Royal Navy Alternate Cruiser designs post WW1

Regarding refitting with Belt Armour, weren't quite a few of the County class cruisers initially commissioned without their Belt Armour? It was added later in the mid-late 1930's during refits.
 
Hindsight engaged. Financial constraints ignored.

Alternative British Heavy cruiser in the Washington Treaty Era.

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Just checked the Washington treaty.
Capital ships were allowed to add up to 3000 tons as part of a refit, but not change calibre or number of main guns, or side armour.
So cruisers can't use that to add armour as a) they aren't capital ships and b) it's armour.
So you would need a different treaty to build cruisers that were designed for retro-fit of armour.

Butterflying the Hawkins class, or agreeing to scrap, and restricting to 6" guns and 8,000 tons in the treaty works better in the long run for the RN, and stands a good chance of being agreeable to most parties.
Except nobody on the naval side in the RN delegation saw that.
As Beatty was 1st sea lord, and according to his bio was "responsible for negotiating the washington naval treaty" that shouldn't be too surprising.

The French and Italians stopped building 10000 tons 8" cruisers, and went to 8000 ton 6" as soon as the London treaty was signed in 1930.
So probably not a problem for them.

The Japanese were building 5,500 ton (ish) 5.5" cruisers until they felt the need to counter the Hawkins.
The Furutaka and Aoba classes were 8,000 ton, not 10,000 (and laid down post Washington). So no 10,000 tonners until post Washington.
Agreeing to an 8000 ton limit, and doing a minor redesign to take 5.5s or 6" rather than 8" before even laying the ships down makes these ships as good as anything in the world.

The US were building the Omahas (8,000 ton, 6") at the time of the Washington treaty, which they presumably thought were satisfactory, or they would be building bigger and heavier armed. I don't think the problems with the Omahas were due mostly to size.
The US hadn't built any cruisers for a while, and they weren't particularly well designed, with an old-fashioned look to them.
Double banked casemate guns, in 1920?
With a restriction to 8000 tons and 6" guns I'm sure the next generation of cruisers would have been better.
Probably like the Pensacola class, only smaller, as the 6" guns allow for weight savings not only on the guns but also throughout the ship to maintain roughly the same performance, but with lighter guns and armament.
Agreeing to 8000 tons and 6" puts the Omahas at the top end of cruisers, rather than instantly obsolescent when everyone starts building 10000 tons with 8".

From the viewpoint of 1921/22, and absent the Hawkins class, the lower limit on tonnage and gun size makes sense for everybody, particularly in the context of an arms (and cost) limitation treaty.
How about the Hawkins are converted into trade protection carriers. Edit: Phew I would be really embarrassed if the previous post had said exactly the same thing
 
It is an old idea. I am not sure that the hull is up to it. Wrong shape. It is telling the RN thought Vindictive too small for a carrier flying WWI aircraft.
 
The USN never built a small cruiser. Not even the Atlantas. I have trouble seeing how you are going to convince them to.
The main point is you don't need to you just need to get the civilians to agree....

It is telling the RN thought Vindictive too small for a carrier flying WWI aircraft.
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Was that just due to no complete thought deck?
 
It wasn't the size of the landing on deck, it was the eddies from the Bridge, masts and funnels in front of it that made landing on near impossible.
 
I have no idea of the specifics. They were waiting on Argus island tests. Hermes came in bigger and didn't have the skinny cruiser hull.

I don't know what you could convince the US politicians to agree to. Apparently they weren't really talking to the navy at WNT. I imagine they would want the biggest and best then refuse to pay for it. Sort of backwards to what you are thinking.

I think the problem is one of education. The Navy has been educating the politicians towards this battleships fleet culminating in the SoDaks and Lexingtons. But by 1920ish the navy knows their limitations and wants something else. The politicians are going to want to know why all those big cruiser ideas they have been sold for the last decade are no longer relevant. And besides aren't all those Omahas bigger than everyone else's cruisers? The USN is in an ideological hole it will take a decade to dig itself out of.
 
Problem with the USN at that time was that it was insanely top heavy. Their Armoured cruisers were obsolete and vulnerable and they had precisely two light cruisers worthy of the name. The USN didn't really have that many destroyers until the 4 stacker program started up either. Instead they just built more and more battleships whilst utterly neglecting their scouting arm. They NEEDED cruisers.
 
For what it's worth this is a list of the 58 cruisers the British Empire had in 1922. The source is Conway's 1922-46 with the laying down and completion dates from Conway's 1906-21. However, the dates may not be 100% correct.

I have included the cruiser Raleigh, which wasn't in Conway's list of RN ship in 1922, because it was wrecked on 8th August 1922. I have included the Vindictive even though she wasn't converted back into a cruiser until 1923-25 (Source, Conway's 1906-21). Furthermore 8 of the 58 ships were still incomplete at the beginning of 1922 so the effective cruiser strength of the British Empire at 1st January 1922 was 49 ships.

At the time the service life of a cruiser was set at 15 years and that is why I have put the 15 Year column in. As it happened 15 is also the number of cruisers that would become over age by the end of 1929. Therefore, after deducting Raleigh, there would be only 42 effective cruisers on 1st January 1930 against a requirement for 70. IIRC from Friedman the Admiralty wanted to lay down 28 County class cruisers 1924-27 (8+8+8+4) to bring the cruiser force up to the required strength by the beginning of 1930.

I had though that the requirement was for 40 County class to be laid down 1924-28 at the rate of 8 a year. Morris says so in Cruisers of the Royal and Commonwealth Navies and I thought that Roskill said so in British Naval Policy Between the Wars. This might have been correct because another 14 cruisers would have become overage between 1st January 1930 and 31st December 1931.

In the end 14 cruisers were discarded 1922-29 and 11 Counties were completed. Another 7 cruisers were discarded 1930-31 and this was offset by the completion of 4 new ships, which were the final pair of Counties and the 2 York class.

In the second half of the 1920s the second half of the 1920s the Admiralty increased the service life of a cruiser from 15 to 20 years. The target was still 70 cruisers of which 10 could be over age, which required an average building rate of 3 ships a year. Then the First London Naval Treaty set the service life of surface vessels exceeding 3,000 tons, but not exceeding 10,000 tons standard displacement, at 16 years after the date of completion if the ship was laid down before 1st January 1920 and 20 years if laid down after 31st December 1919.

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I have no idea of the specifics. They were waiting on Argus island tests. Hermes came in bigger and didn't have the skinny cruiser hull.
While I have my copy of Conway's out...

Dimensions
Hermes: 598ft overall x 70ft 3in x 18ft 6in

Cavendish: class were 605ft overall x 65ft x 19ft 3in

Machinery
Hermes: 2-shaft Parsons geared turbines, 6 Yarrow boilers, 40,000 shp = 25 knots

Cavendish (Vindictive): 4-shaft Parsons geared turbines, 12 Yarrow boilers, 60,000 shp = 30 knots

The dimensions are much closer than I had previously thought. However, Hermes might have had a "fuller" hull form in fuller is the correct word.
 
The basic problem with a small USN cruiser is that it does not match their requirements. They want a cruiser
to supplement the Lexington battle cruisers in a scout role. Preferably on some epic sweep across the Pacific. And the Omahas had just proven small 7000 ton cruisers don't work.
The USN never built a small cruiser. Not even the Atlantas. I have trouble seeing how you are going to convince them to.

Well, there is the Chester class. Which is even more of an aberration and is quite obsolescent by this point in time. And I can't check its service range as I don't have US Cruisers on me at the moment.

The USN also has to replace its aging armored cruisers which do serve as flag vessels, which is another concern. The battlecruisers would have replaced them originally, but with their cancellation 8" light cruisers were to replace them instead (as an 8" gun treaty cruiser was superior to the old ships). Now, in an environment where there is no ship that can compare to them...

The US hadn't built any cruisers for a while, and they weren't particularly well designed, with an old-fashioned look to them.
Double banked casemate guns, in 1920?

Unfortunately a big destroyer a cruiser does not make. In simple terms it is the wrong hull shape, and the Americans were still learning that you don't have to stick guns on every flat surface. So they wanted another go. Which was leading towards something like the Pensacolas but the WNT intervened.

Issue being that the US valued end on firepower on its cruisers at the time vs broadside firepower. This lead to the poor design choice. On the aft portion of the ship, it is understandable. The ship was designed to have a first generation catapult of the type shown below.

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This was a system that demanded a ton of space - and this is why the quarterdeck was empty as designed. The two twin mounts were add-ons, nothing more. This is an important point - the twin 6" mount on the Omaha was cramped and had an effectively lower rate of fire. For example, a hypothetical 4x2 6" Omaha successor would effectively be less capable unless the mounts are completely redesigned (and enlarged). Let's not talk about the increased top weight, which was the enemy of Omaha (designed with 10 torpedo tubes and, I believe, 488 naval mines as part of its regular loadout). So you'd have to have a redesign of the mounts (likely making them heavier), a larger hull to take the additional top weight that's higher up, etc. and when you only have a small margin to play with and range is still insufficient...

It's no surprise that the US was already working on an 8" gun replacement cruiser, as the rate of fire isn't noticeably worse than the equivalent 6" gun version at the time when in a multi-gun mount.

Their Armoured cruisers were obsolete and vulnerable and they had precisely two light cruisers worthy of the name.

USS Birmingham: *sniffles*

Instead they just built more and more battleships whilst utterly neglecting their scouting arm. They NEEDED cruisers.

This is especially the case as the British and Japanese do both have battlecruisers. The USN has already sacrificed their battlecruisers at the altar of the treaty, and now the British, instead of just agreeing as per OTL, are insisting that tonnage be limited as it was later on? This would deprive the USN of any heavy scout that could overpower an AMC (or, looking ahead, any Panzerschiff which did drive discussions OTL of dropping the 8" limitation). I'd like to hear what the USN receives in return for depriving itself of any replacement for its armored cruisers and the lack of any heavy scouting force.

As, well, if the answer was just politicians would have gone for it just to save money, why didn't the British press OTL?
 
in 'British Aircraft Carriers, Design, Development and Service Histories' by David Hobbs I have found the following figures for Vindictive and Hermes.

Vindictive: Length 605ft Hermes; Length 600ft flight deck 570ft.
Beam 65ft 2in flight deck aft 57ft Beam, flight deck 90ft
draught 20ft 6 in draught 26ft

others sources give Hermes a hull waterline beam of 70ft over the bulges.

The most telling dimension here is that for Draught, which would seen to confirm that Hermes had a much fuller hull form. Vindictive beam to draught ratio = 65.2 over 20.5 = 3.12, For Hermes beam to Draught ratio = 70 over 26 = 2.69. The lower the ratio the fuller the hull form. That is a very quick and dirty formula and is only useful as the two ships are very similar in length.
 
Vindictive would have made a useful convoy escort with say 10 Swordfish. Would also have been very useful early war hunting raiders in southern waters.
 
The RAF would have stolen the pilots and used the Swordfish in the Bob. The FAA couldn't man the ships they had.
 
While the FAA was part of the RAF, did it get its own budget and manpower allocation? Or did the high command at the air ministry decide how much allocated?

How was it commanded? through one of the RAF Groups or under RN command until a fairly high level?
 
Just for discussion purposes, a notional Omaha redesign with 3 x twin 6" turrets replacing the casemates. I suspect the bridge and forward turrets would have to be further aft? And an Arethusa for comparison.

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As an aside, would the Pensacolas have been better off with a cut down mast and 4 x twin 8" turrets?
 
Very nice take on the Omaha's, you'd probably have to increase the beam slightly and stiffen the hull for the barbettes but that shouldn't be too bad. And the Pepsicola's would have been better if they'd had their triple turrets under the twins, cutting down a bit of top weight would have been a good thing.
 
As, well, if the answer was just politicians would have gone for it just to save money, why didn't the British press OTL?

It took politicians to make a successful disarmament conference - never leave it to the military. The US wanted to extend limits to minor units. It was the Brits who wouldn't accept controls because the French and Italians rejected the ban on the submarine. At Washington, 2 Hawkins class were in service while 3 were still under construction, 5:5:3 is a simple way of controlling the need for 10,000 ton ships, The US can build 50,000 tons of 8" cruisers and Japan can build 30,000 tons. Lets convene again in 5 years and hammer out a further agreement.

The Spanish Almirante Cervera class are another example of what could be done on 8000 tons.
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