Royal Navy Alternate Cruiser designs post WW1

The Royal Navy at the end of WW1 had Numerous obsolete cruisers many still using coal and totally unsuited to what was understood as modern warfare . The Royal Navy Had recently begun construction of two modern cruiser designs . One was The Hawkins class and the other was the Emerald class .

The Hawkins class was of excellent range and speed compared to proceeding classes . The 7.5 inch gun was a good design but suffered from being hand loaded and trained single mounts . As speeds and ranges increased this became more and more unacceptable . It is worth noting that at the time of design in 1915 the 7.5 inch was chosen as an intermediate cruiser able to overpower German ships with 7 inch guns . The Treaty cruiser used the 8 inch calibre as a maximum and a 10,000 ton displacement . For the purposes of the Royal Navy the Hawkins was too much ship for not much gun . The Follow on Heavy cruiser design was the County class that was forced through hull design to be longer then for example the US Cruisers in order to have more fuel efficient engine to speed ratio's . (The Royal Navy was always able in this era to achieve better SHP to Speed for a given displacement .) .

The Emerald class was a brilliant scouting cruiser with very high speed and excellent range . Again the single 6 inch mounts are inadequate .

What I am proposing is that a universal cruiser design in introduced with the intention of maximizing the numbers of cruisers and the versatility of the design . If instead of the County class they instead go with a three twin 8 inch turret(one forward and two aft) design on 9,000 tons (York class plus armour ) . If designed for three single 4 inch AA guns per side and a pair of quad pom poms on centreline mounts (one in front of the bridge and the other in a super firing position forward of the two aft turrets. You could end up with a very good ship . I personally hate the amidships Royal Navy floatplane hangars and mount however for the time they are very good so I feel they should be retained . Allow for two Walrus size aircraft . Also the good old quad Vickers 50 cal could be mounted on top of these hangars .

Design the triple 6 inch to fit into the same barbette as the 8 inch .

With 450,000 tons the Royal Navy could conceivably build 50 cruisers . This would have required the Hawkins for example to be converted into a sub 10,000 ton carrier . Expect a 14 to 20 aircraft air group.
. By WW2 this would directly translate into 50 cruisers compared to 29 modern ships . With construction beginning in 1927 you would need to be building 4 per year . This would also improve strategic construction .
 
The UK interest in the 8" is an artifact of the WNT.

The WNT strongly encourages the participants to build the most powerful 8" cruisers possible.

If you can convince the RN not to engage in this competition a universal cruiser is going to be a proto Leander, possibly shifting to an Arethusa. After all they already have a twin 6" turret tested.

But that isn't going to happen under a WNT.
 
I'd swap the position of the dual 8-inch around so its two forwards one aft, you don't save anything by doing this and leaves you more room for the hangar (as well as looking better). Any 8-inch mount should NOT have a designed AA capacity, this made the RN's turrets tall, over complex and heavy for what they were. Eliminating that would be a good thing.

I'm not sure what armour scheme you could fit onto a 6 x 8-inch gunned ship with 9,000 tons to play with, it might be alright. And I like the idea of a universal hull. As cruisers get bigger though you're probably going to want to grow this into a larger universal hull so you could have a CL with 4 x triple mounts a-la Town class but have a similar hull with 9 x 8-inch guns in 3 x Triples.
 
If you can convince the RN not to engage in this competition a universal cruiser is going to be a proto Leander, possibly shifting to an Arethusa. After all they already have a twin 6" turret tested.

But that isn't going to happen under a WNT.
Wild idea, Britain opts out of the Heavy Cruisers in exchange for being allowed a greater amount of cruiser tonnage and so more ships?
 
Wild idea, Britain opts out of the Heavy Cruisers in exchange for being allowed a greater amount of cruiser tonnage and so more ships?

Probably asking too much and you'd hear 'reeee!' from the Admiralty. Because what happens when you run into an 8-inch gunned ship thats as fast as you are. You can't close the range and he can out range you with his bigger guns. And if everyone else is building them then the RN would too.
 
INVHO the Hawkins Class were an aberration for the RN caused by the supposed building of 7' gunned cruisers by the Germans. If the RN coverts all the Hawkins to Carriers or scraps them on the ways then the British are in a much stronger position at the WNT talks to limit cruisers ton 6". IIRC the other participants in the WNT argued for 8" and 10.000 tons to match the Hawkins Class. If the 6" gun is kept as the standard then I see the RN building a turreted version of the E class and an analogue of the Leander class as their standard trade protection/scout Cruiser until the LNT. If other navies start build big multi turret 6' gunned cruisers then I can see the RN build a town type with four 6" triple mounts (capable hopefully of being up graded to four 8" duel mounts) until such time as the limit on gun calibre lapses.
 
The Hawkins class was of excellent range and speed compared to proceeding classes . The 7.5 inch gun was a good design but suffered from being hand loaded and trained single mounts . As speeds and ranges increased this became more and more unacceptable . It is worth noting that at the time of design in 1915 the 7.5 inch was chosen as an intermediate cruiser able to overpower German ships with 7 inch guns . The Treaty cruiser used the 8 inch calibre as a maximum and a 10,000 ton displacement . For the purposes of the Royal Navy the Hawkins was too much ship for not much gun .
The best with hindsight is simply to build the Hawkins (or even better E class 7500t limit) with 10x twin 6" all on centreline (OTL 7.5" positions) with the two side mounts removed to save weight?

Then come WNT they insist on a 6" limit and its likley to stick?
 
Last edited:
Treat the Hawkins class as a restricted category. RN and USN allowed 5 each, IJN 3, France and Italy 2 each of ships with 8” up to 10,000 tons. All other cruisers 6” and 8000 tons but unrestricted in numbers.

The need for 8” guns was range. At first it wasn’t thought that full director firing gear could fit in a 10000 ton ship but when it could these ships became quite a threat.
 
Last edited:
Of the five Hawkins Class two were launched by the Armistice and therefore it is a bit late to build them as 6" cruisers with turrets. With the last three ships this might be possible. Also due to the fine lines aft fitting a fifth turret on the quarter deck might be a problem.
 
Don't try to make the guns on the County Class dual purpose. 3 triple turrets, small tube power plant, geared turbines, decent armour.
 
Last edited:
Both the Japanese ships were laid down after the conclusion of the WNT negotiations, so in practical terms they could have been signed away.
 
Of the five Hawkins Class two were launched by the Armistice and therefore it is a bit late to build them as 6" cruisers with turrets. With the last three ships this might be possible. Also due to the fine lines aft fitting a fifth turret on the quarter deck might be a problem.
Rebuild them as carriers and have 6" gun as the maximum allowed in the treaty. At under 10,000 tons they don't count towards the allowed carrier tonnage, so nothing's lost. Just don't tell the other treaty parties that's what you plan to do with them before the treaty's signed.
 
Last edited:
The Brits had been building fleet cruisers for a North Sea dust up for 20 years. They badly needed Hawkins as cruisers for patrol duties. It is part of the reason they went crazy on Counties. They perform the role as well.

I am not sure where this idea is coming for a universal cruiser hull. Maybe the Brooklyn/Wichitas? That again is an artifact of the WNT. If the USN had a choice they would have all been Wichitas. Wait. We are thinking about the Mogami's right?
This whole switch the turret out thing doesn't make sense. A navy would decide whether long range fire or a hail of 6" was doctrinely superior and design accordingly. The hail of fire was way of circumventing the WNT. Not a better way of making a 6" cruiser. In a natural environment you would get big and small cruisers with different hull sizes.

To design a universal hull from the start would require a degree of foresight of how to abuse the rules no one really showed. Heck, I would argue that the Japanese made the leap showed desperation rather than foresight.
 
INVHO the Hawkins Class were an aberration for the RN caused by the supposed building of 7' gunned cruisers by the Germans. If the RN coverts all the Hawkins to Carriers or scraps them on the ways then the British are in a much stronger position at the WNT talks to limit cruisers ton 6". IIRC the other participants in the WNT argued for 8" and 10.000 tons to match the Hawkins Class. If the 6" gun is kept as the standard then I see the RN building a turreted version of the E class and an analogue of the Leander class as their standard trade protection/scout Cruiser until the LNT. If other navies start build big multi turret 6' gunned cruisers then I can see the RN build a town type with four 6" triple mounts (capable hopefully of being up graded to four 8" duel mounts) until such time as the limit on gun calibre lapses.

The USN was looking at the 8" gun already as well - the Hawkins class was a very good driver for continued development, but issues with RF guns (the 6"/53 was an improvement, that said) lead them to favor the 8" gun. That's especially when they are faced with the political realities that they will never match the RN on a quantitative basis.

The first 8 USN 8" cruisers were replacements for the eight surviving members of the Big Ten, as it were. Absent an 8" gun series, they might actually try to refit the old armored cruisers and maintain them in service.

Treat the Hawkins class as a restricted category. RN and USN allowed 5 each, IJN 3, France and Italy 2 each of ships with 8” up to 10,000 tons. All other cruisers 6” and 8000 tons but unrestricted in numbers.

The need for 8” guns was range. At first it wasn’t thought that full director firing gear could fit in a 10000 ton ship but when it could these ships became quite a threat.

8000 tons was inadequate for USN purposes, as was shown by the Omaha class design scheme. It was incredibly difficult to get the required ranges seen as necessary by the USN for Pacific operations.
 
The USN was looking at the 8" gun already as well - the Hawkins class was a very good driver for continued development, but issues with RF guns (the 6"/53 was an improvement, that said) lead them to favor the 8" gun. That's especially when they are faced with the political realities that they will never match the RN on a quantitative basis.

The first 8 USN 8" cruisers were replacements for the eight surviving members of the Big Ten, as it were. Absent an 8" gun series, they might actually try to refit the old armored cruisers and maintain them in service.



8000 tons was inadequate for USN purposes, as was shown by the Omaha class design scheme. It was incredibly difficult to get the required ranges seen as necessary by the USN for Pacific operations.

Then have the USN demand that Fuel and water tankage is not counted as part of the ships weight - the British managed something similar for the BB all up weight?
 
Then have the USN demand that Fuel and water tankage is not counted as part of the ships weight - the British managed something similar for the BB all up weight?

But space and structural weight becomes more critical on smaller vessels. The Omaha class were incredibly poor seaboats, reflecting destroyer design practices more than anything. They were incredibly wet, had performance that varied (partially due to three different type of powerplants being used amongst the various class members). They were also thin-hulled and poorly suited for both tropical and arctic service With that as their experience, they wanted larger to provide for better performance and habitability.

Your savings as mentioned would only give ~ 1k tons, which means the USN is still going to have to be working with a ~9k ton vessel. So smaller than the Pensacola as built, which was incredibly undersized (and which also were supposed to have ~1.4k tons of fuel oil alone, so you'd either lose range or build an even lighter ship than that).

I mention this, as these are the vessels that are being launched and are getting ready for trials as the conference is ongoing.

That also doesn't address the other issue - Britain has so many more vessels that the US wanted qualitative advantage. To get that, you'd need a cap on total number of vessels and tonnage as well. This was the issue that came up in 1927 as well - the US wanted a lower cap than the British, decidedly so. (the British wanted ~ 70, and the US desired 35 - the Omaha class and 25 8" gun cruisers).

Cruiser tonnage capping at this time was practically an afterthought for the powers that be. The cap of 10k tons and 8" allowed for all existing vessels to continue in service and kept the USN happy. say the US gives up that bargaining chip and agrees to the British desire. In exchange, what would the US press to give up one of its initial bargaining options? They do have to replace their eight main armored cruisers, three of which are still used for flag operations - what becomes of those without a replacement in the pipeline?

EDIT: Just checked the OTL records. As far as I can tell, from Part 4 concerning Capital Ship and Standard Displacement definition, a vessel is not a Capital ship so long as it does not exceed 10k tons standard displacement, and standard displacement already accounts for fuel oil and reserve feed water as well. Am I missing something in the OTL treaty that says cruisers don't follow that standard, as it seems that they already don't have to account for oil and RFW as part of displacement.

-

I'm not saying it can't happen; just saying that the USN will want something in exchange. (As it's giving up a fairly major bargaining position without much in return, and without any real change in the leadup to cause that change). Perhaps agreement that they may rebuild the armored cruisers with a caliber of any size equivalent or lessor. After the treaty this gets shoved to the wayside, until Germany starts constructing their panzerschiff, which are much larger than anything allowed under the treaty. At which point, the delayed refits are finally rushed into place. (The refits are an OTL recommendation prior to the construction of Pensacola, but were looked upon unfavorably as Pensacola was superior in every regard).

-

To OP, just to keep on topic, how much armor are you gaining by moving to A-XY scheme vs the AB-X scheme? How significantly does it affect armor?
 
Last edited:

MatthewB

Banned
I’d like the RN to abandon the single and open mounts. Go straight to the dual closed mounts of the Leanders.

640px-D_class_cruiser_diagrams_Brasseys_1923.jpg


oni201-42.PNG
 

MatthewB

Banned
Skip the Arethusa class, too small, make more Didos where at least their small size is offset by credible AA for CBG defence.
 
Top