Alternate ship designs: Bismarck

[Shadow Master]

Ah! New comers welcome, and thanks for choosing to participate in the discussion.

How on earth are you going to get forward firing turrets on there?

I'm not!

Do I see a pun in there?
I Like the design but..
quad turrets? the germans might have some problems with these..
if DS still happens, i cant see it ending well for her, a turret knocked out and thats half her firepower gone
i know the purpose of the ship is for commerce raiding only, but you have to take into account that ships will be out looking for her.
As for the secondry turrets, have them spread equally. the 5.9 inch gun was an excellent weapon
i like the semi carrier idea, what planes are you planning to have on her?

OMG! If I read your first line correctly, I had not even thought of that, lol. +1 for the humor.

I agree, the quads are not something OTL Germany is going to have any experience with, and even this ATL Germany is likely to not have any previous quad turret experience before this class, unless we use this template for the Deutschland and Scharnahorst classes, meaning a pair of stern quads, but that is for a different thread.

When I read up on the DS, it struck me as odd that the RN choose to restrict themselves to a headlong charge to avoid the risk of plunging fire hitting HMS Hood (and look how that turned out), and thus restricting themselves to fire from just 10 heavy guns. And of course, then they turned to unmask their stern batteries and giving the Germans a warm welcome from all 18 guns, fate stuck its bad finger in and...

What got me was, if you are Germany, and you went to all the trouble of building a Battleship faster than pretty much anything the RN can throw at you (30 kts), why leave 1/2 of your main battery in the bow, and thus either force you to unmask your forward firepower (and thus loose some of that hard won speed), or only be able to use half your main battery while out running your slower persuers. My design allows for both the maximum speed and maximum firepower to be brought to bear, while obeying the standing orders to not engage enemy capitol ships unless impossible to avoid them. At DS, the Germans had the advantage of turning slightly to starboard, and thus forcing the HMS Hood and HMS PoW to come in headlong, so were facing 8 15" modern German guns with only 4 older 15" guns, with a markedly inferior ROF, and 6 14" modern British guns.

Keeping in mind, that two quads allow for a shorter/thicker armored citadel, and that the ATL Bismarck shown has a much greater seperation of her turrets than OTL, and the risk of loosing a turret, while always present, is at least as mitigated as possible without going all "Richelieu style" turret seperation.

I am going to dispense with the 5.9" guns, as their limited ROF and greater deckspace requirements than those of the smaller guns would IMO be a liability, especially in reguard to AAA volume of fire. They might be better hitting and killing DD's, but even there, more smaller guns, each with 2-3 times the rate of fire of their larger cousins, means a greater number of hits. I just have not got my mind around the total number of secondary guns to put on, nor how to situate them for best effects.

Normally, I would want an aircraft hangar/catapults/cranes to be at the stern of a ship, as that just seems a better layout and easier to work, but the whole premise of the ATL class is built around the concept of maximum firepower, while using maximum speed to get out of range. Having a catapult deck, well above the waterline, should allow for launching aircraft in all but the most heavy seas. Recovery, however, is another matter.

As for the ATL aircraft, I wanted to go with a notional twin engined aircraft, that had a two row layout in it's engine design. As it turns out, the BMW 132 in the OTL Arado Ar-196's already have an equivalent to just about what I was looking for, and that is the BMW 801. You can find that thread HERE. I am calling the notional twin engined aircraft an Arado Ar-296. Not sure yet on the airwing complement composition, but that is for the other thead, as well.

Anyway, I think that I have to abandon the TED for this ships design, as size and weight seem prohibitive, to say nothing of reliability, but I will try to upgrade to the 4 shaft design suggested up thread.

Thanks again guys for the responses!

Any secondary turret locations suggestions? I am currently attempting to look to:
Maximize stern firepower, or
Maximize forward port/starboard firing arcs, or
Maximizing number of guns, over either forward arc or stern fire.

 

[Hood]

interesting..certainly a good argument for them..
what if a british BB/BC crossed the T? In the initial stages of a battle, valuable time would be lost in turning the ship, while the enemy blasts away, until it finds the range..
Denmark strait was a serious mix of luck, bad info and seriously bad look for the Hood, and the british.
Tovey was going to tell Holland to put POW in front, but didnt want to interfere...
also Hoods Dreyer V fire control table was much less accurate for a ship the was angled of turning
plus the fact that Prinz Eugen had been put in front of bismarck..
ultimately Holland had misjudged. He believed the germans were further away than they actually were.
if everything had gone to plan Hood and POw would have crossed the T, Norfolk and Suffolk would then take on PE, while Lutzens faced 18 guns of the british.
anyway..

you could have 9 15 inch guns in Triple turrets, one forward two aft..

 

[Aber]

Ah! New comers welcome, and thanks for choosing to participate in the discussion.

I'm not!

I understand your argument for no main battery forward, but in the last diagrams posted, given the size of the hanger I can't see where you will put any secondary or AA batteries to cover the forward arc. If there is even a destroyer in front of you firing unimpeded, you will have to yaw to drive it off slowing you down if there are other ships chasing you.

 

[CV12Hornet]

If you need a twin turret design for the DP 128mm, the page in the link has a picture of a planned DD with DP twin.
http://navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_5-45_skc41.htm

 

[Shadow Master]

Ok

If you need a twin turret design for the DP 128mm, the page in the link has a picture of a planned DD with DP twin.
http://navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_5-45_skc41.htm.

Thanks. My main problem was trying to get a turret to scale, and after many a frustrating moment, I decided to just shrink down the OTL 5.9" turret to 70% in an attempt to get a turret of about (I hope) the right size, and then start throwing out possible layouts.

So, if the turret seems to big or small for twin 12,8cm guns, let me know right quick. Otherwise, please, feel free to pick a layout or (Even better) submit one of your own by just saving the pic, and then just using copy and paste, and repost using imgur.

So here is a triple ship section, and their are layouts on both top and bottom in each section. I have no idea what to do with the layout, and probably all of my initial 6 are garbage, but with help from the forum community hopefully we can get this done by next week sometime.

So in the first section, the top shows 2 pairs of superimposed turrets, with the middle one superfiring above the outer one. On the bottom, only one turret is superfiring, but up to three of them can fire stern on.

In the second section, again with the two pairs of superfiring turrets, but in this case all can fire dead astern, but with quite restricted forward firing as a result. On the bottom, only the stern most pair are superfiring, and the forward pair is a bit further forward, to provide a somewhat better field of forward firing arcs for the stern pair.

In the third section, I added a fifth turret to the top layout, and in the bottom I just tried a 4 turret layout. If you need the section and turret source images, let me know I and I can post them so you can make your own layout designs.

Anyway, none of these initial attempts will likely be selected, but as a starting point, we should be able to get these to give an idea, and get the discussion rolling.

Any thoughts?

 

[HMS Warspite]

My suggestion is to put all secondaries on a raides upperdeck, just to keep them high and dry, besides providing better AA rle aabilities when higher up. Secondly, the mountings could be placed as in refitted Renown and Queen Elizabeth class ships all on the same level and all in line, opposed to a stepped form the USN favoured, but resulted in taller ammunitionhoists. Also move the mountigns a bit insde opposed to the extreme sides, to allow more indirect protection, rather than just on the extreme flanks of teh hull, intervering with the internal defenses as well. The Original possitioning of the Bismark heavy AA was good enough, so a fith mounting on each side, where the Original had a catapult is easy to be done then.

 

[Shadow Master]

Not sure which section you are referring to here. IOTL, the Biamarck class had 3 twin 15cm turrets per beam as well as 4 twin 10,5cm turrets one deck higher.

Here is an OTL midsection for comparison:

The red and purple turrets are for the secondary armaments, while the green aircraft cranes are also shown.

As we can see in the OTL, the 4.1" purple turrets are indeed mounted higher up than the 5.9" red turrets. Unfortunately these two drawings are not to the same scale, but I would poing out that the ATL class has only the space between the OTL catapult, and the front of the superstructure to work with. The notional twin 5" turrets will surely be smaller than the OTL 5.9" turrets, but by how much?
Also in the image above, if you look closely, we can see how the Germans had at least 4 levels of guns. Look between the forward two purple turrets, and there are two pair of twin guns (Not sure they are the same type, but two are clearly under the others) and this is the best demonstration of what I hope to achieve, and that is a secondary battery with a two tierd AA battery gallery above them.

 

[HMS Warspite]

Not sure which section you are referring to here. IOTL, the Biamarck class had 3 twin 15cm turrets per beam as well as 4 twin 10,5cm turrets one deck higher.

Here is an OTL midsection for comparison:

The red and purple turrets are for the secondary armaments, while the green aircraft cranes are also shown.

As we can see in the OTL, the 4.1" purple turrets are indeed mounted higher up than the 5.9" red turrets. Unfortunately these two drawings are not to the same scale, but I would poing out that the ATL class has only the space between the OTL catapult, and the front of the superstructure to work with. The notional twin 5" turrets will surely be smaller than the OTL 5.9" turrets, but by how much?
Also in the image above, if you look closely, we can see how the Germans had at least 4 levels of guns. Look between the forward two purple turrets, and there are two pair of twin guns (Not sure they are the same type, but two are clearly under the others) and this is the best demonstration of what I hope to achieve, and that is a secondary battery with a two tierd AA battery gallery above them.

Hi thereShhadow,

I was refering to the possitions of the Original 10.5CM FLAK guns, being raised one deck above the upperdeck of the ship, giving them a higher and more wheatherproff location, besides being more inboard from the side.
If the deck is build out as in contempary French ships, it will add more internal volume, besides making the available more space for small AA guns on the sides, just as on Richelieu and Dunkerque. It also enhances the ruggedness of the hull with an additional strengthdeck replacing the seperate superstructure shape of the Original Bismarck.

 

[Life In Black]

A friend asked me to post this here: http://forum.worldofwarships.com/in...rman-battleships-will-only-have-dual-turrets/

 

[Shadow Master]

Welcome to the thread!

A friend asked me to post this here: http://forum.worldofwarships.com/in...rman-battleships-will-only-have-dual-turrets/

I got to page 4 before I thought to see just how many pages there were, and as there were 10 more pages yet to go, I returned here with more reading to do.

About what I would expect, what with the ToV limiting things in Germany in OTL. Some other interesting things have come to light in the early days of this thread, let me go hunt up that link, as you may want to post it there, as well.

 

[Shadow Master]

I understand your argument for no main battery forward, but in the last diagrams posted, given the size of the hanger I can't see where you will put any secondary or AA batteries to cover the forward arc. If there is even a destroyer in front of you firing unimpeded, you will have to yaw to drive it off slowing you down if there are other ships chasing you.

I cannot see any way to get forward secondary firepower. I can see getting 15 degree off the bow firepower from the secondaries on either beam, but as you have pointed out, this leaves the Germans with a 30 degree blindspot directly in their path.
Once we can get a consensus for at least a couple three good secondary armament layoughts, I will be able to focus on the AA layought. For forward AA, I am looking at three positions where they could be mounted.

Do you have a couple picks of the 6 initial layoughts? Or even better, a layout proposal of your own?

 

[Shadow Master]

Here we go, this was posted way back in the early days of the thread, but I think that it tells an interesting tale, and yes, this is likely a result (At least in part) of the ToV.

Here. Courtesy of NHBL.

 

[HMS Warspite]

I cannot see any way to get forward secondary firepower. I can see getting 15 degree off the bow firepower from the secondaries on either beam, but as you have pointed out, this leaves the Germans with a 30 degree blindspot directly in their path.
Once we can get a consensus for at least a couple three good secondary armament layoughts, I will be able to focus on the AA layought. For forward AA, I am looking at three positions where they could be mounted.

Do you have a couple picks of the 6 initial layoughts? Or even better, a layout proposal of your own?

There is a simple solution for the missing forward arc, namely: Use the rudder and turn the ship a bit to open the ark of the side mounted secondaries. Only at very short range the forward arc becomes a problem then, though the enemy ship first needs to get that close.

Just an observation.

 

[Shadow Master]

There is a simple solution for the missing forward arc, namely: Use the rudder and turn the ship a bit to open the ark of the side mounted secondaries. Only at very short range the forward arc becomes a problem then, though the enemy ship first needs to get that close.

Just an observation.

Well said, and very true.

So, anybody want to try their own hand at posting images for the ATL secondary layout?

 

[HMS Warspite]

Well said, and very true.

So, anybody want to try their own hand at posting images for the ATL secondary layout?

There is a fujimoto design for a battleship with secodnary armament located at the bow: (see below)

Or this French Hybrid design for a "Croiseur de Combat", alternatively developped in the Dunkerque class battelship.