So putting a minimum size on the ship may be needed as well....10,000t as in the OTL WW1 N class or later J L Thompson and Sons design.
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1930s British Sanity Options (Economy, Navy, Airforce and Army)
- Thread starter Sarthak
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So putting a minimum size on the ship may be needed as well....10,000t as in the OTL WW1 N class or later J L Thompson and Sons design.
Is there any data on additional problems caused by enemy action against electrified railways that wouldn't necessarily be the case with steam or diesel?
@naraic and @perfectgeneral thanks for your input.
AIUI the Royal Mail Ships Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were paid for by government subsidies and paid for themselves several times over with the service that they gave as troopships during the war.
If all the scrap and build scheme produces is another pair of super-liners the troop carrying capacity of the Merchant Navy would be much increased.
AIUI the Royal Mail Ships Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were paid for by government subsidies and paid for themselves several times over with the service that they gave as troopships during the war.
If all the scrap and build scheme produces is another pair of super-liners the troop carrying capacity of the Merchant Navy would be much increased.
Also there needs to be far more widespread takeup of Diesel power in the new construction. OTL the shipowners were completely uninterested in Diesel despite the improved efficiency.
Having government subsidies for Diesel powered merchant ships to get the shipowners over the hurdle of higher initial cost of acquisition will go a long way to improving the situation.
Thanks for your input too.
I mentioned the Tyne Tunnel and Forth Road Bridge as examples of the sort of thing that might be done and not necessarily that they would be done.
I could just as easily have mentioned the Severn and Humber bridges or the Channel, Isle of Wight and Northern Ireland tunnels.
On a more mundane level it's a pity that none of the rail and road tunnels towards the mouth of the River Tees were built. (Are tunnels built or are they dug?) Recently I've also mentioned the rail tunnels near the mouth of the Tyne that were proposed but never built in another thread.
I also wish that a road-rail bridge been built to the Isle of Skye with the railway extended to Uig and Armadale. It wouldn't make any money, but looks good on a map.
Deleted member 94680
Have ships built under the scrap and build schemes be something like the Empire Ships but 10 years or so earlier?
I was going to mention that.
Found a link a few days ago to an interesting thesis on diesels in the UK
Its a longer version of this article - British Marine Industry and the Diesel Engine
Not so sure if was the ship owners that was the problem, some went abroad and bought diesel ships from foreign yards, the big problem looks to have been the British coal industry which was dead set against any dieslisation and effectively blocked it - Page 15 of the above.
There was a 'return to coal' movement in the 30's to try and get the RN back on coal......
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Not that I know of.
However, I do know that this was discussed in the Weir Report and that the conclusion was that it wouldn't be much of an additional problem, because I've read it. Their biggest vulnerability would be if the electricity was cut off rather than direct damage.
Also the most extensive system of electrified lines IOTL were the London Underground (most of which was overground) and the "Southern Electric" which were in the areas which were most vulnerable to bombing. AFAIK any damage done to the electrical equipment was repaired quickly.
That reminds me that as the Southern Railway was the company that did the most electrification IOTL and it will do even more ITTL. At the very least it will have completed the Kent Coast Scheme (including Ashford to Hastings) by 1939 and will probably have electrified Tonbridge to Hastings too.
AFAIK there were only a few dozen diesel shunting locomotives around in the 1930s and no mainline diesels whatsoever, so that's a non-problem.
My thoughts were that Parliament would pass a law similar to the American Merchant Marine Act of 1936 and an equivalent to the U.S. Maritime Commission is created to supervise it.
So the short answer is yes.
Also, one of the conditions of the subsidy was that the ships built under it would be requisitioned by the Government in war or other national emergencies.
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I'm on board with this generally. There were some unforced errors though (or at least, unforced AFAIK) - errors that didn't arise from the inherent limitations of the economy or public opinion. One big one is not giving the RN control over its own aircraft procurement, the basis of Astrodragon's magnum opus. Two others I can think of that deserve mention:
1. the Treaty Ports. These were the ports in Ireland handed over to Eire in 1938. Refuelling facilities at Berehaven, for instance, would have been very useful, and the UK gained nothing useful from handing them over. This seems a no-brainer with hindsight, though maybe there's an angle I'm not seeing.
2. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935. This essentially gave the Germans the right to build as much as they could (given the limits of their shipbuilding capability), and by making it a bilateral agreement (i.e. excluding the French, who had a legitimate interest) it made Anglo-French relations more difficult. It seems to have been driven by wishful thinking on both sides, but the damage to relations with France was reason enough by itself not to do it.
Britain even drew up a plan to invade Ireland for the treaty ports. They were very important and was one of the reasons why Ireland and British relations soured even further after the Anglo-Irish Trade War.
JFC Fuller posted the link here
Pre WW1 Royal Navy Diesel Engines for Surface Ships
Reading through threads on the All the Worlds' Battlecruisers forum I was struck by two covering Fisher/Vickers proposals for diesel powered capital ships, they ignited a memory I had of reading about a single cylinder diesel test unit Vickers had produced prior to the War that seemed relevant...
www.secretprojects.co.uk
The British Government subsidises the completion of the Cape Town to Cairo Railway including a branch from Khartoum to the deep water port of Takoradi in the Gold Coast. It wouldn't make any money, but it would improve the logistics in the East African and Middle East theatres.
Similarly the Baghdad to Haifa Railway which was proposed in the 1930s at the same time as the pipeline
Deleted member 94680
Imperial Defence and the prestige of the Empire
How is it paid for?
British Government Expenditure 1918-40
As can be seen from the above table Government revenue and expenditure more or less balanced between 1923-24 and 1937-38. Furthermore, both were in the range of £800 million to £850 million from 1923-24 to 1935-36. It can also be seen that servicing the National Debt absorbed 40-45% of expenditure between 1922-23 and 1930-31 before falling to about 25% from 1936-37 onwards.
AIUI the reduction in the cost of servicing the National Debt was due to the Depression allowing HM Treasury to re-finance it (if that's the right expression). The money saved financed the Rearmament Programme. HM Treasury doesn't receive any credit from this, let alone the credit that is due.
The Depression also reduced the cost of borrowing money. Therefore, I think HM Treasury could have found the money for the schemes that I'm proposing by borrowing it at low rates of interest and with generous repayment terms. In the medium term some of the extra tax revenue that the public works create is used to pay for the increased cost of servicing the National Debt and in the longer term to pay the extra debt off.
I agree. That is as long as the result is more companies like Imperial Chemical Industries and not more like British Leyland.