1930s British Sanity Options (Economy, Navy, Airforce and Army)

[Astrodragon]

To be honest, I'm not convinced by the 5.1" gun with a 62lb shell.
The 4.5" shell weighed 55lb (4.7" 50lb) due to a much better ballistic shape. Applying this to 4.7" calibre would have been the OTL 62lb shell.
So stick with the 4.7", and design the new shell. With separate shell it should be fine to handle.
The 4.5" mount was intended for AA use, use that as your new GP mounting with the heavy 4.7", and you should be golden
You can probably also modify the existing 4.7" to take the new shell, increasing the surface capability of the old destroyers
Using one common mount for all new destroyers and AA armament on heavier ships would allow them to be mass produced with cost savings, and make logistics simpler (just the 4" and 4.7" as opposed to 4", 4.5" and two types of 4.7")

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

I don't get this, DDs did not have TDSs, Extra tanks still count in standard it's just the contents, the extra size will require larger engines, the extra size will make nobody will believe your weights......RN would not be allowed to cheat until very late (post 36 where it did not matter numbers wise)?

The naval treaties warship size was measured by standard displacement, which didn't include fuel and feed water.

This form of measurement that was devised for the Washington Naval Treaty. The British had fuel and feed water excluded from it to prevent the water protection system in the Nelson class from being counted in their displacement.

Edit

I didn't read that properly. I thought you were referring to the weight of the fuel rather than the weight of the larger hull and more powerful machinery.

 

[marathag]

Also the Americans had different requirements for their ships and that might account for some of the cost differences

The Congressional requirements that USN ships were to have habitability standards as merchant ships is hard to categorize for the costs of better ventilation, higher capacity on freshwater condensors, and so on.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

I would go for something larger based [off] on the Tribal class come 36 you are not limited so something with 4 twin 4.5" DP guns (simply the open guns from Ark would do as fitted to the 'toothless terrors' Scylla and Charybdis with more 40mm light AA as well on say 3500 with the rest as OTL class apart from more shock tested back up generators like all RN ships.....

I wouldn't go for the Tribal class in any form. I'd build more destroyers of the A to I type or go straight to the Javelin class.

There wouldn't be a requirement for scout destroyers in my version of TTL.

My version of the 1930 London Naval Treaty would allow the British Commonwealth to have 500,000 tons of cruisers (i.e. 70 made up of 15 eight-inch gunned ships of the County & York classes and 55 six-inch gunned ships of the Leander and Arethusa classes) and 200,000 tons of destroyers which would be enough for 16 flotillas of A to I type destroyers. The Government would order the Treasury to find the money to build up to these limits.

 

[jsb]

To be honest, I'm not convinced by the 5.1" gun with a 62lb shell.
The 4.5" shell weighed 55lb (4.7" 50lb) due to a much better ballistic shape. Applying this to 4.7" calibre would have been the OTL 62lb shell.

Agreed if we look at the OTL guns,

5/38 - 55lb split Great
5.1/50 - experimental 108lb (shell 70-62lb)
4.5/45 - 87-91lb fixed (why) shell to heavy
5.25"/50 - 80lb split shell to heavy for fast loading
4.7/40 - 74lb fixed to heavy
4.7"/50 - 62lb split let down by mount
4.5"/45 - 55-58lb split Great gun
4.7"/45 - 50lb split not DP

I think its clear we want a separate shell about 50-55lb a 4.7"/45 or /50 could be perfectly acceptable and potentially be retrofitted into older construction as well better than a new type?

 

[jsb]

The naval treaties warship size was measured by standard displacement, which didn't include fuel and feed water.

Yes but the tanks would still count it's just the contents that are free with standard.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Yes but the tanks would still count it's just the contents that are free with standard.

Correct. I have already admitted my error.

 

[PMN1]

The summary of what I want to do economically is:

• Increase the capacity of the coal mining industry;
• Increase the capacity of the steel industry;
• Increase the capacity of the shipbuilding industry (merchant ships and warships);
• Increase the capacity of the motor vehicle manufacturing industry. That is all types of motor vehicles including lorries and motor cycles, not just cars;
• Increase the capacity of the electronics industry;
• Increase the capacity of the aircraft industry, including aero engines and aircraft equipment;
• Improve inland transport, i.e. the roads, railways, inland waterways, ports and domestic civil aviation;
• Improve the Merchant Navy;
• Expand the overseas airlines.

Mechanisation of the coal industry would be useful but I wonder if it would be resisted in the face of potential job losses.

According to Page on this link

http://s7d2.scene7.com/is/content/Caterpillar/C10339072

The first patents for coal cutters was in 1912.

http://ere-symposium.cege.umn.edu/downloads/Mother_of_Invention.pdf

 

[marathag]

Postwar the new open pit method with drag buckets was so much more efficient it couldn't be ignored.

Same methods were available before the War, and there was an UK subsidiary of the Bucyrus-Erie company that made them in the USA

 

[naraic]

Mechanisation of the coal industry would be useful but I wonder if it would be resisted in the face of potential job losses.

You can reduce the resistance by creating alternate jobs.

Job losses tend to be resisted more if there is not alternate employment available. So it depends on if the economic improvements can create further jobs. In Lancashire for example there was two main industrial employers (cotton and coal). Cotton was shedding jobs through the interwar era. If coal is also shedding jobs people will go crazy.

We need a big economic improvement to reduce resistance.

 

[KarmaPolice]

Problem is, open-cast mining was generally not viable for the seams currently being worked. However, the level of mechanisation was terrible; Orwell recorded in his Road To Wigan Pier notes talking to a miner who said he'd worked in a German coal-mine which was more modern than his current one. During the Great War. It was generally accepted at the time and since that the vast majority of the coal industry was too fragmented and under-capitalised. Dragooning the owners into several larger groups [perhaps based geographically by coalfield] and then getting them some cheap credit for modernisation might be worth it.

Except there's one problem - British coal is generally uneconomic. Many fields weren't working at full stretch even during winter. What's the point expanding capacity if you can't sell your current output?

You can reduce the resistance by creating alternate jobs.

Job losses tend to be resisted more if there is not alternate employment available. So it depends on if the economic improvements can create further jobs. In Lancashire for example there was two main industrial employers (cotton and coal). Cotton was shedding jobs through the interwar era. If coal is also shedding jobs people will go crazy.

We need a big economic improvement to reduce resistance.

First off, really difficult to do. Many places in the UK were 'monotowns' - dominated by one industry. Just like Nottingham was footwear, Sheffield was cutlery and small blades, Jarrow shipbulding and so on. One industry dies, the whole place does - often what 'other' industries existed, they were there to support the primary industry.

Yes, cotton and coal was important in Lancashire; but not in the same places. Each town was one or the other [or occasionally, a third industry]. Plus, working in a mine is completely different to working in a cotton-mill.

 

[marathag]

If coal is also shedding jobs people will go crazy.

'Join the Army Construction Corps! Same pay as digging, but doing construction all.over the United Kingdom-Sign up Now!'

 

[marathag]

Except there's one problem - British coal is generally uneconomic. Many fields weren't working at full stretch even during winter. What's the point expanding capacity if you can't sell your current output?

Due to high cost of tunnel deep mining. Postwar, UK had no problem selling Coal again, since it was pit mining done by 'Sunshine Miners'

 

[michael1]

British warships cheaper according to my copy of Jane's Fighting Ships 1939. However, American warships might have been better, e.g. welded hulls, more advanced machinery, AC electrical systems, the 5" DP gun in its various forms and more accurate AA fire control systems. The greater sophistication may be a reason for their greater cost.

Also the Americans had different requirements for their ships and that might account for some of the cost differences.

US costs for most things were higher than British costs during the period if using actual exchange rates to compare prices. Two main reasons, firstly higher US tariffs meant that even if tradable goods were cheaper in the UK they wouldn't exert downward pressure on US prices since the tariffs roughly equalized prices. Secondly, US productivity was higher, which lead to higher US wages (reinforcing the tariff effect on US wages) and so US prices for non-tradables were higher than UK prices, and non-tradable intermediate goods form a significant share of the cost of final goods.

Apparently an approximate deflator the UK applied to lend lease goods to compare with UK costs was a factor of 5 rather than the exchange rate of 4, representing the higher costs of US goods (a source escapes me right now).

Of course it's also possible that higher US costs reflect higher quality ships and different requirements, I make no comment on this. It's also possible that US production methods made small production runs expensive relative to UK production methods. I'm not entirely talking about production line techniques but rather to the skill mixture of the workforce. The UK workforce, especially in shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing, tended to have lots of on the job training, making them highly adaptable and suitable for short production runs at the cost of a lack of standardization of the final product. The US workforce tended to have less job specific training/experience, hence be more suited to following a standardized set of instructions, which would really payoff the longer the production run.

 

[KarmaPolice]

Due to high cost of tunnel deep mining. Postwar, UK had no problem selling Coal again, since it was pit mining done by 'Sunshine Miners'

Or, more likely a combination of the closure of the most uneconomic mines, increased mechanisation, restored demand for coal and a stronger general economy. No private business could make investment decisions on the possibility that in the future the nation may be fighting for it's life and need every ton of the black stuff regardless of price, any more that the Soviet planners could make a Five-Year-Plan on the assumption that enemy forces would be occupying the Ukraine.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

bump

Post 118 on Page 6 bumped.

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.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

This is a crude calculation, but it's the best that I can do.

 

[edgeworthy]

Mechanisation of the coal industry would be useful but I wonder if it would be resisted in the face of potential job losses.

Also on the plus side my paternal Grandfather might not die of Black Lung.

 

[Crowbar Six]

No they couldn't because destroyers that large were prohibited by the First London Naval Treaty and even if they were legal they'd eat into the British Commonwealths destroyer tonnage quota like locusts.

Super destroyers weren't the Royal Navy's style for the good reasons that they couldn't be built in numbers and didn't suite the its requirements. They couldn't do a lot of things that proper cruisers could do and that includes the Arethusa class could do.

I'm not a fan of the Arethusas or their successors the Dido class. However, they were adequate ships that did their job and the Royal Navy needed a large number of adequate ships instead of a few "super ships".

Precisely, the enemy of the good is the better. Better to have a ship that ticks most of the boxes now, rather than something that ticks all of them later and has glitter too, but is too expensive or slow to build in numbers.

 

[Crowbar Six]

Also on the plus side my paternal Grandfather might not die of Black Lung.

Some of the high quality steam coal reserves in the UK at the time were in very narrow seams which had to be worked manually. If you use mechanised recovery methods that make some of those reserves unrecoverable, they were only economically viable as worker wages were so low at the time.