wouldn t replace battleships just use them to slow the opposition down so the big boys could finish them off.That was the plan in OTL there was never enough planes to do a proper job.And yes you could do it shortly after 1922 by replacing the inefficient carriers with ones with a larger air group.
AHC/WI: Faster Nelson class?
- Thread starter USS_Ward
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You can also argue that the Grand Fleet's Battleships did the job they were built for by scaring the Germans into hiding in port for most of the War and you can't shoot at someone who won't come out and fight.
They did come out at least twice within 6 months of Jutland
In August 1916, Scheer tried a repeat of the plan to lure part of the Grand Fleet into a trap.
Again thanks to signals intelligence, the Grand Fleet knew the HSF was at sea but the HSF had no idea the GF was as its scouting subs and Zeppelins had missed the GF's departure.
The two fleets were about an hours steaming apart when an incorrect sighting report from Zeppelin L13 sent Scheer off away from the GF.
The GF had 29 Battleships and 6 Battlecruisers vs the HSF 18 Battleships and 2 Battlecruisers and IIRC, the point of contact would have put the HSF further away from home than at Jutland.
The RN BCF and Main BF were linked by a cruiser line allowing visual passage of signals while Hipper and Scheer had to rely on wireless, which was being intercepted by Room 40.
Hercules had Campania’s balloon up but Hercules was at the rear of the RN formation – Beatty is supposed to have said ‘the balloon should have been flown from a ship in the advance cruiser line to increase the range of vision ahead of the fleet. Had the balloon been well forward during the operations. I am of the opinion that the enemy might possibly have been sighted’.
Scheer also looked at another operation the following month but was put off by bad weather which would have hampered Zeppelin ops and wanted to try again even after that but had his U-boats assigned to attacking MV's rather than used as scouts and he was convinced he needed U-boat scouts for any operation to succeed.
Even as late as April 1918, parts of the German fleet attempted to make an attack on a Scandinavia – UK convoy that was being covered by the 2nd Battlecruiser squadron and the 7th Light Cruiser Squadron.
The battlecruisers of the 1st Scouting Group and the 1st, 3rd and 4th Dreadnought squadrons plus two light cruiser and 4 destroyer flotillas all managed to leave harbour without the Admiralty finding out and it was only radio messages following the breakdown of Moltke that alerted them.
Hipper and Scheer failed to find the convoy and the Grand Fleet (31 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 2 cruisers, 22 light cruisers and 85 destroyers failed to make contact with the Hipper or Scheer.
As an expert on the naval budget of the time you must, of course, know about the 1920 CID committee on naval expenditure. Given the ruckus that had caused, how do you think throwing even more money around would have gone down just a year or so later?
I find this stuff interesting, so I did some digging and can't see where on earth the money to build new carriers to replace four new carriers will ome from. In 1922, just after the British taxpayer had just paid for the biggest fleet in history, followed by paying for the biggest war in history, almost no one in the navy or the government was going to even think of spending about some 7 million plus to replace three brand-new carriers and one just a few years old.
This was the time when the UK was straining to pay off a vast war debt. The very first candidate of the Anti Waste Movement had won a seat in Parliament in what was normally a very safe government seat, and was soon followed by more politicians elected on the platform of cutting spending. The Geddes Committee called for the naval estimates to be cut by almost 25%. Where on earth would the navy find extra funding for new carriers to replace brand-new carriers when it was facing a 25% funding cut?
After all, 7 million pounds was a huge amount at the time. In that era, the British spend about 9 million pounds a year on roads, a bit over 1 million on the universities, 25 million on aged pensions, 60 million on education, and 15 million on police and prisons. So where does one find the 7 million? Do you cut the vast majority of road spending? Do you tell the aged pensioners that they will lose over a quarter of their money? Do you slash police by 50%? This is not petty cash, and those who would bear the cost had miserable standards of living compared to what we have.
Secondly, who on earth would scrap new carriers and build newer ones when there had only been about 100 landings ona flat top in history (depending on exactly when the new designs kick off) and therefore no one knew whether carriers would work properly, or how to design one properly? The entire world of flat-top use, flying, handling and design was basically brand new - what expertise had been built up to allow the designers to create newer and better ships?
If designers could create better ships in 1922 with almost no experience, then why didn't they design better ships in about 1919? The 100 or so landings on Eagle had taught them a bit, but there an incredible amount to learn - for example the lead pilot wanted the island to be removed but the ship's officers wanted it kept on, and history proved them right. Do you really think that fewer than 125 landings is enough to teach designers how to build vastly better carriers?
We can see what would have happened if new carriers were designed around 1922 by looking at what happened. There were 13 carriers designed or completed in the 1920s; Hermes, Eagle, Furious, Courageous, Glorious, Lexington, Saratoga, Langley, Ranger, Hosho, Kaga, Akagi, and Bearne . Let's assume that a hypothetical British carrier designed around 1921 to replace the "experiments" would have had the same chance of having problematic features as the other early/mid '20s carriers did. In that case, there's;
1- a very high chance she'd be too small to operate as an efficient fleet carrier in WW2 (all the purpose-built '20s carriers were too small for the '40s, as was the original design for the original cancelled design that was to be known as Shokaku);
2- a 90+% chance she'd have an artifically short or out-of-level flight deck because of subsidiary bow flight decks or lower-deck catapults, a hump or slope, or a pointed flight deck (as in Furious, Eagle, Saragota, Lexington, Courageous, Glorious, Hermes, Kaga, Akagi, Bearn, Eagle and arguably Ranger ) which became inefficient when aircraft became heavier;
3- a probability of 50+% that she'd have no island (Kaga, Akagi, Hosho, Langley and Ranger as designed, Furious as initially rebuilt, and as recommended by Samson for Eagle after her first trials);
4- a 70% chance she'd had a lot of space and weight devoted to low-angle guns (like Hermes, Furious, Eagle, Hosho, Lexington, Saratoga, Akagi, Kaga, and Bearn);
5 - a probability of about 54% that she'd have a problematic no-funnel arrangement (as in Furious, Hosho, Akagi, Kaga, Langley, and Ranger);
6- a very high chance that the flight deck would be compromised to allow for seaplanes or other spotters (Berne, Hermes, Ranger);
7- a very, very high chance that she'd have no catapults.
And of course in reality the chances of a poor design would be much higher, because all of the 1920s carriers bar Hosho and Langley were completed to designs that used the experience of the trials in Eagle (before her actual completion), Langley, Hosho, etc.
No one in the RN was going to build new carriers around the time the Nelrods were designed because they'd barely started using the experimental ones. Scrapping four experimental ships to just build new experimental ones was not going to happen, for very good reasons.
May one ask how much deck landing and carrier design experience you have?
Maybe the anti-waste movement focuses selling colonial possessions in the Americas to the US to bring down war debt.
Hope this is not going to be too far off topic, but both your calculation methods explained above got me tantalizing close to something i've been trying to find out for a long time, namely the speed of the Nagatos if re-engined with more powerful turbines. Someone said there were plans to give them turbines like Kaga's at 127,000 HP, and on japanese wiki says that planned speed was over 29kts. However to me at least it's not clear if this speed is for the unbulged and otherwise not uparmoured hull, or it's for the fully bulged and uparmoured hull.
Going by Shlock's method i.e. dubling the power for every 4 knots, increasing the power from 82,000 to 127,000 HP gets a fully bulged and uparmoured Nagato from 25 to just over 27 knots.
Going by ArtosStark's method the figures indeed show that 29 kts can be done on 127,000HP (though it kinda looks too good to be true as i'll try to explain below).
But which of the above methods is the most accurate?
The HP ratio for Nagato's machinery is about 27 HP/ton, modernized machinery (but not uprated, still at 82,000HP) weight was 3000 tons. If the same ratio applies to the uprated 127,000 HP machinery the weight goes to something like 4600 tons which seems way too high? Another poster i think said, if i understand correctly, that another 1600 or so tons would go on towards increased protection and/or hull alterations for the extra machinery, so a fully re-engined Nagato would be something like 42,000 tons up from 39,000 tons (already 7000 tons more than the original Nagato) , and presumably speed would be back down a knot, say 28kts, or my reasoning is completely wrong?
Regretably i could never find info on modernized Kaga's machinery weight. Also, after Kaga's modernization, due to the massive displacement increase of over 8000 tons, bulges etc. speed only increased to 28,3 from 27,5 knots. Based on this aspect, it does seem to me that a 27 kts plus speed for a fully re-engined and modernized Nagato is more realistic, or again my reasoning is wrong?
Thanks for any input/ corrections etc.
They don't have to replace the carriers right away - they can muddle through with what they have - but come the late 20s or early 30s they will have a superb design or group of designs and then repurpose the old ones.
Also building better carriers 'now' allows other nations to 'learn' as well once they see what the British have built like HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible led to other navy's building 'Dreadnought battleships' and 'Battlecruisers' very quickly.
What is important is that the British manage the treaties to allow such future carriers to be built
Arguably they did that. References to the failure to scrap and replace the experimental carriers are endless around here. Just because they could do something doesn't mean they can or will.
So apparently there was a proposed refit pre-war (that didn't happen cuz said war) in which the NelRods would have gotten their refit
"....A complete reconstruction design was ordered in 1938, which included :
Replacement of belt armour, which involved ripping out the internal belts and replacing them with external belts (14" over magazine, 13" over machinery) as in the King George V class to protect against diving shells
The addition of 6 twin 5.25" mounts
Replacement of machinery. New machinery would offer more power and take up less space and weight. It was expected that the Nelson would achieve 25,5 knots at 36,000 tons displacement, which was considered to be the new standard displacement of the ships.
Replacement of bridge. The heavily armoured conning tower would be replaced with a less armoured one, and new bridge will be installed.
Addition of aircraft arrangement. There was no hope of fitting them with the desired cross deck catapults as in the King George V, so this was considered to be of questionable value
Removal of torpedo tubes...."
from:
"....A complete reconstruction design was ordered in 1938, which included :
Replacement of belt armour, which involved ripping out the internal belts and replacing them with external belts (14" over magazine, 13" over machinery) as in the King George V class to protect against diving shells
The addition of 6 twin 5.25" mounts
Replacement of machinery. New machinery would offer more power and take up less space and weight. It was expected that the Nelson would achieve 25,5 knots at 36,000 tons displacement, which was considered to be the new standard displacement of the ships.
Replacement of bridge. The heavily armoured conning tower would be replaced with a less armoured one, and new bridge will be installed.
Addition of aircraft arrangement. There was no hope of fitting them with the desired cross deck catapults as in the King George V, so this was considered to be of questionable value
Removal of torpedo tubes...."
from:
Apparently I missed this the first time round. The method I use is based on the rule of thumb often found in Marine engineering texts (here is one if you want to check it out,https://www.usna.edu/NAOE/_files/documents/Courses/EN400/02.07 Chapter 7.pdf )
Basically that the power required to move a ship increases by the cube of the speed. So to double the speed you require roughly 8 times the power. Therefore cubing the ratio of speeds will roughly give you the required increase in power.
However, this is a simplified equation, that ignores the increased resistance from increased weight, changed balance or dimensional changes to the ship. So it tends to be a bit on the light side. That said, I tend to find the double the power for every 4 knots rule a little heavy and a little rigid. If I am looking for better numbers sometimes I will put the ratio of speed to a factor of 3.5 instead of 3. That tends to put me somewhere in the middle between the two methods.
The cubic rule works best for upgrading with new, high-pressure boilers and lighter machinery in the original hull profile. Any increase in displacement, and thereby draught, will increase drag. There is also a critical threshold, proportional to the square root of the waterline length, which limits the speed of any immersed vessel. Only by planing can shorter speedboats achieve their higher speeds.
The transom stern on the G3 allowed the longest possible waterline length whilst still permitting access to existing infrastructure by taking around 25' off the length of the usual cruiser stern.
The transom stern on the G3 allowed the longest possible waterline length whilst still permitting access to existing infrastructure by taking around 25' off the length of the usual cruiser stern.
Many thanks for your input ArtosStark. Probably the document above is above my head, i'm bad with complicated numbers and formulas unfortunately! But if i may ask, based on your method, do you mean that a Nagato with 127,000 HP would be faster or slower than the conservative 27 kts using the doubling the power for every 4 kts method? What kind of speed you get according to your calculations?
If I am being more conservative and going for a factor of 3.5 instead of 3 I would get 28 knots.