different admiral class bc

Hello all, new to this.
Something i have been pondering over for a while, what if, after jutland the admiralty instead of modifing hood and her sisters multiple times, completly redesign her to an early K2 design(looks like Hood but with 18 inch guns and better armour) I know 18 inch guns seem a bit radical, but considering fisher managed to get 18 inch guns on furious..
finished in, lets say early 1921, with her sisters cancelled as per OTL what effects might she have?
WNT is obviously different..
 
Would not the whole ship have to be redesigned to accommodate 18 inch guns and turrets? I am not sure at that later date Hood could be finished. Later ships maybe, but Hood?
 
Well the 18's on the Furious were singleton's so I'd expect the weight would be much more for 4 twins, could the Hood be armed and armoured and maintain such speed on anything close to the tonnage of what she was?
As to what impact, I suppose it might depend on whether the other navies see her as a glass jaw or instead demand that they get to build a ship of such size/weapons.
 
she would only be Hood in name, her keel would be laid up and a new one laid down in its place similiar length, with all or nothing armour, taken from the new american designs
and obviously wider to accommodate the guns
 
she would only be Hood in name, her keel would be laid up and a new one laid down in its place similiar length, with all or nothing armour, taken from the new american designs
and obviously wider to accommodate the guns

That sounds about right. I did not think OTL Hood would be adaptable to the OP ideas.
 
That sounds about right. I did not think OTL Hood would be adaptable to the OP ideas.
Take a look at the OTL design work on battlecruisers in the introduction to this on the G3 design

This is mostly post WW1 and pre WNT but would be duplicated in Hood were cancelled at the same time as her 3 planned sisters
 
Hello all, new to this.
Something i have been pondering over for a while, what if, after jutland the admiralty instead of modifing hood and her sisters multiple times, completly redesign her to an early K2 design(looks like Hood but with 18 inch guns and better armour) I know 18 inch guns seem a bit radical, but considering fisher managed to get 18 inch guns on furious..
finished in, lets say early 1921, with her sisters cancelled as per OTL what effects might she have?
WNT is obviously different..

I would far rather that they tried sticking 3 or even 4 x triple 15" on her

With improved ammo (Green boys) the 15" would be more than enough

Edit: With more thought - Scrap Hood or rename her Ark Royal and stick a flight deck on her and build 4 G3s instead naming one of them Hood
 
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Could the Hood be easily converted to a carrier after Jutland?

Well not sure about easy! But certainly doable

The US Battle Cruisers were converted (well 2 converted and 4 scrapped) becoming Saratoga and Lexington - the Admiral Class BattleCruisers were about the same dimensions and displacement

Some napkin designs here

http://warships1discussionboards.yu...ood-completed-as-aircaft-carrier#.V9HyvJgrKUk

Perhaps a successful use of Sopwith Cuckoos against a later Sortie by the HSF in 1917 really opens the Navy's eyes and they get wind of the US plans to convert 2 of their Lexington class BCs and the British decide to do the same

This and learnings from Jutland result in Hood and Anson left on the slips work having halted in early 1917 (more due to the need for shipyards to build DDs and repair ships etc due to USW) with Howe and Rodney also suspended but later scrapped - building work the 2 Admiral Class Carriers initially resume in 1918 halt soon after wards and then only recommence in 1922 following the WNT - both ships are launched in 1924 and both enter service in 1926.
 
My bad memory strikes again. I had thought the Hood was further along in its completion. I now check and see it was laid down after Jutland.

Well then plans for larger guns or convesion to a carrier are certainly possible.

If converted to a carrier, how many planes might the Hood carry? Would it have multible decks or one large like the US conversions.
 

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My bad memory strikes again. I had thought the Hood was further along in its completion. I now check and see it was laid down after Jutland.

Well then plans for larger guns or convesion to a carrier are certainly possible.

If converted to a carrier, how many planes might the Hood carry? Would it have multible decks or one large like the US conversions.
Likely fewer than the US Lexington class, assuming the RN goes with the British standard armored flight deck. At a guess 45-50, Saratoga was embarking 90 in 1943.

HMS Furious was roughly the same displacement and overall dimensions as the American Yorktown class (she was 35' shorter in the hull, with 5' more beam, and about 1,000 tons heavier at full load) and she carried 36 aircraft. Yorktown and her sisters all carried 70+ (at Leyte Gulf Enterprise had 92 aircraft embarked, including 34 SBC-2 and 19 TBF, along with 39 Hellcats, four of them night fighters).

As an aside: It never ceases to amaze me that the RN would have built a 48,000 warship, named it after a flag officer who died on a BC at Jutland because of poor protective design, and only gave her a MAX of 3" of deck armor. It is almost murder.
 
If converted to a carrier, how many planes might the Hood carry? Would it have multible decks or one large like the US conversions.
I suggest she'd have multiple hangar decks. Every RN fleet carrier except the three Illustrious had more than one hangar deck, including all three Outrageous class, Ark Royal, Indomitable, both Implacables and both Audacious class. Only the small and/or slow carriers had single hangar decks. Only today with the Queen Elizabeth class is the RN following the USN with a single large hangar deck for fleet carriers.
 
Likely fewer than the US Lexington class, assuming the RN goes with the British standard armored flight deck. At a guess 45-50, Saratoga was embarking 90 in 1943.

Why would the British go with an armored flight deck so early? IOTL the armored-deck design for the Illustrious-class and its successors came about because the FAA's fighter aircraft were inferior to almost everything else being fielded by the navies and air forces of the time.
 

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Why would the British go with an armored flight deck so early? IOTL the armored-deck design for the Illustrious-class and its successors came about because the FAA's fighter aircraft were inferior to almost everything else being fielded by the navies and air forces of the time.
It would actually make sense in a lot of ways for a conversion to have an armored deck. The mindset at the time was that carriers were part of the scouting force, just like cruisers, except they had the ability to send scouting aircraft beyond the horizon (the Lex and Sara kept their 4x2 8" guns until 1942, Akagi was built with ten 20cm guns, and still had six mounted when she was sunk, Kaga never lost any of her 20cm guns, more mdern ones were even mounted during her refit), so an armored deck was logical in a lot of ways (the Lexingtons had a 2" armored deck, but it was at the hanger level).
 
It would actually make sense in a lot of ways for a conversion to have an armored deck. The mindset at the time was that carriers were part of the scouting force, just like cruisers, except they had the ability to send scouting aircraft beyond the horizon (the Lex and Sara kept their 4x2 8" guns until 1942, Akagi was built with ten 20cm guns, and still had six mounted when she was sunk, Kaga never lost any of her 20cm guns, more mdern ones were even mounted during her refit), so an armored deck was logical in a lot of ways (the Lexingtons had a 2" armored deck, but it was at the hanger level.)

That's still not the same as the armored flight deck used for the Illustrious and Implacable class.
 
I could see Hood as an armored carrier but not with an armored deck. Would she be armed with 8-10 inch guns or just a bunch of AA weapons? I suspects a combination.

With my earlier question I think Hood would have 2-3 decks and carry at least 60 post WW1 planes.

Without a full load of BC weapons, what speed might she be able to maintain?
 
Building an armoured box on top of an existing battlecruiser hull will be very difficult. I don't think think any of the conversion carriers had armoured decks.
 
AFD carriers came later. Hood would surely follow the example of Glorious etc.

BTW, the choice of armoured decks on the AFD carriers wasn't because of FAA aircraft inferiority, because that wasn't a thing when they were designed. It was because of the impossibility of effectively intercepting and defeating an inbound raid in pre-radar days. Look at the difference in fleet defence effectiveness between the IJN at Midway and the RN during Pedestal, despite the disparity in aircraft.

IIRC the USN looked at the same problem, of defending against air attack, and came to the same conclusion. The proposed solution, however, was supposedly to have lots of small carriers instead of a few big ones, to avoid the "eggs in one basket" problem and to increase the likelihood of decks surviving the attack. It was never implemented of course, so maybe someone realised how silly it was and quietly killed it!
 
AFD carriers came later. Hood would surely follow the example of Glorious etc.

BTW, the choice of armoured decks on the AFD carriers wasn't because of FAA aircraft inferiority, because that wasn't a thing when they were designed. It was because of the impossibility of effectively intercepting and defeating an inbound raid in pre-radar days. Look at the difference in fleet defence effectiveness between the IJN at Midway and the RN during Pedestal, despite the disparity in aircraft.

IIRC the USN looked at the same problem, of defending against air attack, and came to the same conclusion. The proposed solution, however, was supposedly to have lots of small carriers instead of a few big ones, to avoid the "eggs in one basket" problem and to increase the likelihood of decks surviving the attack. It was never implemented of course, so maybe someone realised how silly it was and quietly killed it!

Yes this basically - the Armoured box design came about after Ark Royal was laid down after the RN decided in the light of deteriorating relations with the Italians that it would be required to fight Italy in the Med and other Littoral environments coupled with the increasing speed size and bomb load of the then land based twin and triple engine bombers which were often faster than the fighter planes of the day (Mid - late 30s) which threatened any fleet operating in the Central Med and North Sea.

Before then none of the British Carriers used an armoured box or armoured deck - so I agree that the Hood and any other converted Admiral class BC would be closer to the Akagi in eventual design

This site does a good job of explaining how and why the British decided to build AFD Carriers
 
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