Shipbucket

The Deutschland class pocket battleships came as more of a shock to the United States Navy than it did to the Royal Navy. The RN at least had ships that could catch and dispatch the German ships. When the USN looked at its inventory it had.... nothing that could take on the so called pocket battleships. The USN felt it would require four cruisers with 6" and 8" guns to damage one of the PB's sufficiently for something larger to catch and finish off the job. The number of 'hunting' groups for the North and South Atlantic was estimated at six per ocean to successfully run down and catch one raider. This was unacceptable to the USN. (To do this properly I think the WNT/LNT's need to have a bit of leeway otherwise this ship never gets built.)

To get the new ship through Congress it was listed as an experimental anti-raider cruiser. Other details than that were kept very obscure. The ship was to be a 26,000 ton large cruiser. The ship and armament were to be built and supplied by Bethlehem Steel. At the end of WW1 Bethlehems had had returned to them three twin 14" turrets and guns that had been made available to the RN from an order for the Greek BB Salamis. The guns and turrets had been kept as spares for the New York and Oklahoma classes, both of which mounted twin 14" turrets. Using these three turrets meant that no new weapon system would need to be added to the inventory and the guns firepower would outgun a PB quite handily. The basic New Orleans class heavy cruiser design was enlarged considerably to take the twin 14". Length went out to 674 feet while the breadth increased to 88 feet. The ship required a 125,000shp propulsion system to raise a speed of 30 knots. Armour was made to defeat the German 11", with 10" of side armour and 3.5" of deck armour. Only one of these 'experimental' cruisers could be completed in this form by which time the USN felt that the various treaties would have expired and a new class could be built using the experience with the Alaska as the basis for the new ships.

Very cool looking! Never quite been a fan of american heavy cruiser designs, but this one looks pretty neat and powerful!

I like it!

I like the looks of this one too. A nice concept and backstory too.

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

It is a very nice job indeed. But I think it would look much cooler if you updated other parts too, like boats, life rafts, electronics and searchlights. Also that 1.1" gun on the bridge looks like you forgot to remove it

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Worklist: Portuguese Navy and Barnegat class seaplane tenders

the shading on those turrets is to ... much!

This is what I did around a year back, and posted it in one of "Karl94" US Battleship tread back then... never used though!

Notice how much simpler the shading is for the same effect!

Ha, missed the little sucker. Thank you WhyMe, I did think about replacing all the outdated bits but most of them are still serviceable. The US parts sheet is a bit of a stranger to me.

Heuhen, the turrets I used were from the Salamis by Garlicdesign. I knew yours were there, I have them in my 'bits' folder. Those Salamis turrets were the ones I picked to use because I could make them available with a little twist of historys tail. Otherwise I would have had to build a new set of weapons for the ship. Besides yours are triples and the Salamis ones are twins.