Shipbucket

In the General SB forum is a thread "What would you like to see" - well two glaring holes in the RN cruiser line appears to be the 'D' and 'E' class cruisers and their variants with twin turrets.

As part of my Iberian forces were a design I did for escorting cruisers for the Reina Eugenia Victoria based on pictures of the UK 'D' class. The base unit I used was one of Novices very good 'C' class drawings. This is probably as close to an RL design as I am likely to get.

Looking at the 'D' class I decided to build an 'Export' model for overseas buyers based around the twin 6"/50 MkXXII turret, fitting one forward and two aft. For customers I figured places like Poland, Belgium, Norway, and some of the South American countries would be interested. The drawing shown is one for Poland.

very nice.

JSB

Why The lifted bow?

Norway would be interested.

well Norway would not be interested in a ship of this type. Specially in that time periods. Norway had there own naval shipyard and the largest ships Norway build for there usage was Destroyers and the only ship to be build over seas is coastal defence ships, and that due to the naval docks wasn't beamy enough for building them.

And also Norway did not spend money on the navy in the time periods of 1890-1935. It was first in 1935 Norway started to build naval ship, and the biggest destroyer Norway was building before invasion was a 1700 ton Destroyer, that was supposed to be the lead destroyer for the smaller destroyer.

so a cruiser is a no no in Norway.

Howdy Heuhen,

That is only Norway in real life, what they might do in another universe far, far, away is open to interpretation. I have thought of Norway buying one of the 13.5" BB's that had to be scrapped after the treaties. That would make a pretty good coast defence ship.

The 'Trawler' bow was something done on the later C & D class cruisers.

Well in another universe Norway would build many more small destroyers for one reason, the Norwegian coastline.

There was also talks about buying a BB in the 20's.. But it was dropped for one simple reason, the Norwegian coastline. A small coastal defence ship would do the same job more effective than any other battleship on the Norwegian coastlines.

we had an exercise in Norway In the 70's, Norwegian Navy vs a British cruiser, result Norway used 3 PT boats that literally ran circle around the cruiser, and defeated it.

Vickers did offer a slow cruiser to Norway in the 1930s, the plan for it is in Friedman's 'British Cruisers'. There were numerous sales attempts to Spain too via the Vickers-owned yards. I'm sure some those based on the Cs and Ds and Es probably didn't look too different from these.

These look great Krakatoa. I just love the way you and JSB kitbash up some great ideas.

I'd love to have a crack at the Ds and Es some day but realistically it could be years. I know your not keen Krakatoa, but I think you've got the skills to draw a real-life ship from scratch. Making a good kitbash is almost as much work as drawing from fresh.

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agreed, and you drew top views from scratch as well.

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and at the same time Norway had a plane to build a new coastal defense ship (or ass it was called at that time, artillery ship), there is an reason for Norway didn't go for it. in 1930 The Norwegian Navy was starting it's project for new ships, and they had economy to get a cruiser... but they did go for a couple small destroyer, one large destroyer, one large minelayer (among the biggest in Europa at the time)...

Vickers can even offer an battleship for free. Norway would not go for it at all. for the simple reason that Norway operated under an strategy of using the Norwegian coastline as there advantage. Just think what would happen if you had two top modern Coastal defense ships in 1940 hiding in fjords, forcing the larger German ship in, trapping them in a narrow fjord... Do that with an larger cruiser..

Would a free battleship not be accepted ? think Warspite at Narvik . I would think an old 13.5inch RN BB would make quite a good costal defence battleship if cost is no object (and with conscript reserve crews and a free old ship it nearly is).

JSB

There was a couple of Norwegian rich Gentlemen s that was trying to bay a BB from Argentina.. or something, But the Norwegian Navy said No they didn't need that type of ship. we also have to remember that the manpower you need for a ship of that type.

The Navy Norway had in 1940 was good enough, and it bounded up a good part of the German Navy. The only problem was the Norwegian Navy wasn't given the order to go to battle at all, the Norwegian government didn't manage to send that order. Just think about Narvik, where we had two very old CDS, they did heavily damage those German destroyers, and that by only using the secondary battery, the main battery did'n have a chance to fire, now thing about what would happened if those CDS was ordered to open fire... 8" guns, in Narrow fjords.


Warspite did it well in Narvik, but they had the element of surprise on there side, when Warspite was going out of the area, she had help of here destroyer escort to turn around, that's how Narrow it can be. If the German destroyers did know she was coming, they just needed to trap here... and that's it. When Warspites was going in to Narvik, she could only open fire with here main gun when she had them all on close range. due to the fjord bends in many direction, with hills all around, preventing here from lobbing here shells over the mountain.

Using Warspite as an example is not that good. the only time a BB is good for Norway is when Norway can use the element of surprise or used the ship in the open sea. A BB can't use the Narrow fjord to it advantage.

and even during the cold war, when the Navy was almost swiming in money they didn't consider anything bigger than a small destroyer or frigate, a cruiser i just top big. and need to many crew, it's better to have three frigates with the same amount of guns, then one cruiser. three frigates, give you the capability to attack from three direction, something you can do in Norwegian fjord, and you can do it without getting hit. I remember Sleipner class in 1940, where the German Navy tried to catch and destroy the flagship of the class... well they never managed to get here, so the Germans send all aircraft they had in that area that day, 40 aircrafts totall, and even then it took them 2 hours to get here, due to the little destroyer used the Norwegian fjords and terrains to it's advantage... The Germans lost a couple of aircraft in that battle. A BB will just be an siting duck!