WesWorld

Now before you all sink her with all hands, I think I might be about 2-3 years ahead of the timeline with superfiring turrets on this size of a vessel, but I like the "look" of her as a logical extension of the Danish navies abilities!


Hel, Denmark Heavy Cruiser laid down 1923

Displacement:
12,408 t light; 13,002 t standard; 14,450 t normal; 15,551 t full load
Loading submergence 854 tons/feet

Dimensions:
600.00 ft x 70.00 ft x 20.00 ft (normal load)
182.88 m x 21.34 m x 6.10 m

Armament:
10 - 8.20" / 208 mm guns (4 Main turrets, 2 superfiring turrets)
12 - 5.10" / 130 mm guns
8 - 3.00" / 76 mm AA guns
12 - 0.51" / 13 mm guns
Weight of broadside 3,662 lbs / 1,661 kg
12 - 18.0" / 457.2 mm above water torpedoes

Armour:
Belt 4.00" / 102 mm, upper belt 2.00" / 51 mm, ends unarmoured
Belts cover 100 % of normal area
Main turrets 2.50" / 64 mm, 2nd gun shields 1.00" / 25 mm
Light gun shields 0.50" / 13 mm
Armour deck 3.00" / 76 mm, Conning tower 3.00" / 76 mm

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Electric motors, 4 shafts, 87,504 shp / 65,278 Kw = 30.00 kts
Range 13,500nm at 12.00 kts

Complement:
658 - 856

Cost:
£3.573 million / $14.292 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 458 tons, 3.2 %
Armour: 3,080 tons, 21.3 %
Belts: 912 tons, 6.3 %, Armament: 470 tons, 3.3 %, Armour Deck: 1,659 tons, 11.5 %
Conning Tower: 38 tons, 0.3 %, Torpedo bulkhead: 0 tons, 0.0 %
Machinery: 2,925 tons, 20.2 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 5,845 tons, 40.5 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 2,042 tons, 14.1 %
Miscellaneous weights: 100 tons, 0.7 %

Metacentric height 3.6

Remarks:
Hull space for machinery, storage & compartmentation is adequate
Room for accommodation & workspaces is excellent
Ship has slow, easy roll, a good, steady gun platform
Good seaboat, rides out heavy weather easily

Estimated overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Relative margin of stability: 1.12
Shellfire needed to sink: 20,513 lbs / 9,304 Kg = 74.4 x 8.2 " / 208 mm shells
(Approx weight of penetrating shell hits needed to sink ship excluding critical hits)
Torpedoes needed to sink: 2.1
(Approx number of typical torpedo hits needed to sink ship)
Relative steadiness as gun platform: 70 %
(Average = 50 %)
Relative rocking effect from firing to beam: 0.70
Relative quality as seaboat: 1.28

Hull form characteristics:
Block coefficient: 0.602
Sharpness coefficient: 0.38
Hull speed coefficient 'M': 7.53
'Natural speed' for length: 24.49 kts
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 57 %
Trim: 55
(Maximise stabilty/flotation = 0, Maximise steadiness/seakeeping = 100)

Estimated hull characteristics & strength:
Underwater volume absorbed by magazines and engineering spaces: 91.3 %
Relative accommodation and working space: 181.4 %
(Average = 100%)
Displacement factor: 114 %
(Displacement relative to loading factors)
Relative cross-sectional hull strength: 0.95
(Structure weight / hull surface area: 125 lbs / square foot or 609 Kg / square metre)
Relative longitudinal hull strength: 1.64
(for 24.50 ft / 7.47 m average freeboard, freeboard adjustment 8.20 ft)
Relative composite hull strength: 1.00

Armament Layout as follows...
Main armament = A-3, B-2, X-2, Y-3
Secondary armament = 3 X twin dual prrpose mounts on each beam.

sorry, she's going to take some damage ;-)

block coefficient: .6? nope. try .5

very strong armour deck, a bit much for the time period?

dp guns in 192x? nope, that comes later.

apart from that - nice, very well armed and a reasonable turn of speed

but at least she is still floating!

My resources on ships of the inter-war period is a little slim, and I was basing the armour on HMS Suffolk (1926) which list 4" deck! I thought I was in the right ball park...oh well!

How much later for true D.P. guns... I' ve kind of been working on the idea of a" Psuedo D.P." with an elevation of about 45-50 degrees, not the 80-90 degrees the Brits had on HMS Dido!

as for the BC, I'll work on it!

Thanks for the input!

Hi!

I like your design and I don´t think she´s remarkable ahead of her time if those 130mm guns are single purpose anti-ship weapons leaving those 76mm guns as AA suit.

In fact, taking those 130mm guns as single-purpose offers a reasonable and easy storyline once you make the step from single to dual-purpose several years later.

I also think her bc is not a problem at all. LA is right, most known cruisers tend to have a bc of ~0,5 - less so for small CLs and a tid bit more for CAs - but for a CA of 13kts whos roots go back to early ACs a bc of 0,6 seems to be okay. Not every cruiser needs to feature a long and slender hull, though, and it has its advantages to use a higher bc.

On armor I have to comment that I don´t think she´s unreasonably armored. LA is right, she features a thick deck - easpecially for a cruiser of the early 20s - but it´s not totally unrealistic. One has to consider that designers are allowed to work with additional 3kts in Wesworld compared to historical WT-designs. As a result we (will) see heavier armor all over on most of our ships. In the actual case this isn´t even true. Her belt is thicker than on early british, american or french designs which didn´t feature full belts anyway but given that your cruiser weights 13kts a belt of 4" is some sort of minimum. Her main battery is also better armored than british or japanese designs (if you can call 25mm weathershields/turrets "armored") but even the early german K-class CLs of 6000ts had similar or thicker faceplates for their main guns - not to mention the pocket battleships or italian CAs. Her CT also seems reasonable....

To sum it up: a little bit too much deck armor _maybe_ but that´s it. The rest seems realistical and even the deck thickness is not really problem as long as your next design doesn´t feature thicker decks...

Her long range is remarkable and one could hardly find a historical example with a similar range but again: In Wesworld heavy cruisers are allowed to be bigger and thus there´s also more space for fuel cells to increase a designs range compared to historical designs. For light cruisers the opposite is true, though.

So change the secondaries from DP to single purpose and you get a really good, powerful and balanced heavy cruiser design. My opinion of course...

So long,

HoOmAn

PS: SUFFOLK never had a 4" deck. She featured armored boxes around her magazins with a similar thickness but everything else was hardly thicker than a paper sheet. Well, over machinery she had patches of 35mm, IIRC, but I don´t have my Whitleys at hand.

The Second Level of Hel......(with apologies to Dante)!!

Hel, Denmark Heavy Cruiser laid down 1923

Displacement:
11,985 t light; 12,570 t standard; 14,000 t normal; 15,088 t full load
Loading submergence 866 tons/feet

Dimensions:
630.00 ft x 74.00 ft x 20.00 ft (normal load)
192.02 m x 22.56 m x 6.10 m

Armament:
10 - 8.20" / 208 mm guns (4 Main turrets, 2 superfiring turrets)
12 - 5.10" / 130 mm guns
8 - 3.00" / 76 mm AA guns
12 - 0.51" / 13 mm guns
Weight of broadside 3,662 lbs / 1,661 kg
8 - 21.0" / 533.4 mm above water torpedoes

Armour:
Belt 3.50" / 89 mm, upper belt 2.00" / 51 mm, ends unarmoured
Belts cover 100 % of normal area
Main turrets 2.50" / 64 mm, 2nd gun shields 1.00" / 25 mm
Light gun shields 0.50" / 13 mm
Armour deck 2.50" / 64 mm, Conning tower 3.00" / 76 mm

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Geared drive, 4 shafts, 81,361 shp / 60,695 Kw = 30.00 kts
Range 13,500nm at 12.00 kts

Complement:
643 - 836

Cost:
£3.446 million / $13.785 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 458 tons, 3.3 %
Armour: 2,772 tons, 19.8 %
Belts: 890 tons, 6.4 %, Armament: 444 tons, 3.2 %, Armour Deck: 1,401 tons, 10.0 %
Conning Tower: 38 tons, 0.3 %, Torpedo bulkhead: 0 tons, 0.0 %
Machinery: 2,719 tons, 19.4 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 5,936 tons, 42.4 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 2,015 tons, 14.4 %
Miscellaneous weights: 100 tons, 0.7 %

Metacentric height 4.2

Remarks:
Hull space for machinery, storage & compartmentation is adequate
Room for accommodation & workspaces is excellent
Ship has slow, easy roll, a good, steady gun platform
Good seaboat, rides out heavy weather easily

Estimated overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Relative margin of stability: 1.16
Shellfire needed to sink: 19,898 lbs / 9,026 Kg = 72.2 x 8.2 " / 208 mm shells
(Approx weight of penetrating shell hits needed to sink ship excluding critical hits)
Torpedoes needed to sink: 2.2
(Approx number of typical torpedo hits needed to sink ship)
Relative steadiness as gun platform: 70 %
(Average = 50 %)
Relative rocking effect from firing to beam: 0.52
Relative quality as seaboat: 1.23

Hull form characteristics:
Block coefficient: 0.526
Sharpness coefficient: 0.36
Hull speed coefficient 'M': 7.99
'Natural speed' for length: 25.10 kts
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 54 %
Trim: 57
(Maximise stabilty/flotation = 0, Maximise steadiness/seakeeping = 100)

Estimated hull characteristics & strength:
Underwater volume absorbed by magazines and engineering spaces: 89.5 %
Relative accommodation and working space: 174.1 %
(Average = 100%)
Displacement factor: 117 %
(Displacement relative to loading factors)
Relative cross-sectional hull strength: 0.97
(Structure weight / hull surface area: 128 lbs / square foot or 625 Kg / square metre)
Relative longitudinal hull strength: 1.40
(for 22.00 ft / 6.71 m average freeboard, freeboard adjustment 5.80 ft)
Relative composite hull strength: 1.00

Armament Layout as follows...
Main armament = A-3, B-2, X-2, Y-3
Secondary armament = 3 X twin mounts on each beam.
Torpedoes are mounted in 2 quad turrets, 1 to each beam, in recesses below deck level.

Thanks for the input HoOmAn, as i said "Janes" is a bit light of info!

Recommend any good books?

P.S. what do you think of Mk 2?

Quoted

Originally posted by Commodore Green
Thanks for the input HoOmAn, as i said "Janes" is a bit light of info!

Recommend any good books?

P.S. what do you think of Mk 2?

First of all: Forget Janes...

Go and try to lay your hands on M.J. Whitley´s books ("cruisers of WW2" for example). On german units I reccomend to get Gröners "Warships of the German Navy". There´s also a good book called "Cruisers of the IJN" but I forgot who wrote it. There are other good sources as well but you maybe should start with Whitley. His book is not too expansive. One simply has to spend some money sometimes - there´s no other way to get some good sources.

MK2 still features those "high angle" or DP-guns which I really put to a rest. DP-guns of that caliber mounted in twin mounts are more than just 1-2 years ahead of the time.

I´ve also seen that you´ve reduced her belts and deck thicknesses. Together with the reduced bc you get a smaller and cheaper design which is a good idea if one tries to stay realistical knowing that someone has to fund those ships.

I´d love to see a line drawing of her...

Cheers,

HoOmAn

Modified to remove the source of your unrest!

I was going to wait until 1924 before posting this possible design for the RN;




[SIZE=1]Both modified from original pictures [/SIZE]

The springstyle is modified from HMS Kent found in the Springstyle libary that accompanies springsharp.

HMS Kent, Royal Navy 8in Cruiser laid down 1924

Displacement:
11,902 t light; 12,423 t standard; 14,233 t normal; 15,624 t full load
Loading submergence 797 tons/feet

Dimensions:
680.00 ft x 71.50 ft x 23.50 ft (normal load)
207.26 m x 21.79 m x 7.16 m

Armament:
10 - 8.00" / 203 mm guns (5 Main turrets x 2 guns, 2 superfiring turrets)
8 - 4.00" / 102 mm guns (8 2nd turrets x 1 guns)
4 - 2.00" / 51 mm AA guns
4 - 1.00" / 25 mm guns
Weight of broadside 2,834 lbs / 1,285 kg
8 - 21.0" / 533.4 mm above water torpedoes

Armour:
Belt 4.00" / 102 mm, upper belt 1.00" / 25 mm, ends unarmoured
Belts cover 136 % of normal area
Main turrets 1.00" / 25 mm
Armour deck 1.00" / 25 mm, Conning tower 1.00" / 25 mm
Torpedo bulkhead 1.00" / 25 mm

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Geared drive, 4 shafts, 103,399 shp / 77,135 Kw = 32.50 kts
Range 10,500nm at 15.00 kts

Complement:
651 - 847

Cost:
£3.681 million / $14.725 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 354 tons, 2.5 %
Armour: 2,276 tons, 16.0 %
Belts: 1,203 tons, 8.5 %, Armament: 161 tons, 1.1 %, Armour Deck: 516 tons, 3.6 %
Conning Tower: 13 tons, 0.1 %, Torpedo bulkhead: 384 tons, 2.7 %
Machinery: 3,406 tons, 23.9 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 5,766 tons, 40.5 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 2,331 tons, 16.4 %
Miscellaneous weights: 100 tons, 0.7 %

Metacentric height 4.7

Remarks:
Hull space for machinery, storage & compartmentation is cramped
Room for accommodation & workspaces is excellent
Ship has slow, easy roll, a good, steady gun platform
Good seaboat, rides out heavy weather easily

Estimated overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Relative margin of stability: 1.28
Shellfire needed to sink: 9,775 lbs / 4,434 Kg = 38.2 x 8.0 " / 203 mm shells
(Approx weight of penetrating shell hits needed to sink ship excluding critical hits)
Torpedoes needed to sink: 1.5
(Approx number of typical torpedo hits needed to sink ship)
Relative steadiness as gun platform: 70 %
(Average = 50 %)
Relative rocking effect from firing to beam: 0.41
Relative quality as seaboat: 1.38

Hull form characteristics:
Block coefficient: 0.436
Sharpness coefficient: 0.31
Hull speed coefficient 'M': 8.58
'Natural speed' for length: 26.08 kts
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 52 %
Trim: 51
(Maximise stabilty/flotation = 0, Maximise steadiness/seakeeping = 100)

Estimated hull characteristics & strength:
Underwater volume absorbed by magazines and engineering spaces: 136.0 %
Relative accommodation and working space: 162.7 %
(Average = 100%)
Displacement factor: 118 %
(Displacement relative to loading factors)
Relative cross-sectional hull strength: 0.96
(Structure weight / hull surface area: 121 lbs / square foot or 590 Kg / square metre)
Relative longitudinal hull strength: 1.40
(for 22.50 ft / 6.86 m average freeboard, freeboard adjustment 6.25 ft)
Relative composite hull strength: 1.00

early brooklyn? wouldn't they rather have used

a) a 'Q' turret?
b) triples?

A) The forward C turret has better fields of fire. Also Admiralty mentality of "British ships always advance towards the enemy" means that those guns will be more usefull as well.
Plus, she looks better.

B) The Admiralty would have liked triples(4) for maximum firepower, but they also wanted a HA requirement for the guns! Triple turrets are too complicated for HA fire so duples it is. 6 duple turrets on her looks a bit silly.

BTW, her displacement of 12,500t is becuase as historical she would be designed for 13,000t but come out under tonnage.

Also both drawings are 1940/43 not 1920's

HA? wassat?

Sorry, High Angle. Yes believe it or not 8" AA guns.

Given the RN's building habits I don't see this particular design becoming a reality. I do however agree with the suggestion that the RN would go with triples and to get 10x8" guns they could simply take the U.S.S. Pensacola gun layout which is the most likely IMO.

I don't think mixing duples and triples would be very good. With the extra displacement to work with I reckon a 4x3 8" gun design, with the 2 outside barrels of each turret given HA capability might work.

Stuffing another duple turret onto HMS Kent is easier than designing a triple turret.

I'll have a go with 4x3 anyways...

So, given that HMS Kent had HA main guns in 1924, it's not that much of a push for KDM Hel to have them on her secondary guns a year earlier , is it?

[SIZE=1]Modified from original drawing [/SIZE]

I don't mind Hel having HA secondary guns, but what are you going to use them for? With manual training they wouldn't be very useful.
I currently have; 130mm/45 in a duple turret with 50 degree elevation. The 3"/60 and 3"/40 with free traverse and elevation.

Quoted

Originally posted by Commodore Green
So, given that HMS Kent had HA main guns in 1924, it's not that much of a push for KDM Hel to have them on her secondary guns a year earlier , is it?

HA = High Angle means - in the case of those british cruisers - max. 60° elevation

Real AA/DP-guns have a max. elevation of 85°-90° and those were unlikely in twin mounts in the early 20s.

Again: It´s most likely just me who thinks one should avoid 5" or 130mm DP-dual mounts in the early 20s but you asked for opinions and input and, well, that´s mine. Given the lack of adequate FC for AA guns in those years you don´t even loose a thing by "downrating" those guns to single-purpose.

If you can´t live without HA/DP secondaries - keep them. I won´t dictate you to change it.

Regards,

HoOmAn

Keep in mind that the threat from aircraft isn't that great at the moment. Dive bombers don't exist. Level bombing doesn't really work without a good bombsight. That leaves torpedo bombers, for which you don't need large elevations, just lots of shells.

"I don't think mixing duples and triples would be very good. With the extra displacement to work with I reckon a 4x3 8" gun design, with the 2 outside barrels of each turret given HA capability might work."

The Americans seemed to think mixing twins and triples was the right thing to do, they even put the triples super-imposed so they could fit in the narrow hull of the Pensacola's. I personally think if your going to use triples you might as well mount all your guns in triples so I agree with Red Admirals tendancy to use them.