In 1919 when Trenchard was fighting for the continuation of the Independent RAF, there was perhaps a small window of opportunity for the Admiralty to Nobble Winston Churchill, who having been a very air-minded First Lord of Admiralty, might have lent a friendly ear. However I think the very best the navy could have hoped for would be to retain of all shipborne aircraft. I think Coastal Command might have been a reach to far. As to the Army, they might get away with unarmed light aircraft for artillery spotting BIMVHO that is all.
 
I can't see any image but I don't think anyone is going to be building 15" armed, 35,000 ton ships in a post Furious and Rodney world. You're building something that will be obsolete on the stocks. The new minimum for battleships is going to be based around a slightly slower Rodney i.e. armour against 16" guns, 16" or larger guns and 27 knots and you can't manage that on less than 45k tons. The minimum for battlecruisers is going to be based on Lexington and Furious with all that implies in terms of size and weight.

That's why I asked for the size, regardless of the still born treaty limits, just a prospect.

Her armour was marginal against 16" shells and if she had been built with 1920 era machinery she would have had trouble making more than 23ish knots.

I think that for the 20s, speed was still expendable for a battleship. I agree with James, I learn that a ship well designed, can do miracles:
The case of Guadalcanal is a case of a battleship with 14-inch guns failing to get through the armor of a ship designed to resist 16-inch gunfire.

which means that is very possible to build a decent ship.
 
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The potential, and threat from, strategic bombing is much more relevant to the UK than the US because of geography... there'll be an independent air force, but its significance and exact role aren't yet clear.

Ooh nasty thought - did the Zeppelin raids still happen? Is there a London air defence area?
I can confidently predict plenty of tussles over who controls Home air defence.

Yes, Zeppelin raids happened, although as OTL the airship has been shown to be a rather dubious vehicle.
Broadly speaking , I'd put aviation in general behind where it was in reality.
However, there are a few oddities - e.g. we've had the first air combat victory by a carrier aircraft (floatplane vs Zeppelin).
 

Deleted member 94680

Are there possibilities for a battleship design like this 10/12x15"/16" for the RN?, how big and expensive would/could/should be?, given the chance due to financials been on site, that is.

I very much doubt it. The RN never seriously considered any 10 or 12 gun (I take it you mean 5 turret or 4x3) designs post-Jutland AFAIK for capital ships. As to size, OTL, they’d practicably be limited by the Suez Canal locks and whichever dry docks or floating docks they had. I’m not sure where else they were exactly, but IIRC the new docks at Singapore were built to handle the largest ships in the Navy, so the precedent is there.

ATL, it’s up to the OP for the finances in this alt-post-war world.
 
Hey sts-200, what are the possibilities of getting this type of rebuilt for the Queens and Royals down the line ?:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-italian-style-rebuild-of-qe-class.480976/

As @Thoresby says, quite low.
They will receive updates on the lines of the real 1920s QE modifications, and perhaps a little more. With there being nine of them, they are likely to be a core force for some time.
In a world of bigger guns, the RN faces a potentially nasty block obsolecence problem - the QEs, Royals, Hoods and R&R all have the same armament.

Older ships (or parts of them) may have a role to play ... not everyone has to compete at the highest level.
 

Deleted member 94680

They will receive updates on the lines of the real 1920s QE modifications, and perhaps a little more. With there being nine of them, they are likely to be a core force for some time.

If they all get an upgrade along the lines of the rebuilds Queen Elizabeth and Valiant got, then it would be a great upgrade on OTL. The BD mounts for their secondaries and the upgrades to their fire control were all great improvements. That and I like the way they looked after the rebuild with the trunked funnels and the “Queen Anne’s mansion” superstructure.
 
South Dakota managed this at 35k tons, though it was a 1938 design.
Her armour was marginal against 16" shells and if she had been built with 1920 era machinery she would have had trouble making more than 23ish knots.

IMO split the difference - doing it with South Dakota '38s range and AA defence wouldn't be possible in the early-mid 20s, but doing it with the same speed, armour and surface armament would be, once they got away from either direct-drive or turbo-electric drive (and it would probably only have the light-shell 16").
 
I very much doubt it. The RN never seriously considered any 10 or 12 gun (I take it you mean 5 turret or 4x3) designs post-Jutland AFAIK for capital ships. As to size, OTL, they’d practicably be limited by the Suez Canal locks and whichever dry docks or floating docks they had. I’m not sure where else they were exactly, but IIRC the new docks at Singapore were built to handle the largest ships in the Navy, so the precedent is there.

ATL, it’s up to the OP for the finances in this alt-post-war world.
Finances will be much better, but not so much better that they can afford to rebuild too many docks.
Rosyth and the Portsmouth basin were the largest (and are in the story), which set a limit of about 865x106' (plus a bit of wiggle room with caisons - hence my 878' Furious).

Minor note - there are no locks on the Suez Canal, but there were limits due to the shape of the dredged channel.
 

Deleted member 94680

Minor note - there are no locks on the Suez Canal, but there were limits due to the shape of the dredged channel.

Ah right. I knew there was a size limit and just assumed it was due to locks.
 
On a slightly different track, did the later Hawkins-class cruisers get finished, or were the ones after Cavendish cancelled when the war ended early?
Although they ended up setting the standard for OTL's "Treaty" heavy cruisers, the RN never seemed to be happy with the design and they spent half the inter-war years converting and re-converting and generally messing around with them. If Hawkins is a one-off it might affect any inter-war lmits on cruiser design.

If they're planning for Vindictive to mount cruiser armament as well as a significant air group on 10,000 tons, the Admiralty have some bad news coming. Worst case, they end up with something like a 1920s Tone - a cut-down CA that carries half-a-dozen float planes. Not bad if all you want to do is scout, but not a carrier or even a path to one.
 
On a slightly different track, did the later Hawkins-class cruisers get finished, or were the ones after Cavendish cancelled when the war ended early?
Although they ended up setting the standard for OTL's "Treaty" heavy cruisers, the RN never seemed to be happy with the design and they spent half the inter-war years converting and re-converting and generally messing around with them. If Hawkins is a one-off it might affect any inter-war lmits on cruiser design.

If they're planning for Vindictive to mount cruiser armament as well as a significant air group on 10,000 tons, the Admiralty have some bad news coming. Worst case, they end up with something like a 1920s Tone - a cut-down CA that carries half-a-dozen float planes. Not bad if all you want to do is scout, but not a carrier or even a path to one.

Even if the Hawkins is a one-off, the USN was still designing what would become termed as heavy cruisers. Between October 1919 and April 1921, the USN came up with twelve designs ranging from 8,250 tons to 12,000 tons that would be armed with anywhere from six to twelve 8"/55-caliber guns.
 
*ahem*

In the spring of 1918, it was therefore proposed that the last four ‘Omahas’ be built to a new design to match these British ships. To save time and allow as much use of existing orders as possible, the layout of machinery and central hull structure was retained. The ships were given an extra 18’ of length and 6’ beam, with normal displacement rising to 8,000 tons. The two fore-funnels were trunked together to make room for the bridge structure to be moved aft, allowing a pair of superfiring turrets to be fitted forward. The greatly increased beam was necessary to compensate for the extra topweight, as main armament was increased to include six 8” guns.It was accepted that these redesigned ships would be 1½ knots slower than the Omahas, but even though they ended up several hundred tons over their design load, in practice there was little difference in service speeds, as the larger hull improved seakeeping, and the deficiencies in the machinery of the early ‘Omahas’ were partly overcome. During construction, they were described as ‘improved Omahas’, but in service they became known as the ‘Newark’ class, after the lead ship.
 
Fascinating set of links, JudgeKing. I particularly liked the design for a 20,000-ton "scout cruiser" with a main battery of 2(!) 14" guns, 8" side armour and a speed of 35 knots. Sounds like a US variation on Fisher - SPEED!! Armour! Guns?
 
Fascinating set of links, JudgeKing. I particularly liked the design for a 20,000-ton "scout cruiser" with a main battery of 2(!) 14" guns, 8" side armour and a speed of 35 knots. Sounds like a US variation on Fisher - SPEED!! Armour! Guns?

That's the Fisheresque spirit!!!
 
I can confidently predict plenty of tussles over who controls Home air defence.

One solution, which the Air Force would fight, would be to use the Soviet model and create two forces with separate structures and budgets. The Air Defence force responsible for home defence and the RAF with offensive missions.

If you don't leave ground support with the army then you are going to have to mandate the mission (force percentage/budget percentage or whatever works) or the air force will skimp on it.
 
They will receive updates on the lines of the real 1920s QE modifications, and perhaps a little more. With there being nine of them, they are likely to be a core force for some time.
In a world of bigger guns, the RN faces a potentially nasty block obsolecence problem - the QEs, Royals, Hoods and R&R all have the same armament.

Ok, and the catapult would be excluded?, I don't know exactly how much it weights but the space that requires could be of better use, I guess.
 
One solution, which the Air Force would fight, would be to use the Soviet model and create two forces with separate structures and budgets. The Air Defence force responsible for home defence and the RAF with offensive missions.

If you don't leave ground support with the army then you are going to have to mandate the mission (force percentage/budget percentage or whatever works) or the air force will skimp on it.
Yes, that's a good one - as is an idea that the Navy should be responsible; they've traditionally been the first line of defence, and after all, the enemy has to fly over water...

Given that an RAF hasn't been created during the war, I'd say it was pretty unlikely that one would be formed in peacetime.
Simply due to bureacratic inertia and vested interests, it seems inevitable that the Navy will control anything connected with ships, the Army anything connected with ground support and fighter cover 'over the front'.
It's always the crossovers that are difficult (e.g. do Navy land planes defend naval bases, and if so, who defends the rest of the country).
Heavy bombing is less well developed that OTL, so there's probably still a tussle to come over who controls that. The Handley Page O/100 would have seen some service in the summer of 1917, the O/400 would likely be delayed due to the early end of the war. Given a reduction to peacetime working, I doubt the Vimy would see service before 1920.
 
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