Alternate warships of nations

(^^^) Just following Mahan. He wanted the islands for the United States as part of the "Drive Across the Pacific"; which had replaced Manifest Destiny. Please understand that while he is my geo-strategist of record and choice, he was also an evil imperialist, no different than the other interlopers who raced around the world trying to impose their foreign values and political systems onto local inhabitants, who the imperialists thought needed to be taught religion and "good government", while being economically exploited for the privileges of learning the European or American or Japanese civilization being imposed on them by force.

If you want to know what kind of alternate warships would result from such a situation if Mahan had his way all the way?

The following source material started with DANFS prototype illustrations of the ships in grayscale but the work is 90% manipulated by me to produce the final illustrations of USS Maine, USS Texas and USS Brooklyn for my ATL. I am rather proud of the results.

USS-Texas-USS-Maine-4.png
(^^^) Just following Mahan. He wanted the islands for the United States as part of the "Drive Across the Pacific"; which had replaced Manifest Destiny. Please understand that while he is my geo-strategist of record and choice, he was also an evil imperialist, no different than the other interlopers who raced around the world trying to impose their foreign values and political systems onto local inhabitants, who the imperialists thought needed to be taught religion and "good government", while being economically exploited for the privileges of learning the European or American or Japanese civilization being imposed on them by force.

If you want to know what kind of alternate warships would result from such a situation if Mahan had his way all the way?

The following source material started with DANFS prototype illustrations of the ships in grayscale but the work is 90% manipulated by me to produce the final illustrations of USS Maine, USS Texas and USS Brooklyn for my ATL. I am rather proud of the results.

USS-Texas-USS-Maine-4.png
I like the drawings. I like the Texas better than the Maine. Maybe for the brighter color, and the stacks being closer to the center in Texas than Maine.

The extra turret on Brooklyn is a bold move. How much longer is her hull for the extra turret? This Brooklyn has double the main gun broadside of the later Pennsylvania armored cruisers. Does this Brooklyn eventually get refitted with the same new 8" guns that USS New York was refitted with?

This USN should get a sister-ship for Brooklyn. Can we also get wing main battery turrets on the Pennsylvanias and Tennessees?
 

McPherson

Banned
I like the drawings. I like the Texas better than the Maine. Maybe for the brighter color, and the stacks being closer to the center in Texas than Maine.

The extra turret on Brooklyn is a bold move. How much longer is her hull for the extra turret? This Brooklyn has double the main gun broadside of the later Pennsylvania armored cruisers. Does this Brooklyn eventually get refitted with the same new 8" guns that USS New York was refitted with?

This USN should get a sister-ship for Brooklyn. Can we also get wing main battery turrets on the Pennsylvanias and Tennessees?
Thank you. I prefer the Maine because the beam to length is a better ratio for seakeeping as far as the "cruiser" qualities. Aesthetically I am not as concerned about funnel placement as i am about the weight distribution over the hull sausage. (hull flotation). Based on the Ericsson style flatbed steam engines and final electric drives, I think Maine is a better balanced design.

Brooklyn is 137.3 meters at the waterline or about 450.5 feet. And yes, she gets the new 20cmL40 BLNR type rifles of the ATL New York (Saratoga) which is her sister ship.

Pennsylvania and Tennessee... have not decided. Might be Brooklyn repeats with improved engines and higher speeds. Just depends how the war gaming goes against the Germans in 1900.
 
The Coast Defence Battleship HMCS Ottawa joins the Great Lakes Defence squadron in May 1867 during a period of high tensions after the Fenian Brotherhood's attempts to invade Canada and privateer raids on the lakes.

1605506645712.png
 
Based on the Ericsson style flatbed steam engines
Ericsson style engines (assuming you mean vibrating lever engines) fell out of favor once twin screws were adopted and ships got bigger, even flatbed engines seem to have died out once double expansion engines were adopted. What kind of expansion is this ship using (single/double/triple expansion) and how many screws does it have?
 
The Fenian Brotherhood's Finn McCool a US Timber Clad river monitor stolen from a breakers yard on Lake Michigan after the US Civil War rearmed and used between 1866 and 1868 to raid Canadian shipping and lakeside communities as part of their attempted invasion. Driven ashore by the Ottawa she was burned by her crew who were later had 1 in 10 hung as Pirates and the rest sentenced to 30 years.

1605583723281.png
 
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In our timeline, after Malaya donated a battleship, India tentatively offered 3 Battleships and 9 protected cruisers. It was decided that the tax burden on Indians would be unfair.
Wait, seriously? Well this opens up some possibilities for other scenarios I've been considering, although certainly not on that grand a scale.
 
Going through my recently acquired copy of Friedman's U.S. Cruisers I came upon a rather intriguing idea the USN had for an Atlanta successor. Basically it was to have the 5"/54 as its gun of choice and mount 2 turrets on each broadside instead of the Atlanta's one for a total of 10 turrets and be around a knot or two faster and better protected to boot with being protected against 6" shells and having 2" of deck armor(as compared to being protected against 5" shells and a 1.25" deck for the Atlantas)and as I recall several other features the Atlantas lacked due to their small size. Apparently it was to displace around 8000 tons. Here's an interesting question what if this class had been built instead of the Atlantas?
 
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IOTL, after Malay donated a battleship, India tentatively offered 3 Battleships and 9 protected cruisers. It was decided that the tax burden on Indians would be unfair. In the above scenario, if India was insisting on it's own navy then the Fleet Unit concept would fit well and an Invincible or Indefatigable (looks like they already have the 2-3 cruisers and 6-8 Destroyers) would be a better investment than a smaller cruiser. A RIN at this time would be limited by suitable officers leading to fewer but larger ships.
Got a source for this? First I have heard of it.
 
Got a source for this? First I have heard of it.
Reported from Dec 1912.
jLThjGX.jpg


It was later claimed to be exaggerated and the offer was £4m for 2 Battleships but the intent was that if the Princes contributed to Imperial Defense then perhaps Indians in other colony's would get better treatment.
 
Going through my recently acquired copy of Friedman's U.S. Cruisers I came upon a rather intriguing idea the USN had for an Atlanta successor. Basically it was to have the 5"/54 as its gun of choice and mount 2 turrets on each broadside instead of the Atlanta's one for a total of 10 turrets and be around a knot or two faster and better protected to boot with being protected against 6" shells and having 2" of deck armor(as compared to being protected against 5" shells and a 1.25" deck for the Atlantas)and as I recall several other features the Atlantas lacked due to their small size. Apparently it was to displace around 8000 tons. Here's an interesting question what if this class had been built instead of the Atlantas?
Th idea is not very sound, as the biggest objection would be to waste precious weight on main guns put on the wings, rather than the more efficient center line. A 10 turret layout was a nightmare to start with, so a much more efficient option would be to drastically reduce the number of main gun turrets, or riffles, or both. An idea might be to drop the thinking of a twin turret and go for a tripple of quad turret at the same time, like in this Russian link: http://bastion-karpenko.narod.ru/MLK_NB_1_98.pdf
1605868154030.png

Basically, reducing the number of main gun turrets in number, allows more light equipment such as range finders, radars and light weapons to be fitted, where a multiple gunturret layout would prevent this (See USS Atlanta, which could engage not more than two targets at the same time, though fitted with eight gunturrets! The design was hampered by her only two present rangefinders, as fitting more was seriously problematic in terms of stability issues.) A more practical design would be to have removed the wing turrets, as was done on the 2nd batch of Atlanta class cruisers, making the ship more stable and allowing a bit more light AA to be fitted, which was impossible on the 1st batch of ships.
 
Th idea is not very sound, as the biggest objection would be to waste precious weight on main guns put on the wings, rather than the more efficient center line. A 10 turret layout was a nightmare to start with, so a much more efficient option would be to drastically reduce the number of main gun turrets, or riffles, or both. An idea might be to drop the thinking of a twin turret and go for a tripple of quad turret at the same time, like in this Russian link: http://bastion-karpenko.narod.ru/MLK_NB_1_98.pdf
View attachment 600996
Basically, reducing the number of main gun turrets in number, allows more light equipment such as range finders, radars and light weapons to be fitted, where a multiple gunturret layout would prevent this (See USS Atlanta, which could engage not more than two targets at the same time, though fitted with eight gunturrets! The design was hampered by her only two present rangefinders, as fitting more was seriously problematic in terms of stability issues.) A more practical design would be to have removed the wing turrets, as was done on the 2nd batch of Atlanta class cruisers, making the ship more stable and allowing a bit more light AA to be fitted, which was impossible on the 1st batch of ships.
As I recall the class never really got beyond the preliminary design stage and yes they did consider another pair of MK37's roughly Admidships as part of the design to fix the flaw of the Atlantas in that department
 
The Fenian Brotherhood's Finn McCool a US Timber Clad river monitor stolen from a breakers yard on Lake Michigan after the US Civil War rearmed and used between 1866 and 1868 to raid Canadian shipping and lakeside communities as part of their attempted invasion. Driven ashore by the Ottawa she was burned by her crew who were later had 1 in 10 hung as Pirates and the rest sentenced to 30 years.

View attachment 600187

I do like the idea of US/Canadian tensions leading to both sides maintaining sizable fleet's on the Great Lakes. Gives me an idea where signifigantly worse US-Canadian/British relations lead to a situation where the RN is forced to maintain a sizable force at Halifax to defend eastern Canada and a much smaller force at the fortified base at Vancouver (My personal theory is that with a much more militarized US and the need to defend the much more heavily populated Eastern Canada where all the industry is that Canadian war plans will boil down to instantly abandoning the West and Plains provinces/territories with the exception of Vancouver which is to be turned into a heavily fortified base allowing the Brits/Canadians to deploy merchant raiders to try and disrupt US trade off the West Coast. The new Canadian navy will pretty much entirely focus initial on riverine warfare (using various gunboats and monitors in the East) and it's main forces based on the Great Lakes.
 
Th idea is not very sound, as the biggest objection would be to waste precious weight on main guns put on the wings, rather than the more efficient center line. A 10 turret layout was a nightmare to start with, so a much more efficient option would be to drastically reduce the number of main gun turrets, or riffles, or both. An idea might be to drop the thinking of a twin turret and go for a tripple of quad turret at the same time, like in this Russian link: http://bastion-karpenko.narod.ru/MLK_NB_1_98.pdf
View attachment 600996
Basically, reducing the number of main gun turrets in number, allows more light equipment such as range finders, radars and light weapons to be fitted, where a multiple gunturret layout would prevent this (See USS Atlanta, which could engage not more than two targets at the same time, though fitted with eight gunturrets! The design was hampered by her only two present rangefinders, as fitting more was seriously problematic in terms of stability issues.) A more practical design would be to have removed the wing turrets, as was done on the 2nd batch of Atlanta class cruisers, making the ship more stable and allowing a bit more light AA to be fitted, which was impossible on the 1st batch of ships.
For those of us who don't speak or read Russian... WFT???

Am I seeing that correct - 4 turrets, with 4 barrels eac, one pair directly above another?

I presume post WWII and some form of auto-loader?
 
For those of us who don't speak or read Russian... WFT???

Am I seeing that correct - 4 turrets, with 4 barrels eac, one pair directly above another?

I presume post WWII and some form of auto-loader?
That is correct, as the actual design is from around 1950, meaning a relatively high degree of automation and fast reload systems as also was done on contemporary landbased (like tanks) weapon systems.

BL-127, quad barreled 100mm/70 gun turret as designed for a separate batch of the Grozovoi class destroyer. The design was addaptable for the 130 mm/58 gun in a slightly larger heavier mount for installing on a cruiser hull as the barbette diameter of the mounting fitted in existing barbettes of the tripple MK-5-bis turret for the 152 mm/57 (6") B-38 Pattern 1938 gun, found on the Chapayev and Sverdlovsk classes light cruisers

1605953555784.png
 
That is correct, as the actual design is from around 1950, meaning a relatively high degree of automation and fast reload systems as also was done on contemporary landbased (like tanks) weapon systems.

BL-127, quad barreled 100mm/70 gun turret as designed for a separate batch of the Grozovoi class destroyer. The design was addaptable for the 130 mm/58 gun in a slightly larger heavier mount for installing on a cruiser hull as the barbette diameter of the mounting fitted in existing barbettes of the tripple MK-5-bis turret for the 152 mm/57 (6") B-38 Pattern 1938 gun, found on the Chapayev and Sverdlovsk classes light cruisers

View attachment 601249
So a fancy pancy AA gun then. I know they never installed them (I mean, not even I would miss that!), but did it get to prototype stage?
 
So a fancy pancy AA gun then. I know they never installed them (I mean, not even I would miss that!), but did it get to prototype stage?
Not that I am aware of, though it was in the Cold War period of secrecy and missdirection, so who knows. Navweaps tells the following on this project:
"In 1949 a BL-127 quadruple mount was designed, but this was not approved for production."

 
18 rpm per barrel? By 4x? 72 rpm of 3.9" heading your way per turret? Ouch. That not gonna buff out.

This information is correct. The project aimed to get a rapid rate of fire sort of weaponsystem to counter very fast moving jets in a time when Surface to Air missles were still something for the future. The idea was somewhat similar to the CIWS (close in weapon systems) of the 80's wit multi barreled aitocannons with a rapid rate fo fire to put a steel wall against incomming missiles and aircraft at point blanc range. The 1949 project was to get an already proven gun with high rate of fire in a multi barrel mointing to get as many shells in the air as possible against jet propelled aircraft of the time.
 
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