Is this enough budget to start developing a new way to power ships using the splitting of atoms and have it ready by 1927?
Nowhere near and that would have to be a national endeavour with all hands on the pumps for that.
Optimize the RN for WWII
- Thread starter Spencersj345.346
- Start date
Nowhere near and that would have to be a national endeavour with all hands on the pumps for that.
The FAA was not just limited by the RAF training all of their pilots and advising on aircraft. It was also limited to only those assets that could go on a ship. This means it had very few aircraft spares, a limited supply system (one warehouse IIRC), no bases to train from, no infrastructure support of any kind outside of what the RAF let them use. These were serious handicaps in the massive wartime expansion. Keeping Coastal Command with the Navy does not just improve Coastal Command (though it may well do that), it also basically fixes all of these issues at a stroke, making the FAA (or RNAS if you want to bring that back) a more complete, more resilient and more efficient organization all around.
A few thousand 50’ tall Royal Marines would definitely be useful….
I might be having one of my blond moments but do you mean UP? I though RP was the air-to-ground rocket.
IIRC it was developed by the Army in the late 1930s in the first place and they were only adopted by the Army & RN because there was a shortage of anti-aircraft guns which ITTL won't be as severe.
OR
I might go to the Fifth Sea Lord and the liaison officer from the Air Ministry and say, "What if we sling some of these under the wings of an aeroplane?"
AND/OR
I might think, "What if I used these to fire an anti-submarine weapon?"
More of them, and restore the Royal Marines Artillery. The 63rd (Royal Navy) Division will rise again.
Re the discussion about improving the Royal Marines... Captain Hurricane?
Royal Marines after having successfully overturned a trio of p.1000 Rattes, Rhine frontier, 1946.
Driftless
Donor
Basically, building plans should allow for simultaneous (or overlapping times) of conflict across the globe. Even with one hot war going on one front and a cold war going on another, the RN would need to project across the globe. No other navy needed to cover every major body of saltwater like the RN, so plenty of long endurance ships (range and accomodation) and plenty of basing facilities. Even with the US needing to cover both the vast Atlantic and Pacific, that's still not including the Med and Indian Oceans, or even much of the South Atlantic, and certainly not the North and Norwegian Seas, during the interwar period.
A mass of light AA weapons is needed anyway. So I'd go for a high-velocity pom-pom ASAP, and move to the Bofors when it is ready, it was a better weapon.
RN will need to have a good, hard look at their veritable flood of cannons between 3in and 4.7in, and make the reduction in calibres there.
Yeah the RN should basically go "we want the http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_4-45_mk16.php as our heavy AA gun on cruisers and as a destroyer armament. and for fleet destroyers and battleship secondaries/carrier armament we want the http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_45-45_mk1.php without fixed ammunition and the mounts for destroyers, either single or double MUST have a HA fire capacity."
To avoid the dance of the calibers, also you want to have basically two different designs of mounts for each gun, a single and dual mount, and this is then a common universal mount and if the design is altered the whole lot can be updated to features the changes instead of having tons of different types of turrets.
You could put the 4.7 on the next gen AA cruisers, IE the Dido analogue, but you make sure that the turrets are all fitted with powered loading and ramming and you have a mock up turret with guns and everything and you run tests on ALL these mounts as if under attack etc and listen to the crews feedback about the mounts.
Use the Iron duke for this role as a training ship, and you have the FAA and RAF 'attack' her during these tests to see what works, and what does not.
But by standardising as much as you can, you want to reduce the logistical footprint of the classes of ships you're putting into service.
To avoid the dance of the calibers, also you want to have basically two different designs of mounts for each gun, a single and dual mount, and this is then a common universal mount and if the design is altered the whole lot can be updated to features the changes instead of having tons of different types of turrets.
You could put the 4.7 on the next gen AA cruisers, IE the Dido analogue, but you make sure that the turrets are all fitted with powered loading and ramming and you have a mock up turret with guns and everything and you run tests on ALL these mounts as if under attack etc and listen to the crews feedback about the mounts.
Use the Iron duke for this role as a training ship, and you have the FAA and RAF 'attack' her during these tests to see what works, and what does not.
But by standardising as much as you can, you want to reduce the logistical footprint of the classes of ships you're putting into service.
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And also avoid spreading design resources too thin, which was a big reason the KGV turrets were so problematic.
Probably can build more counties pre LNT and ditch the Yorks as a idea with the bigger budget as well. Probably no where near the 40 Counties the RN originally wanted but ca. at least get a few more....albeit definitely not getting more than 20 laid down pre 1st LNT I suspect
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Driftless
Donor
A passing thought: Two heavies and any combo of light cruisers in the Graf Spee battle.
Another passing thought: another heavy at Denmark Strait?
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I don't know. The RN, as noted by others, has global trade protection responsibilities. Pretty much by definition, they will always have a shortage of cruisers relative to missions where a cruiser would be useful. An extra 10-15% in budget authority for a decade solves a lot of problems but it does not solve the fundamental scope of mission relative to requirements. The RN will look at their mission set and resources and likely decide that minimalist trade protection cruisers of a given type might still be desirable to save on construction, manning and operational costs if that gives them a couple of extra hulls every two or three years in a building cycle. There is a place for Yorks and Aresthustras --- perhaps there is a place for a York +500 tons in survivability and habitability enhancements compared to OTL along with American boiler additives but the RN has as much a need for quantity (as long as it meets thresholds for quality) as it does for quality in each individual unit.
To be fair if the RN had had its way they would have gone ham on the Counties in the 20s. That being said could perhaps see them still building the Yorks and closer to the orginally planned class of 7(maybe 4 get built?)under the circumstances of my OP along with at least the 3 counties they ordered but canceled due to the OTL LNT. As for the Artheusas not that sure they were the best idea but if nothing else I suppose their hull design did majorly influence the Didos....
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marathag
Banned
Use this excuse
'The climate control is for the benefit of the new, expensive and delicate electronics system, not the Operators'
That's the blunt explanation used for the new USN Fleet boats and new electro-mechanical TDC for A/C instalation to keep condensation at bay
The Arethusa's were perfectly good convoy escorts and patrol cruisers, they had good range and were quite tough little things, and if I had to choose between sending a C/D or a 'Theusa, i'd send the more modern ship.
I think the RN was served well by the counties and didn't really need 40 of them. What it really needed was gobs and gobs of light cruisers and ideally what we could do in this is replace those old C and D type ships, with either more Leanders or hold off and get as many TotallynotaColonyclass into service.
HMS Cumberland could have been at River Plate with a very minor POD. She was at the Falklands self-overhauling her engines IOTL.
Not everything can carry an octuple pompom. You need these smaller mounts. It took years of war to get credible weapons onto the smaller ships of the fleet.