Shipbucket

A lot of "No Treaty" ships have appeared lately, so I will offer one more. Premise is that for a new heavy cruiser the RN uses the 9.4/9.2" guns that had been developed for the Gorgon Class coast defence ships originally ordered for Norway. ( http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_92-51_mk12.htm ) These ultra long range guns with their big shells would have had one drawback for a cruiser. Their rate of fire.



My drawing shows the Shannon in its late 1937 model fit-out with single 20mm replacing the original quad 0.5"mg's.



In 1938 and forward the Shannon and sisterships were taken in hand for an upgrade of the secondary/tertiary weapons. Single 4" replaced with twins and 2pdr quad mountings.

The drawing is nice , the only things I can comment on are,
- why limit to 11,500 standard ! (and why standard ) I would have through without treaty's you would want to give it a good belt (why build a tinclad, make it immune to 6 inch guns would be good) and maybe 4.7' secondary's maybe 15+kt ?

but ...
The main problem is I just do see the RN building it, without the treaty's they have already got old BCs (Hood + R&R + T etc.) that can fill this role, due to the growth of battleships they will now be completely unable to stand in any battle line so will be free to use as heavy CAs.

Why build this when you can build a G3 ? (Alaska v Iowa why build Alaska when its 2/3 the price of Iowa ).

And without treaty's the RN will be very short of cash (after it build sufficient G3s for pride v USN/IJN) so I cant see a treaty cruser race, just smaller 5000 or 6000t 6 inch ships ( Leander/Arethusa ).

JSB

JSB:
You also have to look at what your competitors are likely to build. The US wanted to build 12,500-15,000 ton 8" cruisers with 5-6" belts. The Japanese had similar wants. They had the Pacific to play in and wanted big cruisers with long endurance, both already had the 8" in their inventories, while the largest UK cruiser guns of the time were the 7.5" and 9.2". The UK needed big cruisers with long endurance to police and to protect the Empires sea lanes. In real life they built a dozen or more Counties for those duties. What I have done is make the Counties big enough to have a belt thick enough to defeat 6" guns, fast enough and guns with enough range to "maintain the range". Until aircraft replaced cruisers as the 'eyes of the fleet' these ships also had to be able to do that job as well.

The few battlecruisers were just not numerous enough and cost too much to run to use as patrol cruisers. As heavy CA's they would be the center/flagship of a fleets cruiser squadron. Also the fastest carriers (at this time the Courageous class) needed heavy fire support that could keep up with them, that would also be the BC's job.

You could build 4-5 of these for the price of a G3. One G3 would not be used to patrol the sea lanes of the Empire.

Whats the worst thing your cruiser commander can hear from his director tower with his enemies shells exploding around him? "Short!"...."Short!!"....."Short!!!"

Will anybody have the cash to build lots of CAs ? historically the USN didn't build any CAs till the Pensacola in 25 and the IJN will run totally out of funds with the Kanto earthquake and the BB/BC program.

I think all the cash will go to the big battle line with cheap 6 inch CLs as the majority of the rest. (Omaha/Kuma-class/etc.)

Not that this should put you off designing them (you can always pretend they are design studies that didn't get built )

JSB

[quote="JSB] Not that this should put you off designing them (you can always pretend they are design studies that didn't get built ) JSB[/quote]

Funny haha......

I think this sort of comment is what Golly and Colo are referring to in their latest posts in the General Forum.

The only part of either of your posts that held any merit was reminding me that I had left the old floatplane on rather than updating it to a later Fairey model.

I like the looks, a super-Vindictive meets Town Class.
I think in this non-WT AU the Admiralty would have developed a new 9.2in mark rather than using an existing one. These guns would have been dangerous to all cruisers and would have given smaller battleships something to worry about too.
The armour is thin but adequate, you don't want to overload these ships and make them big sitting targets, this looks about right, a greyhound but one that can bite.

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

Thank you Hood,
People forget that even though the Hippers were huge cruisers they only had 80mm (3.1") of armoured belt. Overgunning, overarmouring, outsizing a ship reminds me of what I was like when I was young 40 years ago. Nowadays they ask "Do you want fries with that" when you upsize everything.

Allright, have to say: On the first drawing, a very very old 2pdr. pom pom. There's a better part available, and has been for a long time.

On the 2nd drawing, what the hells IS that? It's not a 2 pdr. pom pom, but I've seen several people use it.

The same thing goes for the single/twin 4" drawings and the 20 mm cannons. If you're going to do a British AU ship, at least use parts that would have been common. Some people take the trouble of collating up-to-date parts sheets, at least use them.

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Would you please not eat my gun...

Miloshik you have ever only seen one person use the weapons shown - me. The parts on the RN part sheet I use where applicable, the 2pdr quad and octuple, on the RN sheet, look virtually the same which is not correct. There is quite a difference in size between the two mountings. The ammunition feeders on the quad are offset, not on the SB drawing. Why has the drawing stuck with two pixel barrel width? The 40mm weapons below the 2pdr in the RN sheet look closer to real with the one pixel barrels (except the Hazemeyer). Even with the extra cooling jacket the 2pdr is under 6" wide and could use 1 pixel. Same with the 20mm, when I started using SB parts some years ago the 20mm was a stick figure. I didn't like it so drew my own.

Just because the parts on the RN part sheet are there does not make them good. If I do not like something I will draw and use my own parts in preference. If you do not like that - too bad.

As far as I am aware the whole reason for the PD/AU sections are for people to use their imaginations. Something you can not do in the RL/NW paint by numbers sections.

Krakatoa can you expand on your last comment about " RL/NW paint by numbers sections ", exactly what do you mean by that ?