Shipbucket

I kind of wanted the width for a TDS or should I ditch it and go full on big CA ? (and to keep as close to the OTL LLC to make speed etc easy to calc and draw )

A revision with 8 guns (I think would be better)



What do you think ? (does anybody have a good table of thickness of belt/deck to stop different guns ?)

JSB

Given the choice of more guns or more armor, I'd choose armor personally...

I still like the idea but I think you are putting too much reliance to torpedo defence by having a larger hull area. The problem you have is that at the size of hull (dimensions) to your displacement, you are going to have a very lightly built hull. Which means when you do take mine or torpedo damage the hull will warp majorly (making the ship very difficult to repair). Also you will have much larger open spaces inside the hull itself because you do not have the displacement to fully sub-divide the hull which would assist with TDS, so any below waterline damage will destabilise your hull very quickly.

The full battlecruisers Lion/Tiger were 700x88/90 on about 30 to 32,000 tons with 9" armour, with 8x13.5". So having a hull at 700x80 on 24,000 tons 6" armour and 8x9.2/9.4" will give you a much stronger hull that is still big enough to put your 100,000shp into for your 32 knots. You are trading gunpower and armour for speed. But you still have internal strength to help with below waterline damage and internal security.

The age old problem of compromise.

The Courageous and Glorious had already been placed in reserve in 1919 and if they had not been converted to CV's they would have been scrapped. To the RN, as LBC's, they were white elephants.

Didn't this have a lot to do with the fact that with only 4 guns (or 2 on F) that they couldn't hit anything (with salvos) ? And they where to light for the gun blast ? both solved by having more 9.2s.

JSB

Yes to the salvo problem. And IIRC both Courageous and Glorious did suffer hull damage firing full broadsides.

I agree, the 9.2-inch gun will cause fewer problems and having more of them helps firing solutions. And with more armor you can afford to take greater risks with them. I see them doing excellent work hunting down enemy armored cruisers/raiders and even escorting convoys. Yes, a battleship outguns them and has more armor. But these are faster and can choose the range at which they'll fight. The 9.2-inch gun has a higher ROF and with any luck will get more hits on the BB than it takes. And moving fast getting those hits won't be easy.

A battlecruiser will have better luck with its greater speed but the higher ROF of these may tip the balance...

This type of LBC sounds like it could have taken the Bismarck on, or even the Graf Spee, and survived, due to speed mostly.

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"It is better to type nothing and be assumed an ass, than to type something and remove all doubt." - Me

Graf Spee would be nice and with 3 to hunt down raiders would be cool, but hunting Bismarck except as a +1 when the BBs start to fight would be a very bad idea (9.2 will not kill her and my belt/deck will make Hood look like Yamato) at last she can run .

O and this is officially a LCA not LBC ! very much so as a LBC would count v BC tonnage and we have never accepted that in the treaty's ! (RN maintains that this is just another old armoured cruiser that slipped past in the wording of the WNT )

JSB

It doesn't really matter what you call it, it's above 10,000 tons and have guns greater than 8" which means it counts as a capital ship according to chapter XI and XII of the Washington Naval Treaty.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

I think this version looks much better than the first attempt, but the low draught layout and long stern still looks a bit odd.

I wouldn't worry about the wording of the Washington Treaty. If there had been no Effinghams then 10,000 tons 8in might not have been the limit for CAs and if these had existed then some other form of treaty would have come about.

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

Thiel - Yes but not sure its really capital ship material, I think the best bet is some playing with words in the treaty such as asking can we all keep some of the old first class armoured cruisers for imperial policing/training you know the old unthreating things with 9.2 guns (say we all get to keep 5-10 of them ?) and then just forgetting that G/C/F are exactly that ....... (RN may have kept to the rules but they did write the treaty to get 'feed water' out of standard )

Hood - I was trying to use the same hull as OTL to keep things simple.

JSB

PS - what better posting a sequence of images (get to read the progression ?) or just updating the first page (easy to read) ? what do people prefer ?