept in the same place or at all? You'd have to cut away the hull very much to clear the fore and aft arcs, and wouldn't shielded mounts be present instead due to the RN shift towards them during WWI?)