Royal Navy Alternate Cruiser designs post WW1

I often wonder if the Graf Spee would have been worse of with the rate of fire from 28 6 inch guns firing on her as opposed to 16 6 inch and 6 8 inch .

I thought all the hits that did serious damage to the Graf Spee were 8 inch hits. Graf Spee would have done worse if it was being fired upon by 18 8 inch guns.
 
18 8 inch are going to be much more powerful , however a 6 inch will mess up Graf Spee . The armour belt will keep 6 inch out . The upper works etc will be destroyed . I would have far preferred all York class over a mix of County and Leander .
 
From the USN 1928 Program:
The 1916 program, as enacted by Congress and approved by the President, August 29, 1916, provided for a total of 156 war vessels.

The battle ships authorized were to have “as heavy armor and as powerful armament as any vessels of their class, to have the highest practicable speed and greatest desirable radius of action,” and this same description was applied to various others of the proposed vessels. The President had laid out a definite year to year schedule in his message for the laying down of the vessels all within a period of five years but this was not included in the bill. It did provide, however, that 66 of the vessels were to be undertaken “as soon as practicable.” The cost of the program was estimated at the time as $686,000,000. Insofar as it has been completed to date the program has cost $984,000,000.

The program was criticised on the one hand as excessive and on the other as inadequate. Other critics doubted the President's sincerity and were convinced that many of the vessels provided in the program would never be built.

In regards to WNT:
It will be seen that the United States made the greatest sacrifice in naval tonnage. The expenditure on the uncompleted vessels that were scrapped totaled $153,814,000. It would have cost an additional $282,986,000 to complete them. The savings to the three principal powers as a result of the Washington treaty have been estimated as high as $2,000,000,000, and the saving to the United States alone at $1,000,000,000.1 The First Lord of the British Admiralty estimated the saving to Great Britain over a five year period, in the House of Commons, November 22, 1926, as “£48.000,000 to £88,000,000” - $233,592,000 to $428,252,000.
 
Agree with most of your post but not sure that USN could really cancel it over 8" v 6" (if the RN/others have not already built them) without paying a huge political price with its own government?

The USN was not overly concerned about the WNT, though it used it to get parity with the Royal Navy. If there was not treaty the USN could have become as big as it wanted, with some economical restrains later perhaps, but otherwise much larger and more influential, especially toward Japan, which would find severe restrains in its own naval enlargement, as well as a Royal Navy forced to make choices in its own programs, due to economical restrictions so short after a costly long war.

For most the logical reason of the USN to go for 8 inch on cruisers was it wanted to outrange existing cruisers of potential (Pacific) opposition, rather t6han create short range gunnery ships, which suited more the QF gun type of the more normal cruiser. Basically teh 8 inch was choosen to make substitute battleships, with a cruiser hull, just to get a sort of smaller battlecruiser idea of the years before the Great War. The role the USN in the early 20's considered for the new 8 inch gunner was that of a oversea deployement of a big gunned show of force in peacetime and a sort of hybrid battleship in wartime, as the larger, but slower real battleships were mostly concentrated in either east, or westcoast mainland USA at the time and would take a lot of time to travel to a warzone.

USN cruisers did not the classical cruiser roles any other navy, except Japan, employed. The USA simply had not that many colonial territories to protect and show her flag there, as did the British, French and a few others. The classical cruiser was multi-purpose warship capable of operating alone and in groups, intended for patrolling, commerce protection, commerce raiding, scouting for a battlefleet (before aircraft became a major factor), oversea deployement, political powerplay and many more tasks. USN heavy cruisers especially did nothing of these, except the showing the flag oversea and were considered battleline units in the first place.
 
The USN was not overly concerned about the WNT, though it used it to get parity with the Royal Navy. If there was not treaty the USN could have become as big as it wanted, with some economical restrains later perhaps, but otherwise much larger and more influential, especially toward Japan, which would find severe restrains in its own naval enlargement, as well as a Royal Navy forced to make choices in its own programs, due to economical restrictions so short after a costly long war.

For most the logical reason of the USN to go for 8 inch on cruisers was it wanted to outrange existing cruisers of potential (Pacific) opposition, rather t6han create short range gunnery ships, which suited more the QF gun type of the more normal cruiser. Basically teh 8 inch was choosen to make substitute battleships, with a cruiser hull, just to get a sort of smaller battlecruisers not idea of the years before the Great War. The role the USN in the early 20's considered for the new 8 inch gunner was that of a oversea deployement of a big gunned show of force in peacetime and a sort of hybrid battleship in wartime, as the larger, but slower real battleships were mostly concentrated in either east, or westcoast mainland USA at the time and would take a lot of time to travel to a warzone.

USN cruisers did not the classical cruiser roles any other navy, except Japan, employed. The USA simply had not that many colonial territories to protect and show her flag there, as did the British, French and a few others. The classical cruiser was multi-purpose warship capable of operating alone and in groups, intended for patrolling, commerce protection, commerce raiding, scouting for a battlefleet (before aircraft became a major factor), oversea deployement, political powerplay and many more tasks. USN heavy cruisers especially did nothing of these, except the showing the flag oversea and were considered battleline units in the first place.
No, the US did not consider their CAs substitute battleship/battlecruisers when they started looking into them pre-Washington. Completely wrong. They were scout cruisers, much like the preceding Omahas; the 8” guns were for fighting other cruisers so they could either complete their scouting mission in the face of cruiser opposition, or else bushwhack enemy scout cruisers.

Even later, when their jobs had changed, they were not considered battle line units. CAs, within the Battle Fleet Force structure, were to operate with CLs and DDs in a manner similar to how they were deployed at Surigao Strait: towards the enemy to support light forces in the torpedo attack by combatting enemy light cruisers in the screen. The other duty was carrier escort, a logical outgrowth of the original scouting mission. Surprise surprise, this mostly what they did during the war, with only cruiser-destroyer surface actions tacked on, and those were different from prewar doctrine mostly due to the independence of such units from the battle fleet.
 
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So the RN went for Leanders and Arethusas, primarily for trade protection and a higher number of cruisers. But some googling turned up La Argentina - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARA_La_Argentina_(C-3)

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With a bit of tweaking, might this design have been a good option to go for? Only 30 knots, but with some armour that could be removed to give equivalent protection to an Arethusa? Three triple 6" turrets. Built with accomodation for 60 cadets, so possibly some savings there? Maybe some room to up the power from 54,000hp?
 
FWIIW the Argentine, La Argentina -training cruiser was not as far as I know ever fitted with an 8 X 2lb Pom Pom(as stated in Wikipedia) but had bespoke twin 1" Vickers auto cannons fitted either side of the bridge.
 
She's fairly obviously heavily based on the Arethusas and Leanders - slightly slower but over twice the range and heavier armour. Better? I wouldn't like to bet on the difference.

(Hmmm...perhaps there's the start of an ASB timeline? Graf Spee's crew seize La Argentina and try to sail home!) :)
 
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She's fairly obviously heavily based on the Arethusas and Leanders - slightly slower but over twice the range and heavier armour. Better? I would like to bet on the difference.

(Hmmm...perhaps there's the start of an ASB timeline? Graf Spee's crew seize La Argentina and try to sail home!) :)
Speaking of La Argentina if her completion had been delayed by seven or so months she would have probably been a ship of the Royal Navy due to the outbreak of WW2
 
The biggest thing that is missing is what the the Pensacola and Northampton class light cruisers replaced - the Pennsylvania and Tennessee class armored cruisers. That is part of the reason behind their weaponry and design. The older armored cruisers were considered for refurbishment, but the newer vessels had more firepower, better range, better armor and higher speed. It was an easy choice to have them replaced. The light cruisers took over from the old armored cruisers by being able to act as a flag vessel, cruise on independent and squadron operations for far distances

The reason they became heavy cruisers was due to the LNT, but if you're analyzing their design, construction, and initial service, it's important that they were light cruisers upon commissioning and light cruisers in design.

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The US love affair with the 8" gun goes back to the 1890s, as the US always lagged behind the UK in the development of RF guns. The 6" gun on the Omaha, while a definite improvement on previous incarnations, was limited as the rate of fire of the 6"/53 in the twin mount was much worse than in the single mount. This is being discovered at the time of the WNT, so you have the US aware that their 6" mounts are much worse than foreign equivalents, and the US is going to be handicapped in the event that they accept the restriction. In comparison, the 8" gun, while slower firing, was not significantly worse that it was even with the 6"/53. In effect, the 8"/55 was seen as a superior weapon as its cumulative weight of fire would outpace what US 6"/53 guns could accomplish at the time.

As for why the US bothered putting the worse 6"/53 on the Omaha class? The US noticed that, while the ships had 8 guns, only 4 could fire in any direction at once, and as such the antiquated casemate design had to be supplemented with 6"/53 twin mounts after the fact. The rear was intended for the catapult, as noted before as well. The 6"/53 twin did have better performance than a single 6"/53, hence their use vs single pedestal mount guns.

I'll point to US Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History by Friedman. On page 112, he talks about the decision of the 8"/55 over the 6"/53. Even in his research, the initial choice for the 8" gun was almost reflexive (though I'll point out that some designs for the Omaha class also included 8" guns). It was assumed that the proposed 8"/50 would be superior due to its better range, and that there was no other argument that could be held against it. Friedman then points out that support for the 8" was not unanimous - the April 1921 General Board hearing had every single witness oppose the 8" gun (mostly on the basis that the British didn't care for the Hawkins class, that they were too expensive and too manpower-intensive, and that they were shifting to 6" guns again in the E Class.

These same supporters argued that range would rarely exceed the maximum range of the 6" guns, and as such there'd be no advantage to fight at longer ranges, and that the Chief of BuOrd and his subordinates preferred the 6" gun, arguing that [since the 8" gun was limited to 2-3 RPM at this time (the Pennsylvania class had the newest iteration of the weapon, which was approaching 20 years old by this point)], the single 6" gun would have far superior performance as they can guarantee 6-8 RPM from it.

Of course, all of these arguments were built around the false premise that they would be using single mounts. Eventually, the supporters of the 6" did relent, noting that twin mounts would perform far worse than a single mount, and the RoF would be comparable to the hypothetical 8" mount. And, of BuOrd's two projected designs (an 8 gun 8" ship or a 12 gun 6" ship), the 8" ship would project 2000 lbs per broadside vs 1200 for the 6" one.

(I'll note that this was done ~4 months after the launch of Omaha, before the vessel could be commissioned. This was a known factor)

It is noted that it's part of the reason the US relented to 8" cruiser restrictions in the LNT, as by then mounts had advanced to the point where the RoF of the 6" gun was superseding the gains made by the 8" gun. A personal observation: the 8" gun is a better investment, as the projected gains of the larger gun in future generations would be less than for the 6" gun. Even if you are to argue at the time that the 6"/53 mount would be improved over time, that means that all cruisers built with the 6"/53 in twin or more mounts in the interim would have performance significantly worse than later ships. In comparison, 8" ships lose less performance over time as the gains in RoF are far more marginal.

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Another impact that the US is dealing with is the construction of the Omaha. The stresses on the hull of the vessel were noted to be very high due to her extremely light construction.

I did find that the US considered very small cruisers in 1919 - schemes D, E, F, and H of the 1920 scout cruisers (page 113 of US Cruisers) shows the design schemes for cruisers of 5k to 6.5k in size, with either 5 6"/53 or 6 8"/50 (hypothetical 8" at the time). The latter caliber was on two of the larger design schemes. These were favored by Commander W. S. Pye of OpNav, although he thought they were too fast and wanted them reduced so that they could achieve 30 knots max (vice 33-35 of the schemes).

The US General Board "violently opposed" [page 114] this idea - because of the issues of hull stress. The US was at this time pursuing a 10k ton, 3x2 8"/50 ship capable of 35 knots with 10k nm cruise radius at 10 knots. They knew that as the Omaha had been a tight design and that the hull would be highly stressed at sea (this is a year before a single ship was launched). They were committed to relieving hull stress, which necessitated them to increase the size of the vessel, to the point where 10,000 tons was practically a necessity.

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This all doesn't even account that the US possessed different requirements than the British.

The issues that would have to be solved for the US thus have to be based around the following:

Finding adequate replacements for its aging 2nd-Rate semicapital warships on a hull for hull basis.
Making 6"/53 multigun mounts comparable with peer 8"/50 or 8"/55 multigun mounts.
Resolving US concerns about hull stress in its currently constructing vessels, of which were a well known issue.
Satisfying the requirements of the US without unduly handicapping it against other nations with less stringent requirements on range.
 
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