WesWorld

Quite a few countries have now built, or are building, new modern battleships.

We seem to have 2 basic concepts;

- 25-27knt vessels with 12 or more 381mm guns

and

- 30knt vessels with 9x 381mm guns

The armour on the designs seems to be pretty much designer's personal choice. From the 350mm belt on RM Lepanto to the 400mm on RSANS Ophion.

Which do you feel is better?

For the moment I'm going more for the slower ships with more firepower, but in the future the faster ships will be better.

I'm looking a bit more at something that has more speed and less guns. Allows me to run away from the nasty looking ships like Lepanto.
:-)

Atlantis is currently looking at a 2x4 15" design with a 28/30 knot speed and as much armor as I can cram on her, but unfortunately the esthetics are not quite up to Atlantian standards. Melampus and Thesues being 26.1 knot ships will need playpals too so the speed required to offer the ability to operate the new ships with the current top notch ships may drop them into the 25-27 knot, 9x381, 400mm belt catagory.

India, of course, went for a smaller BB, which could be considered heavy on speed and light on guns for its size. Certainly the protection is not lacking.

As for Germany, we'll have to see what the rules are when I start building for them.

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Atlantis is currently looking at a 2x4 15" design with a 28/30 knot speed and as much armor as I can cram on her

Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that would go to the turrets. One hit on one of the main turrets...

Guess I might as well include this;




It gives a few ideas for 2x4 turreted ships. B2 gets my vote


After a bit of fiddling with quad turrets I got;

40.000t
8x381mm
20x113mm
200.000shp=32.49knts
10.000nm@15knts
350mm belt
150mm deck
500 turret face

I just got Allied Battleships by Garzke&Dulin which offers good information on french ships but the pages you´ve scanned is not taken from that book. So could you please provide a source for that scan? Thanks.

500mm turret faces? What´s that good for?

I guess in order to keep the shells out of the turret. Of course those 500mm will be useless if one is firing at the side or rear of that turret.

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So could you please provide a source for that scan? Thanks.

I can't remember the exact title, but will find it again soon. I'm fairly sure that its a french language book, but the scan would suggest otherwise. As I said, I'll find the source again soon.

This is the problem with borrowing books but not buying them.

I think they are from the Dumas books on the Richeleau class (one of a 3 part series on the Dunkerque & Richileau and projected follow-on classes)

French designers, have a lot of different situations to consider.

France is definitely an overstreached "status quo" Power, navy wise, so generally will seek to preserve her navy in order to counterattack after the opponent's offensive impetus is spent. So speed is pretty important to French capital ship designers, so that French ships can live to fight another day. The Med Fleet is a bit of an exception, since France has high-value colonies there, and little room to run. So the France class, something of a brawler, will be deployed there. But for capital ships intended for the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, speed is a big consideration, and France is considering 6x15", 8x15", and 9x15" designs.

The Russians plan on small fleets in the Baltic, Black, Med Seas, and Pacific Ocean to maintain presence, while relying on their powerful Northern Fleet to be able to act as a unit in either the Eastern or Western Hemisphere as situations arise. Most possible theaters of war for Russia have considerable strategic depth before anything vital is threatened (the Baltic being the major exception, so the personnel of hostile navies operating there will be able to walk across it on the mines I plan to lay there in the event of war), so Russia can afford temporary defeats and losses in secondary theaters while her main naval strength operates decisively in one. Then when that situation is settled...

Thus, for Russian designers, lethality, survivability, and range are more important than tactical speed. So expect to see lots of guns on subsequent Russian BBs.

Greece has no plans for new battleships. I'd rather 7 17k or 8 15kton cruisers than 3 40k ton BB.


Cheers,

I'm being a party pooper. However the FEH is looking at this 36000ton standard 10-15" 27kt design.

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(the Baltic being the major exception, so the personnel of hostile navies operating there will be able to walk across it on the mines I plan to lay there in the event of war),

Note to self: landing craft no longer needed; build more minesweepers instead...

A couple of those Gascogne pics helped inspire my picture of Akbar, so I guess I'm partial to them.

Rog: you're not entirely alone there. I've been pondering whether the last 26,666 tonnes of Indian battleship tonnage should be used on a third Akbar or two nasty CA's. Haven't got an answer to that just yet.

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Note to self: landing craft no longer needed; build more minesweepers instead...

Why not combine the two and create a landing minesweeper? :-)

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Note to self: landing craft no longer needed; build more minesweepers instead

Note to self: put antipersonnel mines on naval mines

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I've been pondering whether the last 26,666 tonnes of Indian battleship tonnage should be used on a third Akbar or two nasty CA's. Haven't got an answer to that just yet.

Well the CT will limit the number of hulls which pushes Greece to either 3 40,000ton ships or 4 30,000ton ones. I would have to break the treaty to build 7 or 8 smaller ships. Breaking the numbers limit may be more politically acceptable than breaking the tonnage limit (which would be to abrogate the treaty).

Cheers,

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Originally posted by alt_naval
I would have to break the treaty to build 7 or 8 smaller ships. Breaking the numbers limit may be more politically acceptable than breaking the tonnage limit (which would be to abrogate the treaty).

Neither will be, methinks....but you´ll never know.

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Neither will be, methinks....but you´ll never know.

As the smallest navy (one of) Greece stands a better chance than SAE would.

Cheers,

I guess it might depend on what was built. How threatened the other Treaty nations felt by the Greek's actions.
Some nations uphold the treaty to the letter of the words used,
while others view it as a guild line, and then some view it as an conceptual document.

The first group will allow no deviation from the written word.

The Second group will follow the treaty in some ways to mold their naval construction efforts,
but not follow the small print in every situation.

The Last group views the treaty as an ideal for how the world should work,
but won't follow the treaty if a section does not fit with their concept of how they think the concept should be.
(limited on one type of ship by size and numbers, but would be perfectly willing to follow one or the other, but not both).

Germany has other restrictions, but those might be removed in the near future. Or at least altered.

Chile has no restrictions other than the size of their drydocks and the small number of factories.

I see Greece attempting to build a force to be able to handle larger numbers of vessels with numbers instead of large ships,
so the few battleships it can have grates on them slightly as they don't really want huge battleships in the Med.
I see them wanting ships the size of the late model Pre-Dreadnoughts and early Dreadnought,
or some large Armoured Cruisers around the size or slightly smaller than what Chile is attempting to build.
To build 7 or 8 battleships within the tonnage limit of 120,000 tons the ships would have to be within the 15,000 to 17,142 ton range.
Rather small for a battleship, but nice for a cruiser.

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Originally posted by Ithekro
The Last group views the treaty as an ideal for how the world should work,
but won't follow the treaty if a section does not fit with their concept of how they think the concept should be.

Are you serious?

Why should a country that is not willing to follow a treaty sign it at all? We are not talking a non-aggression pact or something similar after all (where A could hope to surprise B by not following the treaty).