Clay pigeon/trap shooting are still the common test in NZ, although skeet is also increasingly known
- Status
Story 0776
October 23, 1941 near Tula, Russia
The Soviet tank brigade advanced. Heavy fighting, mud and mechanical breakdowns made the brigade slightly stronger than a reinforced tank company. Instead of almost seventy tanks moving towards the German infantry battalion that had lodged itself into the crossroads that dominated the outer chinks of the defenses along the paths to Moscow, seventeen tanks were advancing.
The seventeen tanks were being supported by a recently reconstructed infantry battalion, five hundred men were laying down covering fire. The ninety seven Germans in their hastily prepared positions waited for the Soviets to get closer as ammunition was slow coming to the front. Harassment and intimidation fires were no longer authorized, only decisive fire. The tanks slowed and then stopped two hundred yards from the strong point and their cannons fired. High explosive shells slammed into the fixed positions that were visible and machine gun bullets leaped out to keep the German infantrymen’s heads down. Still, there was little overt resistance as the Red infantry advanced.
When the first squad came within one hundred meters of the defensive position, it erupted. The first fusillade gutted a dozen Russians. Some platoons went to the mud to return fire while others tried to close the distance as quickly as possible.
Thread 0777 --- USS Alaska 10/24/1941
October 24, 1941 Camden, New Jersey
The yard was busy. Over on the far side of the yard, an assembly line for landing craft was being made ready. The intermediate size slips were being allocated for rapid completion of the Cleveland class light cruisers. The namesake shape of that class was slightly ahead of schedule and only tolerably over budget for delivery in late spring of 1942.
The cranes were carrying heavy equipment all over the yard. And those cranes would become even more busy. In the largest construction areas, six new large cruisers would start construction. Alaska’s keel would be laid down in the afternoon. Her five sisters were powerful ships. Each would look like an over-inflated Cleveland class cruiser; twelve ten inch guns in triple turrets, a a pair of turrets forward and aft as well as three twin dual purpose five inch guns on each broadside. She would be armored against the super heavy shells of the Baltimore class with an eight and a half inch belt and four inches of deck armor in three layers. Alaska were designed to run with the other modern cruisers and her engines, replicas of the Essex engines could push the 24,000 ton ships to over 34 knots. Tentative plans had Alaska and Guam joining the fleet in late 1943 and ready for combat by the summer of 1944. Their mission was to hunt down large raiders with a secondary task of protecting carriers.
More important in the short run was the new work order from the Navy Department. Work was being ordered to be frozen on Amsterdam, Tallahassee and New Haven. Work crews were to be used on other priorities as naval architects were revisiting plans for rapid cruiser carrier conversions. Earlier work had indicated that the Brooklyn class hull form had some promise for an interim carrier design. Freezing construction for the next two months would impose a minimal delay on increasing cruiser strength even as it could pay off in less re-work in the scenario where the navy needed more aircraft carriers.
The yard was busy. Over on the far side of the yard, an assembly line for landing craft was being made ready. The intermediate size slips were being allocated for rapid completion of the Cleveland class light cruisers. The namesake shape of that class was slightly ahead of schedule and only tolerably over budget for delivery in late spring of 1942.
The cranes were carrying heavy equipment all over the yard. And those cranes would become even more busy. In the largest construction areas, six new large cruisers would start construction. Alaska’s keel would be laid down in the afternoon. Her five sisters were powerful ships. Each would look like an over-inflated Cleveland class cruiser; twelve ten inch guns in triple turrets, a a pair of turrets forward and aft as well as three twin dual purpose five inch guns on each broadside. She would be armored against the super heavy shells of the Baltimore class with an eight and a half inch belt and four inches of deck armor in three layers. Alaska were designed to run with the other modern cruisers and her engines, replicas of the Essex engines could push the 24,000 ton ships to over 34 knots. Tentative plans had Alaska and Guam joining the fleet in late 1943 and ready for combat by the summer of 1944. Their mission was to hunt down large raiders with a secondary task of protecting carriers.
More important in the short run was the new work order from the Navy Department. Work was being ordered to be frozen on Amsterdam, Tallahassee and New Haven. Work crews were to be used on other priorities as naval architects were revisiting plans for rapid cruiser carrier conversions. Earlier work had indicated that the Brooklyn class hull form had some promise for an interim carrier design. Freezing construction for the next two months would impose a minimal delay on increasing cruiser strength even as it could pay off in less re-work in the scenario where the navy needed more aircraft carriers.
Last edited:
Wow! Six Alaskas! Bet someone or other on this forum's going to be pleased.
What are the ten inch guns - a new design?
I am laying these hulls down only a few months earlier than OTL Alaska hulls. Who knows if they will be completed.
Correct, a new design 10 inch gun.
I am making changes to Alaska for the same reason I made minor changes to the Atlanta design --- it is a different set of logical compromises to perform a mission that the USN thought needed to be performed.
In my mind, TTL Alaska are the "minimum" super-cruiser killers. This means lighter guns than OTL (more of them) and a tad less armor. There should be no temptation to use them in the battle line. I still think that they are a ship in search of an actual mission but I am not gifting the USN with foresight.
Story 0778
October 25, 1941 Nichols Field, Luzon
A dozen P-40E’s roared into the sky. They climbed to 14,000 feet within 10 minutes. The fighters then headed north. The new radar at Iba was trying to vector them to a dozen B-17 bombers flying south over Lingayan Gulf.
An hour later, ten P-40s landed on the concrete runways at Nichols. Two other plans had to divert to Clark because of a radiator failure. The interception had failed. The bombers had doglegged east and then south again. The Iba rada controllers tried to direct the pursuit planes by giving them directions relative to the IBA fighter direction center. Within minutes, the squadron was over the western edge of the Lingayan Gulf instead of the eastern edge. Clark Field would have been devastated by the unopposed bomber attack.
As the pilots returned to their ready rooms, the section leaders and the squadron commander moved to his office to discuss lessons learned while the raw lieutenants looked at the board. Half of them had a sortie scheduled for tomorrow while the rest were on maintenance, paperwork and logistics duties. One of the butter bars scheduled to fly on Sunday would be bumped as the senior Captain had to steal his sortie to head to Iba in order to sort out the cluster fuck of the interception.
And they are also named after US territories, as OTL.
Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Phillipines, Puerto Rico and Samoa.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
IMO it is more likely they would just go to 8 12" guns for a bare minimum cruiser-killer design. OTL the USN concluded basically 6 12">9 10">12 8" in its large cruiser design studies, 8 12" would be considered superior to 12 10". Still I can see 10" as a possible compromise in terms of gun design, being possibly faster and cheaper to design and test
Plausible, and honestly, I don't have the Alaska's doing much besides honoring AH.com WWII AH USN tropes
If you are referring to a discussion with me, I think you are slightly misrepresenting my argument. It was not that the Finnish leadership thought it was necessary to join the invasion of the USSR, exactly, it was more that they thought it was necessary to have a major ally able to provide Finland with the means to feed itself and to arm itself against renewed Soviet aggression. As the events progressed IOTL, by late summer 1940 Nazi Germany was the only realistic source for that apparently sorely needed assistance. In those conditions, though, getting that needed ally and joining the invasion of the USSR were part and parcel. That Finland could count on German help to try to get back the areas lost in the Winter War and even more territory in Karelia was nice, but getting a revanche was a secondary consideration (even if it was popular, especially among the political right). The defence of Finland and the survival of the Finnish people came first.
Generally, I tend to think that with Norway in Allied hands, Finland might not ally with Germany. I just don't believe staying neutral would have been very likely in that case either. Like I have argued before, under the circumstances, guaranteed, major German assistance (contingent on Finland joining the war against the USSR) would have on balance seemed definitely better than the uncertain possibility of trading through neutral Sweden (on which the Nazis still had considerable leverage) and essentially trusting the goodwill of the Swedish and the Allies both to get food, fuel and weapons in any significant numbers.
I tend to agree with you about the events in this TL. It would have been unlikely for the Finns to make peace with the USSR so early, as the Germans very likely would have turned on them, with possibly catastrophic results. At the very least, Germany would stop all transport of materiel and supplies to Finland. This alone would make things iffy for Finland in the winter of 1941-42. If there are German troops in Finland, the Nazi leadership could well make Finland into a battleground as well. It is easy to see Hitler launching into one of his tantrums and deciding that the Finnish betrayal of the Reich would have to be punished. In that case the Finnish options would be fighting the Germans alone, not an enticing prospect at all, or asking the Soviets for help against them, which would be even worse. Especially if it would mean Red Army troops on Finnish soil.
I think it all boils down to both Hitler and Stalin ITTL placing an unlikely amount of trust in the Finns not to double-cross them, giving more leeway to a minor power than seems realistic. It doesn't really, IMHO, fit into the nature of the OTL total war between the Soviets and the Nazis. As it was IOTL, the Finnish effort to sit on the fence at the same time it was a German ally was really pushing it in terms of plausibility...
Last edited:
Yes, and in this timeline the USN made slightly different assumptions and came to a different solution of 4x3 10 inch guns
I am making this choice to show that this universe is very similar to ours but it is slightly different and underlying assumptions/analysis of the same problem can lead to plausibly different approaches. Overall, this is not a big deal as a plot device. The big thing from the update is that Alaska is being laid down a couple months earlier than OTL reflecting slightly higher/earlier mobilization and planning on the part of the USN and industry and far more importantly, the three Cleveland class cruisers that were converted into the first three CVLs have an earlier work freeze as the designers look at their options.
Would those Alaska class hulls have been any good for use as aircraft carriers hulls?
- Status