Deleted member 94680
You did indeed. A fair point. It depends if a Cold War analogue develops and the need for a Strategic Bomber Command is discovered, I suppose.
Dread Nought but the Fury of the Seas
- Thread starter sts-200
- Start date
You did indeed. A fair point. It depends if a Cold War analogue develops and the need for a Strategic Bomber Command is discovered, I suppose.
Of course if WWII plays out anywhere near like otl technologically speaking much like the US the UK will recognize the need for an independent air force. Mind you let's hope that the RAF doesn't treat the Army like peasants that it begrudgingly must support unlike the USAF
The potential, and threat from, strategic bombing is much more relevant to the UK than the US because of geography... there'll be an independent air force, but its significance and exact role aren't yet clear.
Ooh nasty thought - did the Zeppelin raids still happen? Is there a London air defence area?
Hopefully the Cavendish will teach the RN that that is a very bad idea and hybrid are the worst of both worlds.
I think the odds of that are near zero. If anything the RAF has historically been even less keen on helpings Pongo's ((RAF nickname for the Army because when they leave the pong* goes.) *unpleasant smell) than the USAF.
Deleted member 94680
How very dare you. The RAF has Army Cooperation squadrons (like the mighty II (AC) Squadron) that bear the designation AC for all time the same way Bomber squadrons are (B) and reconnaissance squadrons have (R).
Another thirty years being dependent on the army might change that of course
Thinking about it is there any chance that the British (or anyone else ITTL) could wind up with a fully air integrated military? What I mean is a Navy with its own air arm like the OTL USN and IJN, and apparently the RN ITTL. In addition, there would be an army like the OTL USMC with its own integrated tactical aviation, and an air force that would handle national air defense, strategic bombing, and air transports. This would be something like if the nation combined the OTL USSRs PVO Strany (air defense force) and Long Range Aviation (bomber force) into an air force, while leaving frontal aviation (tactical airpower) to the army.
Hey sts-200, what are the possibilities of getting this type of rebuilt for the Queens and Royals down the line ?:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-italian-style-rebuild-of-qe-class.480976/
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-italian-style-rebuild-of-qe-class.480976/
Minimal, those deep rebuilds were a function of the treaty environment where the definition of a top of line battleship was essentially frozen for twenty years. In that context rebuilding old ships could keep them competitive as first rate ships.
If you have either no treaty or a less restrictive/shorter treaty (and that seems to be the direction sts is going) then you are going to get 18" armed, 28 knot, 60k ships (i.e. a Furious done right) and there is no rebuild that can make a QE competitive with something like that.
Take the ship's bell and stern plate and put them on a 60k 18" ship, technically still the same ships
Well, you never know when you need one of those. I was thinking actually on make them faster, at least so they could reach the 25kn mark as designed.
Last edited:
A poster on another board once made the point that ships like Hermes were expected to spend a lot of the first half of their lives acting as depot ships for float planes. The 6" aren't so much for dueling with cruisers but for when some raider rumbles you at anchor supporting flight ops in a Pacific atoll.
The problem is a deep, Italian style refit costs a meaningful percentage of a new build of similar size. Even for the RN, which in this tl as on OTL will almost certainly have the largest naval budget in the world, I just can't see enough money left over to do deep refits on second/third line ships. Because while this tl's RN is going to be better funded it's probably not going to be proportionally better funded, not with a larger, less damaged, non-Versailles restricted Germany around.
So when it comes to the RN's budget meeting paying for a quarter of a new first rate ship is going to win out over making the flagship of the South America Squadron* that little bit better.
*And that's the fate of the 15" ships in a generations time. They won't have the speed or the armament to be anything other than a burden in the high priority fleets.
Deleted member 94680
The "Italian-style rebuilds" still didn't make the Conte di Cavours and the Andrea Dorias competitive with the Queen Elizabeth battleships and each cost as much as a new Littorio, give or take.
"These modernizations have been criticized by some naval historians because these ships would eventually prove to be inferior to the British battleships they were meant to face (namely the Queen Elizabeth class, since by the time the decision to proceed was taken a war between Italy and the United Kingdom seemed more likely). In addition, the cost of the reconstruction would be not much less than the cost of building a brand new Littorio-class battleship; moreover, the reconstruction work caused bottlenecks in the providing of steel plates, that caused substantial delays in the construction of the modern battleships, which otherwise might have been completed at an earlier date." wiki
Somehow, I can't see the Royal Navy spending that much money and resources on older ships when they have the infrastructure to build new with relatively little problem. The Exchequer will be the problem for the RN, not fleet size or relative modernity of Capital Ships.
"These modernizations have been criticized by some naval historians because these ships would eventually prove to be inferior to the British battleships they were meant to face (namely the Queen Elizabeth class, since by the time the decision to proceed was taken a war between Italy and the United Kingdom seemed more likely). In addition, the cost of the reconstruction would be not much less than the cost of building a brand new Littorio-class battleship; moreover, the reconstruction work caused bottlenecks in the providing of steel plates, that caused substantial delays in the construction of the modern battleships, which otherwise might have been completed at an earlier date." wiki
Somehow, I can't see the Royal Navy spending that much money and resources on older ships when they have the infrastructure to build new with relatively little problem. The Exchequer will be the problem for the RN, not fleet size or relative modernity of Capital Ships.
I can see the development of three separate British air services:
1) the Royal Naval Air Service ; the Fleet Air Arm and Coastal Command*;
2) the Royal Air Force (formerly the Independent Air Force): Bomber Command, Fighter Command & long-range aerial recon; and
3) the Army Air Corp (formerly the Royal Flying Corps): Tactical Air Command (fighter-bombers, aerial recon and artillery spotters)*.
*(as they should have been OTL, since the RAF ignored anything to do with water & mud back then)
1) the Royal Naval Air Service ; the Fleet Air Arm and Coastal Command*;
2) the Royal Air Force (formerly the Independent Air Force): Bomber Command, Fighter Command & long-range aerial recon; and
3) the Army Air Corp (formerly the Royal Flying Corps): Tactical Air Command (fighter-bombers, aerial recon and artillery spotters)*.
*(as they should have been OTL, since the RAF ignored anything to do with water & mud back then)
The RNAS makes sense, even today the maritime patrol role should be done by the FAA rather than the RAF but the crossover between Fighter Command and Tactical Air Command means they need to be in the same force. Also what's the difference between the requirement for long range fighters providing escorts to bombers versus supporting land forces at a distance? If you are going to have an independent air force at all the current division between the RAF and Army Air Corps is probably about right*.
*with some caveats over helicopters but that's not going to be an issue for quite a while.
Last edited:
Then in that case:
Are there possibilities for a battleship design like this 10/12x15"/16" for the RN?, how big and expensive would/could/should be?, given the chance due to financials been on site, that is.
I can't see any image but I don't think anyone is going to be building 15" armed, 35,000 ton ships in a post Furious and Rodney world. You're building something that will be obsolete on the stocks. The new minimum for battleships is going to be based around a slightly slower Rodney i.e. armour against 16" guns, 16" or larger guns and 27 knots and you can't manage that on less than 45k tons. The minimum for battlecruisers is going to be based on Lexington and Furious with all that implies in terms of size and weight.
South Dakota managed this at 35k tons, though it was a 1938 design.