One advantage of poor turret arrangement is the lack of superfiring gus means that you can stick some AA on top of most of the turrets if you need to.
It's a relative upside I agree. Probably doesn't balance out your inability to mount guns along the sides like an all centerline arrangement.
I do think you could build up your superstructure in such a way to provide platforms for more AA, though not sure it would balance out your lack of space relative to other designs and near inability to mount an effective secondary battery.
Ditch the echelon turrets and use the freed up space for more DP secondaries and AA. Still has enough guns for prestige purposes [as capital units], shore bombardment, and occasionally swatting lesser ships. Since it wasn't going to to toe to toe with capital units but it's not as if they could do that with their full original guns anyway.
The trouble with the first generation Battlecruisers is that they were all rendered obsolete by the Queen Elizabeth class battleships. They're too slow to outrun them, to thinly armoured to resist their fire and too lightly armed to fight them. Yes with a lot of money they can raise the top speed by a couple of knots but that would be cancelled out by increasing the armour to give them even a barely adequate amount of armour. Even after modernisation the ship is only really good for showing the flag and coastal defence/bombardment. I'd stick to converting the ship to all oil firing, raising the maximum elevation of the main guns and giving it some AA guns and spend the rest of the available funds on modern destroyers and MTBs.
Thats really what I am asking, what could be done. Any navy which keeps such a thing around will not be wanting to take them up against anything like a proper battleship, though against a Kongo you may stand a chance. But they could ward off any cruiser they would come across, and thus would have a certain prestige. So what would the AA fit of such a refit look like?
40mm Bofors guns or 2lb Pom Poms on the turrets and spread around the weather deck were they're not hampering the main guns firing arcs.
It kinda doesn't. You need at least six guns for effective salvo fire. A Moltke could get away with that, but not any other en echelon battlecruiser.
That being said, removing one en echelon turret might be worth doing. You could still use the remaining one as an ersatz midships turret, retaining enough guns for effective salvo fire while freeing up more space.
The Japanese were able to mount twin 5" guns on platforms pretty high up on the superstructure. See Yamashiro:
On a related note, get Seydlitz. She's the fastest ship here and the best-armored, not just in thickness but in coverage. With a switch to oil firing and some lengethening you might be able to get her to 30 knots like the Kongos.
The politicians don't necessarily know that, and the admirals hopefully would be level headed enough to realize that since the main purpose of the ship is for prestige purposes in the navy of a minor power it's better off to convert her into something that's more useful for said navy instead of taking the dick waving seriously.
Even if it’s for prestige purposes if you’re spending gobs of money on it either way why not make it an effective ship. Removing the wing turrets would leave the 8-gun ships unable to bully 8” Washington cruisers.
And it’s the 1930s, you don’t need to ditch the wing turrets for an effective AA battery anyway, and you don’t have a good DP gun either. It’s a pointless extra cost that reduces capability.
Now I'm wondering what a hypothetical Lexington battlecruiser modernization from circa mid 1938 to late 1941 would look like...probably add a lot of armor if nothing else
I'm not sure a hull designed to move at 25 - 26 knots could be made to move that fast.
Assuming the hull doesn’t fracture you can make a 30,000 ton brick go 30 knots if you could shove enough power into it. The limitation is the reasonable size of power plant. The Invincible class would require a little over twice it’s installed power (41,000 shp to about 85-90,000 shp).
That’s probably beyond the reasonable restrictions of the machinery spaces even with 1930’s boilers and turbines.
You underestimate just how damn bulky those old coal-fired plants were. As an extreme example the South Dakota-class battleships had similar machinery weights to the New York class - and almost 5 times the shp.
With 1930s machinery tech doubling the installed horsepower is easy.
What was the navy thinking of size wise for the original South Carolina Dreadnought? I know 16000 was demanded by Congress but if she had none of those limits? Would she be Dreadnought size or 20,000?
BTW i love the original South Carolina as it showed ingenuity and looked modern, especially compared to Dreadnought while lighter
BTW i love the original South Carolina as it showed ingenuity and looked modern, especially compared to Dreadnought while lighter
More space and positions for lookouts, which in the era before radar is pretty important in getting the first shot off, and for a country expected to go in a war at a quantitative disadvantage it's something they really need.
It also gives the ships a "Japanese" look and is visually intimidating to potential enemies. (Before then Japanese ships looked British)
Not really a fair comparison. The New York’s had Triple Expansion Engines while the SD’s had double reduction geared turbines. Invincible had direct drive turbines while post war refits would be for single reduction geared turbines.
However, on investigation of the Queen Elizabeth Class it might be possible. Warspite lost 1400 tons of machinery weight (of an original total of 3950 tons) and went from 56,000 shp (75,000 shp on overload) to 80,000 shp nominal. IOW it went from 14.1 shp/ton to 31.4 shp/ton of machinery weight. Note that this ignores the nearly 50% overload potential of the QE’s original plant (I seem to recall the new plant might have had around 30% overload potential).
So at least on the basis of weight, rather than space, it might be possible. You would not likely be able to improve subdivision though, as the OTL QE’s were able to.
Hence why I said an “extreme” comparison.
Still, we have examples in the Japanese battleships, who nearly doubled their output, and the Italian rebuilds, which increased by 2.5 times the installed power while also reducing the size of the machinery spaces by going to a two-shaft arrangement and using the remaining space for a new TDS.