Alternate warships of nations

McPherson

Banned
Just to comment on the cartoon illustration and premise.

1. The bomb is too small.
2. Any idea that the hypothetical bomb would detonate sympathetically once the American torpedo sets off the fires and detonation chain that will explode the aft main magazine is not likely to happen. Maybe a fizzle.
 
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Luftwaffe 1946, Issue No.2
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Luftwaffe 1946, Volume 2, Issue No.5
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Luftwaffe 1946, Issue No.3
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
This is a DISCUSSION Board. That requires text, in fact it almost exclusively requires text. In this part of the Board, with a rare exception, there should be a two or three PARAGRAPHS of text to single image ratio.
 

McPherson

Banned
Start point.

NIK7045__05614.1410676981.1280.1280__86657.1427058341.jpg


1/700 Niko Model US Navy Battleships USS Iowa, 1898 Resin ...

Result of modifications. (Work mine.)

USS-IOWA-1898.png


What is going on here?

The base model is the 1898 Iowa which was a ~13,000 tonne full load battleship of 1895 vintage with very poor seakeeping, unbalanced and poorly designed main barbette armament and troublesome engines.

How was I going to get something American useful out to the Canary Islands with the crappy American technology extant, face-off against a German-Spanish squadron in an ATL and wargame it? (THIS ^^^) is what I came up with.

Based off Wiki

General characteristics
Type:Pre-dreadnought battleship
Displacement:
  • Design: 14,410 long tons (14641.24 tm)
  • Full load: 15,647 long tons (15898.09tm)
Length:
  • 460 ft (140.1 m) (lwl)
  • 162 ft 6 in (141.49 m)(loa)
Beam:72 ft 3 in (22.02 m)
Draft:24 ft (7.3 m)
Installed power:
  • 12 × small-tube B & W boilers
  • 17,000 ihp (12,677 kW)
Propulsion:
Speed:18 kn (33 km/h; 20.7 mph)
Range:5,140 nmi (9,520 km; 5,920 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:
  • 36 officers
  • 540 enlisted men
Armament:
Armor:

The logic is straightforward. The main armament is a mixed battery of large and medium bore guns designed to mask the Americans lack of a good medium bore size and caliber quick fire gun at this time. The hull is modified because the powerplant is long and heavy and low in the hull, with the electric motors under the after turrets near the screws and the rudder. Seakeeping and stability on a 5.15 x 2.9 LBD ratio is horrible. 6.5 x 2.9 LBD is actually much better, though she is still wet and a roller.

That ship shows up off Santa Cruz de Teneriffe in an ATL and Admiral Eduard von Knorr is going to think twice about it.
 
3 main turrets on a pre-dreadnought? Has that ever been actually tried? Because from what I know all pre-dreadnoughts had only two main turrets.
 
I love the model. It still looks like they should have carried the forecastle deck about 100' further after so they could superpose the rear turrets, but I guess that would do bad things to the stability. One question - why are your 1890s American designers/shipbuilders working in metric? I don't think the OTL US had any metric-calibre guns in that period.

The German Brandenburg class had three main turrets, but the midships one carried the same calibre but shorter main guns.
The Germans don't seem to have been particularly happy with the Brandenburgs. They built them with 6x9.4" and a very light secondary armament - I guess that middle turret ate up a lot of the midships space - but for the next two classes they dropped the main armament to 4x9.4" but added a very heavy secondary armament of 18x5.9". Then they went to 11" for the main armament but kept the heavy secondary battery (14x6.7").
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
The Germans don't seem to have been particularly happy with the Brandenburgs. They built them with 6x9.4" and a very light secondary armament - I guess that middle turret ate up a lot of the midships space - but for the next two classes they dropped the main armament to 4x9.4" but added a very heavy secondary armament of 18x5.9". Then they went to 11" for the main armament but kept the heavy secondary battery (14x6.7").

No, they weren't happy. Tried to offload all four class members to the Ottoman Empire, succeeded with the two in best condition.
 
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